Orlando Maneschy
Conference Report. November 2023
I believe that we are living through major challenges in our time and we cannot shy away from them. In addition to the issues surrounding the Anthropocene, diasporas, global tensions, and violence, there are a number of local issues that need to be addressed with care and attention. This requires us to build other ways of being, to break with crystallized models that no longer account for the museum of the future. Education is one of the ways. Looking beyond the center and understanding what the peripheries have to say. Co-creating relationships between the various participants in the territory in which we operate and realizing that there are people who have different needs. What are we doing in this regard? Are the big institutions concerned about including DEF? I reiterate these questions because we need to create inclusive, living institutions that need to think about their modus operandi and what they are aimed at.
These days at CIMAM were an intense time of listening, but also of exchanging and getting closer to the various grantees. The topics brought up seemed to stimulate a desire to get closer, which manifested itself in complicit glances after a powerful lecture and in in-depth conversations about differences and what united us even though we lived in different realities. As humans, we truly realize that co-creation is a strategy for making the world a little more possible.
I'm going to focus on some of the questions and lectures that touched me the most. Elvira Espejo Ayca began by raising extremely important questions about the social and educational function of the museum, in which the whole community and its relationship with heritage is a commitment for everyone, establishing other ways of seeing; Pablo Lafuente problematizes the museum. "How do we deal with the museum's program obsolescence?" he asks.
This echoes in our minds. A challenge to create new paradigms. There is a need for transformation from the outside in. How can we build a museum that wants to be for everyone without being generalized? Nicolás Testoni brings an extraordinary experience in which people also take center stage in a zone of complexities. What the Museo Taller has been doing is moving and engaging; Coco Fusco is a force of nature! "Institutional transformation can only come about through negotiation and the ability to represent change as something desired and ultimately beneficial to the powerful, as much as to the powerless." Luiz Camnitzer brought a dimension of humanity: "If we don't understand art as a root activity, where we use our imagination, we are lost." Daina Leyton addressed the issue of inclusion and ESDs and how we fail to do the minimum to include diverse bodies and diversities.
Marie Hélène Pereira brought her African experience of community building that seeks to have real consequences in people's lives. teresa cisneiros presented herself as a curator of people and said that institutions need to create educational conditions that are born and begin within the institutions themselves, and are not just empty proposals: "Learn, learn, learn!" Ana Gallardo, with her art, articulated territories of respect, self-care, and performativity with elderly women and men, subverting the art system. Mariam Pastor Races urges us to think about what we have actually been building in our lives: a very forceful and necessary speech in the face of the direction humanity is taking.
Luma Hamdan gave one of the most moving performances. She presented Darat al Funun - The Khalid Shoman Foundation and artists from the Middle East. There was an outcry at the fact that such talented artists live in situations of exclusion due to geopolitical issues. One of the most moving moments was when Yto Barrada, via the internet due to his inability to come in person, revealed the real situation experienced by many artists.
As a person from the Amazon, having the opportunity to listen to people with such different perspectives and from different cultures, as well as to exchange impressions and debate with professionals from all over the world was unique, transformative, and bridge-building. I’m already in talks about building projects together. Everything was perfect, the snacks and the welcome from the whole team. I have nothing but praise. Thank you CIMAM!
Bio
Orlando Maneschy holds a PhD in Communication and Semiotics from Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo – Brazil, funded by CNPq (Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation) (2001 – 2005). His thesis is titled ‘Unfolded Images: Communicating operations of the image in the territory of art’. Based on the theories of Semiotics of Culture, his thesis focuses on visual practices developed within the Brazilian contemporary art context, investigating the communicational operations that artists convey in their process of producing images. Currently, Maneschy’s main focus of research is on the intersections between the visual arts and the sociomuseology, with a particular interest in cultural policy, politics and ethics in the constitution of the Amazoniana Collection of Art, and the relationships with the artists’ creative procedures. He is an Associate Professor at the Federal University of Pará (UFPA), where he is also de head of the UFPA Art Gallery and curator of the Amazoniana Collection of Art. Maneschy was a CAPES Postdoctoral Fellow (Brazilian Ministry of Education) at the Center for Research and Studies in Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon (CIEBA – FBAUL) (2015-2016). His postdoctoral research project was titled “Routes from Lisbon to Belém do Pará – Brazil: image and imaginary to understand the Amazon [Algures or the first kiss]’. This research aimed to explore the encounter of the two aforementioned cities in order to understand how past procedures can communicate with those of the present in contexts such as the Amazon. Some of the recent projects and publications developed by Maneschy include: 1) Vozes Amazonianas| Amazonian Voices: iversity, Memory and Visibility in the Territory of Art. This project was grated funding from Lei Aldir Blanc – Pará – Cultural and Material Heritage (2021) to organise a series of online discussions among the art community in Belém do Pará, mainly the artists that have artworks included in the Amazoniana Collection of Art. Through three online events, we focused the discussions in the themes of the Amazonian history, the colonial processes that was forcefully undertaken in the region and the context of visual arts production. Furthermore, this project resulted in the publication of an e-book titled Vozes Amazonianas: Diversidade, Memória e Visibilidade no território da arte (Belém: Programa de Pós-Graduação em Artes – UFPA). The book aimed at discussing diversity, plurality, and promotion of inclusion in regards to the development of art projects in the Amazon. 2) Amazônia XXI. In 2021 he contributed with articles fom the book Amazônia XXI along with the curator Paulo Herkenhoff, and published by the Fundação Getúio Vargas (Rio de Janeiro), focusing on the visual arts produced in the Brazilian Amazon [https://conhecimento.fgv.br/publicacao/amazonia-xxi]. 3) Burning and Friction: Amazoniana Experience. This is an article published in an emblematic number of the respectable art magazine Select – Art and Contemporary Culture (Dossier “Floresta”), and focus on the creative processes of visual artists concerning the Amazoniana Collection of Art.