Masterclass: Decolonial Aesthesis

Lecture and Discussion with Rolando Vázquez

Decolonial thought has shown that we cannot attain a truthful understanding of our present without coloniality, that is without the destruction of Earth and erasure of worlds that sustain our everyday reality. Coloniality as a de-worlding historical movement circulates not only through the economy and the state but also through aesthetics, through the forms through which we re-present and experience our reality. Decolonial aesthesis articulates a critique of modern aesthetics and looks for what lies silenced under the normativity of the contemporary.

Biography

Dr. Rolando Vazquez is currently Associate Professor of Sociology at University College Roosevelt, Middelburg, and Cluster Chair at University College Utrecht, Utrecht. Since 2010, he has been, together with Walter Mignolo, co-director of the annual Decolonial Summer School. In 2016, under the direction of Gloria Wekker, he co-authored the 'Let's do Diversity' report of the Diversity Committee of the University of Amsterdam. In 2020, he published Vistas of Modernity: Decolonial aesthesis and the End of the Contemporary and in 2021, with Hicham Khalidi, he published the essay 'A new Bauhaus? The debate for a more inclusive Europe' as a response to the new European Green Deal of Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Masterclass in collaboration with S.M.A.K. Ghent.