Chair " Emancipated Imaginaries"  (2023-2028)

This research programme is focused on the negotiation of mutations in the discourse and practice of the image, from the colonial period to the postcolonial critical space. It's rooted in the decolonisation of Algeria, and pays attention to the echoes of emancipation movements in a planetary perspectives. Opening up another genealogy, attentive to the transitional dialogue generated by African independence and international solidarity, could be one of the possible anchors for thinking about a critical world history of the visual arts and aesthetic mutations in resistance.

The objective of this Chair is to evaluate the manner in which artists and works of art establish a Right to look (Derrida, 1985; Mirzoeff, 2011), challenge and erode an colonial unthinkable. Furthermore, the notion of 'visual unconscious' is explored through the use of counter-narratives and artistic practices that engage with the processes of writing art history, while simultaneously interrogating the political and critical dimensions of the re-engagement with the imagination.

The filmic, editorial and curatorial writing project will open up an overview of a history of critical art and visual culture conceived in terms of emancipation. With the support of a number of interconnected case studies, visual and textual objects (photographs, plastic works, films, etc.) will serve as a basis for understanding the renegotiations of certain projected and assigned imaginaries. The aim is to provide a framework for analysing the aesthetics of resistance on an international scale, transcending the representation of colonial and post-colonial Algeria, and ultimately opening up the possibility of following in the footsteps and grasping other bodies of work, other artistic gestures and critical representations converging towards an emancipation of social and political assignments, from past to present, with and against the image.