University of Gothenburg
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André Alves

Doctoral Student

The Crafts and Fine Art
Unit
Telephone
+46 736-84 52 09
Mail
andre.alves@akademinvaland.gu.se
Visiting address
Kristinelundsgatan 6-8
41137 Göteborg
Postal address
Box 131
40530 Göteborg

About André Alves

 

André Alves is interested in how the aspect disaffection within capitalism contributes to a de-politicization of the shared social scene and poses limitations to knowledge. His artistic research advances 'pedagogies of affection' under the thesis of whereas art can, through its practice-based component, offer experiences against de-sensitization. The dissertation work currently titled “A Never-ending thirst”: performing imaginaries beyond the ‘productive’ worker" discusses the contemporary relationship of subjects with work in cognitive capitalism and subsequent affectations arising from it by deploying artistic ‘pedagogies of affection’ and methods of ‘co-motion’ within the exhibition as a research format to enhance vulnerability (understood here as a sensorial-conceptual rehabilitation of the forms of separateness) as a critical-affective approach to modes of existence oriented to the market (‘Teflon-existence’, to use Maria Franco Ferraz concept).

“A Never-ending thirst” discusses how the fiction of self-sufficiency resulting from the identification of the subject with productivity and efficacy required by the modernity-capitalist mindset led to the political destruction of the collective unfolding. One particular focus of my study is the narration of the inevitable pathological effect of capitalism, which is understood in my study both as evidence of a need of change, and a possibility for an affective and political reappreciation of the notion of ‘vulnerability’, not as a negative but as an enhancement of collective unfolding. Through practices of exhibition as a research, “A never-ending thirst” takes specific interest in staging feeling (the standpoint of methods in feminist approaches to social practice) in order to enhance listening and to reappreciate contemporary relations between autonomy and heteronomy. I describe these methods as a ‘co-motion’, both a doing together and a practice to sensitize, thus moving from aspects of representation to resonance, a process that could be summarized under the category of ‘pedagogy of affection’.

The artistic projects included in “A Never-ending thirst” are: - Restauro da Juventude Cansada (public intervention; city of Porto; 2015) - Suspended (exhibition and workshop; Centro de Arte Joven de Madrid; 2016) - Body at rest (performative essay; CAA conference; 2016) - Never ending dance (exhibition and workshop; Centro Cultural Vila Flor; 2017) - Double Exposure (video-essay; Research Pavilion, Venice Biennale; 2017) - O que falta é amor (participatory event; O Sol Aceita a Pele Para Ficar; 2017) + book (with Filipa Araújo and Max Fernandes) - Contact: a poetry of exportation of assimilating the other (exhibition; Centro El Carmen; 2018) - O papel da Fábrica (exhibition; Centro de Arte Oliva; 2019) - Fabrica (exhibition; Flatland; 2019) - Estação Encontro (participatory event; Sociedade Martins Sarmento; 2019) - Pre-text (exhibition and workshop; Momentum 10; 2019) - Sede da Juventude Cansada – (play/participatory event; online/city of Porto; 2020)

“A Never-ending thirst” is structured in three parts.The first concerns the politics of image-making and representation. It is developed as a long-term case study around the Air-dancer as a possible artistic archetype for the subjectivity. The second part examines the possibilities of my artistic practice as method of ‘co-motion’, a form of “ethics therapeutic” (Janning 2017), in which the arousal and enhancement of sensation is the key component for collective events. The third component of my study reflects about listening and the spatialization of the voice as a different system of knowledge, an epistemological standpoint moving its emphasis from saying to listening. André Alves research is currently supervised by Jessica Hemmings and Diego del Pozo Barriuso, and received previous supervision by Andrea Phillips and Daniel Jewesbury.