{"id":43155,"date":"2025-08-01T13:37:36","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T11:37:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/?p=43155"},"modified":"2025-08-14T11:27:56","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T09:27:56","slug":"dialogues-on-opacity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/dialogues-on-opacity\/","title":{"rendered":"Dialogues on Opacity"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"project":[357],"project_type":[775,725,730,743],"class_list":["post-43155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","project-solitude-blog","project_type-community","project_type-formats","project_type-artistic-research","project_type-themes"],"acf":{"bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","custom_color_css_variable":"","content_type":[{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Text","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"Dialogues on Opacity<\/strong><\/span>\r\nExchange Circle<\/em>\r\n\r\nAs part of his larger project of articulating a vision around the relation of identities, cultures, and communities, the Martiniquan poet and philosopher \u00c9douard Glissant1<\/sup> writes that at the base of the western idea of difference lies a reductive gesture of grasping (each other's) realities and ideas, a requirement for full transparency. \u00bbIn order to understand and thus accept you, I have to measure your solidity with the ideal scale providing me with grounds to make comparisons and, perhaps, judgments. I have to reduce.\u00ab2<\/sup> In response to this dominating motion of reduction to the transparent, Glissant offers the concept of opacity, as a framework for relation that is based in illegibility and generosity in action and perception.\r\n\r\nWhile the notion of opacity after Glissant, as formulated in Poetics of Relation<\/em>, was introduced in the 1990s,3<\/sup> it remains crucial against the backdrop of today's regimes of visibility,4<\/sup> censorship, and surveillance, also (but not only) affecting art and discursive contexts. Beyond that, the concept is specifically nurturing to the community context of Akademie Schloss Solitude, which is a contact zone for fellows from a broad and diverse range of cultural and social backgrounds. Because the constellations of fellows tend to mirror global circumstances (including social and political tensions), sensible and solidaric communication is always at stake, but this also holds the potential to rehearse relation<\/em> in unlikely and rich ways. The concept of opacity introduces a perspective that can be productively considered for the ways in which this community comes together.\r\n\r\nA discussion that stayed with me from the first gathering revolved around the notion of giving-on-and-with<\/em> as an approach to relation, translated from Glissant's original French formulation donner-avec<\/em>. Following Glissant's translator Betsy Wing,5<\/sup> we considered the term as a substitute for comprendre<\/em>, the French term for understanding, which originates from the prefix con-<\/em> (with) and the word stem prendere<\/em> (to take). Tracing its etymology, the term seems to signify a gesture of gaining knowledge that seizes, assimilates, and through this motion attempts to pull everything into its world, to render it transparent. The English language is equipped with a similar term, to grasp<\/em>, which similarly aligns with the appropriating motions of the explorer and the colonizer. Donner-avec<\/em>, on the other hand, proposes an alternative approach and way of perception (In French, donner<\/em> can mean \u00bbto give\u00ab but also \u00bbto look outward\u00ab) based on generosity and softness, and drawing from a sense of yielding and giving in.\r\n\r\nThe second exchange circle expanded the discussion on opacity toward the theme of silence and the various layers of the phenomenon, while also touching on the notion of community itself. We engaged with the themes through somatic and listening exercises, sharing personal stories (which will remain private) as well as dialogue around the politics of silence. Silence was approached as a layered phenomenon that encompasses the suppression of voices, the barely audible, defiant silences, as well as the possibility for a language of silence.6<\/sup> One of the critical questions we encountered was why we are once again leaning on academic reading and lengthy speech to approach the fragile phenomenon of silence. Can we subvert dominant speech while also staying specific to the ideas we talk about?