mardi 20 septembre 2022

Planetary Kunsthalle : a process of Becoming Gyre A Proposition initiated at L’appartement 22, Rabat, in 2022 with Raqs Media Collective 13.05.2022
The Straits of Gibraltar and the Alboran Sea (a branch of the Mediterranean) are the water bodies that separate the landmass of Northern Morocco, and Africa, from its neighbouring landmass of Southern Europe. This stretch of water is made lively by a circulatory ocean current called a ‘gyre’. A gyre is an ocean current that operates between two land-masses, and is caused by differences in temperature and pressure between different oceans and landmasses. It is in the wind, it is in the water, it is in how sand moves from the deserts across the ocean, it brings rain, and it makes ships sail, and fish thrive.
The gyre, from which we get the word ‘gyrate’ is like an oceanic dance - a circulation of salt, temperature, water, and forms of life between two closely allied continental systems. We take this as a metaphor for the relationship between two artistic presences, separated by space and linked by the marking of time. This connection could be the first step towards the imagination of a planetary kunsthalle. Raqs and L’appartement 22 instigates a process, as an invitation, towards an ethic of fluid hospitality, where the roles of custodianship and creation are blurred, in the process of many currents, from near and far, entering the gyre.
The co-incidence of two anniversaries in the year 2022 is an opportunity to think about rhythms, returns, renewals, and other forms of the occupation of time. This year, L’appartement 22 in Rabat turns twenty, and the Raqs Media Collective, in Delhi, turns thirty. Raqs refers to a dance in a state of ecstasy, which we have absorbed as a form of kinetic contemplation. Raqs travels to Rabat, Fez, and the Rif Mountains on the southern edge of the Mediterranean, becoming gyre. A multitude of places witness our passage and encounter with forms of organic life and attempts to make sense beyond conventional visual forms and trade languages.
The conversation between L’appartement 22 and Raqs, which has been sporadic and serendipitous so far, now takes a turn : towards concreteness, towards specificity, and towards a generative possibility for a shared occupation of time to mark our mutual anniversaries. This conversation also opens itself to other artistic and intellectual energies, visions and processes to enter, and move with plural co-presence over time.
Becoming Gyre is a way of coming alive in an imaginative geological, oceanographic, and meteorological sense. It moves the inner mountains of all those who enter the process, it makes their continents glide and their continental s(h)elves collide ; it unleashes the currents that connect and takes a sounding of changing weather in a way that makes it possible to listen, and talk, to the entire planet through art, conversation and co-presence. It anchors and intensifies us ; it makes us proliferate. It changes the temperature of time. Planetary Kunsthalle is a proposition for a mobile and elusive stirring of a generative and deliberative life. It is aware of the immense potentiality that is engendered with artistic intermingling, as also the blind spots within which many a cultural encounter travels and falters. It proposes a tenurial form of the occupation of time, attention and space. It is aware of fragility, and is inspired by the recursive and fluid presence of a gyre-current, which appears, flows away, and returns with new force. It moves away from expression of art and values that sees locked assets, towards a more growing “sources in common”. It seeks regeneration, and becoming multiple. It seeks the dismantling of hierarchies of predictable time- horizons and frozen time-tables. Raqs and L’appartement 22 invite artists, curators, poets to a brainstorming and a series of dialogues, readings in the perspective of an ‘event’ and publication where these encounters culminate.
The 1st Public Sessions/Event/Open-Brainstorming will take place Online on the 20th Sept 2022.