Research project on models and practices of global cultural exchange and NAM, bringing together art history, cultural history, sociology, and digital humanities. Focused on exploring the internal dynamics of NAM, the collaborative research project "Models, and Practices of Global Cultural Exchange and Non-aligned Movement. Research in the Spatio-Temporal Cultural Dynamics" is addressing the econom
ic, social, and political framework of radical cultural practices emerging from the process of decolonization and their socio-cultural consequences. The notion of cultural exchange encompasses the entire field of cultural production and a wide array of cultural activities, therefore the scope of the research has been narrowed down to exchange programs in visual arts, design, architecture, and urban planning. The latter assumes projects integral to UN (UNESCO) programs of international technical aid to Africa and Asia, led by networks of UN experts, serving as transnational platforms for the articulation of the most urgent challenges of developing countries. The workings of these networks are exemplary of the complex inter-relations between three very different forms of post-war globalization projects: one linked to the United States and the capitalist West; one to the Soviet Union and other forms of statist socialism; and the third linked to the growth of the Non-Aligned Movement. The basic questions posed by this project are: What was the position of NAM member countries within that culture? How, and under what terms and conditions did African, Asian, and Latin American artists reach the international art scene in the Cold War period? What about those segments of non-European visual arts which did not comply with the notions of modernity emerging from the interplay of the Western and Eastern Blocs’ visual orders? Where was such art produced, for whom, in which social and institutional framework, and whose interests it was (re)presenting? Whether and why were the models of transnational cultural exchange generated by such "invisible" art production disruptive of the cultural dynamics of the global art scene? How they were related to emancipatory social movements in Africa, Asia, and Latin America? What we can learn about the postcolonial visual regimes by following multiple, interlocking, and simultaneous spatiotemporal trajectories of images, people, and ideas circulating within NAM's geopolitical space during the 1960s and afterward? The intention of this project is to provide answers to these and several other questions by cutting across the range of current theoretical explanations, and focusing on the political, aesthetic, and linguistic features of NAM member countries' art and visual cultures. Concerning the complexity of the object of the research, the methodological approach of art history will strongly benefit from pollination with cultural studies, sociology, human geography, political science, economics, and history. Given that the focus of the research is on the transnational, and global circulation of objects, persons, and ideas, the trajectories of their movements through different cultural spaces and temporalities will be represented by the application of custom-made digital tools aiming at dynamic representations of spatiotemporal data correlations, and multidimensional network visualizations. Apart from gaining new insights into the objects of our immediate research interest, the objective of using XR technologies in the development of said digital tools is to allow researchers to examine whether and how the experience of conducting analytic data operations in an immersive, virtual, environment affects the way we use data, and understand its cognitive value.
