Nos Es Sencillo

Andrea Francke: Perhaps it is inevitable that institutions in the Global North, which hold unequal power in knowledge-making and distribution, repeat colonial structures, even when well-meaning. It’s hard to escape the conditions of where thinking happens. I’m also part of that system, so this critique also includes me. Years ago, in Peru, I was speaking with the daughter of an influential Peruvian intellectual about how he would discuss having made a choice. He could either produce knowledge that is legible and intended for a Global North audience, or he could work in Peru on projects that made sense and intervene in that context. He was aware that you can’t have it both ways, and that it is not only a social and political choice, but also a personal career choice. The refusal of Global North legibility is a choice. Sara and I wanted to find a way to produce and circulate something that claimed a different type of space, that generated different relations of production. It was hard because the structure itself is not a good fit. I approached Giuliana Vidarte, who came up with the format and organized the conversation. Since the point is to map and situate the thinking, then in terms of authorship, Giuliana is more central than us. She raised the point that whenever Cordelia and Olinda, or anyone in the SOI NOMA collective, speak about their work, it is quickly limited to contextualizing and making it legible. It’s trapped in the eternal loop of producing legibility by appealing to specific codes that have been proved effective and seductive to an international art-world context. Giuliana suggested, what if we asked them completely different questions? What if we talked about their experiences travelling? What if instead of making themselves legible, they made the structures that host them and distribute their work visible? What if voices from the Global South were doing the analysis instead of producing testimony that is then analysed in the Global North?