Rafael Zen is a queer Latinx video and sound artist and performer, currently living in the land of the Coast Salish peoples, otherwise known as Vancouver. We were both part of an event at Emily Carr University of Art and Design called Listening in Relationthat expanded upon listening practices and ecological art by exploring decolonization through thought and practices of IBPoC artists. I asked Rafael about their work in new media, performance art, and in particular their understanding of decolonization and decolonial resistance.
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What if art could awaken us from our colonial capitalist slumber? Rafael Zen, a visionary artist, invites us to dream of radical futures through sound, performance, and unwavering conviction. This episode explores how art can provoke dialogue, challenge ideologies, and pave the way for meaningful change, one non-negotiable at a time.
Chapter Summary
00:00 The Dreaming Role of Artists
01:10 Exploring Decolonization in Art
03:01 Hauntology and Futurity
05:06 The Malfunctioning Cyborg
06:44 Listening as a Tool for Awareness
08:52 Art as a Catalyst for Change
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Behind the Story
Rafael Zen’s work is deeply rooted in cyborg theory, speculative environmental utopias, and Brazilian indigenous theory. Zen draws inspiration from thinkers like Ailton Krenak and Mark Fisher, crafting art that challenges audiences to confront the devastation caused by colonial capitalism. By creating immersive installations and using sound as a democratic medium, Zen aims to provoke dialogue and foster a sense of presence, ultimately inviting listeners to reimagine a world free from oppression and violence.
Note: This is an automated transcription that is provided for those who prefer to read this conversation and for documentation. It has been verified but is not 100% accurate (some names might not be quite right). Please contact me if you would like to quote from this transcript: claude@conscient.ca
[00:00:00] Rafael Zen
The role of artists is the role of dreaming. I think. Yeah, I've worked as a poet, as a multimedia artist, sound artist, storyteller. And I think we hold the capacity to shape the narratives that build our present, our future, reshape the narratives that inform our past. And I still believe in that role. I do believe that we have a call to work on the episteme, this epistemological call, this call to investigate the ideas, the words, the shapes that build our relationships. So I think if we can do that alone, dreaming of a new reality, dreaming of futurities, dreaming of dialogue, I think that's a good path for us artists.
[00:00:56] Claude Schryer
Rafael Zen is a queer Latinx video and sound artist and performer currently living in the land of the Coast Salish peoples, otherwise known as Vancouver. We were both part of an event at Emily Carr University of Art and Design called Listening in Relation that expanded upon listening practices and ecological art by exploring decolonization through thought and practices of epoch artists. I asked Raphael about their work in new media, performance art, and in particular their understanding of decolonization and decolonial resistance.
Episode 228. Artists as Dreamers.
[00:01:51] Rafael Zen
I work mostly through cyborg theory, intersectional cyborg theory, speculative environmental utopias or eco dreaming. Usually imagining a future where nature no longer exists. A future, yeah, it's a tough one, but usually asking audiences to imagine with me a future where nature can only be accessed through projections, mimicry, simulations, usually through electronic music, electronic noise art and multimedia glitch installations. I bring a lot from Brazilian indigenous theory. There's an authority called Ailton Krenak, which is an indigenous leader that informs my practice a lot thinking the impacts of the concept of humanity in our politics and in our notion of environment and what dreaming of ecotopias might be. And within my work I also think a lot about the intersection of hauntology and futurity. How. How we are haunted by a past that feels like informs our present.
And how can we get rid of our pasts, aggressive, oppressive nature to point towards queer dreaming, eco dreaming, radical futures? I think what I wish as an artist is to invite audiences to. To think with me about the devastation that we have caused. And I mean we as the human race, we as perpetuators of colonial capitalism. Perpetuators of what? I like to think the colonial, capitalistic, narcissistic mindset. So yeah, I come from an art that provokes and wishes to negotiate these ideas on what to do with a world that sometimes we feel too comfortable to say there's no Fixing. Yeah. I like Mark Fisher's ideas a lot about how we have been tricked.
We have been scammed by colonial capitalism in a way of not even dreaming of a possible solution anymore. It feels very comfortable for us citizens of urban centers to just accept that things are the way they are. Just accept all of the powers that have been thrown onto our bodies. So, yeah, that's something that I really like to investigate. How can we, as a community, dream of? I say queer futurities, but it can be radical equality, radical futures, equitable futures. And then there's the provocation of what technology is.
To me, I work a lot. When I say cyborg theory, I'm working right now with the idea of the malfunctioning cyborg. A biological being that has been infected, has been convinced to use a bunch of technologies. And by technologies, I mean our language, our identity, and also all of this technology that comes from the industrialization of our world. It's very different than technology when you think of the Silicon Valley. It's not a technology I'm addressing in my work. I like to use DIY technologies, malfunctioning technologies, linguistic visuals, sonic gadgets that allow me to maybe break expectations.
I like to create this stage for weirdness, this stage for shock that may create an openness towards otherness. Yeah, it can sound very dystopian and harsh sometimes, but I think it's a strategy to let people know that change is not always pretty. And radicalism, when you think of solutions for the world, it's not going to be passive and it's not going to be. Yeah, colonially beautiful.
[00:06:15] Claude Schryer
Well, I chaired a panel earlier today where there's. We will. I will publish that panel. And I said, we're going to deconstruct decolonization, right? Because decolonization itself has become a buzzword and people throw it around left and right. But let's talk about listening, because we're at a listening event here in Vancouver, or so-called Vancouver, Listening and Relation. What are your thoughts and your work around listening and sound?
