»Collapse« is a performative and discursive research projects investigating different formats of knowledge exchange, discussion, and connection.
By experimenting with learning and unlearning, this discursive platform aims to function as a laboratory, investigating narratives, and politics of contemporary discourses through performative and spatial investigation.
Through collaborative workshops, conversations and exchange, the aim is to play with the gap between theory and action, while developing and engaging with a broad interdisciplinary audience. Collapse departs from not-knowing, inviting those who are not so sure with the aim to create a content assemblage that is reflective of our shared curiosities.
The project is developed by Danja Burchard, and realized in collaboration with different collaborators such as the philosopher Francesca Scapinello at NOGOODS.
– Collapse –
“It matters what matters we use to think other matters with; it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with; it matters what knots knot knots, what thoughts think thoughts, what descriptions describe descriptions, what ties tie ties. It matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories.”
“Think we must!”
– Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble, 2016
Collapse
Collapse is to cave out, fall in, give away
Collapse is the process of losing force, significance, effectiveness and the illusion of worth.
Collapse is to fall or shrink together, abruptly and completely.
Collapse is to fall into a tumbled or flattened mass through the force of external pressure.
Collapse is to break down vital energy, stamina and/or self-control.
Collapse is exhaustion.
Collapse is to break down.
Collapse is a lapsus – a falling out of time, in order to try, error, question, speculate, establish and reconfigure.
Collapse is the impossibility of perfection, the necessity of flawful collaboration and a doomed praxis of utopian speculation.
Collabor (lat.) in perfect is collapsus.
Collaborare (lat.) means to collectively elaborate something that could at all times abruptly and completely fall together. Fall together or be folded into its most compact version.
Collapse is to challenge normative assumption, forces and illusions through queering practices of re-worthing, re-reading, and dissecting through nonsensical approaches and questions.
To wonder is to remember the forgetting and to see the repetition of form as the “taking form” of the familiar. It is hard to know why it is that we can be “shocked” by what passes us as familiar.
(Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology p.83)
Collapse is to work jointly on an investigation that, as ongoing conversation, will be a process composed by brief temporary failures, vulnerable judgments and fragile curiosity, where an inferior state of non-sense turns into an ironic potential for applied creative speculation.
Collapse is a collaborative practice of shape-shifting.
“Diffracted Creatures and Architectures of Identity”
The first Series of COLLAPSE was part of the Empathy series at NOGOODS and focused on notions of identity.
Identity has a pervasive presence when relating to the world of words, acts, decisions and relationships. What are the elements that we take as important when constituting our identities? To pose this question means to acknowledge where one stands and where one comes from. What are the social, cultural, moral, political, epistemic and aesthetic narratives we use to tell our stories with?
To conceive identity as a multitude that does not have to be traced back to a principle of unity is a revolution within a society that wants to reduce identity to something inherently self-explanatory. Intersectionality has shown that identity is a multi-layered enterprise. When looking at it, different directions of sense are at play – the most common ones including class, gender and race. To ask where one comes from and to invite somebody to think what they want to retain from their background is a way to pursue the intersectionalist project of narrating and creating identity.
This idea of exploring identity as narrative can be functional in taking a step inside the process of giving oneself a determined reason for being, believing and, thus, behaving. It opens up a way to understand how we elaborate on things, which at times is more important than the content of the thought itself.
Refusing to avoid the complexity of our origins, we want to dance with reality, and with the idea of identity. We want to scatter an image of unity and self-consistency to multiply our senses of relating: to the world of words, acts, decisions and relationships.
Collapse is a series of collective reading, thinking, and discussion groups on identity creation and politics.
Together we aim to challenge our common knowledge with clouds of questions: where, who and what do I come from? Who or what constitutes the “I”? Does everybody have the right to be (or have) an “I”?
“Diffracted Creatures”
on Wednesday 28.9.22 at 20:00.
– reader
In expanding the notion of identity, we invite you to a joint attempt to explore how the nuances of our identities are formed. By embracing an understanding of the self as a diffracted creature, together we want to explore narratives of identity and how these impact the agency we feel to occupy space.
“Molding the self”
On Wednesday 12.10.22 at 20:00
– reader
Longevity and origine are elements closely linked to the notion of identity. What forms of self-narration can we explore in order to create an intergenerational nomadic understanding of our identities? Together we want to explore notions of intergenerational storytelling in order to explore an identity narration not only as a politicized tool, but as an act of acknowledgement, responsibility, care and protection.
“Longing / Belonging”
On Wednesday 26.10.22 at 20h
– reader
Oscillating between belonging and longing, desire emerges as a driving force capable of creation and disruption. Contrary to the tendency of pushing it away from the political arena, we aim at re-discover desire as one of the principles that characterizes not only personal identity, but also the ability of staying together with others. We will navigate the different nuances that characterize the formulation of desiring, its modes, subjects and objects, intentions and the biopolitical framework that shapes it.
“Negotiations of Togetherness”
On Wednesday 23.11.22 at 20h
– a reader
Getting things right is something that appears logical and reasonable to aim for, as it is perceived as the necessary premise to build discussions and relations. What happens, when this principle is turned upside down and challenged in its importance? We want to dance with states of misunderstandings, equivocations and losts in translation to explore how these concepts underlining the pivotal requirement of listening, and negotiation for the enactment of empathy, solidarity and mutual understanding.
The event was co-hosted with the artist Imad Alwahibi. All texts from the reader where translated across several languages from english, to arabic to persian, to french to arabic, to english. 7 different readers existed with slight translation differences. While reading, the “original text” could not be located, hereby playing with the notion of understanding, translating and perceiving.