\r\n\r\nWhile our responses to this question remain distinct, what emerged in the discussion is a reflection on what is at stake; not so much an opposition of academic and non-academic vocabulary but the implicit and latent qualities of exchange. Turning back to the framework of the opaque, the creation of a welcoming environment for dialogue may start with attunement to intervals and pauses,7<\/sup> to the unspoken, and to who doesn\u2019t speak, while also valuing nonverbal forms of exchange. Attentive listening, in the sense of donner-avec<\/em>, may aid this process of coming toward each other. Listening-with<\/em> stands in for listening not for revelation, but amid our different backgrounds and tuned to the resonant overtones that weave together the temporary community. As we rehearse a form of paying attention that leans toward others, we open up to a sensation that can disrupt positionality, expectations, and internalized knowledge. Perhaps subtle gestures of active and generous perception are the invisible threads initiating communities that \u2013 without mixing ideas and identities into a flattening amalgam \u2013 emerge through the opaque complexities of many worlds."},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_img","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Bild(er)","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"img_gallery":true,"img":[43159,43161,43163,43165,43167,43169],"img_gallery_format":false},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Text","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"Depth Attunement: turbid images, opaque imaginaries<\/strong><\/span>\r\nPresentation and workshop<\/em>\r\n\r\nAs part of the exchange gatherings, I invited artist and ocean scientist Mae Lubetkin to host a presentation and workshop for the fellows that introduced a specific and situated angle on the theme of opacity. The format emerged from Lubetkin's previous workshops and research, and drew from our conversations around opacity, muddy ways of sensing, and submerged memories. \u00bbDepth attunement\u00ab opened up currents to engage with the turbidity of image-making and the right to opaque imaginaries, finding fluid ground within deep ocean worlds. The attunement began with a corporeal listening moment of sensing place together, then slipped into oceanic depths through Lubetkin\u2019s presentation.8<\/sup>\r\n\r\nThinking through the question of visibility, the presentation traced genealogies of subsea imaging and oceanic imaginaries. A plural space of many meanings, the deep ocean is also a contested zone shaped by extractivist and colonial continuums. One argument to ban internationally proposed seabed mining points to the uncertain magnitude of destruction it would inflict, and the limited scientific knowledge of deep-sea environments. As Kathrine McKittrick notes,9<\/sup> science has yet to \u00bbquestion the analytical work of capturing, and the desire to capture\u00ab more data, while legal frameworks overlook the ocean\u2019s right to opacity (Glissant).\r\n\r\nThe workshop then attuned to physical fragments and digital traces of deep-sea floors. Workshop participants got in contact with oceanic remnants \u2013 iridescent, ancient, soft, odorous \u2013 then rendered them into 3D models. Aligned with Bridget Crone\u2019s Turbid Image<\/em>,10<\/sup> each digital reconstruction was compared to its material counterpart, asking: What gets enveloped in the turbidity of image-making? Which imaginaries persist without digital mediation? Beyond these waters, the session ended with a collective dialogue on turbidity as a shared condition, and opacity as a politics of sensing, being, and imagining.11<\/sup> We continued our conversation well into the evening, sitting in solidarity and reflecting on the deep ocean as a space of multitudes."},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_img","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Bild(er)","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"img_gallery":true,"img":[43171,43173,43175,43177,43179,43181,43183,43185,43187],"img_gallery_format":false},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Text","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"Opacity : Transmission <\/strong><\/span>\r\nGroup exhibition and sonic program<\/em>\r\n\r\nWith contributions by Swati Arora, Lukas Beyer, Kosmas \u00d0inh, Hanieh Fatouraee, Louis Henderson, Saghar Hosseinpour, Atsuko Mochida, Matilde Outeiro\r\nAssembled by Kosmas \u00d0inh, Matilde Outeiro\r\n\r\nBuilding on the exchange group that assembled several times in the space, the format gathered encounters and resounded conversations around the topics of opacity, silence, and translation. Resonating with the format and methods of the exchange circle, the barn offered a space for refuge, dialogue, and attentive listening at the edge of the Open Solitude event.