Editorial Roundtable

Yvette Mutumba:  I just wanted to add to this regarding not only the Dutch context but also the  idea of Diaspora in the broader perspective. This is relevant in thinking about how European institutions are trying to open up. I’m not going to use the word “diversity” again, but opening up in the sense of having a global perspective.

What often happens is that they—geographically speaking—reach out far regarding new programming or new acquisition policies. There is this understanding of “Okay, if we’re opening up, we have to look at Black artists from the United States, or we have to invite Latin American artists.” But what is actually happening in front of their doorstep is often completely ignored or not understood as part of the respective Diasporas and hence as being relevant for changing programs and acquisition policies. I think considering that aspect is a really important job for this issue of Stedelijk Studies. I think it really does speak to this idea that Diaspora can be everywhere and nowhere. Meaning, it includes also what surrounds us, because we are surrounded by the Diaspora as much as it is part of very different geographical contexts. This also applies to the white artist being part of a white European Diaspora. I think that’s something that is still not really part of an ingrained idea in many institutional approaches toward thinking around their new strategies.

Quinsy Gario: I’m wondering about the applicability of the term Diaspora in and of itself. I’m from the Caribbean, part of the Dutch Caribbean Diaspora to be precise, but also of African descent. So, do I get to claim African Diaspora? Or perhaps African Diaspora once removed? There are definitely shared cultural markers and practices that have survived the brutal violence of the Global North’s extractive and dehumanizing logic. And they make encounters rich and vibrant with recognition. But some things cannot be translated, and I’m never not aware of that.

I think there’s a really important part in Saidiya Hartman’s Lose Your Mother, where she writes about going to Ghana, where she is expecting to be embraced by the local population only to be confronted with the fact that because of, among other things, how she dresses, her status as a professor, she’s simply seen as a stranger within that context.

So, if you talk about Soekidjan Irodikromo being added to the collection, would he be seen as part of the Javanese Diaspora by the Javanese themselves? And how does that matter for how the museum wants to reorganize its collection through the addition of his work? Is he not taking space from a local artist who could be included? Is the museum not once again continuing its logic of displacement, but now through a non-European diasporic artist?

And I think there’s something there about these—if I can use the term—“origin communities.” We need to talk about what “origin” means within the context of communities and within the forming of communities. Is the idea to include Irodikromo in Indonesian modernism not forced, because the removal of his ancestors, through time, through coloniality, through Dutch imperialism, presents a different development that is related but not the same as Indonesian modernism? Does that not also damage community forming and thinking of related communities, but far removed from each other? It could be argued that we’ve continued “divide and conquer” into “include and conquer.”

CL: I’m happy you bring that up. I thought about this and the conclusion I came to, if I have to project it to myself, is that the complexity lies here, in that I am—if we want to use the term race—I would be racially African, ethnically South American, but culturally European. So, it is exactly in that layering of a physical presence, an ethnic belonging and a cultural programming, where the difficulties are, or where the challenges against the old way of thinking are, where we categorize people along a single axis. This single access just won’t do anymore. If you would want to, you could call it intersectional, but what, then, does this produce?

As in, what kind of subject does it produce? And what kind of art comes out of the concerns that it then produces a particular type of subject? And Diaspora might be a way to maybe enter that space. And, having said that, I must say that since conceiving this idea of the Diaspora issue, time does something to you and to your thinking, and I think we now think about the idea of movement because, as you said, Diaspora doesn’t encapsulate what we’re trying to talk about. But movement may be an idea that could be worth filling with these ideas.

QG: I think movement also opens up agency or acknowledges agency and the ways in which people define their own belonging. I think Diaspora a lot of times is also used as a label to group people who might not want to be grouped together. There’s something also to be said, like you mentioned earlier, about when museums in the Global North started collecting these white European diasporic artists, it was in a certain sense also an attempt to trouble that they were white. They became “local” through this move and replaced contemporary indigenous art production as the aesthetic norm of that region. Indigenous art production was then consigned to the ethnographic museum or the tourist art market and pushed out of critical discourse. If you look at how museums in the Global North look at whiteness in South America, many of the museum professionals didn’t, and some still don’t, see those artists as white. And that’s also a really interesting, fascinating situation when you think about it.

