HomeInternational Conference on Sexual Diversity Studies in Ibero-America: Desires, Spaces and Identities

International Conference on Sexual Diversity Studies in Ibero-America: Desires, Spaces and Identities

Congreso internacional sobre estudios de diversidad sexual en Iberoamérica: deseos, espacios e identidades

Artistic-cultural practices, productions and epistemologies from the edges: voices and decolonial stakes of feminisms and sexual dissidences

Prácticas, producciones y epistemologías artístico-culturales desde los bordes: voces y apuestas decoloniales de los feminismos y de las disidencias sexuales

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Published on Thursday, December 21, 2023

Abstract

Español English

This symposium aims to make visible, analyze and reflect on border cultural practices and productions. In the geographic and symbolic borders stand identities and resistances of those “othernesses” built by colonialism and by that “western conscience”. In a decolonizing effort on the object-subject in artistic-cultural production, feminisms and sexual dissidences in the Ibero-American and diasporic space transform “the personal into the political” through artivist practices and the appropriation of public and virtual space, proposals from performance, manifesto, street art, literature, weaving, scenic arts and music, among other forms of expression that deconstruct the hegemonic vision.

Announcement

Español English

Within the framework of the International Congress on Sexual Diversity Studies in Ibero-America: Desires, spaces and identities, to be held at the University of Girona, symposium number 20: Artistic-cultural practices, productions and epistemologies from the edges: voices and decolonial bets of feminisms and sexual dissidence, we propose the following:

Argument

Cultural production is, like many, a space of power and dispute, where historically hegemonic discourses and practices have been established that institutionalize a certain knowledge about sexuality, intimacy, desire, pleasure, thus constituting an ideal type of subject framed in the heteronormative-patriarchal system. Thus, literature, music, radio, the graphic industry, cinema, the performing arts, among other forms of artistic-cultural expression, create a narrative that does not necessarily encompass the multiple ways of thinking about everyday life. An important author who addresses these issues is Gayatri Spivak, feminist and literary critic who in her analysis of the history of literature affirmed that this history is the product of a process of epistemic violence grounded in the discourses on the "other" and from an imperialist vision on the colonized, orientalism, the folkloric, the exotic, the anthropological and the primitive (Montanaro,2017, p. 37).

Thus, the epistemic violence instituted through cultural production gives a voice to certain social groups and, in turn, promotes a reduced and excluding content. In the face of this, organized communities recognize the importance of vindicating the wisdom of the "others": ethnic peoples, women, children, sexual dissidence; thus, countercultural artistic movements confront the established order and the configuration of sexist, racist and classist practices. In this way, art and culture are consolidated as an intersectional scenario of practical and symbolic resistance.

In this context, feminist groups and sexual dissidences have created spaces and cultural practices that deconstruct sexogeneric relations and pleasure as a purely phallocentric and heteronormative category, thus building new forms from the periphery and subalternity. There, the different bets allow the reconfiguration of oppressive imaginaries and realities.

In relation to the process of artistic-cultural creation from the frontiers, the concept of artivism has begun to gain popularity among feminisms, and art and cultural studies. Artivism emerges as a hybrid neologism that involves work created by individuals who see an organic relationship between art and activism, and who are committed to the transformation of themselves and the world (Sandoval, Latorre, 2008).

From the fusion of these identities and the gentrification and saturation of urban areas, artivism breaks the structure of conventional communication, bursting into the social space to call attention and inoculate thought in its receivers. Through emotionality, subjectivation, rupture and invasion of spaces, artivism adapts non-artistic means and times to artistic expression, calling for action, making the spectator aware of his own power.

Moreover, artivism challenges traditional standards of aesthetics and corporeality, and subverts the very notion of the aesthetic object, through a dynamic progress that changes materials and media, practices and styles, roles and rituals, and ceases to be idiomatic in the art world to become pragmatic in social life. In this sense, feminist artivism has played a fundamental role in the relationship between art and politics from the 1970s to the present, weaving organizational structures to subvert patriarchal propaganda, which denigrates and controls the imaginary and discourse of the feminine (Lippard, 1984).

Finally, artivism takes over the public space of cultural platforms that have historically been dominated by white and bourgeois men. In this way, artivist consciousness is centered on individual and collective narratives under an intersectional gaze, that is, in addition to taking over the public space of cultural practices, it makes visible and problematizes imaginaries that involve gender, race and class.

Thanks to artivism, there are different expressions that seek to take virtual and face-to-face spaces, understanding them as hegemonic and heteropatriarchal scenarios where it is necessary to show nonconformity, as well as to make everyday realities visible, expose inequalities, articulate political struggles in community from daily life and build from processes that had not been explored before.

In Latin America there is an extensive history since the late twentieth century and where, as a result of the repressive and violent context, movements have been created that allow to glimpse and build alternative dialogues to the hegemonic ones and take the spaces from which they have been marginalized. An example of this is LASTESIS, a Chilean collective that performs in different ways and is a feminist reference worldwide. Likewise, the Afroféminas Collective in Spain, who take the space through the networks to talk about racism and sexism. Finally, the Contramarcha in the city of Bogota, Colombia and Orgullo Crítico in Madrid, Spain, have taken spaces in the streets to make visible LGBITQ+ issues that are not recognized in the hegemonic discourse.

Thus, understanding spaces as places of contention and recognition, where artivism and cultural production take shape, it becomes necessary to make this counter-hegemonic struggle visible through academic spaces that allow us to glimpse how, in Ibero-America, different identities are constructed and materialize through spaces. In the same way, it allows to analyze, compare and discuss shared and differentiated features, which facilitates a socialization and articulation of academic spaces and beyond them; thus, facilitating the adaptation to our contexts. Likewise, to understand that, through artistic expressions, different communities have been woven within countries and internationally, generating a sense of belonging, inclusion, identity and resistance.

