The symposium presents the output of the IMAGINART research project on Imagining Institutions Otherwise: Art, Politics, and State Transformation (2020-2026), while expanding its scope through a focus on Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and the current conjuncture in order to tackle core political urgencies affecting the role cultural institutions play in society.

IMAGINART has investigated a variety of creative counter-institutions in Palestine, Italy, Hungary, Indonesia, Germany, South Africa and the Kurdish diaspora. These are artist-run, mostly grassroots spaces and projects that set up socio-institutional experiments based on principles of collaboration, horizontality and resource sharing. These projects mobilise artistic practices to reconfigure organisational forms and reimagine self-organised, collective life according to ideas of social justice and freedom.

IMAGINART’s main proposition is that these socio-artistic experiments produce an institutional otherwise in the here and now that may prefigure the future of cultural and other institutions. Thus, the symposium asks: What does it mean to ‘imagine institutions otherwise’ in this moment? What are meaningful responses to the ongoing fascist attack on cultural institutions? How do counter-institutions propose to change our organised ways of being and working together? Can their tentative proposals, their lessons in the minor key, show how cultural institutions could emerge from the current polycrisis?

Mohamed Abusal, Jessica de Abreu, Reza Afisina, Amal Alhaag, Barnita Bagchi, Sruti Bala, Selçuk Balamir, Marco Baravalle, María do Mar Castro Varela, Luke Cohlen, Jamila Ghaddar, Lani Hanna, Jeanne van Heeswijk, Aline Hernández, Lara Khaldi, Jeroen de Kloet, Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes, Hilda Moucharrafieh, Nawal Mustafa, Emily Pethick, Josien Pieterse, Omar Salamanca and Mikki Stelder.

IMAGINART members: Chiara De Cesari, Andrea Elera Coello, Nuraini Juliastuti, Yazan Khalili, Abdulkerim Pusat, Eszter Szakács, Aria Spinelli, Jasmijn Stam, and Carine Zaayman.

10:00–10:15 Walk-in

10:15–10:30 Welcome and introduction

10:30–12:00 Cultural institutions in times of genocide

Panelists: Yazan Khalili (IMAGINART), Mohamed Abusal (Eltiqa collective), Marco Baravalle (ANGA/IRI/Sale Docks), Josien Pieterse (Framer Framed), Sruti Bala (UvA)
Chair: Mikki Stelder (UvA)

12:00–13:00 How Do Counterinstitutions Work I: Art commoning

Panelists: Nuraini Juliastuti (IMAGINART), Aria Spinelli (IMAGINART/UvA), Jeanne van Heeswijk (Basecamp), Selçuk Balamir (UvA)
Chair: Andrea Elera (IMAGINART)

13:00–14:00 Lunch

14:00–15:00 How Do Counterinstitutions Work II: An/archiving

Panelists: Carine Zaayman (RCMC/IMAGINART), Jamila Ghaddar (UvA), Jessica de Abreu (The Black Archives), Lani Hanna (UvA)
Chair: Emily Pethick

15:00–16:00 How Do Counterinstitutions Work III: Cross-scale (trans)instituting

Panelists: Eszter Szakács (IMAGINART), Reza Afisina (ruangrupa), Aline Hernández & Luke Cohlen (Casco), Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes (UvA)
Chair: Jeroen de Kloet (UvA)

16:00–16:15 Coffee break

16:15–17:15 Practitheorizing: Utopia, the otherwise and the radical imagination

Panelists: Chiara De Cesari (IMAGINART), Amal Alhaag (Metro54), Barnita Bagchi (UvA)
Chair: Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes (UvA)

17:15 – 18:30 The neofascist conjuncture: What is to be done?

Panelists: María do Mar Castro Varela (ASH Berlin), Hilda Moucharrafieh (Platform BK, (A)WAKE), Lara Khaldi (de Appel), Omar Salamanca (Free University Brussels)
Chair: Nawal Mustafa (UvA)

18:30 Drinks & dinner

IMAGINART is a research project based at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA) and Cultural Studies at the University of Amsterdam. IMAGINART is financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) under grant VI.Vidi.195.178.