Lopud Seminar – The Forgotten Space
September 8–11, 2016 | Lopud Island, Croatia.
September 8–11, 2016 | Lopud Island, Croatia.
© Allan Sekula, Fish Story Chapter Three: Middle Passage, 1994
TBA21–Academy
The Forgotten Space, TBA21’s seminar taking place on the Croatian island of Lopud, borrows its title and part of its conceptual framework from the work and legacy of the artist Allan Sekula (1951–2013). The name is a specific reference to Sekula and Noël Burch’s 2010 film and publication The Forgotten Space, which explores the precarious geopolitical configurations and labor relations active on our seas and in ports and harbor nexuses, which, almost invisibly, manage the shipment and distribution of goods throughout our globalized world. Sekula’s work is a starting point for an expanded thematic exploration, enabling ideas, various fields of expertise, and experiences to drift, travel, shift, and float—across disciplines and between artists, curators, architects, scientists, explorers, and thinkers.
Since summer 2005 TBA21 has been holding seminars and debate sessions on the Croatian island of Lopud. Conceived to create an impetus for innovation, dialogue, and exchange by interconnecting different agendas and practices the Lopud Seminars negotiate relevant issues regarding art, architecture, ecology, institutional practice, and preservation. The debate sessions, held in small groups, not only reexamine and correct the institutional course but also open it up to transdisciplinary evaluation and activity.
The 2016 seminar sets out to explore the figure of the ‘absent’ or forgotten space in relation to the seas and oceans; and the underlying imaginary implicit in the gestures and narrations of disappearance, sublimation, and disembodiment. We argue that this imaginary allows for the dramatic scenarios of aquatic life decimation, marine pollution, human trafficking, labor abuse, and misuse of marine resources that we are facing today. This contemporary condition is linked to the cultural history of the oceans, which is marked by multiple forms of exploitation along well-established trade routes, by powerful scenarios of fear, by the construction of myth, and by the extensive colonization of seemingly unregulated spaces. This history is overshadowed by the current and past function of the ocean(s) as a route for migration, deportation, and exile, specifically within the context of the Mediterranean and the tragedies that we are currently witnessing with the tide of refugees attempting to reach Europe.
Like much of TBA21’s recent activity, particularly within the framework of TBA21 The Current, The Forgotten Space asks difficult questions about the state of the world and seeks to critique and propose possible approaches to some of the complex questions of our globalized age. The Lopud Seminar thus serves as a linchpin, pulling and holding together various threads, from both the past and the future of TBA21’s trajectory, inaugurating an explicit linkage between The Current–which has been on the forefront of environmental research focusing on the oceans—and an exhibition planned for 2017 at TBA21–Augarten, which will showcase the work of Allan Sekula and bring his critical framework to the surface of artistic and intellectual debate.
Since summer 2005 TBA21 has been holding seminars and debate sessions on the Croatian island of Lopud. Conceived to create an impetus for innovation, dialogue, and exchange by interconnecting different agendas and practices the Lopud Seminars negotiate relevant issues regarding art, architecture, ecology, institutional practice, and preservation. The debate sessions, held in small groups, not only reexamine and correct the institutional course but also open it up to transdisciplinary evaluation and activity.
The 2016 seminar sets out to explore the figure of the ‘absent’ or forgotten space in relation to the seas and oceans; and the underlying imaginary implicit in the gestures and narrations of disappearance, sublimation, and disembodiment. We argue that this imaginary allows for the dramatic scenarios of aquatic life decimation, marine pollution, human trafficking, labor abuse, and misuse of marine resources that we are facing today. This contemporary condition is linked to the cultural history of the oceans, which is marked by multiple forms of exploitation along well-established trade routes, by powerful scenarios of fear, by the construction of myth, and by the extensive colonization of seemingly unregulated spaces. This history is overshadowed by the current and past function of the ocean(s) as a route for migration, deportation, and exile, specifically within the context of the Mediterranean and the tragedies that we are currently witnessing with the tide of refugees attempting to reach Europe.
Like much of TBA21’s recent activity, particularly within the framework of TBA21 The Current, The Forgotten Space asks difficult questions about the state of the world and seeks to critique and propose possible approaches to some of the complex questions of our globalized age. The Lopud Seminar thus serves as a linchpin, pulling and holding together various threads, from both the past and the future of TBA21’s trajectory, inaugurating an explicit linkage between The Current–which has been on the forefront of environmental research focusing on the oceans—and an exhibition planned for 2017 at TBA21–Augarten, which will showcase the work of Allan Sekula and bring his critical framework to the surface of artistic and intellectual debate.