Our cities, our museums, our universities, our homes, even our mirrors, are infested with ghosts. Spectral traces of our colonial past, uncomfortable and often unconscious cultural legacies that strongly re-emerge in our public and private spaces, in often unexpected ways – in the daily intimacy of gestures, consumer objects, relationships – making the recognition of the “other” as a human being extremely complex, and of ourselves as a radically intercultural community. Some recent political and/or artistic actions of re-appropriation and re-writing of these spaces act as a sort of detonator, allowing us to understand also the role of our bodies, which often without our knowledge act by reproducing stereotypes and colonial postures, through a sort of “choreography”, which are also “affective predispositions”. The critical and transformative space opened up by these actions, invites us to question ourselves, questioning our discomfort, our intellectual security, our common sense, the urgency of a cultural change, for a different “community that comes”.

This talk is part of the program of Design Your Community.