I think there is this understanding as well regarding how you acknowledge—I think bell hooks said it really well—“imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” while also finding ways to dismantle it through these new interventions into the collection. Because, I think, on the one hand, it’s good that the museum is becoming a platform for these destabilizing initiatives. On the other hand, it’s also this question of thinking about how to think of the museum as this imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchal institution in and of itself. So, do you want to include more people in that? Or do the people that you want to include in that already dismantle that system?

YM: Well, I think it’s really both. This idea of dismantling can only work if it’s complimentary from the inside and the outside. Also, I think it’s very subjective. It is really important to bring in subjectivity here, because we tend to talk about this in a more generic way in terms of speaking of “the institution,” “the structure,” and so on.

It’s really related to the subjectivity of those who are part of that structure, or are outside of it, and depending on where they position themselves, this dismantling is actually possible.

In connection to that, this aspect of movement is really relevant. I liked this in the text by micro-histórias. They talked about how they see movement as an indicator for the fact that destabilization, inconsistency, and instability are a process of movement. They use it to describe the context they’re working within, which is the very specific context of the Jewish Diaspora in Brazil. But at the same time, they’re suggesting how an institution can actually use it as a tool. They underline how institutions always strive toward something static, which is maybe eternity, or to preserve for eternity. I am thinking of the idea of dismantling as a way of instability or destabilization. The Diaspora is moving as part of a movement, and we can learn from that in a sense; all the insecurities it also brings with it and the different access points it provides can be used as a powerful tool to implement.

This is an important aspect which applies to either/or—either within the institution or outside the institution. But it’s much harder of course when you’re inside to actually stretch and, you know, become that instability in that context.

CL: The museum does have a way of taking away flexibility, because it is an institute after all and it operates in a certain way, whether you want it to or not.

So, how do you resist becoming part of that? How do you resist its logic? Right. And ethnic background is of no consequence, because the logic is so strong that resisting it is an active deed, it’s a verb. So, then, how do you implement this idea of Diaspora or movement within such a rigid system? How do you make this rigid system start moving? I think using the instability that is present to make a lasting DNA change that becomes part of the way the institute moves in the future is the way to go.

YM: Yes, with all the rigidity that the institution represents. I mean, when I talk about subjectivity, it is because I think there’s always that instability; it’s maybe something that from the outside is often not perceived because the institution is seen or perceived as part of a static physical space that is inhabited.

And, at the same time, it is inhabited by all these very different instabilities that are coming together and which are building that system, you know? I think this often is somehow underestimated, the potential that actually is in there. I feel like sometimes it’s about resisting, but maybe it’s also sometimes about ignoring certain things in a subtle way by not constantly responding but by creating a sort of own space within the bigger system one is navigating. I think this is really something you’re doing, Charl, in many ways already. It’s not an active resistance but, you know, doing your thing.

CL: I actively do not engage with rigidity.

YM: Yeah, yeah, that’s much more elegant.

CL: What are the main takeaways for you, Yvette and Quinsy, after reading the accepted essays [for this issue]?

QG: For me, there’s a certain urge for destabilization of norms and of dominance. There’s a certain advocating for presenting our worlds otherwise through the recalling and retention of exciting, troubling, or destabilizing knowledge. I think that’s a powerful common theme within the contributions.

YM: As for myself, it is the aspect of performativity. It comes up in very different ways, but it comes up again and again. So, in terms of how performativity can be a tool to think around collections. Maria Walsh, for example, brings up the aspect of rehearsal, which of course is a term that comes from a performance. In Jessica Gogan’s text on [Lygia Clark] of course it also becomes a very strong [point]. Here, even more in regard to the connection between movement and body and how the body is actually inserted as part of performative strategies. That was really interesting for me, and connects to the other thoughts by micro-histórias regarding movement.

Again and again, this thinking around collections comes up in this issue with regard to how we can (re-)perform them in one way or another. It is very interesting to use the notions of movement and performativity toward collections, because it instantly becomes less about aesthetics when you think around them and more about a bodily experience.

Furthermore, one word that really stuck with me is from Ashley Gallant: “post-copyright.” I, like, really, really love it. “Liberated collections” and “post-copyright.” I mean, what else do we have to say? You know, it’s all in there. I think it’s really great.

