This four-day study trip to Lisbon will explore artistic and curatorial practices of art institutions and self-organised initiatives dealing with sustainability and sustenance. We will discover translocal, postcolonial and ecological projects and focus on how art can be effective within and outside institutional infrastructures.
In the vibrant and historically complex Lisbon, a city shaped by its colonial past, present-day migration and rich cultural diversity, we will visit initiatives and spaces that redefine art as a relational and infrastructural practice. From culinary knowledge as artistic material to the realisation of self-managed cultural spaces, the study trip will explore the artistic field not only as a symbolic arena, but also as a place of subsistence, care and agency.
Particular attention will be paid to operational conditions: exhibition formats and artistic strategies that move in forms of coming together, producing and learning together. We will learn how contemporary projects articulate and practise relative autonomy, create sustainable infrastructures and promote practices of the common good – especially against the backdrop of economic constraints and post-political conditions.
During this four-day intensive course, we will engage with artists, curators, scholars, and community organisers whose practices suspend the boundaries between art, life, knowledge production, and social change. The aim is to critically reflect on modes of production and representation, while simultaneously devising new forms of artistic governmentality that challenge extractive logics.