SAVVY Contemporary: Cracking the Surface

The Long Night of Ideas

As part of the Long Night of Ideas, SAVVY is organising a series of music, spoken-word performances, talks and video-screenings dedicated to an exploration of the idea of 'decanonizing as method'.

Decanonisation is that possibility of unmasking and revealing the inner workings of the canon – whether from the West, East, North or South, as the paradoxes of canon formation and maintainance. Decanonisation should be the possibility of elastifying the canon, by bringing in works from indigenous people, PoC, LGBT, other geographies and not seeing these new additions only through the eyes of those works that already inhabit the canon, but also the possibility of reviewing, rejecting and declassifying some works that were thought to have been canonized. By so doing, one achieves an ultimate flexibility and elasticity of the canon that is akin to a non-canon. Decanonisation should be the dismantling of hierarchical structures that produce canons, and strive at eliminating the emergence of parallel canons. Needless to say that ‘the canon’ that is synonymous to ‘the western canon’ becomes redundant.

We would like to use this opportunity to think together how artistic practices can respond to the urgent need for a decanonisation of knowledge and imagine alternative forms of cultural and political praxis.