\r\n\r\nThrough installations and a sound-based program, the lenses of opacity and transmission were proposed as a continuum \u2013 an echo chamber of broken rhythms, communal dialogues, and structures of support and power. Through a collective voice the exhibition posed the questions: What is at stake in the moment of translating an internal conversation to a public? When does quietness and speaking with a trembling voice become acts of resistance? How does migration and war shape voice and silence? And which communal languages outside of dominant speech can we tune to?\r\n\r\nThe sonic program opened with an audio essay by Louis Henderson on the disappearing voice throughout different versions of Words<\/em> (1973\u201377) by Sangie Davis and Lee Perry, continued with a radio piece of Saghar Hosseinpour,12<\/sup> and closed with a live set by Lukas Beyer, in which he sonically deconstructed Emily Dickinson\u2019s poem I dwell in possibility<\/em>.\r\n\r\nThe exhibition featured an installation by Atsuko Mochida on structures of support, a work by Hanieh Fatouraee based on her research on different ways of knowing as well as hydro-spatial and temporal relations near the lake Urmia (Iran), and an interactive installation by Swati Arora on the epistemic violence of borders. Matilde Outeiro and I set up a research library that gathered referential materials of the exchange group as well as contributions by fellows of the academy related to the format\u2019s themes.13<\/sup>"},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_img","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Bild(er)","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"img_gallery":false,"img":[43189],"img_gallery_format":false},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Text","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"Conversation Library \u2013 list of contributions<\/span><\/strong>\r\n\r\nSwati Arora: \u00bbA Manifesto to Decentre Theatre and Performance Studies,\u00ab in Performance Research<\/em>. Vol. 27, no. 2, 2022, pp. 1\u201312 (available online at: doi:10.1080\/14682761.2021.1881730<\/a>).\r\n\r\nJJJJJerome Ellis: The Clearing: Music, Dysfluency, Blackness, and Time<\/em>. Bak Online, 2025 (available online at: bakonline.org\/en\/research+publications\/prospections\/the+clearing+music+dysfluency+blackness+and+time\/<\/a>).\r\n\r\nJJJJJerome Ellis: Thank you, Elder PPPPPPPPPPPhytolacca<\/em>. From the series Exposure, 2023.\r\n\r\nFabian Faylona: Fragment of the absent Other<\/em>. Decalcomanies, 2025.\r\n\r\n\u00c9douard Glissant: \u00bbFor Opacity,\u00ab Betsy Wing (trans.), in: Poetics of Relation<\/em>. Ann Arbor 1997.\r\n\r\nBetsy Wing: \u00bbTranslator's Introduction,\u00ab in: Glissant, Poetics of Relation<\/em>. Ann Arbor 1997.\r\n\r\nAmelia Groom: \u00bbHush Now: Terre Thaemlitz and the Languages of Silence,\u00ab in: The Contemporary Journal<\/em>. May 24, 2021 (available online at: thecontemporaryjournal.org\/strands\/sonic-continuum\/hush-now-terre-thaemlitz-and-the-languages-of-silence<\/a>).\r\n\r\nLouis Henderson: Words of my mouth<\/em>. Unpublished manuscript, 2023.\r\n\r\nHarriet Ann Jacobs: \u00bbChapter 21: Loophole of Retreat,\u00ab in: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl<\/em>. 1861.\r\n\r\nBrandon LaBelle: Sonic Agency: Sound and Emergent Forms of Resistance<\/em>. London 2018.\r\n\r\nHerman Melville (Translated from memory by Kristen Brande): I Am Bartleby the Scrivener<\/em>. Bordeaux 2021.\r\n\r\nTrin T. Minh-ha: \u00bbThe Image and the Void,\u00ab in: Journal of Visual Culture<\/em>. Volume 15, Issue 1, 2016 (available online at: https:\/\/journals.sagepub.com\/doi\/10.1177\/1470412915619458<\/a>).\r\n\r\nFilm stills from Trin T. Minh-ha, Forgetting Vietnam<\/em>. Moongift Films, 2015.\r\n\r\nMartin Herbert: Tell Them I Said No<\/em>. Berlin 2016."},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_footnotes","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Fu\u00dfnoten","bgcolor":"","footnotes_list_hide_numbers":false,"footnotes":[{"footnote":"In reading Glissant, the Caribbean context is crucial to considering the formation of his ideas. Many of his concepts are directly linked to the region\u2019s distinct landscape as a character. This has to be especially considered when translating his ideas to other contexts."},{"footnote":"\u00c9douard Glissant: Poetics of Relation<\/em>. Betsy Wing (trans.). Ann Arbor 1997, p.111."},{"footnote":"The concept first appears in published form in 1981 with Caribbean Discourse<\/em> but is developed throughout three decades of writing in works such as Poetics of Relation<\/em> (1990), Treatise on the Whole-World<\/em> (1997), and Philosophy of Relation<\/em> (2009)."},{"footnote":"Following Trinh, T. Minh-ha: \u00bbThe Image and the Void,\u00ab in: Journal of Visual Culture<\/em>, vol. 15, no. 1, 2016, pp. 131\u201332 (available online at: https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1177\/1470412915619458<\/a>)."