Starting with the idea of creating a space to help artists undertaking an international residency, connect with each other and the city around them, we began to consider what opportunities arise when something is lost or left in transience. Working as seven curators for whom English is a second language, we wondered what possibilities emerge from misunderstanding and miscommunication. In our response to the original brief from Delfina Foundation, we proposed that when something is lost in translation or transition, this is not a moment of failure but of creative potential to be valued.
What does losing mean? Is it possible or even desirable to archive these lost moments? Is it possible to generate new communicative possibilities through losing?
The Archive of Losing is a propositional space for actively losing; losing as a poetic mode for unlearning, unlearning as a liberating measure. We explore the potential of spaces in-between to embody losing as a reflexive destructuring. In our curatorial display, the commissioned artists Giulia Frascino and Josh Clague use image and text as an invitation to the audience to experiment with the possibilities of losing. The live element of our proposal, a performance by Gianna T, explores the creative potential of misalignment and unlearning of conventions.
Image: Giulia Frascino. HIATO (waiting room), 2023, drawing part of multimedia installation
