agrupa is a series of events comprising talks, workshops, screenings, performances, and kindred happenings that focuses on divergent perspectives, spaces in-between, and new ways of assembling and disassembling. The project explores the potentiality of socially engaged practices and participatory art regarding an eclectic assortment of publics and institutions. With the goal of expanding the umbrella term “intervention,” it will research and engage community and service work, urban renewal practices, collectives, and political movements as forms of knowledge production and social engagement.

In response to the heightened social, political, and cultural frictions wrought by the binary opposition of “center" and “periphery,” this series shifts towards a gradation of positions and the diversity of peripheral sites, enabling us to reconsider conventional roles of institutional work, authorship, and geopolitical relations. Furthermore, we want to shed light on the differences between institutional centers and independent contexts. What is the role of participatory practice within the traditional frameworks like museums, on the one hand, and alternative spaces, on the other?

We also want to create space for questioning the institutions as power hierarchies in order to both understand their legacy and heritage, as well as to critically reflect on their role in the fields of art and culture in their becoming more participatory, equitable and inclusive systems.

The series of events aligns with the goals of the Collaborative Research Center Intervening Arts, deepening the institution’s self-reflexivity and further connecting it to external scholars, artists, curators, writers and publicists. Another major goal is to provide opportunities to young cultural and social workers beyond the academy to participate in discussions about how to expand community engagement in considerate, critical, and integrative ways.

The project is led by Project A02 Shared Protocols: Assembly in Contemporary Art and works in collaboration with other subprojects.

2022

Screening: DETOURS by Ekaterina Selenkina and artist talk with Julia Boxler
Laboratory format Intervention Space Art and Academia designed and organized by João Gabriel Rizek, Luise Marie Willer, Tobias Rosen, and Lena Pozdnyakova.
Marina Naprushkina und die Neue Nachbarschaft
Laboratory format Intervention Space Art and Academia designed and organized by João Gabriel Rizek, Luise Marie Willer, Tobias Rosen, and Lena Pozdnyakova.

2023

Book Launch Radical Futurisms with T. J. Demos
Laboratory format Intervention Space Art and Academia designed and organized by João Gabriel Rizek, Luise Marie Willer, Tobias Rosen, and Lena Pozdnyakova. Institutional Possibility: Protocols for Caring Institutions
Laboratory format Future Lab designed and organized by João Gabriel Rizek, Luise Marie Willer, Tobias Rosen, Lena Pozdnyakova, and Janette Helm.