Archipelago of Artistic Practices. Een symposium voor artistiek onderzoek van Jubilee en M HKA
14-21 jun 2025
Op weg naar een duurzame alternatieve artistieke infrastructuur. Een ambitieus en gelaagd symposium voor artistiek onderzoek rond een innovatieve digitale infrastructuur voor het in kaart brengen van onderzoeksgerichte praktijk. De bijeenkomst bestaat uit een tentoonstelling, performances, presentaties en gesprekken.
Deelnemende kunstenaars: Tekla Aslanishvili, Justin Bennett, Köken Ergun, Ciel Grommen, Assem Hendawi, Åsa Lie, Zheng Mahler, Vincent Meessen, Hélène Meyer, Scott William Raby, Shahana Rajani, Pejvak, Maximiliaan Royakkers, Mirwan Andan and Iswanto Hartono (ruangrupa), Merzedes Sturm-Lie, Filip van Dingenen, Stijn van Dorpe, Clémentine Vaultier, Vermeir & Heiremans
Kunstwerkers en -onderzoekers: Ariadna Estella Alba, Samira Alirezabeigi, Nick Axel, Evi Bert, Louise de Bethune, Sabeth Buchmann, Federico Ferretti, Johannes Grillet, Guy Gypens, Nav Haq, Loes Jacobs, Eleonoor Kenis, Sarah Késenne, Raphael Pirenne, Katrien Reist, Emily Rosamond, Julie Vanderhaegen, Julie van Elslande, Piet Van Hecke, Tobias van Royen, Jesse van Winden, Danielle van Zuijlen
Kunstorganisaties en -collectieven: Agency, Atelier Cartographique, BARN Core Team of the Brussels Artist-Run Network, Bureau of Analogies, f.eks., Kenniscentrum Coöperatief Ondernemen, Kunsthal Gent, nadine, NICC, Re-Connect Festival, Seasonal Neighbours, State of the Arts (SOTA).
Archipelago of Artistic Practices is een symposium voor artistiek onderzoek georganiseerd door Jubilee en M HKA, ontwikkeld rond Eavatea, een digitale infrastructuur voor het cartograferen van praktijkgericht en transdisciplinair onderzoek. Het programma en de tentoonstelling zijn verweven met M HKA’s grootschalige tentoonstelling The Geopolitics of Infrastructure, waarin veel deelnemende kunstenaars ook vertegenwoordigd zijn.
Het symposium start met performances en participatieve interventies tijdens de openingsavond van de tentoonstelling (donderdag 12 juni), en ontvouwt zich vervolgens rond vier thematische dagen: The Geopolitics of Infrastructure (14 juni), The Infrastructure of Archives (15 juni), Archipelago of Artistic Practices (20 juni), en Mapping and Performing Infrastructure (21 juni). Extra muros zijn er een Reading Room en een Live Conversation bij Out of Sight (16 en 19 juni).
De bijeenkomst vertrekt vanuit het principe van “leren door te doen”. Collectieve interventies en reflectieve momenten – waaronder screenings, performances en wandelingen – verkennen de thematieken van de tentoonstelling en bevragen de interface van Eavatea als innovatieve relationele infrastructuur die nieuwe onderzoekstrajecten wil inspireren, initiëren en ondersteunen.
Eavatea is momenteel in ontwikkeling via een samenwerking tussen nadine en Atelier Cartographique, in het kader van Jubilee’s bredere onderzoekspraktijk. De naam is ontleend aan een kaart van de Polynesische navigator Tupaia, die westerse cartografische systemen verweefde met inheemse navigatietechnieken gebaseerd op natuurobservatie en storytelling. Eavatea stelt vragen over hoe een digitaal instrument narratieve mogelijkheden kan openen, en hoe het artistieke praktijken die in situ, nomadisch, collectief of transdisciplinair zijn, kan archiveren, visualiseren en distribueren. Het platform wil de relationele kennis die deze praktijken genereren niet enkel registreren, maar ook activeren en onderling verbinden.
Als onderzoekstool voor commoning en innovatie, gebouwd met open source-software, beoogt Eavatea nieuwe modellen van productie, distributie en financiering te articuleren. De interface maakt hybride relaties mogelijk – digitaal en fysiek – en stelt vragen bij de dominante infrastructuren in de kunstwereld, waarin het model van de solopracticus nog steeds primeert.
Het discursieve programma verenigt kunstenaars en onderzoekers in een ambitieus netwerk van lezingen, gesprekken en collectieve praktijken, die samen reflecteren op duurzame vormen van artistieke infrastructuur. De conferentie wil een gedeelde ruimte creëren waar ideeën rond coöperatief onderzoek, collectieve eigenaarschap en gedeelde distributie van artistieke praktijken kunnen circuleren en evolueren.
