Son[i]a #357 Andrea Francke
- 00:01 The echoes of colonization: Aníbal Quijano
- 08:45 Mothering, Relation of care vs relation of property
- 11:19 "Invisible spaces of parenthood"
- 18:16 Art and social practices
- 19:56 Failures and blind spots when going back to "Invisible spaces of parenthood"
- 23:25 Kin and mothering, as an expansive thing
- 24:18 "Future of the Left"
- 33:24 An evalution based on pedagogy: creating spaces from learning
- 34:27 Participatory programs, social practices and charity
- 42:39 Creating those moments when you are demolished by reality
- 45:13 The newsletters: opening the learning process and the pleasure of creating a relationship with a community
- 51:11 Evaluation reports, small victories and non-performative documents
- 61:19 Traps and failures
- 61:48 Diversity and otherness: creating different ways for people entering a space. Other ways of thinking about diversity
- 65:11 Sitting down with failure
- 67:38 Success is boring
- 71:37 Social awkwardness, small talk, building intimacy and a conversation about things
- 76:54 Feeding, hosting, hospitality
- 82:34 The role of bureaucracy
- 90:44 Writing: accepting my own voice
- 101:00 Coda
Andrea Francke’s life story was marked by many places, until she settled in London. Born in Peru to a Mexican mother and raised in Brazil, by the time she graduated in London she was already a mother herself. This situated experience led her to team up with her colleague Kim Dhillon to launch "Invisible Spaces of Parenthood": a research project and exhibition space, which they temporarily converted into a functional nursery for fellow university students and academics. The project looks to the sixties and seventies to explore conversations, debates, and radical feminist practices around parenting, in order to update and implement them today, when child-rearing support and initiatives are being dismantled.
"Invisible Spaces of Parenthood" is like a microcosm of the interstitial spaces in which Andrea Francke’s artistic practice unfolds. Her work involves writing, teaching, and social practices, and she is interested in generating opportunities for horizontal exchange and learning among artists, activists, and other groups: almost-utopian horizons that redefine the outmoded category of “art” in search of experimentation and a genuine desire to transform reality.
In this podcast, we talk to Andrea Francke about her interest in participatory projects and infrastructures, in a conversation that touches on inclusion, hospitality, and the repercussions of the colonial project. Andrea unpacks the idea of failure as she reflects on the challenges involved in designing institutional legal networks and frameworks. We also talk about imported categories of art, about invisible labour, and about the idea of charity as a slippery slope.