It is useless and unworthy to wait for the Iberian or European tie to clean the house. The priority is the reverse: to clean the house to be at the collective table like at home [Eduardo Lourenço | The Marx Complex]
"In fact, the question of the essence of Europe is not mysterious or unanswerable. (...) But let us not worry about sterile questions about the true borders and ethnic entities of Europe. There is no doubt that Europe has neither a substantial popular base nor strong borders to the east and the southeast, nor an unequivocal religious identity (...) The question should not be: who, according to what criteria and what traditions, belongs to a "true Europe"? (...) but: which scenes do Europeans play in their decisive historical moments? What are the ideas that animate them, the illusions that mobilize them? How has Europe achieved its driving history and by what means does it keep moving? Where does Europe's power and unity run the risk of failing?" [Peter Sloterdijk | If Europe Awakes]
Since the last decades of the 20th century, the notion of "Europe" has been highly questioned, especially in the territory of the so-called European Studies. These, have developed multiple investigations on what we understand, after all, for EUROPA. What critical framework can we draw today to understand the various interactions and dissemination that make Europe fundamentally a kind of financial and commercial brand? What place can there still exist in the world for Europe as we have traditionally understood it? What Europe is left to us after the great historical controversies that have crossed and continue to cross it? Is it real, the so widespread European multiculturalism? What is the possibility of a heterotopic becoming to Europe? On the other hand, Europe has been the subject of complex debates, in the domain of which some artists have been called in to participate, questioning both the political reorganization of the post II War, the recent political decisions, or the artistic mapping based on geopolitical strategies in global context. From this critical framework, we propose to develop a research project around the multiple political, social and artistic representations of Europe that we have, have or want to have and that configure some of the discussions.
This project articulates a international conference (I) Notes on Europe. The dogmatic sleep and a curatorial project (II) Walking Around the Sun: Machines, Spiders and Buccaneers.