PARS PRO TOTO
Online Screenings by peer to space
Pars Pro Toto is peer to space’s online series showcasing video art works which focus on very personal stories narrated by the artist or by the protagonist. The works are embedded in a thematic context of cultural, social, political, or environmental issues. A new iteration focusing on a further topic will be released quarterly.
Pars Pro Toto creates a digital space for users to be silent observers and to simultaneously witness the social complexity of the world. By discovering artworks based on individual experiences yet presented in a broader context, the series demonstrates how the personal symbolizes a part of the whole, a pars pro toto. The personal story seen as an extract of an overall reality becomes visible and fits into the mosaic of the collective experience. Exploring larger issues through the individual lens activates awareness within the viewers. This leads to a deeper and more empathetic understanding of today’s global social conditions. The series promotes the importance of freedom of expression and the necessity of providing a voice for everyone as a basis for a caring and participatory society.
Giving Contours To Shadows
(Online from July 1 until September 30, 2021)
Works by Mirelle Borra, Francois Knoetze, Tabita Rezaire
Curated by Gloria Aino Grzywatz
The sixth iteration of PARS PRO TOTO deals with how colonial power structures impact the present. Ever since the West set out to exploit the world for its own benefit in the modern era, it has asserted its interests primarily with the help of infrastructure measures. With smooth and accelerated material flows, Europe and Northern America repeatedly increased their prosperity at the expense of others. The structural racism of Europeans and Americans has shaped and continues to shape the uneasy relationship with those they have colonised over the centuries. Knoetze’s work Core Dump - Dakar illustrates the fatal effects of outsourcing European e-waste to Africa. Somewhere in Between by Mirelle Borra reveals three hundred years of a colonial past and traces of the spice trade still remain present in Dutch society today. Tabita Rezaire’s video Deep Down Tidal makes clear how the infrastructure of undersea fiber optic cables which carry our digital data are laid along colonial shipping routes. All three works are indicative of the structural problems caused by colonialism that still exist around the world today. The title of the screening Giving Contours To Shadows refers to a research project based on the a concept by the French writer and poet Édouard Glissant (1928–2011) that history in the Western realm is sheer a functional fantasy of the West far away from universal validity. Giving Contours To Shadows refers to the shadowy sides of colonialism, ignored by the Western world, while triggered by them. This screening aims to draw visibility to the continuing exploitation and injustices happening in the global South. We believe that awareness forms the basis for a new narrative and the potential for change.
Mirelle Borra (NL/DE), Somewhere in Between, video, 7:00 min, 2016
MIrelle Borra
Somewhere in Between by Mirelle Borra reflects on the Indo diaspora after the decolonization of the Dutch East Indies (contemporary Indonesia). Hundreds of thousands of people of Eurasian heritage were forced to leave the country after the Bersiap period (the bloody separation between the Netherlands and its colony). The narration of the video conflates a number of comments left on online Indo community networks. Shaped like a stream of thoughts — Somewhere in Between highlights different aspects of the process to redefine identity and culture. It reveals how traces of the spice trade and three hundred years of a colonial past still remain present in Dutch society today. Somewhere in Between is one narrative in an interchanging world of migratory experiences. These particular migrating stories re-contextualize the past and give us insight to the present.
Francois Knoetze (ZAF), Core Dump – Dakar, video, 11:50 min., 2018
Francois Knoetze
Francois Knoetze’s video work Core Dump - Dakar is the first part of a multi-part series of video works that thematically intersect the West's notions of technological utopias and the impoverished, technology-poor former colonies, the colonies that continue to be exploited to create these shimmering oases of the West. Every day, discarded old equipment from Europe such as mobile phones, laptops or televisions arrive at the e-waste dumps of Africa, the prosperity scrap of the industrial nations. This is processed under risky conditions in order to earn some money. Often they pay for it with their own health. In Knoetzes' work, the electronic waste fuses with the body of the workshop owner to form a cyborg in a TV repair workshop. This cyborg is able to re-embody historical data and hack into online systems in search of a utopian future.
Tabita Rezaire (GF), Deep Down Tidal, video, 19 min., 2017
Portrait Tabita Rezaire © Marcella Ruiz Cruz
Deep Down Tidal by Tabita Rezaire excavates the power of water as a conductive interface for communication. From submarine cables to sunken cities, drowned bodies, hidden histories of navigations and sacred signal transmissions, the ocean is home to a complex set of communication networks. As modern information and communication technologies become omnipresent in our industrialized realities, we urgently need to understand the cultural, political and environmental forces that have shaped them. Looking at the infrastructure of submarine fibre optic cables that transfers our digital data, it is striking to realize that the cables are layered onto colonial shipping routes. Deep Down Tidal enquires the intrictate cosmological, spiritual, political and technological entangled narratives sprung from water as an interface to understand the legacies of colonialism.
Previous PARS PRO TOTO iterations:
The Personal is Political (2020)
Home Is Where Heart Is (2020)
Mirror, Mirror (2020)
Hou Lang Tui Qian Lang (后浪推前浪) (2021)
Another Person In You (2021)
Giving Contours To Shadows (2021)
Dreams Of Solidarity (2021)
Desire is Something Boundless (2022)
My Body, My Choice? (2022)