The speculative texts introduce new notions that I take very seriously. How can we continue thinking around them and use them, actually, in the real field? The idea of “post-copyright” is a really good example of that. It’s very ironic, but also has so many truths.

CL: I have to say that’s stuck with me a lot already, and I’ve also been talking to our head of collections about basically stowing the works away in a vault like gold bars, you know, like capital, and then moving on and seeing how we can do this otherwise.

I have to say that this issue for me as a research issue made apparent even more how broad the idea of Diaspora is and how broad the idea of movement is, because when we speak about these issues it’s often most projected on people of Jewish or African descent, but this issue [of the journal] shows very strongly that in other parts of the world and with people of other ethnic backgrounds—you know, former Soviet spaces, in South America—that all these different things are happening.

And what I find most striking is to see how humans are humans. When you move, you move, and then it’s a song, right? When you move, you move, just like that. But when you move, you move, and it requires a reaction, it requires an action or a response, so to speak. It cannot be response-less. And the broadness of this issue to me is very, very exciting as possibly a way to draw attention to different movements and other outcomes.

YM: Do you think it is similar?

CL: Yeah, what their similarities are. I’m really excited about that specific outcome of this issue. So, Meredith, can you tell us what the setup of the issue is?

Meredith North: Yes, we begin the issue with the artistic research by Katherina Gorodynska in her conceptual essay where, through a more personal narrative, she addresses the interaction with objects and spaces, movement and memory—sort of our revolving terms, I think. So, she opens with this as an exploration, which I think we’re trying to highlight, certainly as an artist researcher. Her approach to, or perhaps an interrogation of, research is not bound only by experience with sites, with places, but memory and history through objects and materials.

The “Museum of the  Displaced” interview sort of kicks off another aspect of the Diaspora in conversation, on the unlearning of the institution, navigating between practitioners and participants in an art world but also then forming in fact their own museum based around care over outcomes. Beginning with that aspect of conversation is really important. And then we have micro-histórias writing about Casa do Povo, where again conversation and histories of locality in the Diaspora is really brought to a specific site. So, again, we have this idea of museums and sites as a place of bringing these notions together. This idea of unlearning can also be seen in Maria Walsh’s text on the diasporic reanimation of art and objects. How do we reanimate or re-examine objects in terms of “co-citizenship,” to use Ariella Azoulay’s term? She is really also interrogating this question of the institution, because how do we talk about futurity and other futures of co-citizenship without recycling or trying to undo the imperialist history of those institutions?

I like this idea of unlearning as a common thread in looking at existing collections.

Filipe Lippe’s essay, “Common Grounds,” offers a kind of speculative investigation of commonality, of bringing into this an idea of what creates citizenship or community or belonging, which is another sort of larger thread here. His work addresses this through a specifically Brazilian context with the “quilombization” of experience, which I thought was fantastic. Having these conversations around the institution and the experience, memories, across and in spaces, continues in the interview between Elsbeth Dekker and Robbie Schweiger with Alexander Ugay, whose work is now part of the Stedelijk Museum’s collection.

And so they investigate this idea of memory and movement again from a complex background—through conversations, I think as Quinsy and Charl were sort of highlighting—this idea of how do we group diasporic movements and what kind of labels or categories or regions does that apply? And how do we move past that? This idea of memory and place once again resurfaces.

Moreover, how do we, for lack of a better word, translate or perhaps offer that as not only an artistic position but also a research position? Several of our submissions interrogate this question through research. It’s not an either/or, and this continues with Anja Isabel Schneider’s “Chorus of Relations,” where she examines Manthia Diawara’s An Opera for the World.

So, this idea of community moving or shifting between the extremely local and sites of movement, sites that see movement in passing, is also a global cycle. As Charl said, when you move, I would also add, “I move, too.” Right? Because it is relational and reactional. And Diawara’s work really encapsulates this larger idea of a kind of globality using the tools of high Western culture, through opera.

With Jessica Gogan’s work, once again we find ourselves in the museum, but through Lygia Clark’s artistic practice of embodiment that opens up, as Yvette said, to these larger ideas. Participation and performance specifically is very much this act of care, especially in Clark’s work of caring for not only the participants but ideas, memories, and the physicality of those bodies.

