Can art activate intuitive, collective problem-solving? The collaborative projects of Iván Navarro and Courtney Smith, working together as Konantü, seek to answer that question, spanning media, disciplines, and contexts while honoring their roots in sculpture. Each artist brings a particular set of skills to this dynamic partnership. As the Konantü website explains, Smith is “an assembly artist working with all manner of joints, hinges, and other connective and articulative mechanisms within material and immaterial structures,” while Navarro is “a circuitry artist working with alternating currents of control and resistance inside dynamic systems of power transformation generating reflection and illumination.” In the spirit of free and public art-making, Smith describes Konantü’s mission as “using the mediation of objects, along with connective elements such as language and music, to build a complex interplay of revolving reciprocities in an exploration of human solidarity.”
Jan Garden Castro: Courtney, you’ve said that Konantü—the name is a Mapuche (Indigenous Chilean) word meaning “sunset”—proposes “an art that is shared, that is adaptable, that is free, and that eludes commodification.” It fosters community-building and problem-solving. How does this work? Is your project aligned with social practice art?
Courtney Smith: Konantü was created as an alternative practice to standard object-based and exhibition-oriented art, which is, of course, our background as sculptors. With Konantü, the product is the collective experience, and the objects and structures we produce for that purpose are just the instruments used in the process, which are then consumed, distributed, or recycled. . .
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