First: thank you. Thank you to those who have accompanied us on this intellectual and emotional flight; the contributors to the issue Myriam D. Diatta, Sindi-Leigh McBride, Catalina Mejia Moreno, Léuli Eshrāghi, Mira Asriningtyas, Diana Agunbiade-Kolawole, Denise Ferreira da Silva and Valentina Desideri. It has truly been a pleasure. A special thank you to Ulrika Flink and the team at Konsthall C for co-hosting the workshops in Stockholm. Thank you also to Jyoti Mistry and Petra Bauer for listening to our initial proposal and continuously hearing us and making space and time for our ideas throughout the last two years. Sincerest thanks to the PARSE team—Rose Brander, Anna Sofia Jernryd, Gerrie van Noord, Tristan Bridge and Erik Betshammar—all of whom were instrumental in making this issue materialize.
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Citations matter. In Dear Science and Other Stories, thinking through Édouard Glissant’s Poetics of Relations, Black Studies scholar Kathrine McKittrick references geographer Derek Gregory and sociologist Avery Gordon when considering how the production of space is tied to “the materiality of intellectual inquiry” and “the materiality of institutional storytelling.” “We can thus acknowledge”, McKittrick writes, “that references and citations are concretized, that colonialism and positivism have referential consequences, that references concretize inequity, and that referencing is a spatial project.” It is important to note that McKittrick makes this observation in relation to Black studies and for McKittrick the process of “the sharing of ideas […] enables a terrain of struggle through which different futures are imagined.” Crucially, she acknowledges that referential beginnings that are driven by a logic of accumulation, dispossession, exclusion and dehumanisation leads to reproducing spaces driven by this logic. Black studies, therefore, offer spatial practices “otherwise”.
This issue on citations and its politics seeks to reimagine spaces for knowledge production. McKittrick’s citational and spatial thinking has been one of the cornerstones for this issue. Centring on the reimagining of spatial practice has become an experiment to not only think of citations as means of making space, but also as an environment for showing the processes of sharing ideas. The peer-review process has been central to this experiment; in asking contributors to develop a relation with and understanding of each other’s work, we sought to reclaim the word “peer”, which we feel has been largely lost within institutional frameworks. This aspect has been very valuable and together with the contributors we have gained a deeper understanding on how to build on the knowledge we built together in this initial experiment. In addition to the peer review process, we hosted a series of workshops, which have been just as crucial in rethinking how to share knowledge, with the intention of engaging directly with some of our contributors’ citational practices.
In the first workshop, “Setting the table”, we set up space in collaboration with Konsthall C in Stockholm. This enabled us to start thinking critically together about what citation means and its importance within artistic research, and to collectively unpack the desires and aims of the issue in conversation with Jyoti Mistry, editor in chief of PARSE Journal and Professor in Film at HDK-Valand in Gothenburg, and Petra Bauer, artist and filmmaker, who is also Research Leader and Head of Department of Research and Further Education in Architecture and Fine Art at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. Together with artist, curator and writer Léuli Eshrāghi we reflected in our second workshop, “Narrativizing Citation: Saltwater Sensibilities”, through and with indigenous poetry and performance of the Great Oceans. In these initial workshops our enquiry was guided by the following questions: if we move away from citation as that which frames, supports and legitimises our arguments and creative work, what can emerge? What potential could citation offer as a space for collaboration, sharing and as a spatial practice?
In our third workshop in February 2023, “Sensing Citation: The Sensing Salon”, we engaged with the collaborative practice of Denise Ferreira da Silva and Valentina Desideri. In this workshop we set out to collectively discuss and rephrase the questions that have guided the work on the issue thus far. We arrived at another question: how to engage citational practices that support collaboration/make space within the institutional context? Through the practice of the Sensing Salon we sought to “sense, and making sense” through the readings tools and citational practice embedded and embodied in Tarot, as well as other reading tools.
We have been purposeful in creating and making accessible a mapping (Miro board) as a valid and integral part of the issue, which functioned as both a critical space to hold the knowledges of this process and also as a space to make visible the relations, encounters and connections of care that underpinned the workshops, the peer-review process and our editorial partnership. We invite you to dive into it, to intimately witness and hopefully cite the process of making a publication, which is often rendered opaque in knowledge outputs. As noted, the peer-review process was experimental in design, which ultimately resulted in aspects that worked in ways we had hoped and aspects that didn’t. The mapping of the peer-review process is not edited and does not shy away from the messiness that accompanies cooperative knowledge production; we hope it can serve as an in-process tool that inspires other methodologies of peer-reviewing.
Referencing is, indeed, a spatial project. Engaging with citational practices and in experimenting and facilitating a series of spaces of sharing knowledge in parallel in working with this issue we hope to offer entry points in which different futures can be imagined. The launch of this issue on citations is therefore not a point of arrival. We do not seek to offer conclusions on what citational practices are and should be, but rather we view this issue as a range of entry points to a broader conversation on how to reimagine spaces for knowledge production.
Making space through workshops with some of our contributors has been crucial to this process. Learning from Saltwater Sensibilities of the Great Oceans and the Sensing Salon provided an understanding of how to centre pluralities and sensibilities that traverse institutional settings. Themes of connection, relation, emotions, fluidity and flexibility have permeated this journey, all of which respond conceptually to the element of water.
Engaging with citational practices and in experimenting and facilitating a series of spaces of sharing knowledge in parallel with working on this issue, we have therefore arrived at the understanding that instead of hosting a launch event we invite you to read and think together with us on citations, to facilitate a space for a post-launch encounter, for reflections on the issues as a space of sharing and learning together. Until then, we offer you some companion pieces in response to the element of water while you engage with the contributions of this issue. Enjoy!
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A listening companion
These are songs that hold meaning for us. We invite you to listen and make your own playlist for this issue on Citations. If you would like your playlist to be added to the issue do send it to us at: parse.citations@konst.gu.se
Nina Simone – Suzanne
Irreversible Entanglements, Moor Mother – Water Meditation
Ibeyi – River
TSHA, Oumou Sangaré – Water
Kendrick Lamar – Swimming pools (Drank)
Björk – Oceania
Jamila Woods – LSD
Tom Misch and Loyle Carner – Water Baby
Little Simz – Angel
TLC – Waterfalls
Jimmy Cliff – Many Rivers to Cross
Solange – Stay Flo
Otis Redding – Sitting at the Dock of the Bay
PJ Harvey – Down by the Water
A tasting companion
A sipping drink
Alcoholic
2cl Midori
2cl Cointreau or Triple Sec
2cl Fresh Lemon Juice
A splash of Nori Syrup* (see below)
Add ingredients and ice to a shaker. Top up with soda water, the less water the sweeter!
Non-Alcoholic
2cl Still Spirits Melon Liqueur Flavouring
2cl Triple Sec Syrup
2cl Fresh Lemon Juice
A splash of Nori Syrup* (see below)
Add ingredients and ice to a shaker. Top up with soda water, the less water the sweeter!
Nori Syrup
½ cup of water
½ cup of white granulated sugar
½ nori sheet, roughly cut into 2cm pieces
In a small saucepan over medium heat, add sugar and water, stir until completely dissolved. Bring to the boil and remove from heat. Add the nori pieces and leave to steep for 3 hours. Strain into a glass bottle and store in the fridge.