Curating and The Affectable Universality: Lecture by Antonia Majaca

Location: 3rd floor MFA Hub

In her book Towards a Global Idea of Race, Denise Ferreira da Silva addresses the foundation of instituting (white) man as the universal Subject of knowledge in scientific projects dedicated to finding the “truth of man.” What she calls “the transparent ‘I’”—the universal Subject that possesses the means and tools to discover the truth—is the stronghold of Homo Modernus. Ferreira Da Silva opposes it to the “affectable I”—“the scientific construction of non-European minds.” The talk will use Da Silva’s critical vocabulary to address, from a feminist perspective, the problem of ‘universalization’ in art history and curating, and point towards a possibility of exposing, rather then exhibiting, and curating against, and beyond 'the transparent I'.

Antonia Majaca is an art historian, researcher and curator based in Berlin where she is currently acting as one of the curators on the long-term project Kanon Fragen, initiated by Anselm Franke at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin. She is the research leader at the IZK Institute for Contemporary Art at the Graz University of Technology where her forthcoming artistic research project, The Incomputable, will explore the intertwined histories of psychoanalysis, neurosciences and cybernetics. Feminist Takes, the ongoing collaborative investigation Majaca instigated in 2016, considers the relation between the non-Western avant-garde cinema and feminist theory. Her earlier work includes publications and exhibitions co-curated with Ivana Bago through Delve – Institute for Duration, Location and Variables, an organization they co-founded in 2009.