De tentoonstelling vindt plaats in M HKA’s INBOX en op de zesde verdieping, en presenteert een reeks artistieke onderzoekstrajecten – objecten, documenten, protocollen – die als narratieve constellaties worden geactiveerd. De tentoonstelling is opgevat als een ruimtelijke transpositie van de Eavatea-tool, met nadruk op het relationele en narratieve potentieel van deze infrastructuur.
Praktisch informatie
Het symposium voor artistiek onderzoek vindt plaats van 12 tot 21 juni. In het M HKA en op locatie (Out of Sight).
De tentoonstelling loopt van 13 juni tot en met 13 juli. Op de 5de en 6de verdieping van het M HKA.
Deelname aan het symposium is gratis. Inschrijven kan voor een of alle dagen, via onderstaande link.
Het symposium is in het Engels.
Over Eavatea en Jubilee
Eavatea is sinds 2022 in ontwikkeling binnen een partnerschap tussen Atelier Cartographique, nadine en leden van Jubilee.
Jubilee is een in Brussel gevestigde platformorganisatie voor artistiek onderzoek, gezamenlijk ontwikkeld en aangestuurd door haar leden: beeldend kunstenaars en kunstwerkers. De nadruk op het ondersteunen van artistieke praktijken en het initiëren van collectief onderzoek weerspiegelt Jubilee’s streven naar een ecologie van artistieke praktijken. Sinds 2013 heeft Jubilee diverse onderzoekstools ontwikkeld. Naast Eavatea omvat dit onder meer Caveat, een digitaal platform rond relationele contractvorming; Tracks, een mobiele applicatie voor audiowandelingen; en de maandelijkse Reading Rooms. Jubilee’s jaarlijkse Summer Schools richten zich op artistieke zelforganisatie en alternatieve pedagogieën, waarbij coöperatieve modellen en vormen van commoning verbonden worden met bredere maatschappelijke kwesties.
In 2025 wordt Jubilee ondersteund via M HKA’s deelname aan het L’Internationale-programma Museum of the Commons, alsook via het ontwikkelingsprogramma Permanently Practicing van Kunsthal Gent. Archipel van Artistieke Praktijken is een discursief platform dat gezamenlijk wordt geproduceerd door Jubilee en M HKA, in coproductie met Atelier Cartographique (Brussel), het Centrum voor Kunstarchieven (CKV, Antwerpen), f.eks. (Aalborg), Kunsthal Gent (Gent) en nadine (Brussel). Het programma wordt ondersteund door de Vlaamse Gemeenschap (VG) en de Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie (VGC).
Programma (ENG)
Thursday 12 June 2025, 18:00 – 21:00
Performing Eavatea
Location: M HKA, INBOX, 5th floor
The prism of this Research Summit is Eavatea, a new collaborative research tool for in-situ artistic research. To bring these situated practices from their lived environments first to the virtual dynamics of Eavatea and now into an institutional context, is a good occasion to make them breathe and speak again. We will do this with the invited guests and with the audience. On the opening evening of The Geopolitics of Infrastructure we get a taste of such transitions of art projects from their situated contexts, to the internet-based Eavatea tool, to a museum experience – and back again: what do elements of cross-border artistic research smell, taste and feel like?
Live events during M HKA’s opening:
19:00 Production of Eavatea shards: melting caramel, cooling, breaking, scanning
20:00 Performance: Filip van Dingenen and Hélène Meyer, The Platform for Algae Diplomacy (offering algae soup & bites)
Saturday 14 June 2025, 11:00 – 18:00
Geopolitics of Infrastructures
Location: M HKA, 6th floor
Artistic practices today evoke and question the potential of infrastructure—its symbolic power, political weight and capacity to shape the human world. These vast networks, whilst driving modernisation, national ambition and influence, also fuel geopolitical complexities, and social and environmental degradation.
In this programme, we interrogate the role of infrastructure in statecraft and the building of worldviews, exploring its trans-boundary frictions. A number of the artistic projects included in The Geopolitics of Infrastructure exhibition are presented: research-based artistic practices that critique and reimagine infrastructural models, considering how geopolitics shapes both the conditions of artistic work and the possibilities of creative imagination.
