Arts, Imagination and the Planetary Now

In this conversation, Teesa Bahana (Director of 32° East, a not-for-profit space for contemporary art in Uganda) and Ola Hassanain (artist and architect) will explore our time of ecological collapse, political fragmentation, and growing inequality, in which culture is not a luxury – it is a necessity. Yet around the world, artists and cultural spaces are under threat: defunded, censored, co-opted, or erased entirely. In this moment of planetary crisis, the arts provide a language of relation, a tool for radical imagination, and a practice of care that transcends borders.

Culture shapes how we live, how we move through the world, and how we relate to the land and to each other. As civic and artistic freedoms shrink under the weight of nationalism, austerity, and extractive systems, we must ask not only how to defend cultural space – but how to expand it. What forms of solidarity, policy, and institutional rethinking are needed to sustain artistic communities across geographies? What does it mean to cultivate a planetary consciousness rooted in justice and imagination?

This conversation is part of the Prince Claus Fund’s Exchanges, the Fund’s platform for creative cross-pollination: connecting its international network with Amsterdam’s cultural landscape while building long-lasting relationships across the city’s diverse artistic scenes. Exchanges is made possible through the generous support from the City of Amsterdam.