Transregional Academy on Latin American Art IV

Plural Temporalities. Theories and Practices of Time

Transregional Academy

September 24th – October 2nd, 2022, Bogotá

The notion of plural temporality invites a conception of time as open, relative, local, and multiple rather
than universal, linear, closed, and singular. This notion has a particular pertinence to Latin America
and other regions marked by a colonial past, whose histories of “discovery” or subjugation in themselves pose ongoing problems of identity, memory, and narration vis-à-vis pre-Columbian cultures. The
Transregional Academy “Plural Temporalities: Theories and Practices of Time” seeks to interrogate the
impact of the understanding of temporalities on the construction or deconstruction of identities. From a
lateral perspective, this means considering the multiplicity of chronologies and, moreover, their perceptions, their practices, their causes and consequences—opening a discourse in order to lay the groundwork for a methodology or several methodologies.
The Academy’s location and prism is Latin America. Working outward from there, both transregional
artistic processes of exchange within the American continent and international interrelations will be
critically examined. Instead of merely describing artistic tendencies and comparing them with each
another, different cultural and creative processes, strategies of appropriation, including contradictory
modalities of translation and comparison will be discussed from a transregional and transcultural perspective.
The Academy’s goal is to facilitate a transregional exchange on concepts of temporality and historicity.
To adopt such a perspective, research being conducted in or on Latin American countries must be juxtaposed with discussions taking place elsewhere and located within an international context and viceversa. At the same time, the extent to which there is a common conceptual and epistemological basis
for the construction of a global comparative discourse needs to be considered from a historiographical
perspective. This applies not least of all to terms such as “translocal,” “transregional,” and “transcultural.” The variety and complexity of the interpretive concepts will be examined through the lenses of
historiography, discourse analysis, and art criticism.
Steering Committee: Lena Bader (DFK Paris), Jens Baumgarten (Universidade Federal de São Paulo),
Karen Cordero (Historiadora del arte y curadora independiente), Thierry Dufrêne (Université ParisNanterre), Laura Karp Lugo (Université de Lorraine), Thomas Kirchner (DFK Paris), Natalia Majluf
(Independent Art Historian), Élodie Vaudry (DFK Paris), Tristan Weddigen (Bibliotheca Hertziana in
Rome), Patricia Zalamea (Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá)

More informations : 2022 Plural Temporalities Program.pdf (dfk-paris.org)