A collaborative mixed media installation and post-disciplinary workshop initiated by @brasbasahopen, The 77th Annual General Meeting of the Congress for Constructive Divisiveness explores how practices of futurology, myth-making, and communal deliberation might inform the production of material cultures and collective agencies. Framed as the site of a fictional geopolitical conference à la the UN General Assembly, Congress assembles “delegates” of different ideological persuasions to assess “policies” drawn from contemporary theory and mass culture as they pertain to the future prospects of human civilization. “Founded” the year after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the formation of the UN (a pair of watershed events in the brutal 20th century that both occurred in 1945, 78 years ago), this shadowy convention does not aim to build consensus or arrive at resolutions, but to clarify (and sometimes escalate) divergences between belief systems in order to gauge trajectories of probable conflict and avert future cataclysmic fallouts. An exercise in upending entrenched dogmas about the relative values of unity and division and harmony and discord in constructive discourse, Congress invites audiences to ponder the myriad schisms and crises of our times in an open, critical spirit, shifting the discourse away from paralytic states of denial and anxiety towards courage, wonder, and hope.
Venue: Art Outreach
When: 1 - 9 Apr 2023,
By: Art Outreach
