THE FUTURE PAST VS. COLONIALITY: Decolonial Media Art Beyond 530 Years

Coloniality refers to the colonial ideals, concepts, formats, and organizations which continue to produce decontextualized knowledge which ignores that there have always been other ways of doing, thinking, valuing, and being. Decoloniality may seem new due to this decontextualization. THE FUTURE PAST VS. COLONIALITY: Decolonial Media Art Beyond 530 Years concentrates on the work of artists who are dedicated to the movement of decoloniality and who also question the limited definitions of Media and New Media Art. In the Americas, they follow a school of thought principally headed by an Indigenous and Afro-Latin American effort which focuses on dismantling the apparently organic and unquestionable nature of Eurocentric concepts and ideals. Since colonial times, these have seeped into the intricately formulated dominant matrix of power, embedded within institutions through the privileging and propagation of homogenous and over simplistic thought, and knowledge production. This has resulted in Eurocentric conceptualizations of, for example, beauty, goodness, science, technology, agriculture, progress, politics, economy, sexuality, gender, race, identity, and being. Decolonial consciousness and praxis rooted in oppressed cultures, has been a true art form for surviving and resisting white supremacy and eurocentrism for over 530 years. Media Artists demonstrate this through artwork that is conscious, ecological, grieving, healing, and unable to separate from social justice practice, and community building.

This online exhibition is curated by Dr. Liliana Conlisk Gallegos. THE FUTURE PAST VS. COLONIALITY is a project of the ACM SIGGRAPH Digital Arts Community and is scheduled to premiere at the annual SIGGRAPH ASIA conference, 6-9 December 2022 in Daegu, South Korea with a second opening at the annual SIGGRAPH conference, 9-13 August, 2023 in Los Angeles, California, USA.