Swiftly arose and spread around me. Interventions for a Sticky Thinking (Act One)

On Tuesday, December 17, 2024, Swiftly arose and spread around me. Interventions for a Sticky Thinking (Act One) will be presented at Hangar. This event marks the activation of the first phase of the curatorial research developed by Sergi Álvarez Riosalido under the framework of the Encura VII grant, which will later continue in Madrid. The opening of this research process will feature the participation of Ce Quimera, Alicia Arévalo, Huaqian Zhang, and LANAV.

The first act of this curatorial research project is conceived as a performative and reflective gathering inspired by the study of sticky thinking and the potentialities of slime as a political, ecological, and affective concept. The event will include a series of interventions addressing key themes such as the mediation of viscosity in human and more-than-human relationships, as well as the radical connection between bodies, fluids, and environments.

Sticky thinking develops as a conceptual and sensory framework that blurs the boundaries between bodies, objects, and environments, exploring the dynamics of connection and transformation. Drawing from the intimate contact described by Walt Whitman in the poem that inspires the project’s title, sticky thinking takes saliva as a medium that, as it flows and spreads, unites the human with the more-than-human, the scale of our body with the infinitely large and the infinitely small.

Danez Smith amplifies this perspective through poetry from a queer, racialized, and HIV-positive standpoint, where fluids, such as lubricant, activate both an intimate practice and a political metaphor of exchange and relation. Here, viscosity becomes a means to resist normativity and embrace a relational understanding of identities and bodies beyond imposed boundaries. Similarly, authors such as Karin Anna Pittman and Karen Barad explore the sticky as a mediating element: connections “lubricated” by viscosity and stickiness are not merely links between preexisting agents but generative forces of new, overflowing ways of being and knowing.

Practical Information
Date: Tuesday, December 17, 2024
Time: 7 pm
Venue: Sala Ricson, Hangar
Free admission

With the collaboration of:

           

Supported by: