Counter-Infrastructures: Art & Activism
November 2023
We are pleased to announce our participation in Counter-Infrastructures: Art & Activism, a two day symposium December 4-5 organized with the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) in Dublin, Ireland.
In a context of seemingly perpetual economic, social, environmental and political upheaval framed as the “permacrisis,” Counter-Infrastructures: Art & Activism is a symposium that aims to explore methods for supporting long term, meaningful and resilient activist art practices. The symposium asks how artistic strategies can help us to develop and support social formations that are durable beyond the timescales of the immediate moment, project timeline or crisis, towards “counter-infrastructures” that underpin new ways of living and being together within and against the dominance of extractive and destructive capitalist intersectionally discriminatory systems. Through a combination of theoretical discussions and practical workshops, Counter-Infrastructures will model the creation of durable and meaningful infrastructures that support both communities and artists in tackling issues of urgent social concern.
This event will bring leading contemporary national and international practitioners and theorists of activist art together to develop an understanding of the necessary structures required to support art and activism before, during and after action. The symposium will look at three examples of infrastructures that frame art practice – the curriculum, the institution and the archive – and examine ways of re-imaging these as counter-infrastructures to support activist art practice.
Counter-Infrastructures features contributions from Nuraini Juliastuti, founding member of KUNCI Study Forum & Collective in Yogyakarta, Indonesia; MA in Art & Social Action, a new postgraduate program at NCAD focused on community collaboration, public intervention and collective action; Viviana Checchia, founding member of Vessel and new Director of Void Art Centre in Derry; Radical Institute (Eve Olney), a Cork-based, transnational initiative promoting radical social and ecological change; The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination, focused on developing new forms of creative disobedience and ways to become joyfully ungovernable; Aktion Arkiv, an independent research group focused on participatory action research and public actions; Ed Webb-Ingall, a founding member of the London Community Video Archive (LCVA); alongside publishing with MARCH, a journal of art and strategy.
PROGRAM
DECEMBER 4th
10:00 Counter-Curriculum Workshop with Nuraini Juliastuti and MA Art & Social Action (closed session)
18:00 Counter-Infrastructures Roundtable with Viviana Checchia, Nuraini Juliastuti, and Eve Olney (Radical Institute) with discussion session led by students from MA Art & Social Action.
DECEMBER 5th
10:00 Counter-Institution Workshop with The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination (booking required)
14:00 Counter-Archive Workshop with Aktion Arkiv (booking required)
18:30 Counter-Institution: Output and Closing
19:00 Counter-Archive Talk and Screening with Ed-Webb Ingall
LOCATION: NCAD Gallery, 100 Thomas St. Dublin 8
For questions, please contact Tom O’Dea [odeat@staff.ncad.ie].