Jeanne van Heeswijk will talk about her practice and the “not-yet” as a foundational component of collective becoming and a necessary strategy for surviving in the face of the current conditions of the world. She will discuss how “training for the not-yet” could become an embodied practice crucial for living a livable life. She will do this based on “Trainings for the Not-Yet”, an exhibition as a series of trainings for a more just future, and the publication Toward the Not-Yet: Art as Public Practice which combines a handbook, a dictionary, and an anthology. The book gathers artistic and cultural practices that are propositional, collective, and yearning for a just life-in-common through the chronopolitics of the “not-yet.”

In this conversation, Jeanne will discuss the multiple practices and strategies within. Asserting imagination-as-practice and powered by a commitment to anti-colonial forms of futurity, the contributors — among them artists, scholars, activists, poets, writers, and organizers — reflect on and model ways of practicing equitable life. The book is divided into five thematic sections — Learning Otherwise, Radicalizing the Local, Deep Listening, Creating Sanctuary, and Becoming Collective—each of which includes interrelated visual contributions, interviews, exercises, essays, and propositions.

Toward the Not-Yet: Art as Public Practice (2021, BAK, basis voor actuele kunst and MIT Press), edited by Jeanne van Heeswijk, Maria Hlavajova, and Rachael Rakes, includes contributions by: Yasmin Ahmed, Grace Lostia, Ying Que, and the basic activist kitchen; Barby Asante; Athena Athanasiou; Clara Balaguer and Gabriel Fontana; Chloë Bass; Aimee Carrillo Rowe; Carolina Caycedo; Merve Bedir; Black Quantum Futurism (Camae Ayewa and Rasheedah Phillips); Dhanveer Singh Brar and Louis Moreno; David Bravo, Miguel Robles-Durán, and Urban Front; Allan deSouza; Nicoline van Harskamp; Adelita Husni-Bey; Rosalba Icaza; Walidah Imarisha; Hamada al-Joumah and Yasmine Eid-Sabbagh; Nancy Jouwe; Elke Krasny; Sandra Lange; Joy Mariama Smith; Francesca Masoero and QANAT; Lorenza Mondada; Lisa Myers; Carmen Papalia; Elizabeth A. Povinelli; Laura Raicovich; Hafiz Rancajale; Jonas Staal; Ultra-red; Françoise Vergès; We are Here; and Carol Zou.

Toward the Not Yet: Art as Public Practice is now available online. For more information, [mitpress.mit.edu/9780262542500/ click hereclick here.]
Presented by the Housing Justice Lab in collaboration with the MS Design and Urban Ecologies.