The arts are currently subject to increasing demands to be socially impactful. Across the globe, they are striving to change social processes, intervene in political conflicts, and create new public spheres. The arts involve themselves in conflicts over global power relations and human rights, address crises such as climate change and global pandemics, and devise new ways of living and working. Intervening arts are productive, developing new forms of activity, and not infrequently recurring to the tools of the activist. These tendencies call for a fundamental redefinition of art as an interventionist practice.

This research network combines arts-related disciplines with philosophy, history, sociology, and cultural anthropology. The Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) is based at the Free University of Berlin and works in cooperation with Humboldt University, the Berlin University of the Arts, the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder), Leuphana University in Lüneburg, and Universität Duisburg-Essen.