coming to terms

Coming to terms is a practice of reconciliation. An act that involves learning, understanding, negotiation, and acceptance. It foregrounds affects that call for recognition, and it could potentially enable accountability and repair. To move on from a conflict (be it at an individual, interpersonal or societal level) involves dealing with the past and its gaps; acknowledging the different positions, traumas, and responsibilities within it; dealing with its history; and building capacities to collectively mobilize towards change.

coming to terms is shaped by the potentiality of our singularities when they meet on common grounds. The exhibition began as an excuse for a gathering, an exercise on sharing and intersecting practices, and a call for becoming together. During our meetings over the past three years, on- and off-line, we have been concerned with alternative ways of gazing, engaging with archives, and exhibiting moving images – addressing not only images on the move but the gaze as an active operation that is on the move too – constantly shaped and informed by a multiplicity of factors. Our conversations, activated by our screening practices and cinematic methods, get entangled with questions such as: What happens through the process of screening? What becomes projected? What is intersectional in our approaches? How do our anti-patriarchal impulses manifest in our practices? How are feminist gazes in conflict? How do we take space for ourselves and a complicity of gazes?

With these in mind, we invited colleagues to share their practices and explore further juxtapositions. The resulting conversations during our shared time leave traces; some are formal, visible and audible in the exhibition; some will become present in each other’s practices; and some will hopefully travel with you.

Together, we shape the ways we come to terms.