SS 26 / Semester project by guest teacher Juana Awad

If history is not a fixed record of the past but an interpreted narrative constructed in the present, shaped by positionalities, power dynamics, and incomplete evidence, then how do we approach its telling? And what happens when we approach them through the body, duration, or the ephemerality of live presence? Enrique Dussel proposed thinking from the “underside of history”: from the position of those rendered Other by the modern colonial system, whose experiences and knowledges have been systematically occluded by dominant narratives of progress. Donna Haraway’s notion of “situated knowledges” offers a related but distinct angle: all knowledge, she argues, is produced from a particular location; there is no view from nowhere, only partial perspectives that must be made accountable. Together, these frameworks pose a challenge to any practice that claims to narrate the past: What is seen, and what necessarily remains outside of view? 

The seminar is organized around a series of artist talks and conversations, and two artistic creation workshops. Each session, a practicing artist is invited to present their work, share the questions driving their current research, and enter into conversation with students. Each visiting artist opens a line of inquiry that students are invited to pursue in their own work across the semester. 

With Rheim Alkadhi, Kathleen Bomani, Vanessa Gravenor, Chang Gao, Elkin Calderón and Johannes Förster, Luisa Ungar, and Jota Mombaça.