An online production platform driven by a desire for change
May 3–July 26, 2021
Artists: Claudia Comte, Abhishek Hazra, Alaa Mansour, Omar Mismar, Asunción Molinos Gordo, Courtney Desiree Morris, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Diana Policarpo, and TAHE.
st_age searches for a new language that allows us to reflect on how we could inhabit the world in a different way; one that is conscious and responsible not only towards humans but also transformative and propositive towards other species. The aim is to build more-than-human worlds and generate challenging social and political ecosystems, through a language that can place feminist counterstrategies and subaltern readings at its center, through listening, discussing, and caring for others.
At the onset of the first COVID-19 lockdown in early 2020, TBA21 created an emergency fund to help artists maintain their creative practices in order to mitigate the loss that would inevitably result from much of the world’s cultural programming being canceled or indefinitely postponed. The impact of being in isolation sent shock waves that are still being felt around the globe. We decided to create an outreach program that allows artists to incubate new ideas or finish projects that were halted because of the pandemic. The result of this philanthropic gesture is st_age, a production platform and digital space that showcases these new works. An extensive public program contextualizes these narratives, including artist talks, podcasts, and research clusters for students and scholars who wish to immerse themselves in the source material of the artists’ research. In addition, a backst_age series explores the relevance of the topics unfolding in each episode.
Season 02 includes practices that delve into the remnants of medieval botanical erudition and witchcraft, which are still challenging patriarchal pharmacology today (Diana Policarpo) or into an animistic form of weather forecasting, that has accompanied shepherds and farmers for millennia (Asunción Molinos Gordo). The recuperation of ancestral knowledges is at the core of this second season of st_age. And so is the reclaiming of wisdoms and voices, such as those silenced by centuries of colonial subjugation; or those submerged in the Atlantic, which guide us through a spiritual journey of healing in the guise of a marine goddess (Courtney Desiree Morris). In this season, artists offer a series of remedies for the land through regenerative processes that aim at alleviating the havoc wreaked by the ghosts and monsters of the Anthropocene, and cleanse the air, the soil, the ruins, and the ocean.
These projects have been developed in collaboration with independent organizations and institutions from around the globe.
