Contribution short abstract:

This paper presents various collaborative initiatives with women artists working together on photography collections and visual practices of memory and activism in the context of exile and migration.

Contribution long abstract:

This paper presents various collaborative initiatives with women artists working together on photography collections and visual practices of memory and activism in the context of exile and migration.

Brought together in an open exhibitionary lab, these initiatives or practices of 'creative commons' (Miszczyński 2023) aimed at creating new or different forms of knowledge and communication among each other and with wider audiences.

The idea of '(un)communing the future and its visualities' thus offers innovative insights into how artists and anthropologists make use of visualities to develop creative strategies such as 'speculation', 'storytelling', 'writing', or 'exhibition practices' to build and strengthen commoning practices.

In this paper, I reflect on the possibilities and challenges of understanding the collaboration between artists and anthropologist as ‘forms of being-in-common that refuse or exceeds the logic of identity, state and subject’ (Walker 2020). When commoners from the fields of anthropology and art create creative commons of visualities for possible common futures, they use, organize, and take responsibility for ‘collective productive resources’ (Walker 2020). In this perspective, I want to discuss how the formation and interplay of such relationships are experienced, and whether their outcomes and material effects can shape social spaces and contribute to activist and memory cultures.