Announcement: Ash Moniz’s Research on Cartographies of Solidarity is selected for Maritime Portal Residency in 2021
All the Way South x As you go…roads under your feet, towards the new future
Before the navigational expansion of European pilgrims and commerce in 16th century, maritime exchange of labor, goods and finances, movement of peoples and cultures had flourished along ancient port regions of the south, and have continued to shape contemporary agendas ranging from geopolitical relations, environment and climate change, international trade, to migration policies and forced displacement, food security, and global co-immunity. Yet models, cartographies and vocabularies available for reading these intersectional trajectories are largely oriented around the metropole-periphery coordinates and economic criteria. Indigenous relations of subjects, objects and places, and local schemes of cultural cosmopolitanism, are either erased or written into top-down registrations of colonial mindset, imperial struggles and competitiveness of nation states.
In order to foster a knowledge field that intervenes within the conundrum of globalization, and to pursue connectivity across oceans and borders, we are pleased to announce that Ash Moniz, a Cairo based multi-disciplinary artist, and his research proposal on logistics workers’ transnational solidarity networks have been selected for the Maritime Portal Residency in 2021. The MPR is a collaborative initiative of All the Way South x As you go…roads under your feet, towards the new future. It bridges many understandings of the south that only overlap partially with the geographical South and engages the histories and realities emerged from long lines of maritime mapping and entanglement.
The selection is collectively made by the partner cells of As you go…roads under your feet, towards the new future. We have received over 40 applications from artists and researchers working in diverse contexts. Please be noted that we won’t be able to notify every applicant by email, and we hope to continue our conversations with those who share our commitment to facilitating undisciplined practice and decentralized network in relation to the epistemologies of south.
Research Statement by Ash Moniz
“As the extraterritoriality of logistics carves out geographies of supply chain infrastructure, it also molds the spatial constellations of logistics workers’ solidarity networks. In my research, I have found that workers at many ports each have their own unique port allies who organize in correspondence with their struggles (eg. between Sokhna and Mumbai, or Istanbul and Rio De Janeiro). The nuances of historical reasoning behind these nodes often show cartographies of solidarity that expand beyond geographical or corporate proximity. I would like to contribute to the Maritime Portal residency by experimenting with different cartographical possibilities for representing geographies of solidarity, and how directionalities of social relations interweave with those of cargo. I am building off of an ongoing independent archive that compiles materials from dockers’ strikes internationally, that I have collected over the years. This also includes materials from research on container ships and in ports (Singapore, Sokhna, Port Said, Beirut, Tripoli, Athens, Istanbul, etc.), and shared video-archives from transport workers unions, etc. I am interested in the modes of literacy that dictate inventories of supply, and the forms of representational leverage that shape logistical negotiations. In investigating how tacticality takes form, my work situates the temporal loss of supply-chain interruption within both logistical time and historical time, mapping the lost possibilities of past struggles.”
Hijacking Hindsight (2020) [Still]
In the Anticipation of a Future Need to Know (2017) [still]
Silent Glass (2020) [still]
Ash Moniz
Ash Moniz is a Cairo based multi-disciplinary artist whose practice spans performance, installation, video and film. Along with a BA from OCAD University (Toronto), Moniz has participated in independent study programs such as Raw Academy (Dakar, Senegal), the Harun Farocki Institute (Berlin, Germany) and Mass Alexandria (Alexandria, Egypt). Moniz’s exhibitions include solo shows at Townhouse Gallery (Cairo), Sishang Museum (Beijing), and HMFF (Nanjing); and group shows at Forum Expanded | Berlinale (Berlin), the Dakar Biennale (Dakar), and the Minsheng Museum (Shanghai) [among others]. They currently write art criticism for the Egyptian online-magazine Mada Masr, and have taught at the Cairo Institute for Liberal Arts and Sciences. Their written works have also been published in peer review journals, such as Thresholds at MIT. Moniz was a member of the artist collective ADL from 2014-2018, and were the assistant curator of the AMNUA Museum in Nanjing, China, in 2014/15. They are currently a part of the artist collective Utterance Lab, in Cairo.
All the Way South x As you go… roads under your feet, towards the new future
All the Way South is an exchange network of research, residency and commission initiated by Times Museum. It is a relational response to the diverse processes of southernization and to the historical resonances between southern China and the Souths of the world. We collaborate with cultural makers and institutions to create new geographical trajectories around diasporic memories and experiences, and bridge artist observations of our transregional society with archival and academic practice. We prioritize initiatives that unfold overtime and cross disciplines, and provide funding and resources for the ones that are marginalized by the market.
As you go… roads under your feet, towards the new future is a long-term project and research inquiry that reflects on the Belt and Road Initiative and how it will alter the aesthetics and practices of everyday life in different local contexts. The project was conceived and initiated by Biljana Ciric in 2019 after conducting curatorial research in East Africa, Central Asia, and several Balkan countries. The inquiry is structured as a long-term research project over a period of three years through research cells of organizations, institutions and individuals: What Could Should Curating Do (Belgrade),
Moderna Galerija (Ljubljana), Rockbund Art Museum (Shanghai), Guangdong Times Museum (Guangzhou), ArtCom (Astana), Robel Temesgen and Sinkneh Eshetu (Addis Ababa), and The Public Library (Bor). Please refer to
http://old.wcscd.com/index.php/2020/01/07/as-you-go-the-roads-under-your-feet-towards-a-new-future/