23/02/2021 20:00 – 23:00

For Radio Tenthaus Episode 39 we broadcast the new installment of Future Matter, ‘Betraying Utopia’, as well as a new #studiostatus with artist Margrethe Pettersen.

Betraying Utopia
 “I am not real, I am just like you”.

A utopia is a suspended locale, a space without time, extracted out of the mud of life. In this canonical, western version, it is a suspicious object of desire – dis-incarnated; bodies are designed, pacified, idealized. It is an island where time is suspended, therefore transformation is excluded.
What happens when we re-introduce time, when we betray Utopia’s intentions?

To unlearn what “Utopia” could be/become, Jassem Hindi uses historical, conceptual and speculative strategies. This audio narrative consists of two parts, and it is a soft introduction to a wider research on “Betraying” utopia, and on “Slimy” utopia. He looks at utopia as a political practice that is not about projection (waiting patiently for the future) in a linear, progressive timeline (what is possible according to what we know) – our strategy is to fragment utopia into smaller pieces and disseminate those fragments in our present practices. In art, Utopia is not ‘yet to come’, it is a now: a poem written in times of war is direct access to utopia, a pharmakon in times of hardship – that is the effectiveness of utopia, its potential for immanence, for betraying the dis-incarnated, idealist version.

This work is dedicated to the loving memory of Alina Popa.

Part 1. Betraying Utopia
The first part is about how betrayal can be used as a tool to corrupt, to shred utopia, about how time haunts utopia, and the difference between chimeras and monsters.

Part 2. Slimy Utopia
The second part is about what happens when we have shredded utopia to pieces. I will evoke what kind of politics of hospitality are implied in a slimy utopia. I aspect poetry and monsters towards a political practice, a political practice of magic which says: ‘’I am not real, I am just like you’’.

Jassem Hindi is a Djeddah-born performer and sound artist based in Norway. He is an independent philosophy researcher, studying the double-bind of haunting and hospitality. His recent artworks have been focused on the physical relation between performance and death poetry, as a space for a collective political and environmental practice. 

Future Matter is a monthly online audio series produced by Podium featuring essays and fictions proposing alternative narratives for thinking about our times. 
https://www.futurematter.institute/

Margrethe Iren Pettersen (NO) is a florist, has a BA from the Academy of Contemporary art in Tromsø and a MFA from the Art and Public Space program from Oslo National Academy of the Arts. In her practice, she often work site specific by investigating the ecosystems and their complexities. By drawing attention to the characteristics and coexisting life of plants and organisms of different places, she aim to
challenge the modern perception that divides culture and nature. Her Sami roots and the oral tradition of knowledge production in the north, is themes she brought into her work and research lately.