Talks

#4 Poethics of a Sovereign Ocean
Geopolitical Trajectories

1 September 2021

Highlighting the transregional aspects of Michelle-Marie Letelier’s projects and themes are a series of online conversations entitled “Poethics of a Sovereign Ocean: Orality, Reciprocity and Geopolitical Trajectories (2021)” features conversations with Morgan Guerin, James Harry, David Alday and Ánde Somby. These conversations open Michelle-Marie’s project narratives to the crucial perspectives of Indigenous communities, specifically speakers from the Musqueam, Squamish, Yaghan, and Sámi, for whom the stewardship and viability of waterways and everything within them has been collective knowledge for generations.

Participant Bios

is part of the directive leadership of the Yaghan Indigenous Community of Bahía Mejillones, Puerto Williams, on the Onashaga Canal. Descendant of Yaghan people, descendants of the furthermost Indigenous peoples of the extreme south of Chile, millenary territory inhabited by the community for over 6,000 years, Alday works for the demands of the Yaghan Indigenous community, the revitalization and visibility of their ancestral culture and the protection of their rights as an Indigenous people, especially the right to the sea facing the threat of salmon industries in the region.

is a curator, researcher and author based in Berlin, Germany. She was born in Santiago, Chile. There, she studied Literature and began working at the Theory Department at the Universidad de Chile. Since 2015, she is associate curator at Haus der Kulturen der Welt – HKW in Berlin, where she contributes to the long-term project Kanon-Fragen that questions dominant cultural narratives. In this context, she has curated Afro-Sonic Mapping (2019) and co-curated Parapolitics (2017-18). There, she has also contributed to the exhibition Past Disquiet, with research on South American artists, museums and networks involved in the Solidarity Movement. Guevara has been co-curator of the Latin American Pavilion at the 55th and 54th Venice Biennial (2013 and 2011). Along with her engagement, she has conducted several conversations with cultural practitioners; most recently, she has published a conversation with Mapuche oralitor Elicura Chihuailaf at the NIRIN NGAAY Manuel of the Biennale of Sydney (2020). Guevara lectures on Exhibitions Histories at the MA on Raumstrategien at the Weißensee Kunsthochschule in Berlin. Recently, she joined Archive independent publishing house and art space as curator.

is an artist based in Berlin, Germany. Born in Rancagua, Chile, she studied Arts at the Universidad Católica de Chile. Her installations, photographs, videos and drawings encompass orchestrated transformations of natural resources, alongside extensive wide-ranging, interdisciplinary research into the landscapes where their exploitation and speculation take place, inciting works that enter into transformation processes beyond the extractive industry and its forms of control. Since establishing in Berlin in 2007, she has focused her research on coal, copper, saltpetre, wind and, more recently, salmon. Her work has been shown internationally, among others in: The Arctic Arts Festival 2021 (Harstad); Videonale.18 (Bonn); WE ARE OCEAN 2019-2020 (Berlin and Marseille); 5th Mercosur Biennial (Porto Alegre); Gropius-Bau (Berlin); Screen City Biennial 2019 (Stavanger); Bienal Sur 2017 (Buenos Aires); El Museo de Los Sures (New York); Kunsthall 3,14 (Bergen); Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende (Santiago); Errant Bodies (Berlin); Museum of Contemporary Art (Santiago); East Asia Contemporary Art Space (Shanghai); Museo de Bellas Artes (Santiago) and Kommunale Galerie Charlottenburg (Berlin). She has been artist in residency at ISCP (NYC, 2014), USF (Bergen, 2017), Kunstnerhuset (Svolvær, 2018), Magallanes 2020 (Punta Arenas, 2018), ISLA (Antofagasta, 2018) and Troms fylkeskultursenter (Tromsø, 2019).
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