I’ll start from this image of a trama [portuguese word corresponding to both “plot” and “thread”] because it already configures a relation: practices that come from different directions, speculative possibilities that may or may not have continuity, which at some moment are interlinked and later follow their own directions. The project TRAMA considers practices that are institutive, but they do not need to remain fixed. This is the starting point for the collaborations with Zazie Edições, Pedro Moraes and Negalê Jones. The idea of collaboration enters here not only as the linking of a series of people in a project, but as a maximization of effects to tackle a question of scale.

A Bienal can institute practices that have size, but do not necessarily have scale; while practices of smaller spaces may not have a size and yet they can acquire scale. In other words, they produce effects beyond themselves or which are not enclosed within the exhibition space. This said, one of the goals was precisely to recalibrate the scale of the Bienal for a potential that it could have, for example that of being a political imagination tool for institutional operations.

What interests me is to understand that there are already efforts in this sense, and to distribute the Bienal’s resources to determined initiatives external to the Bienal. This collaboration can involve various layers of the art world, including artists, architects and editors, as well as lawyers and producers, and so on. So in a certain way it is a breakup with the figure or the idea of an artist who acts alone or who singlehandedly brings about a transformation in the world. [LC]

TRAMA Collection

Organized by the artist Luiza Crosman in collaboration with Zazie Edições, as part of her participation in the 33rd Bienal, the TRAMA Collection aims at the translation to Portuguese and diffusion of current texts and essays, in digital editions enabled by the redirection of institutional resources of the artistic field:

Patrícia Reed
Original link: Xenophily and Computational Denaturalization 
[Translation: Xenofilia e desnaturalização computacional]

Victoria Ivanova
Original link: On the Ineffable Allure of Achieving Systemic Agency  
[Translation: Sobre o inefável fascínio por conquistar agência sistêmica]

Iliana Fokianaki
Original link: Redistribution via Appropriation 
[Translation: Redistribuição via apropriação]

Sara Ahmed
Original link: Cutting Yourself Off 
[Translation: Excluir-se]

Keller Easterling
Original link: Medium Design 
[Translation: Design de meios]