Call for Contributions: Virtual Exhibition — Imag(in)ing Slow Transformation
Organized by Vjollca Krasniqi, Vicky Karaiskou, Isabel Machado Alexandre and Alice Semedo
Transformation lies at the core of the Slow Memory COST Action. It is a keyword when solutions to challenges in politics, welfare, conflict, work, environment, and knowledge methodologies are required. It carries an immense range of perceptions and interpretations that derive from lived experiences and memories, as well as expectations and intentions that involve the present and the future. When we consider transformation, we make certain assumptions regarding its patterns, its progressive nature, and its inevitability throughout human history. Mapping transformative change in politics, welfare, conflict, work, environment, and knowledge methodologies, can create structures of hope and social or environmental justice for individuals and communities or tough lessons of ‘never again’.
The visual materiality of transformation lies at the core of this virtual exhibition. It underscores critical interventions that emerging change requires in order to become socially fair. Imagining what and how transformation might or should be involves visualizing the forms it can take. Is social justice always a condition for transformation? How do we transform? Can we transform only under certain conditions? Is transformation a process we fear or embrace? What are we willing to let go and experiment with in order to accomplish transformation? How do we feel and react when transformation occurs? Is transformation equally welcomed for individuals and for communities? How do we envision transformation at an individual and/or community level?
We need to imagine transformation before we strive for it. Slow Memory takes us on a critical inquiry and generates the conditions of transformation. It supports us to comprehend how we think and brings awareness to our senses. It broadens the scope of our memories and creates shifts in perspectives. Hence, it can become a vehicle to imagine unexpected and innovative futures.
We invite all Slow Memory WGs to imagine and visualize genuine slow transformation. We encourage you to think and ask ‘What if’ questions. Possible points of departure for WGs to start imag(in)ing and visualizing Slow Transformation might be:
- WG1: How the transformation of workplaces is remembered? What traditions/material/non-material heritage are worth passing on and why? What should be appreciated and what should be reconsidered about the processes of industrial transformation in Europe?
- WG2: What does social care look like in a transformed society? What does transformed social welfare look and feel like? How does social justice look and feel like? What does abundance mean (and look like) in a transformed society?
- WG3: Slowing down our study of politics and political movements can allow us to see both continuities with the past and the slow transformations of ideologies, practices, and structures beyond moments of rupture. How can slow methodologies reveal the transformations of politics and political movements over time? Where can we see the slow memory of the past in the present – transformed – political cultures? What kinds of transformation would be needed for inclusive, equitable and democratic political cultures in the future? What is lost in the process of slow transformation?
- WG4: In transformations of conflict, peace is an ever-changing ideal as well as an ongoing political practice. What are the visions of peace in conflict transformation and what values underpin them? What domains, relationships, experiences and structures are engaged in transformations of conflict? How does transformation connect the past, present and future? How can we remember conflict as a slow process of transformation not as a series of violent events?
- WG5: What sorts of climate witnesses emerge from the Anthropocene? What would their testimony be and how should it be received? How might a transformed Anthropocene, where the human and more than human exist relationally, look and feel? What does a future look like where care for the environment is a supreme value?
To all WGs: What do the transformative values look like in these new realities? What do human relations and beyond human look like in these transformed societies? How do people make sense of their daily lives? What motivates them? What do social structures in these new realities look like? How do open-minded citizens, willing to try change, act in a transformed society?
Expected proposals include, but are not limited to photographs, videos and interviews. Stories of change and storytelling, in general, are expected to play a central part of the proposals.
Deadline for submitting the applications: July 15, 2024
Final selection: September 10, 2024
Exhibition opening: to be decided
Questions? Contact Vjollca Krasniqi
