‘Marking Histories’ Discontents: Frontier Imaginaries’ ‘Trade Markings’’, un Magazine

Marking Histories’ Discontents: Frontier Imaginaries Edtion No. 5, ‘Trade Markings’, Van Abbe Museum Eindhoven, 7 April — 1 July 2018

Frontier Imaginaries is a roving art and research platform founded by Amsterdam-based and Brisbane-raised curator Vivian Ziherl. Dedicated to studying the frontier in the global era, Ziherl emphasises that ‘the frontier is not a border.’ Rather, it is better understood as a threshold, beyond which what exists is ontologically different to where the perceiver is located. In colonial contexts the frontier distinguishes between civilised and uncivilised territories, like the North American notion of the ‘Wild West’ or in Australia what is often referred to as ‘the Bush,’ territories over which settlers’ have long sought to exert control.

More in un.

Installation view, L-R: Gordon Hookey, ‘Murriland! #1’ 2016; Farida Sedoc, ‘Move on over or we’ll move on over you’ 2018 and ‘Grass Roots’ 2018; Tshibumba Kanda-Matulu, ‘History of Zaire’ 1973–1974. Photo: Marcel de Buck.

Overland: ‘Power of Assembly: On the New World Summit’

‘Richard Bell, Callum Clayton-Dixon and Ilena Saturay, New World Summit Utrecht, 31 January 2016.’ Photo: Ernie Buts.

My short overview of the last New World Summit in Utrecht, January 2016 is now online at Overland.

‘Drawing on Rojava’s political experiment, the sixth NWS convened in Utrecht over the last weekend in January this year to consider the prospect of ‘Stateless Democracy’. It marked the culmination of a year-long collaboration between NWS, BAK and the University of Utrecht’s Centre for Conflict Studies. The Summit convened within a temporary architecture built inside the main hall of the university – where the Treaty of Utrecht was signed in 1579, the document by which the ‘free’ Dutch provinces claimed independence from the Spanish monarchy. In this latest iteration, NWS performed a historical intervention as a critique of the Dutch nation state, using the site of its foundation to stage an assembly of stateless organisations.’