A Utopian Stage is a multi-faceted and open-ended, evolving project that revisits the intersection of modernism, art and revolution through the radical aspirations of the hyper-modernist networks of artists and experimentalists which defined the 1960s and 1970s. This reconstruction of a complex space of international modernity is defined by the ‘third worldist’ sensibilities of the immediate post- colonial period. The project traces a Cultural Atlas through which knowledge was exchanged across alternative (often non-European) plateaus. This process of global ‘reorientation’ takes us through a reconstruction of the gaze - subverting the single ‘reading’ of West to East into a more cyclical model, engaging in cultural, philosophical and political negotiations from East to East, East to West, South to East, South to South - constructing a panoramic exchange of global philosophical and artistic discourse. The project explores how in the aftermath of the collapse of European hegemonies and the rise of the Global South a fluid artistic exchange was possible across geographies, histories and forms in ways and on a scale that had never been possible before.
October 4, 2023
