PROBES #26.2 Auxiliaries

Process, liminality, mediation, transmission, radio, resonance, orality, archive, and abundance. In our coinciding and crossing of paths with Ukrainian artist, mediator, educator, and musician Anton Kats, “the stars aligned” to put prior learning and formats to the test. Three remote encounters, six hours of recording, and several red-hot scissors have produced this exquisite corpse in which we explore a discourse and practice that tend to spill over and exceed boundaries in both nuance and detail. In this podcast, we talk about the Europe of integration, about memory, dementia, and different ways of not knowing, about artistic research and art that defies representation, about site-specific projects and mobile, ephemeral devices, about narrowcasts and radio as a means of creating common public spaces.

Belgian artist and musician Céline Gillain split her time between working as a high school art teacher and the solitary practice of painting in her Brussels studio, until one day she had enough and organised a residency for six female artists at her grandmother’s house. Five years of collective experimentation with other women paved the way for the creation of hybrid, solo performances combining artistic research, the staging of her speculative writing, and catchy pop songs, carefully woven through complex and seemingly sooth and seamless narratives. We talk with Céline about her incursion into the music industry, stage fright, the power of fragility and depression as a form of resistance today. Paradoxically, her current media of choice are a mix of pop songs, motivational speeches, and updated fictions from the entertainment world, which run through everyday life in a darkly humorous, inimitable way.

Professor Oyèrónké Oyèwùmi examines the ways in which universalism in academia distorts our understanding of African cultures, especially in relation to race and gender. In this podcast, Professor Oyèwùmi talks about age, seniority, and respect, about unscrupulousness and academia, dispossession and spirituality. She considers the oxymoron of the notion of “single mother” from the point of view of Yoruba culture, and she also notes how observance of community practices from non-Western cultures may be an unnecessary step as we face the planetary challenges to come.