Publication: As you go…roads under your feet, towards the new future

Edited by Biljana Ciric.
Sound by Ocean&Wavz.
Design by Toby Tam.
Published by Rockbund Art Museum and Mousse Publishing.

As you go…roads under your feet, towards the new future publication is not only a book as an object, but it is fundamentally an act of speaking out different forms of in/visibility in order to escape dominant geopolitical divisions, permanent surveillance, as well as an invincible desire to build up alternative social bonds with autonomous people who are able to protect their integrity as individuals and societies, to nurture the circulation of ideas and to value free and unexpected paths beyond frontiers and oppressions.

Or how to stretch a book to moments of encounter, vibration, silence, connection, shout, question, resonance, doubt, research, echoing three challenging years of political violence, local and global lockdowns, mutation of private lives, expression of pain and anger, construction of hope?  —Larys Frogier

As you go…roads under your feet towards the new future book is an archive of relationships, the lives of us partner cells in the past two years, the collective effort of the research undertaken, but also our process of learning with others about how to work more horizontally and on what terms within inquiry. 

Through this book we also offer modest tools, exercises and methodologies that we practiced trying to stay connected while isolated. The book opens with statements by all the partner cells on our collaboration and personal reflections. The statements are followed by a set of workshops that we undertook with the guidance of Fayen d’Evie, in which we mapped our time and struggles as well as collective writing exercises. Research case studies from local contexts conducted over the past two years are also presented in the book, including conversations with colleagues and peers with whom we learnt how to work together differently.

With political changes accelerated by the pandemic in many local contexts where we work, our inquiry became even more relevant to think together about how to work, how to continue to be critical but also how to keep each other safe and create co-immunity. For us, opacity became a more important tool than visibility, as did its use as an active choice. As we shared more time together, we shared common struggles. Many of the encounters we held during these two years were opaque.

This book serves as a visible archive of some of the moments. 

As you go…roads under your feet, towards the new future is initiated and conceived by Biljana Ciric. The inquiry and research cells include What Could Should Curating Do (Belgrade), Zdenka Badovinac (Ljubljana), Rockbund Art Museum (Shanghai), Guangdong Times Museum (Guangzhou), ArtCom (Astana), Robel Temesgen and Sinkneh Eshetu (Addis Ababa), and The Bor Public Library.

The inquiry gained support from Foundation for Arts Initiatives ( FFAI), CURTAIN (Rockbund Art Museum), Austrian Cultural Forum, Curatorial Practice (Monash University Art, Design and Architecture), and the Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship and Office for Contemporary Art, Norway. 

To order the book please contact Mousse Publishing.

Contributors: Sinkneh Eshetu ( O’Tam Pulto), Nikita Yingqian Cai, Dragan Stojmenovic, Robel Temesgen, Robert Bobnic, Kaja Kraner, Zdenka Badovinac, Jelica Jovanovic, Larys Frogier, Aigerim Kapar, Ocean & Wavz, Chen Liang, Salem Mekuria Aziza Abdulfetah Busser, Manuel Borja- Villel, Mabel Tapia, Tara Mcdowell, Marija Glavas, Alexey Ulko, Fayen d’Evie, Jasphy Zheng, Enanye Kibret, Gebeyehu Desalew, Ash Moniz, Susie Quillinan and Biljana Ciric