Afterall Journal Issue 47 Launch
A conversation between Naeem Mohaiemen and Charles Stankievech

For its issue 47, Afterall Journal focuses on ‘Situated Practices and Conditioned Positions.’ Composed by the editorial team in Singapore and Istanbul in the last year, the issue looks at practices that encounter fragments and facets of histories otherwise not seen or told, complicating the understanding of everchanging alliances of powers and world orders. On the occasion of the launch in Toronto, featured artist Naeem Mohaiemen and editor Charles Stankievech will discuss the role of archiving unfinished histories, listening to subjective testimonies, and presenting aesthetics of evidence in order to question hegemonic narratives that have historically been one-sided and exclusionary. The journal includes essays on additional featured artists such as Gülsün Karamustafa, Thảo Nguyên Phan, Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook and Constantin Brâncuşi, with texts on decolonising contemporary art from Papua New Guinea, African exhibition histories and feminist collectivity, mapping a forensic turn in art, Afro-Portugese creativity in Lisbon, the rental gallery system in 1960s Japan and more by Vasif Kortun, Ana Longoni, Nora A. Taylor, Charles Stankievech, Vijay Prashad, Kaelen Wilson-Goldie, Michael A. Mel, Clare Veal, Filipa Ramos, Serubiri Moses, Carlos Garrido Castellano, Jerssi Esperança Restino Paulo, Daria Ghiu, and Reiko Tomii – with a foreword by Ute Meta Bauer.

Naeem Mohaiemen combines films, installations, and essays to research former utopias and incomplete decolonizations– framed by Third World Internationalism and World Socialism. Despite underlining a left tendency toward misrecognition of allies, a hope for a future international left, as an alternative to current polarities of race and religion, is a basis for the work. He co-edited (w/ Lorenzo Fusi) System Error: War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (Papesse, 2006) and is currently co-editing (w/ Eszter Szakacs) Solidarity Must be Defended (Tranzit/ Van Abbe/ Salt/ Tricontinential, 2019). His work has recently shown at SALT (Istanbul, 2019), MoMA PS1 (NYC, 2018), and documenta 14 (Athens/Kassel, 2017). In Canada, he has shown at Hot Docs (2012), A Space Gallery (Images Festival, 2012), Gallery TPW (Images Festival, 2013), VOX–Centre de l'image contemporaine (2016), and will next show at The Power Plant (Fall 2019). He was a finalist for the 2018 Turner Prize.

Charles Stankievech is an artist, the Director of Visual Studies in the Daniels Faculty at the University of Toronto, and a contributing editor of Afterall Journal.

Afterall is a Research Centre of University of the Arts London, located at Central Saint Martins. The journal is published in partnership with John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, University of Toronto; M HKA, Antwerp; NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore; and in association with the University of Chicago Press.

This launch is hosted by the Master of Visual Studies Proseminar at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, University of Toronto.

Image Credit: Still from Tripoli Cancelled (2017), courtesy of artist and Experimenter.