i always think about shadows and ghosts. i always have. i saw another shadow self picture by lee friedlander. if you see one it turns out to be his. i would have photographed my shadow anyway. it's alive, and it's a ghost. a dog is like that. so i see people are too. i said yesterday everything that was alive is alive, and this morning i read

Actually, the Dead Are Not Dead examines how to redefine our alliances with those who are not presently living. The project proposes communicating with the spectres of the past and the future and taking responsibility for those who are no longer, or not yet, here. It defies the prevalent politics of death, ranging from the destruction of the material and idealistic basis of life for countless people, or the deadly rejection of refugees, to the destruction of the planet. Actually, the Dead Are Not Dead revolves around the reclamation of life, fathoming the potential of artistic practices to imagine life differently.

Actually, the Dead Are Not Dead is directed against the prevalent politics of death: that is, against politics based on the destruction of the material and intellectual foundation of life of large parts of certain populations, on the exclusionist policies of social death, on violence against that which opposes the norm, on the death of countless people in need, and not least on the destruction of the planet, of a common world. To engage with the dead, with those who are no longer or not yet here, instead means taking on responsibility for the life of the past and the future.

The unseen and unheard as well as strategies for making oneself heard and seen play a central role in this part of the exhibition. Voices that did not count for decades and were perceived as mere noise remind us that overcoming oppression is not just about whether someone raises their voice but also whether, how, and as what it is heard. What relationships to others can be established if language or speaking is unavailable? What relationship to oneself can be built if the things around one no longer reveal a coherent narrative, when precarious living conditions cause the surroundings to dissolve as a site to locate the self?

The body as the first and last possible entity of resistance is treated here in different ways: as support or canvas on which to inscribe one’s own story; as a dissident body that inscribes itself into public space in an insistent or drifting way, alone or in company, struggling or celebrating – always in a balancing act and struggle against the powerful voice of the law. It occurs again and again as a body in transition: that is, as a body that constantly shifts the boundaries between genders but also between animal and human, subject and object, sovereign and beast, intactness and lack, death and life. It is this resistant body that counteracts the politics of death whose cartographies we encounter here. The significance of the physicality of the voice eventually returns in the context of the theory and practice of radical pedagogy.

-it's about an art show i'll never see but i'll think about continuously.