Numerous contemporary political and/or artistic practitioners take up invisible strategies to carry out their actions. These strategies include ecret, covert or clandestine tactics. Their aim is manifold:
-to ensure that their actions are effective
-to safeguard the activists identity from those in power
-to remain recognisable to each other
-to undermine the processes of representation and commodification
Examples include guerrilla gardening (from tree planting projects to impromptu farming), culture jamming (subversion of mainstream media messages), independent web networks (for ex. Indymedia), impromptu stand-ins (from sit-ins to pretence replacement), etc.
With regards to these strategies, this conference will address the following issue:
What does it mean to retain a deliberately invisible strategy in order to carry out an artistic intervention or an activist project and what consequences does this have on both the hegemonic politics of representation and on the constitution of the archive?
The aim of this conference is not to make these invisible strategies visible or to constitute an archive of these practices. The aim is to explore the relevance of this invisibility and to explore the fact that art or political activism is not necessarily visible, that it can exist without exposure.
Speakers include:
Mujeres Creando, activists, Bolivia
Suzana Milevska, curator and writer, Macedonia
Roberto Pinto, curator and writer, Italy, current curator Gwangju Biennale
Gao Minglu, curator and writer, Boston
Susan Kelly, writer and activist, UK
Minerva Cuevas, artist, Mexico
Respondents: Sophie Hope, curator, London, Celina Simmons, writer, London.