},{"footnote":"Glissant: Poetics of Relation<\/em> (1997), pp. xi-xx."},{"footnote":"The approach of this session was based on and in dialogue with the ongoing community research and exchange format sonic and the void, initiated in collaboration with Theo F. Gomes. The contributions to this format series are assembled in an Are.na board<\/a>."},{"footnote":"An important reference for our communal discussion is the work of JJJJJerome Ellis. Here leaning on his concept of the Clearing<\/em> as formulated in JJJJJerome Ellis: \u00bbThe Clearing: Music, Dysfluency, Blackness, and Time,\u00ab in: Bak Online<\/em> 2025 (available online at: bakonline.org\/en\/research+publications\/prospections\/the+clearing+music+dysfluency+blackness+and+time\/<\/a>)."},{"footnote":"See Seafloor Futures: Science and Fictions in Deep Dimensions<\/a>, TBA21 Ocean Archive Digital Residency project by Mae Lubetkin, 2023\u201324."},{"footnote":"Katherine McKittrick: Dear Science and Other Stories<\/em>. Durham 2021."},{"footnote":"Bridget Crone: \u00bbTurbid Images and Bodies in the Field,\u00ab in: Fieldwork for Future Ecologies: Radical Practice for Art and Art-based Research<\/em>. Eindhoven 2022."},{"footnote":"For further visual and text references on Mae Lubetkin\u2019s workshop and presentation, see the Depth Attunement Are.na<\/a> channel."},{"footnote":"Available online at https:\/\/lacledesondes.fr\/article\/pl-4-tform-fm-vol-89-avec-saghar-hosseinpour<\/a>."},{"footnote":"The idea of the Conversation Library is based on and connects to an original conversation library, assembled in collaboration with Nata\u0161a Vukajlovi\u0107 within the framework of the exhibition (in)visible labor \/ (in)visible structures at Akademie Schloss Solitude in 2024."}]},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Text","bgcolor":"has-bg-grey","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"

Kosmas Phan \u00d0inh<\/strong><\/span> is an artist, researcher, and curator. His hybrid methods often unfold in conversation with neighborhood and collective approaches. Through the continuity of sound art as well as curatorial and community programming he seeks out contact zones \u2013 where worlds might meet without assimilation.<\/p>"}],"intro_preview_headline":"Dialogues on Opacity","intro_preview_txt":"The exchange series Dialogues on Opacity<\/em> gathered fellows in the Akademie Schloss Solitude\u2019s Barn space for conversation on the topics of opacity, silence, and translation. By sharing texts, sound-related materials, and personal stories, the formats revolved around communal dialogue and attentive listening. Emerging from this exchange, the exhibition Opacity : Transmission<\/em> offered echoes of the gatherings to the public during Open Solitude. Through installations and sound-based contributions, the lenses of opacity and transmission were proposed as a continuum \u2013 an echo chamber of broken rhythms, communal dialogues, and structures of support and power. The following paragraphs reflect on the gatherings\u2019 process and the exhibition and program\u2019s assembly, bringing some conversations to the surface, while leaving others to remain within the community of fellows.<\/span>","intro_preview_img":43157,"post_id_old":"","post_author":null,"post_subtitle":"Kosmas Phan \u0110inh","post_preview_img_hide_on_single":false,"post_txt_old":"","post_pdf":"","post_copyright":"ccl_default","translated_post":false,"translations":null,"post_copyright_individual":"","post_related_posts":[13457,41844,41050],"related_posts_post":[38881,42697,42824,41323,41313,41504,41814,42836]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43155"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43412,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43155\/revisions\/43412"}],"acf:post":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/person\/42836"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/person\/41814"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/person\/41504"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/person\/41313"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/person\/41323"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/person\/42824"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/person\/42697"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/person\/38881"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41050"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41844"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"project","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/project?post=43155"},{"taxonomy":"project_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/project_type?post=43155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}