Topics of papers

Within this line, all contributions related to the following areas are welcome:

  • Artistic-cultural productions from the periphery: decolonization of art and subversion of the artistic "object" to the "subject".
  • Artivism or the political in art: Community methodologies of participation, new aesthetics and corporal and sexual imaginaries from an intersectional point of view.
  • The use and appropriation of spaces: the power of performance, the new "street art", virtual and everyday spaces of resistance and political articulation through art.

Likewise, the organizing committee invites both experienced researchers and young researchers to contribute to this reflection, in Spanish or English.

Modalities of proposals for papers

  • Papers must be unpublished, not having been previously presented at other congresses.
  • Papers will be submitted to a thematic symposium accepted at the congress that is aligned with the interest of the proposal. In case none of the approved symposia is suitable for the communication, the open symposium option may be chosen, where proposals submitted outside symposia will be grouped.
  • No more than two papers will be presented per person, either individually or collectively, and always in different symposia.
  • Abstracts will be submitted through the virtual platform of the congress website and within the established deadline. Abstracts submitted by any other means than the virtual platform of the congress website will not be accepted.
  • Abstracts will have a maximum length of 300 words, including bibliography.
  • The last day to submit abstracts is January 14, 2024.Each paper should include at least three bibliographical references that theoretically support the proposal.
  • Each paper should state the language in which the presentation will be made, either in Spanish or English.
  • In order to publish the papers in the program, it will be necessary that at least one person signing the paper registers in the congress and pays the registration fee.
  • The full text will not be requested

The deadline for submission of paper proposals will be

January 14, 2024.

For the submission of papers, please use the online registration form.

For more information: https://esdeveniments.udg.edu/97226/detail/congreso-internacional-sobre-estudios-de-diversidad-sexual-en-iberoamerica-deseos-espacios-e-identi.html

Email: escueladecolonizando@gmail.com

The organizing committee will communicate the acceptance of papers on February 5, 2024.

The congress will take place, in person, at the University of Girona, on July 17, 18 and 19, 2024.

Scientific committee

  • Janeth Paola Cortés Piraquive, Centro de Investigación Socio-ambiental para la Paz (CISAP), España, jcortespi@unal.edu.co
  • Liz Nataly León Olarte, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, España. lizleon@ucm.es
  • Almendra Espinoza Rivera, Universidad de Heidelberg, Alemania,  almendra.espinoza@posteo.de

Bibliography

  • Alma López, “Las Four,” http://www.almalopez.net
  • Aldro-Vico, E., Jivkova-Semova, D., Bailey, O. (2018). Artivism: A new educative language for tAransformative social action Artivismo. Comunicar: Media Education Research Journal, 57,09-18.
  • Bauman, Z. (2007). Arte, ¿líquido? Madrid: Sequitur.
  • (2018). Why artistic activism. The Center for Artistic Activism. https://c4aa.org/2018/04/why-artistic-activism
  • Deepwell, K. (2020). Feminist Art Activisms and Artivisms. Valiz: Amsterdam. https://www.artmonthly.co.uk/magazine/site/article/art-activism-by-gavin-grindon-february-2010
  • Freire Smith, M. (07.01.2020). Las tesis. La calle (y el cuerpo) en Disputa. Artischock: revista de arte contemporáneo. https://artishockrevista.com/2020/01/07/las-tesis/
  • Lippard, L. (1984). Trojan Horses: Activist Art and Power. In Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation, edited by Brian Wallis. The New Museum of Contemporary Art.
  • Montanaro, A. (2017). Una mirada al feminismo decolonial en América Latina. Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. 
  • Sandoval, C., (2000). New Sciences: Cyborg Feminism and the Methodology of the Oppressed, in The Cybercultures Reader. Ed. David Bell and Barbara M. Kennedy, London: Routledge, 375.
  • Sandoval, C., Latorre, G. (2008). Chicana/o Artivism: Judy Baca’s Digital Work with Youth of Color. Learning Race and Ethnicity: Youth and Digital Media. Ed. Anna Everett. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. 81–108.
  • Mullin, A. (2017). Feminist art and the political imagination. Hypatia, 18, 4. https://bit.ly/2I7sKps
  • Richard, N. (2013). Lo político en el arte: arte, política e instituciones. ARCIS University https://hemi.nyu.edu/hemi/es/e-misferica-62/richard
  • Tobin, A. (30.04.2021). Feminism, art and revolution. Burlington Contemporary. https://contemporary.burlington.org.uk/reviews/reviews/feminism-art-and-revolution

Places

  • Facultat d'Educació i Psicologia
    Girona, Kingdom of Spain

Event attendance modalities

Full on-site event


Date(s)

  • Sunday, January 14, 2024

Keywords

  • disidencia sexuale, artivismo feminista, decolonial

Contact(s)

  • Janeth Paola Cortés Piraquive
    courriel : jcortespi [at] unal [dot] edu [dot] co
  • Almendra Espinoza Rivera
    courriel : almendra [dot] espinoza [at] posteo [dot] de

Information source

  • Liz Nataly León Olarte
    courriel : lizleon [at] ucm [dot] es

License

CC0-1.0 This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.

To cite this announcement

« International Conference on Sexual Diversity Studies in Ibero-America: Desires, Spaces and Identities », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Thursday, December 21, 2023, https://doi.org/10.58079/vdz1

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