CONTACT: vivianacarlos@berkeley.edu
Autonomous Imaginaries' primary focus is to create a community of members and practicing artists from the Bay Area, graduate students, and faculty from the neighboring institutions Berkeley, SFSU, and CCA that collectively reflect on the contemporary production of images from a critical and decolonial point of view. The group, which includes BIPOC female-identified and non-binary people, will promote historically, culturally, and geographically situated autobiographical archives and propose a methodological framework that problematizes extractive cultural knowledge in visual representations. The group will question contemporary photographic practices through encounters with methodologies centering on horizontal dialogue. The group's mission extends beyond identifying and unlearning extractive and oppressive storytelling practices in photography and research. It also aims to cultivate space for resistance stories of joy, leisure, and rest. The funded proposal will be a transformative starting impulse to form a research group of visual and transdisciplinary artists. This group, with its critical and creative approach, will address concerns about their representations and those of their communities, inspiring significant change in the field. Beyond creating spaces for conversation, our purpose is to incorporate our group research into a printed publication. We believe that your potential contribution to this publication will be invaluable, adding depth and diversity to our collective understanding of decolonial visual representation.