In Mariana Hovhannisyan’s essay, she examines the collection practices and archiving of these memories of the Aghed, a community of displaced Armenians who experienced centuries of genocide. So, we again have shifting sites, memories, and what brings together communities. Not only through the archives they carried with them, but the communities and sites of this movement, to its sort of final place of her research in Fresno, California. So, all the way from Marzovan to Fresno, and from looking at that paper trail of movement as a way of searching—again to sort of avoid the term “re-”—to looking at a very difficult, extreme history of genocide against the Aghed. And it’s a history that is still today officially unspeakable or unacknowledgeable in certain places.

Finally, bookending the issue is Ashely Gallant’s speculation, “Can a Museum Be a Dreamtime?” So, rather than thinking again of re-examining, this is a further examination, delving into the speculative future, with this “post-copyright” idea. The overview of the issue is, I think, revolving around multiple themes here, and with the ideas that are highlighted in this discussion. I think each essay addresses in multiple ways this shifting movement of subjectivities, as you all said. I can’t say identity—I feel like that’s not encompassing enough, and maybe just not the right term anymore. Although we and the artist researchers and the scholars here are examining in some ways a sort of shape of identity, it is intersectional and there are multiple themes at play in each of these works that are very connected to our own practices as scholars, artists, and facilitators.

CL: If we move away from this idea of Diaspora into movement, could you tell us about how in your practices this is finding its place… because I already spoke in the beginning about how I came to it, but maybe you can tell us how it finds you?

YM: In my practice, particularly with Contemporary And (C&), it’s all the time, every day, about dis-localities. Because C& is defined by a network of people who work from very specific contexts. We already moved away from this idea a couple of years ago that this very specific geographic context where you are right now in this moment is the main defining factor of your being. It can be, but that’s a very subjective decision.

So, generally, it’s sort of what you just said, Meredith. It’s “post-identity,” or whatever it could be defined as, in relation to geographic localization. This is something we’re really trying to elegantly not ignore or refute, but to find other possibilities of thinking around these localities. Very specifically at C&, what happens is that it all ends up coming together in the digital sphere. Once all the thinking, input, and content gathers in the online sphere, very different rules apply in regard to what localities are, and I think it’s a discussion in itself, because of course this also has its issues and biases.

But still, this is why for us it was always so important to have a digital space where we can come together, because there you can much more freely decide how far you want to be part of the locality or not, and how far it’s something that you want to discuss or not. And that’s why we also always say it’s defined by the network. And the network is just another term for these incredibly complex various localities that Charl also mentioned earlier.

You know, that goes for so many individuals, such as you, Quinsy, as well. Only for you, there are already these possibilities, like, in what way are you being read or what you connect to and how you define yourself or are being defined. I think this is just really a major part of my practice for the past ten years, to look at this and how it’s possible to navigate it and still produce a content that relates to all these questions. It doesn’t mean that an artist generally has to deny their geographic background or whatever; it’s not about that. It’s rather about moving beyond that and seeing how further elements actually add to a practice or an idea of a practice of an artwork, or of that person themselves.

CL: Because of this complexity, of this layering of layers, of affinity, subjectivity allows you to embrace all of that at once and include it within the subject you are dealing with, without having to apologize for it. Quinsy, could you please tell us how this idea of Diaspora or movement is part of your practice, or if it plays a part in your practice?

QG: In a way, I constantly question what I bring to the table and the way in which my own identification contributes to a further enrichment or further deepening of what we’re doing and what we’re thinking about when we talk about “Diaspora.” Because the thing that is really fascinating for me within my own practice is to think about Diaspora not as something which is only racially or ethnically bound, but also bound to, as you said, affinities. Bound to values, to ideas of ethics and justice. And so you end up in situations where your accomplices in your work might not be the same people whom others would group you with.

I’m in a show now together with my family in Riga, Latvia. It’s called Decolonial Ecologies and is curated by Ieva Astahovska. It’s filled with wonderful artists who are thinking about the encounter of environmentalism, post-socialism, and postcolonialism. And I’ve been working with the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art for the last three years in terms of having these conversations and thinking about what it means to be at the margins of Europe and what that does to your sense of self. What this position and place, in all aspects of those concepts, does to your understanding of yourself during an occupation and after occupation, what that does to your understanding of who are you ethically aligning with and who you also see as fighting for justice in whichever way. So, within my own practice, this idea of Diaspora keeps being refracted and keeps being changed in these kaleidoscopic encounters that I have.