[00:06:44] Rafael Zen
At this event, we were talking a lot about deep listening, about strategies to make us feel present, strategies to look at our surroundings. And I think, to me, it's the same method. It's using sound to bring an awareness of presence. I work a lot through performance and through installations that feel very immersive because I think there is this relationship between me and an audience, between bodies in contact. And I think sound is just one of the strategies. It could be visual; it could be any other. It could be smelling.
But I think, yeah, sound feels sometimes very democratic. I think if we learn how to listen, we learn how to be present, to be here. I think it's investigating how much of our attention, how much of our phenomenology of our feeling of the world has been taken away by colonial, capitalistic, narcissistic structures. For sure. And sound is very recent in my practice, for sure. It started with poetry. I started with written text and then visual arts.
And now sound as a last place of arrival reminds me of the importance of knowing your body, the importance of knowing the history of the strategies that were placed onto your body to distract us from our environment and how noisy, how terrible things are.
[00:08:33] Claude Schryer
How do you advise? I know you're a student here, but you're also a very experienced teacher. How do you advise artists who are trying to work their way through these complexities through art? How can art make a difference in the. In this seemingly impossible world?
[00:08:52] Rafael Zen
I think stories are what we do as humans. So I think for artists trying to investigate the field of political art, of Artivism, I think it's just a matter of trusting your vision and that trusting that dialogue is too possible. I think I'm someone that still believes in dialogue. I'm someone that still believes that we are not going to get anywhere if we don't refocus our energy into our local communities, into changing our relationship to, again, otherness, our relationship to the people that compose my microenvironment. I think I've been lucky. I think in my career I haven't found a lot of resistance from the audience. What I have actually found are multiple audiences that wish to connect, that wish to dialogue.
And I think people are going to consume, people are going to get in touch with art and culture because that's the premise of our contemporary world. So trust your stories, trust the narratives that you're going to push out to the world because they for sure make a difference.
[00:10:10] Claude Schryer
Well, I've noticed that dialogue is an art in the sense that creative activities happen. You and I are improvising a conversation, right? You know, we're not scripted. We're asking you questions. And then I'm thinking as you respond to me.
So I like that synergy of dialogue. And I think if it happens everywhere at a micro level, right, you can't just have it happen in the institution. And then everybody else is excluded from art.
That's part of. One of the problems with art is that it's become very sort of siloed in society. There are the professionals who know best, and then, you know, you used the word democracy. The democratization of art is something that is ongoing and a struggle, right. Because we do kind of need an elite who are doing extraordinary things. And yet everybody needs to not only have access but be able to be creative and be able to work their way. I love the way you talk about story, storytelling and stories. Right? Everybody has a story.
How can those stories be heard? How can they be not co-opted, but collaboratively shared?
[00:11:13] Claude Schryer
You know, La vie. So, Rafael, we're going to wrap up soon. I try to ask guests at the end of our conversation to. You've already had given me some very practical things that I think are very useful for listeners. But is there anything else you would say at this point that you suggest that artists and our listeners in general do to better engage with the world through art or through whatever practice they wish?
[00:11:44] Rafael Zen
The only tough questions today, when you invited me for this interview, actually there was this quote by. By a Brazilian curator and psychoanalyst called that. This quotation kept popping up, which is don't negotiate the non-negotiable. And I think because she has this text that says how to decolonize the unconscious, how to bring back a creative wish, to think of creative futures. And don't negotiate the non-negotiable is one of her 10 tips for decolonial artists. And it's so simple, but so tough because non negotiating, non-negotiable implies that we have to know what the non-negotiables are. But I would say for artists, artivists, activists, yeah, know your non negotiables.
And I think if you follow a path, we don't need to create anything. There's such a beautiful path of decolonial theory and decolonial theorists, decolonial thinkers that have sketched this path that's so strong, so powerful. So yeah, know your history and know what we cannot negotiate anymore.
[00:13:04] Claude Schryer
And by not negotiating, you mean not compromise on certain values, certain truths, certain.
[00:13:10] Rafael Zen
Stories that we not shaping our lives, our art and our relationships on things that are non-negotiable. To me, most of what colonial capitalism has taught me is a non-negotiable anymore. I think prejudice or violence or destruction or oppression to me at this point are non-negotiables anymore. And I think my art needs to reflect that and my art needs to be a platform for that to happen, for those ideas to be negotiated. There's no right or wrong answer. Because society and us humans living in the 21st century, we are such complex creatures, and we have been convinced and taken by so many ideologies. But I would say check your ideologies again.
Talking about technology and talking about innovation, there are so many new technologies that allow us to be more well informed, that allow us to know the history of our epistemising, the history of all of these ideas that build us. So I think, yeah, it may seem complex not to negotiate things that are non-negotiable but start by listening. If you go to radical encounters, if you listen to your indigenous communities, if you listen to black feminism, if you listen to queer theory, if you listen to, I don't know, radical equality theory. Yeah, the non-negotiables are there, very well established. And I think it's impossible for us to say, oh, towards decolonization without setting the things that we cannot negotiate anymore.
[00:14:57] Claude Schryer
Thank you, Rafael.
[00:14:58] Rafael Zen
Of course.