U n f i x e d

We live and work in a time where complex concerns abound—climate change, racial and social inequalities, the Covid-19 pandemic. For Feminists working through an intersectional framework, attempts to ‘fix’ these and other global and interdependent issues quickly reveals a troubling condition. We find ourselves pulled into an unstable vortex defined by constant change, contradictions, and recombinant solidarities. Unfixed: Speaking in the future/past aims to speculate on how these instabilities become generative contexts for creative production anchored in socially engaged and relational practices.

This proposal emerged from an ongoing, fortnightly virtual conversation. Our encounter is caught in the paradox of the past and future looping in the present based on our respective geographical positions. Crossing the dateline between Australia and the United States, either Donaldson (Melbourne) speaks from the future, or Stakenas (Brooklyn, NY) logs on from a time passed. This real-time ‘unfixed’ state creates a portal to investigate the spatial, temporal, and ethical concerns of practices that resist linear narratives and analyses.

Unfixed will take the form of a discursive investigation between three women, Kim Donaldson, Carol Stakenas, and Lucreccia Quintanilla. We have met bi-weekly for three months to investigate how our work as artists, curators, and educators has evolved to focus on process and context-oriented practices in galleries, public spaces, and beyond. This has located troubling zones of uncertainty and mapped relations to name dynamics that shape our respective artistic, curatorial, and pedagogical work.

Unfixed invites us all to locate and resist a linear, and fixed, approach as the only way to describe how we work together to create art and culture. Our analysis will surface the productive interplay between challenges and opportunities, distribution of power, and the necessity for value-centred cultural production.

CoVA CONVENOR
Dr Kim Donaldson -  Senior Lecturer in Art, Victorian College of the Arts at the University of Melbourne
PARTICIPANTS
Carol Stakenas - Curator at (SPAN) Social Practices Art Network, NYC
Dr Lucreccia Quintanilla - Artist, DJ and writer