CONTEMPLATIVE ACTIVISM // lucia palladino

Contemplative Activism is my artistic research.

Contemplative Activism is revolution and sub-version.

Contemplative Activism is in transition.

It questions the boundaries of identity and property.

It is a form of resistance to institutions (body/language) and a tool for institutional critique.

It develops decolonizing and anti-capitalistic practices for the bodies in relation to the landscape

they are immersed and transitioning in. 

It aims to undo pre-existing knowledge and expectations and to make space to the encounter.

It reflects on the non-neutral role of the observer/perceiver as reality generator:

the way we position our-selves in the complex landscape of relationships that surround us and we are part of changes the landscape itself.

My positions within otherness is part of the reality I’m generating and being part of.

The contemplation is then active as other-realities/other-bodies/other-languages generator.

In order to meet the other I have to enter the temple (templum), I have to step-in the position from where is possible to perceive the other as alterity.

I have to displace my self to the place where it’s not about me and not about you but something we don’t know yet how to name.

Therefore the practices of Contemplative Activism are based on displacement (nomadic, wandering, walking, filming and writing practices).

The displacement allows a suspension from identification with the present.

In this suspension, while no-meaning, no-sens-direction, is attributed, I can question and move the realities com-posed-with what is there and embrace new

possible futures.

Through the setting of scores, protocols and devices I rewrite the present through the encounter with otherness. The other appears, into a wound.

The Contemplative Activism is an active state of not doing.

The Templum (cum+templum) is a time-space cut.

The Contemplative Activism operates during the cut, while the wound is still open.