Southern Identities Laboratory

What is the South? How to build an identity when the mere act of searching is already a political act as the subject ceases to be an object of exotic study in order to defines itself?

This itinerant laboratory of epistemological decolonization uses scientific tools and methods for an artistic purpose. It is based on the idea that some disciplines regarded as neutral are tinged with a Western halo of tautological and epistemological construction. Technology understood not only as a device, but as a process, is perceived as a bridge to ancestral knowledge that evades the autocracy of Western aesthetics and narrative as it connects past and future.

koshi Kené project created under these premises and methodology, was used as a case study to explore links with communities that safeguard ancestral knowledge. The idea is to link DIY and open source technologies to techniques and / or processes found in different places. The itinerant laboratory model enables the reflection and validation of the hypotheses that we formulate in the same field-territory of action and simultaneously collecting information in the manner of contemporary chronicles.

"Southern Identities Laboratory" was part of Hybrid happenstances (Under 40 degrees) residency programme organized by ATA (Alta Tecnología Andina/High Andean Technology) and selected for ISEA2018 - 24th International Symposium on Electronic Art, held in Durban, South Africa, 23-30 June 2018.This project had the support of Prince Claus Fund.