Paramaribo SPAN

Paramaribo SPAN draws on visual art, printed material, and the internet to create a bridge - between histories, social groups, countries, cultures - and to start a creative dialogue about individual artists' imaginative sovereignty, about public space and vernacular forms, about new media, about negotiations between the local and the global, and about possible future directions.

The main component of the project is an exhibition of contemporary art opening on February 26 2010 and running until March 14 2010. A series of formal and informal events where the artists, curators, members of the SPAN team, and visiting critics will be present.

The Paramaribo SPAN blog is a space for sharing working notes and fragments; it is a journal of the process of creating the exhibition and book. It draws on resources in Dutch and Sranan, but is written primarily in English. The blog is running from July 2009 through March 2010, and will thereafter become an online archive of the project. Contributors here analyse art's meanings and connections; for example, one blog entry reflecting on artistic installments such as the one posted above reads, "That these kinds of political artistic statements can be made now, in Paramaribo, asks an important question about the current state of Surinamese democracy. Will this moment last beyond the outcome of the next election? It also asks about the degree to which artistic expression is seen as agentive or as a large enough social concern. Is it seen as persuasive? It questions the troublesome and vicarious relationship with us, the curators, critics, and exchange artists, with foreign passports and return flights."

Intercultural Understanding.