The
Bratislava
BAK
SummerSPRING
School

DENIAL

Mick Wilson

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It is claimed that the subject about to die will begin in denial as a step along the path of dying. It is further claimed that death is also the object of collective disavowal. Mortality, some will say, is treated as a social embarrassment to be discreetly managed and politely put away. And yet, the giddy tally of the dead jostles for screen-time with all its graphic matter-of-fact-ness. The repetition of the body count courts a daily renewal of attention. What then is denied and avowed in these rhetorical forms? What death is spoken, what death evaded, in the claim that death is denied? If not subject to a disavowal, who or what shall come to speak for death, the dying and the dead?

Mick Wilson is an artist, educator and researcher based in Gothenburg and Dublin. He is currently professor of art and director of studies for doctoral education at HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg. Current research interests include questions of: political community with the dead; contemporary art as public culture; exhibition-making as enquiry; and the rhetorical dynamics of knowledge conflict. Recent co-edited volumes include: Curating After the Global (MIT Press, 2019); Public Enquiries: PARK LEK & the Scandinavian Social Turn (BDP, 2018); and How Institutions Think (MIT Press, 2017). He was one of the (2018/2019) Fellows at BAK, basis voor aktuele kunst, Utrecht.

DEPRESSION

Farmers in Depression

Tomáš Uhnák

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Farmers are sovereign cultural actors who, through their activities, shape, and influence the specific form of the landscape. They take care of the commons such as healthy soil and clean water. They tend to cultural heritage - visually, haptically and sensorily - in the form of a great diversity of crops and animal breeds. In their fields, orchards and vineyards, they preserve a valuable gene pool - often hundreds of years old plants - whose uniquely shaped, tasteful and climate-resistant varieties, are preserved for generations to come. Living and healthy soil rich in microbial relationships, is also a cultural heritage that, like architectural monuments and works of art, deserves attention and protection. At the same time, it is also an intangible cultural heritage - oral and spiritual - which includes gentle farming methods passed down from generation to generation, a deep understanding of the characteristics of the place, soil, and sometimes weather in the areas where farmers work. What better describes the concept of a living culture than a lifelong devotion to replanting the best seeds of valuable varieties over and over every year to keep them in existence? Farmers provide us with a cultural experience of biodiversity. They give the landscape and food an unforgettable character. Something that in the words of philosopher Walter Benjamin we could call an aura.

However, farming belongs to a group of professions that are often exposed to great psychological stress. This tends to result in life with anxiety and depression. Market pressures, speculation and low feed-in tariffs, debt, sales insecurity, loneliness, gender inequalities, and climate change - all this and much more crushes those, on whose stability depends the survival of societies and ecosystems all around the world.

Tomáš Uhnák is food policy analyst, Ph.D. student at the Czech University of Agriculture, publicist and member of the Association of Local Food Initiatives. In his research he focuses on agrarian paradigms, especially food sovereignty and agroecology. He is involved in the development of community-supported agriculture.