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Institute of Contemporary Art Miami

Suely Rolnik: The Abuse of Life: Micropolitical Matrix of the Colonial-Capitalistic Regime

Mar 5 – 28, 2018
Spring Semester 2018
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Image of John Miller, Storage Area, 1993
John Miller, Storage Area, 1993. Acrylic and assorted objects on styrofoam sphere. Permanent Collection, Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami. Gift of Peter Norton

The micropolitical matrix of the colonial-capitalistic system is the abuse of the vital forces of the biosphere, whose essence is the creation of new forms whenever needed for the perseveration of life. In the human species, such abuse reaches today the drive in its very wellspring, diverting it from its ethical destiny—strength of transfiguration of reality and transvaluation of values. Creation is converted into a creativity which designs new scenarios for the accumulation of capital. Given this state of affairs, it isn’t enough to just intervene in power relations, aiming for a fairer distribution of rights (macropolitics), it is also necessary to intervene in the politics of desire which support them, reappropriating the drive in its ethical destiny (micropolitics).

Seminar 1: A Sinister Landscape and The micropolitical sphere of power

  • The paradoxical relation between neoliberalism and conservatism
  • The limit of the Left: the reduction to macropolitics
  • The abuse of the vital force
  • The subjective experience: the subject and the outside-of-the-subject
  • The colonial-capitalistic unconscious

Seminar 2: The macro and micropoltical spheres of resistance

  • Their specificities and their necessary articulation
  • Ten Suggestions for Decolonizing the Unconscious
Schedule
  • Mon, Mar 19, 2018
    5:30 pm to 8:30 pm
  • Tue, Mar 20, 2018
    5:30 pm to 8:30 pm
  • Wed, Mar 21, 2018
    3:00 pm to 6:30 pm
About Suely Rolnik

Suely Rolnik is a Brazilian psychoanalyst, writer and curator. She is a professor at the Catholic University of São Paulo, where she founded the Subjectivity Studies Centre at the Ph.D Program on Clinical Psychology, and was guest professor at the Program of Independent Studies of the Museo d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MacBa) from its foundation in 2008 until its closure in 2015. She was exiled in Paris from 1970–1979, where she obtained a master’s degree in Sociology and Philosophy from Sorbonne / Paris VIII, a master’s in Clinical Human Sciences from Sorbonne / Paris VII, and a clinical Ph.D / D.E.S.S. Upon returning to Brazil, she obtained a Ph.D. in Social Psychology at PUC-SP.

Her research focuses on the politics of subjectivation in different contexts (micropolitics) from a transdisciplinary theoretical perspective, indissociable from clinical-political pragmatics. She authored A hora da Micropolítica (N-1, 2016); Anthropophagie Zombie (Black Jack édit, 2012); Archive mania, (HatjCantz / dOCUMENTA 13, 2011); Cartografia Sentimental. Transformações contemporâneas do desejo (Estação Liberdade, 1989; 4th ed. revised, Sulinas, 2016); and with Félix Guattari: Micropolítica. Cartografias do desejo (Vozes, 1986, 7 th ed. revised, 2005, 14th ed., 2017, in English by Semiotext/MIT, 2006, with the title: Molecular Revolution in Brazil). She is the creator of “Archive for a Work-Event, Activating the Body’s Memory of Lygia Clark’s Poetics and Its Context” (65 film interviews; 2002-2011) and co-curator with Corinne Diserens of the exhibition “Nous sommes le moule. A vous de donner le souffle. Lygia Clark, de l’œuvre à l’événement,” Musée de Beaux-arts de Nantes, 2005, and Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, 2006. She is one of the founders of the South Conceptualisms Network, currently comprising more than 60 Latin American researchers focused on the continent’s conceptual artistic practices during the 1960s and 1970s. She was an invited researcher of the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, París, 2007. She is currently a member of the Advisory Board of the 31th São Paulo Biennial, 2014; the juries of the Casa de las Americas Prize, Cuba, 2014; and of the Prince Claus Award for culture and development, Holland, 2015–2016.

Semester
Mar 5 – 28, 2018
Spring Semester 2018
Learn More