P-Prompt: Spaces for discomfort - Recognition

In this prompt, which is based on the public conversation “First Times do not exist” with artist and curator Nkule Mabaso in Göteborg we ask how to deal with discomfort when encounters and inspirations are not formally acknowledged. An artistic book Nkule (co-)produced was the crucial inspiration for another peer's work, but despite the shared understanding of the politics of recognition, this act of reuse was not formally credited. In this conversation, Nkule insists on the importance and the willingness to take time and be in conversation to acknowledge and sit with this space of discomfort, so the tensions can become tangible and be addressed together rather than looking for punitive gestures or corrective quick fixes.

When we encounter something that catalyses our thinking, how do we make this encounter legible? And when we have reused work without recognising one another sufficiently, what can we do? 

This is a report from practice 'Nkule' So we had this call, where I said to her: “Hey it's a wonderful publication, well done, but I am uncomfortable that there is no stated relationship between this [our] publication and your publication.”  If citation and referencing are about signalling how you come to know something and when, then what happens in these moments where it is not acknowledged. The space of discomfort means for me working through how to talk about it, how to deal with it. After some time, I had a call with her to present my discomfort, also considering the conversations we've had in other instances, and the shared understanding around the politics of recognition, the politics around citation and what acknowledgement does. 

When you encounter something, and that thing catalyses your thinking, how do we then cite and make space for that moment of encounter? How do we make an acknowledgement? What would be an adequate way to signal that? Yes, the handwritten dedication in the book is a signalling: “Thank you for being an inspiration. We are majorly indebted to you. Your book was a lodestar for the making of this one, and for many more creative publications.”

But this homage doesn't exist anywhere else, just in this one copy of the book she gave to us. So, what would be a sufficient signal?