VLC Network

Contemporary And (C&)

Contemporary And (C&) is a dynamic platform for reflecting on and connecting ideas and discourses on contemporary visual arts. Their project, C& Center of Unfinished Business (conceived by Contemporary And’s Julia Grosse, Yvette Mutumba, and Mearg Negusse), is a roving reading room that offers visitors an extraordinary, and also disconcerting, selection of books that are connected to the topic of colonialism in various ways—from the German colonies to Congolese fashion to 21st century capital markets, the reading room stretches the subject to the many different areas that are affected by it. However, it is not about creating a library on colonialism that is consistent and complete, because: when would it ever be? Colonialism is an unfinished business that continues to exist in many ways.

Launched in 2017, the reading room has traveled to art spaces and museums around the world, connecting in various ways with institutions such as ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen), Transmediale in Berlin, school in Vienna, Musée Les Abattoir in Toulouse, Para Site in Hong Kong, or for its first US iteration the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati.

Related

Exhibition

C& Center of Unfinished Business

Apr 1–May 26, 2023

Red text on a white background: C& Center of Unfinished Business at The New School Vera List Center for Art and Politics Contemporary And (C&) Social Justic Hub, University Center, The New School 63 5th Avenue, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10003 April 1–May 26, 2023 The Vera List Center for Art and Politics and multimedia platform Contemporary And (C&) present the C& Center of Unfinished Business at The New School, a roving reading room and exhibition that speaks to the persistence and presence of colonialism in contemporary life. Conceived by Contemporary And’s Julia Grosse, Yvette Mutumba, and Mearg Negusse, the project offers a selection of key, and, at times, unexpected texts that spark discourse on the enduring structures that continuously undergird colonial legacies in modern society. “Unfinished,” here, subtly echoes the “post” in postcolonial—hinting at an incomplete reckoning with colonialism and its evident and insidious aftermaths. The Vera List Center iteration of the exhibition features a curated selection of books, including titles from The New School faculty, alumni, and the VLC Fellows Library. Inaugurated during the 2022 VLC Forum and 30th anniversary celebration, the VLC Fellows Library is a collection of publications by each of the forty-four fellows the Vera List Center has hosted over its thirty-year history, celebrating and making available their research and work. Both the installation and accompanying broadsheet publication are designed by New School students. As with previous iterations, the reading room upends traditional forms of display in both content and form. Books meander through angular shelves next to, above, and across from each other in challenging, experimental, unconventional ways to mirror the tension and discomfort historically embedded in discussions on colonization. To this end, the C& Center of Unfinished Business occupies The New School’s Social Justice Hub, an interstitial space designed and designated for conversations on equity and solidarity across communities. The reading room plays host to public programs that inscribe the VLC’s 2022–2024 Focus Theme Correction* into colonial legacies and postcolonial realities. Conversations with local and international libraries as well as a public reading series explore libraries as sites of intervention, liberation, and repair.

Broadsheet, Catalogue

C& Center of Unfinished Business

Reading

New School New Books: A Reading Series

Apr 21, 2023

Panel

Libraries as Correctives: C& Center of Unfinished Business, Keleketla! Library, and Sister Library with Asia Art Archive

Apr 24, 2023

Conversation

Libraries in Practice: Tending Toward Liberation

May 18, 2023

Network