lumbung calling: Sufficiency by La Intermundial Holobiente, Jumana Emil Abboud, Alice Yard

The seven-part conversation series lumbung calling launches documenta fifteen’s Public Program, activated under the title Meydan. Each edition of the series is dedicated to one of the lumbung values: Local Anchor, Humor, Independence, Generosity, Transparency, Sufficiency, and Regeneration. The format dives deeper into the background of the artistic concept for documenta fifteen and illuminates the idea of lumbung from many different angles. Through conversations with a variety of guests, lumbung calling will explore the rich meaning of lumbung across multiple disciplines, points of view, and contexts within an artistic framing.

lumbung calling takes place on the first Saturday of every month over seven sessions, from April to October 2021. It is hosted by the artist Jumana Emil Abboud and ruangrupa member Mirwan Andan.

The sixth lumbung calling focuses on the lumbung value of Sufficiency. Human ambition has led to discoveries in all fields, and has even brought mankind to other planets. The value of sufficiency, on the other hand, seems incredibly outdated today, as thrift and frugality are considered conditions of deprivation. The Pillars of Hercules have been passed long ago, despite the warning Ne plus ultra (“nothing further beyond”), which urged sailors and navigators to go no further.

The sixth iteration of lumbung calling explores the limits of sufficiency: When do we say enough is enough? How can these limits be pushed? Who or what defines them? Paula Fleisner, Professor of Aesthetics at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, addresses the notion of sufficiency within an enlarged interspecies ecosystem, while artist Christopher Cozier discusses the relations between sufficiency and self-determination, and how gayap and other Caribbean traditions of collective labor suggest ways to rethink notions of scarcity and plenty.

Guests and Hosts

Paula Fleisner holds a PhD in Philosophy from the Universidad de Buenos Aires, where she teaches Aesthetics at the Philosophy Department. Her research topic is the theoretical delimitation of a posthuman materialist aesthetics. She is a Researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) of Argentina and participates in various research groups on contemporary Aesthetics and Philosophy. Fleisner is the author of the book La vida que viene. Estética y Filosofía Política en el pensamiento de Giorgio Agamben (2015), and co-editor of Indisciplina. Estética, política y ontología en la revista Documents (2018) and El situacionismo y sus derivas actuales. Acerca de las relaciones entre arte y política en la estética contemporánea (2015). She also wrote La chunda, a novel based on her late sister’s vision of life as an entangled, animistic matter. She is a member of Colectiva Materia, a group of female philosophers that researches posthuman materialism. She is also a member of La Intermundial Holobiente, a more-than-human artistic quartet.

Christopher Cozier is an artist living and working in Trinidad, and co-director of Alice Yard, Port of Spain. Through his art, ranging from notebook drawings to installations derived from recorded staged actions, Cozier investigates how Caribbean historical and current experiences can inform understandings of the wider contemporary world. Recent exhibitions include the 11th Liverpool Biennial (2021); the 14th Sharjah Biennial (2019); and The Sea is History, Historisk museum, Oslo (2019). Cozier participated in the public program of 10th Berlin Biennale (2018). His work has been exhibited in Relational Undercurrents, Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach (2017); Entanglements, MSU Broad, Michigan (2015); Afro Modern: Journeys through the Black Atlantic, Tate Liverpool (2010); Infinite Island, Brooklyn Museum (2007); and the 5th and 7th Havana Biennials (1994, 2000). He is a Prince Claus Award Laureate 2013 and was awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2004.

Jumana Emil Abboud is an artist whose creative interests lie in oral histories, personal and collective stories, and mythologies, particularly folk tales and their sites of being and unbeing. Abboud uses storytelling, performative elements, and workshop methodologies in her artistic practice to investigate our relationship to time and place, to the human and non-human, exploring tools of memory, attachment, and dispossession amid the challenge for continuity within political, ecological, and cultural struggles. Her work has been shown at The Jerusalem Show (2018); Sharjah Biennial (2017); BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead (2016); Biennale di Venezia (2015); and Istanbul Biennale (2009), among many others. She has participated in art residencies, including Sakiya – Art/Science/Agriculture, Ramallah; Delfina Foundation, London; Arts Initiative Tokyo; and Gästeatelier Krone, Aarau. Abboud is currently pursuing a practice-led PhD at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London.

Mirwan Andan is a member of ruangrupa, Artistic Direction of documenta fifteen.

Undine Schäfer is a sign interpreter based in Göttingen.

Directions