Katarzyna Kosmala

The Rio visit in April 2011 focuses on precarious spaces and addresses a set of contemporary art practices situated within a dialogical paradigm, also referred to as relational aesthetics, in particular exploring its potential for resistance against the market-dominant art production and rather contentious creative industries discourse, in particular in relation to creative labour.

I intend to visit, document and engage with particular artistic projects executed in the context of Rio’s favelas and explore its outreach potential.

I want to engage with nuanced artistic treatments within a dialogic aesthetics frame, particularly in spaces born out of an experience of societal ‘displacement’ and especially within the context of precarious spaces in St American context and in particular in urban Brazil such as street, beach, Rio’s favela, urban void etc. I want to explore potential of these artistic interventions as well as participatory projects in altering subjectivity formation in multiple ways (transformative potential), including the processes of becoming as well as the paradigms of knowledge exchange and educational turn associated with artistic practice and research.

The book project associated with my visit Precarious Spaces: Art & Social/Organisational Change (Eds) is planned, aimed to address some of the promises as well as threats that unpredictability of precarious spaces and dis/placement hold for contemporary visual arts and social change.

Katarzyna Kosmala, PhD is a curator and freelance art writer, Reader at the Centre for Contemporary European Studies, University of the West of Scotland, UK and Visiting Research Fellow at GEXcel, Institute of Thematic Gender Studies, Linköping University & Örebro University, Sweden. She researches and writes on aspects of construction and representation of gender and identity politics in contemporary (visual) culture. She has published in Third Text, N.Paradoxa, Culture and Organization, International Journal of the Arts in Society, Opcje, Obieg, Sekcja Magazyn Artystyczny, Arts Margins. She is also working on her book Imagining Men, Imagining Masculinities.