Where now I’m in a conversation with you talking about Diaspora for Stedelijk Studies but also thinking about what happens when you see the Stedelijk Museum itself as a part of a larger Diaspora of artistic affinities. Thinking about modernism, thinking about contemporary art, about how you create a body, a community body, from those types of coming together. And then you create a different understanding of Diaspora. Not just through the racial lens or the ethnic lens, but through different understandings of what it is that the work we’re doing, in the stories we present and the ways in which these stories can inspire others, can connect to struggles. They can add tools to toolboxes for fighting injustice. And within that thing it comes back to our participation in creating our own little group and inviting others into this call for the Stedelijk Studies Journal. We’re creating another type of community, which is then going ahead and destabilizing what the museum was set up to do in the first place, or where it’s set up. I mean, it’s literally set up in a place where there was a human zoo [See the work Visit (1883–2020) by Timo Demollin, ed.].

So, there are all these different types of questions of what do you do, then, when you speak to those specters and those ghosts and when you speak to the futures and the future people who are not among us but will be among us one day. When we won’t be here. What do we leave behind? I think one aspect within my practice and also within the way in which I participated in this edition of the journal is to think about those traces. And to think about the way in which we remember communities and the way in which we talk about community and how we present communities. For me, it’s important to ponder how we can have these different types of “otherwise” together, without one being dominant or without one being normative or wanting to be normative.

CL: Thank you so much for that, Quinsy. I want to end with discussing this in the context of artistic and scholarly submissions. Because this is actually the first issue that was not a call for papers, but a call for research, where we actively tried to look at artistic research and artistic interventions next to scholarly interventions. And, as we are in this way trying to rethink what a peer reviewed journal is, I want to ask you what you found to be the most challenging thing in trying to rethink this peer-reviewed process.

QG: Well, it’s my first time on this side of the table, so this is the only way I know how to do it. There is no difference for me in that sense. But in terms of the peer review and thinking about the ways in which we invite others into this conversation, it was really fascinating for me to see the different types of commentary that we got back. Each peer review informed the putting together of the journal in different ways and thinking about the feedback that we would give the contributors. And what it means to have feedback for an artistic work and have feedback for a more scholarly written work. I think it was really fascinating to play around with it, I mean, to have this different process than what you would normally do. And how do you bolster a practice if someone has an artistic writing practice and they contribute to the journal? How does a peer review add to the development of their practice? That was interesting to see, too.

YM: I completely agree with everything Quinsy said. I think a lot has happened since the last issue which is really interesting, and which you can see in terms of the feedback to the calls. But at the same time, for me, the question around how we define Academic Excellency and Artistic Excellency is not yet clear. So, I think it was a super important step to now kind of officially invite artistic interventions and speculative writing to make a point of that. We as editors see academic scientific writing and the artistic intervention on par with each other. I think it’s important to make that point and at the same time with this feedback that we received that you also mentioned Quinsy, it became also really clear how difficult it is, still, to not be confusing.

I really like to cause confusion or even irritation sometimes, but I think this is still at a point where we are trying to push against certain structures, but we’re not really there yet, which became clear in the feedback, specifically in regard to the more speculative texts. I don’t evaluate it in the sense that it’s good or bad; it’s more like I think we still need to further understand how to deal with that and I personally have still this inkling in me to be even more pushy, to be even more forward in questioning what Academic Excellency is and who defines it. I connected this with the whole question around what peer review means and who the peers are, which is not solved yet. And bringing in subjectivity here is important when thinking about upcoming issues and thinking around people who are not in that issue or didn’t even apply for various reasons. It’s important also to consider those reasons and to look at them and think about them moving forward. But, at the same time, the journal is still on a good track because this is a really fantastic issue.

CL: Thank you both so much for that. I would like to especially thank you for helping shape and helping think through this idea of Diaspora, helping think through this idea of movement, but also helping think through how to broaden or how to push forward this idea of what it means to be a peer review journal. Thank you.

YM: It was a pleasure.

QG: Thank you all.