Objects Before and After the Wall | The Institute for Endotic Research

Objects Before and After the Wall

Click here for the 2020 publication Objects Before and After the Wall

 

Background

This research analyzes the wall as an object from different angles: thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, twenty-five years after the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement and in the geopolitical framework that requires research in Mexico it´s border condition with Central America and with the United States. The wall as an ideological space and the relationship between objects and walls. The notion of the liminal, the crack, the border and other possible unfoldings. It establishes continuity with the conversations and reflections that took place in the summer of 2018 in the circle of studies and reading: Political history(ies) of objects occurred at the independent space Biquini Wax EPS in Mexico City, coordinated by Clara Bolívar. This circle resulted in the First International Meeting of Objects without People, in which collaborative work networks were created and resulted in simultaneous transmission in nine cities in Mexico, Germany, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala and Ecuador. This international dimension made possible to establish links with other spaces, including the Institute for Endotic Research in Berlin.

Thus, together, we will carry out a reflection on the objects after the fall of East Germany (and the rest of Eastern Europe) after the breakup of the USSR, and the subsequent neoliberal reforms which  took place in Europe and Latin America.

The investigation

This research work aims to strengthen collaborative networks with cultural agents from different latitudes with whom we converge in similar searches in the field of current art. Expanded thinking will allow us to see from an archaeological dimension of the contemporary, how the material condition of objects opens possibilities to think about them.

On the other hand, this research considers the strategy of the circle of study as a fundamental axis: to debate ideas in order to encourage thought as a whole, since in a circle no one is more important than another, there are no hierarchies and ideas pass from voice to voice.

Phase 1: Circle of studies by modules

From Mexico City, we will conduct a study circle from April to August, which will consist on five modules that will be taught in Tlaxcala 3 workspace. It will be open to artists, writers and cultural agents whose work is linked to objects in their symbolic, historical, contextual, political and / or economic dimensions. Interested people can register for all the modules or those who they prefer.

Phase 2: Exchange with Berlin

From the Institute for Endotic Research, a series of meetings will be held throughout the month of April with four writers and artists who will produce texts in the framework of this research. These texts will be read in a collective session in Berlin and later, they will be reviewed in September and October with the curatorial research group.

Phase 3: Curatorial research

After the circle of studies, we will receive proposals from those who have attended at least three of the five study modules and we will select those that will have a development to be shown in the month of November at the Institute for Endotic Research, at the Second International Meeting of Objects and Walls.We will establish working meetings between us and we will discuss the structure and material that will be presented at the Encounter. After the Encounter, we will publish a document that compiles the work process.

 

‘Objects Before and After the Wall’ is a collaboration between Tlaxcala 3 in Mexico City (Ali Cotero and Clara Bolivar) and The Institute for Endotic Research in Berlin (Benjamin Busch and Lorenzo Sandoval).

This project has the 2019 sponsorship of the Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporéneo for theoretical and curatorial research.