Sol y dar y dad: Collective Learning for an Inadmissible Present

The poem “Sol y dar y dad” (To Give and Give Sun), from the “palabrarmas” series by artist Cecilia Vicuña is neither a programme nor a definition but a word-dance of political restlessness. It raises urgent questions for the inadmissible present: What can solidarity of vulnerabilities mean for the people who need, practice, and live it? Can it be danced when bodies are exhausted and isolated, when they feel the pressure of the rising neofascism that is crushing them? Artistic solidarity is not representation but togetherness. It is the articulation of stories of life and struggle—in all of their complicated beauty and violence,-striking back. In the global context of increasing criminalisation of solidarity, this tenth edition of the PEI asks how to share, activate, archive, document, inhabit and create collective histories and experiences that not only oppose silencing and annihilation, but that also chart geographies of solidarity built through resistance and alliances of diverse subalternities.