Archipelago Conversations

Conversas do arquipélago assembles conversations between Caribbean philosopher Édouard Glissant, one of the great thinkers of our time, and Swiss curator and art historian Hans Ulrich Obrist. In these conversations, Glissant expands on the main concepts of his work, such as creolization, colonization, globalization, opacity, rhizomatic thinking and memory, referencing authors, artists and filmmakers.

Based on meetings conducted between 1999 and 2011 (the year of Glissant’s death), these dialogues travel through continents, islands, exhibits and conferences, in tone varying from casual to formal. From their first meeting, in the 1990s, Obrist considered Glissant his mentor — a perception that's reflected in the text. The special relationship established between them is revealed in the pages of the book, which feature handwritten dedications, poetic quotes and drawings the writer gave to the curator. The book also presents an important discussion of Glissant’s unachieved work, the Martinique Museum of American Arts, M2A2, in Martinique.

This book is a dialogue manifesting the thinking of Édouard Glissant, presenting to the reader the ideas of an author who challenged established notions of identity and culture in classics such as Poetics of Relation and Caribbean Discourse.

About the authors
Édouard Glissant was a poet, philosopher and novelist, the author of an extensive oeuvre, including philosophical essays, novels, poetry and plays. He was born in 1928 in Saint-Marie, Martinique, and died in 2011, in Paris. In his youth, Glissant was a disciple of poet Aimé Césaire, his fellow countryman and founder of the Black movement. In 1946, he began, in Paris, his studies in Philosophy, at the Sorbonne, and Ethnography, at the Musée de l’Homme. In the 1950s, he became engaged in movements for decolonization, alongside writers such as Frantz Fanon and René Depestre, and in 1960 he signed the Manifesto of the 121, in support of Algerian independence. As a fiction writer, he published eight novels, among them The Ripening (1953), which won him the Renaudot award. He wrote numerous essays, such as Poetics of Relation (1990). He had a solid university career in the United States, and developed important activities at Unesco. Glissant was a tireless thinker of the effects of colonization, an engaged man and a creator of imagination.

Hans Ulrich Obrist is a curator and art historian. He was born in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1968. Since 2006, he has been the artistic director of London’s Serpentine Gallery. He acts as an independent curator, and was the curator of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Since his first exhibition, World Soup (The Kitchen Show), he has organized over 300 shows, such as Lucius Burckhardt and Cedric Price (2014) – A Stroll Through a Fun Place, for the Swiss pavilion in the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale, Utopia Station, at the 50th Venice Art Biennale (2003), and Cities on the Move (1999), a multidisciplinary, traveling show that started in Bangkok, Thailand. He’s the author of The Interview Project, where he records conversations with artists and intellectuals from various countries about different knowledge areas. A vast selection of these conversations with international thinkers can be found in the Hans Ulrich Obrist – Entrevistas, a series published by Editora Cobogó, between 2009 and 2012, and in Entrevistas brasileiras vol. 1 and vol. 2, respectively published in 2018 and 2020.

Specifications
Title Conversas do arquipélago
[Archipelago Conversations]
Authors Édouard Glissant; Hans Ulrich Obrist
Language Portuguese
Translator Feiga Fiszon
Page count 160
Publisher Cobogó
ISBN 978-65-5691-102-1
Cover Ana Dias | estúdio malabares
Format Softcover
Size 11.5 x 15.3 cm
Year 2023