Hearings: a reader

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The Contour Biennale 8, Polyphonic Worlds: Justice as Medium, curated by Natasha Ginwala, brings together 25 international and local artists and art collectives working in lens-based media, sound, performance, drawing and installation. Taking place in Mechelen, Belgium (2017), the exhibition embraces the communal spirit of the biennale by including many-sided collective voices as well as discrete, individual creative positions. The accompanying reader, Hearings, like the exhibition, takes a polyphonic approach borrowed from juridical and musical spheres. Originally published as an online journal, Hearings is comprised of 32 texts tracing the artistic processes, conceptual methods and historical researchincluding textual, images and video-based contributions of a range of artists, writers, poets, anthropologists and filmmakers. Artists and writers range from Hunter Braithwaite and Trevor Paglen to T. J. Demos, Basir Mahmood and Cooking Sections. This is not a traditional reader but complements the biennale, engaging current ideas and discourses, reorienting relationships around the artwork as a site of evidence and as a testimonial record.