Vistas of Modernity – Decolonial Aesthesis And The End Of The

We are living in a time of polarization. Cultural and educational institutions are confronted with the responsibility to provide tools and spaces for critical reflection, for engagement, and, more fundamentally, for meeting and recognizing each other in our differences. In this decolonial essay Rolando Vázquez introduces his critique which offers an option for thinking and doing beyond the dominant paradigms. It provides a critical analysis of modernity understood broadly as the western project of civilization, while it seeks to overcome the dominion of western epistemology and aesthetics and their embedded eurocentrism and anthropocentrism. Importantly for decolonial thought we are all located in relation to the colonial difference that structures our modern/colonial order. It is only from an awareness of our positioned realities that we can enter in relation with each-other, that we can listen to each-other and learn each-other. Vistas of Modernity is a new title in a series of essays commissioned by the Mondriaan Fund, concerning actual topics about visual arts and cultural heritage. Eelco van der Lingen (director Mondriaan Fund): “Rolando Vázquez is cautious in presenting his analysis. He does not look for quick conclusions, but slowly guides the reader through the context of our history and the contemporary labyrinth of text, language, symbols and images which (often without being properly noticed) give great meaning to our existence. His decolonial aesthesis lifts us above the labyrinth and offers us a new panorama.”   Rolando Vázquez is co-organizer of the Decolonial Summer School in Middelburg and belongs to the movement of Decolonial Aesthesis and Thought. He is associate professor of sociology at University College Roosevelt, affiliated to the research institute for Cultural Inquiry (ICON) and the Gender Studies Department of the University of Utrecht. He regularly gives keynotes in academic and cultural institutions. With Walter Mignolo he has coordinated for eight years the Middelburg Decolonial Summer School. In 2016 he wrote with Gloria Wekker et al. the report of the Diversity Commission of the University of Amsterdam. In 2017 Vázquez curated the workshop: “Staging the End of the Contemporary” for MaerzMusik at the Berliner Festspiele. His work seeks to transgress the dominion of contemporaneity, heteronormativity and modernity/coloniality. Through the question of precedence and relational temporalities he seeks to contribute to decolonizing institutions, epistemology, aesthetics and subjectivity.