Research
Perhaps the whisper was born before lips,
And the leaves in treelessness circled and flew,
And those, to whom we impart our experience as bliss,
Acquire their forms before we do.
Osip Mandelstam, ‘Octaves 7.’
Taking the form of exhibitions, events, screenings, residencies, processes and texts, my research investigates the concept and matter of time. It joins interests in art and critical theory, philosophy, contemporary art and other approaches to time and temporality within various interdisciplinary frameworks. I conceive temporal discontinuity as a form of curatorial research whilst working with strategies of disruption and resistance to dominant orders and systems of power.
My interest is to explore interrelations, juxtapositions and cohesions between post-colonial, de-colonial, queer and feminist theory and practice whilst integrating art from all sorts of media. My curated projects, therefore, display correlated embodied discourses in ‘time-based’ art, such as performance, sound, and moving image, but also in painting, drawing, sculpture, and other artistic materialities associated with 'permanence'. Aiming to test the material and discursive effects of their ephemeral, relational, experiential and situational nature, these projects have been shaped as temporary site-specific installations, as well as processes, gestures, paracuratorial activities or events.
In parallel, I am interested in reading, interpreting and analysing philosophy from a curatorial perspective. My doctoral thesis, for example, focuses on Giorgio Agamben’s studies on potentiality and political ontology. It also incorporates theory from the post-Structuralist period, including Michel Foucault’s critique of power in the materiality of discourse, and the effects of technologies of time discipline in institutionalised and/or self-regulated practices, rhythms and tempos. In addition, it addresses some of the philosophical legacies of Friedrich Nietzsche, such as the concept of the eternal recurrence and the will to power, as well as metaphysics, time and potentiality in Ancient Greek philosophy.
Following this line of thought and practice, I have been exploring potentialities and materialities in discontinuous temporalities through various associated themes--such as violence, human potential, memory, desire, contingency, anachronism, flirtation, and identity. I intend to open up the political and poetic dimension of these approaches (as temporary interventions yet forms of resistance), thus, inaugurating other orders in the theorisation and exhibition of curatorial embodiments of time.
© Copyright 2023 belongs to Paula Zambrano
