FUTURES Annual Publication: Ties That Bind
FUTURES and Fotogalleriet are pleased to announce the launch of the new publication Ties That Bind – Fictions, Orthodoxies and Interdependencies. Through new and translated fiction, poetry, essays and commissioned visual essays, Ties That Bind is an anthology that rethinks attachment and social power relations within family, state, friendship, identities and communities through passion, intoxication, exhaustion, desire, devotion, aid and intimacy in private and public spheres.
Using a decentralised editorial method based on distributed agency, young artists in the FUTURES photography network were invited to suggest untranslated poetry and prose in any language that responded to these overarching questions of codependency and reciprocity. A final selection was then edited by former director of Fotogalleriet Antonio Cataldo and artist and FUTURES nominee Nikhil Vettukattil, combined with six new photographic commissions by FUTURES artists.
“Reciprocity, this book intends to point out, also speaks about toxic relations and the need to rethink the world and its inherent unconscious (as well as undisguised) subordinations if we want to be part of determining structural change. With this volume, our aim is to show the full spectrum of feelings, including perhaps the most “unruly” ones, that arise from imaginative— and unconscious—processes that are not always directed by logic and rationality. Rather, such effects are guided by principles like association, distraction, and wandering—getting lost in the page, the images, the words. We wanted to restore power to involuntary processes guided by conversations that do not always need to lead to an elsewhere other than critical reflection. We looked at forms of exchange, translation, and sharing as ways of gathering that are often connected to discourse as well as physical encounter. We wanted to see if it was possible to maintain or resemble such processes on the page.”
—Antonio Cataldo
“The play between fictive and real that is always at the heart of photography is also at work in the many texts shared here, often united by the personal modes of address, intimations of familiarity or proximity, voyeurism and embodiment always at the edge of interiority and the performance of intersubjective selves. […] What other forms of interconnectedness and companionship are possible if queer or other marginalised and resistant communities are centred, as both the model and inspiration for wider social relations? What kinds of kinship are everywhere practised by chosen family, in diasporas and through artistic invention; In what ways do they undo the toxicities and properties of the relations that we otherwise inherit? What are the issues specific to other forms of coexistence that need more attention?”
—Nikhil Vettukattil
Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, Rihards Bargais, Chinnaswami Subramania Bharati, Lene Berg, Oles Berdnyk, Mahmoud Darwish, Ádám Fekete, Raisan Hameed, Fayyaz Hashmi, Bjørn Hatterud, Ghassan Kanafani, Pablo Lerma, Luna Mahoux, Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida, Emilia Petrakis, Peter Pflügler, Julie Poly, Bhagat Singh, Balázs Szigligeti, Lope de Vega, Li Yinhe, Yao Yuan.
FUTURES is a European Photography Platform that brings together the global photography community to support and nurture the professional development of emerging artists worldwide. Since 2017, FUTURES has aimed to add long-term impact and value by empowering contemporary photographers through initiatives that promote their work and grant them access to an extensive network of professionals, markets, and audiences. FUTURES fosters new and dynamic ways to strengthen the essential relationship between artists and the industry, creating an ecosystem that encourages innovation, professionalization, exchange and imagination.
The platform currently draws from and collaborates with a consortium of art institutions across Europe including: CAMERA – Centro Italiano per la Fotografia (IT), Centre Photographique Rouen Normandie (FR), Copenhagen Photo Festival (DK), Triennial of Photography Hamburg (DE), Der Greif (DE), FOMU (BE), FOTODOK (NL), Fotofestiwal Lodz (PL), Fotogalleriet (NO), Fotograf Magazine (CZ), Organ Vida (HR), ISSP (LV), PhotoIreland (IE), Photo Romania Festival (RO), Bienal Fotografia do Porto (PT), Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center (HU), Void (GR), Photoforum Pasquart (CH), Photo Elysée (CH), and Centre de la photographie Genève (CH), Tblisi Photo Festival (GE), Odessa Photo Days (UA) and a research member, Eurokleis s.r.l. (IT)
FUTURES is co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union