Book Launch: What to Let Go?

How can art reconfigure our collective foundational myths? And of what should we let go on the journey towards figuring it out?

Join us to celebrate the launch of the new publication What to Let Go? Moderated by Claire Shea, this panel discussion brings together editors Cosmin Costinaş and Inti Guererro in conversation with contributors Nikau Hindin, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Pablo José Ramírez, Marian Pastor Roces, and Vivian Ziherl. Together they will discuss what counts as heritage now, who gets to do the counting, and broader related issues around the subject of cultural sovereignty.

What to Let Go? offers new contributions by an international roster of thinkers, authors, anthropologists, curators, artists, and poets. It unpacks historical narratives and political memories linked with objects, sites, and ceremonies that have been lost, looted, restituted, repatriated, revived, or reinvented. Through its diverse line-up of discourse, poetry, and original artistic contributions, it weaves together subjects and geographies that are not usually part of the same conversation—from plundered cultural belongings held in colonial collections, to processes of renaming or removing symbols of past eras—and considers how they relate in the context of recent social upheavals and political processes across continents. In our era of dangerous revisionism, when history has become a battlefield for both the left and the right, we are asking: How can art reconfigure our collective foundational myths? And of what should we let go on the journey towards figuring it out?

Following the program, join us for light refreshments as we conclude the UNSW Galleries opening weekend program for the 24th Biennale of Sydney. What to Let Go? is co-published by Para Site and Sternberg Press. 

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Presented in conjunction with the 24th Biennale of Sydney, ‘Ten Thousand Suns’ at UNSW Galleries, 9 March – 10 June 2024.