11:00 Introduction to Archipelago of Artistic Practices Research Summit
11:30 Mirwan Andan & Iswanto Hartano (ruangrupa) in conversation with Vincent Meessen and Nav Haq
13:00 Lunch
14:00 Shahana Rajani, Pejvak, Assem Hendawi. Conversation moderated by Nav Haq
16:00 Tekla Aslanishvili, Köken Ergun, Zheng Mahler. Conversation moderated by Nick Axel
Sunday 15 June 2025, 11:00 – 18:00
The Infrastructure of Archives
Location: M HKA, 6th floor
The subtle rules and pathways of archives enable our connections to the histories that they safeguard. While the aesthetics of the archive may be perceived as neutral, objective and administrative, they govern our relationships to their contents. These repositories of research are a natural terrain for artists to activate, cultivate, challenge and transform.
Eavatea was conceived as a dynamic archive. Inspired by Tupaia’s wayfinding with its attention to a pluriverse of changing perspectives and narratives, Eavatea was never considered as a fixed archive of practices. Uploaded projects, images, documents can be reactivated and shared. The tool especially aims to open up new connections between its uploaded content and thus generate new narratives.
Content uploaded on Eavatea becomes testimony of an agency that goes beyond one artist or one organisation. They are part of, and generate, multiple narratives rather than being merely one document in a database, which in the end is merely an accumulation of autonomous documents. The documents in Eavatea become ‘relational’ objects.
14:00 Julie van Elslande & Louise de Bethune elaborate on a series of Things from the archive of Agency, that draw a parallel between the legal questions they raise, such as (co-)authorship, and how these are equally of interest for Eavatea
15:30 Sturm & Lie present Panagia Gorgoepikoos, an artist book and exhibition produced in 2021 but based on a 1991-93 project by Åsa Lie & Jadran Sturm
16:30 Collective Reflection on Eavatea as an archive. Participants: Jubilee artists, Louise De Bethune and Julie van Elslande, Jesse van Winden, Evi Bert, Åsa Lie & Merzedes Sturm Lie (Sturm & Lie Foundation), Raphael Pirenne (Agency)
Friday 20 June 2025, 11:00 – 18:30
Cooperative infrastructures
Location: M HKA, 6th floor
As an infrastructure of innovation and commoning, Eavatea brings production, distribution and financing into novel alignments. The interface generates a continuously growing digital common pool resource, the outcome of an agora of in-person-meetings where artists discuss, make choices and upload individual and collective practices on Eavatea. This co-curating process not only generates collective knowledge, but also gives Eavatea an important social dimension. It transforms a self-organised digital infrastructure into a commoning practice, which generates the commons that needs to be collectively governed to ensure its sustainability and preservation. We question if the cooperative model can offer an economic and governance model that serves the needs of the various stakeholders.
11:00 Keynote: The Multi-stakeholder Cooperative and the dissemination of Eavatea – Johannes Grillet (KCO, Knowledge Centre for Cooperative Entrepreneurship, KU Leuven)
11:30 Conversation with Johannes Grillet moderated by Vermeir & Heiremans
12:30 Lunch
13:30 Roundtable Archipelago of Artistic Practices: discussion with members of possible future user groups of Eavatea
- Partners that co-produced Eavatea. They could become the first circle of autonomous users: Atelier Cartographique, nadine, f.eks. 2. Possible future user groups from
- The arts sector: Artists: Brussels Artist-Run Network, Seasonal Neigbours, SOTA; Art institutions: f.eks., Kunsthal Gent/ Openbare Werken Festival, NICC, CKV,
M HKA, Kanal. - Possible future user groups from the educational sector:
Re-Connect (Iranian online performing arts academy); School of Equals (LUCA).
16:00 Vermeir & Heiremans, 7 Walks (Help U Zelven). Starting at M HKA, a short walk exploring the cooperative activities in the vicinity of the museum
Saturday 21 June 2025, 11:00 – 18:00
Mapping infrastructures of artistic practices
Location: M HKA, 6th floor
Eavatea was originally conceived as a ‘mapping tool’ that could go beyond the strictly ‘georeferential’ conventions of cartography that claim objectivity while visualising certain information and obscuring other. The work of the 19th century anarchist geographer Elisée Reclus is still today inspiring in that respect. Many research practices, artistic and otherwise, are occupied precisely with unveiling the infrastructures that shape and reshape our understanding of the world and life that takes place in it. But on the other hand, Eavatea is also proposing an alternative mode of operating. The installation of a tool that distributes transdisciplinary and research-based practices through a collective artistic engagement reflects how it can be used as a common and pluriverse infrastructure. Eavatea can thus become an agora within the broader arts field, a motor of encounters on- and offline, for setting up research communities and new forms of exchange.
11:00 Keynote: Élisée Reclus, Social Art and Cartography – Federico Ferretti (Professor of Geography, University of Bologna)
11:30 Conversation with Federico Ferretti moderated by Vermeir & Heiremans
12:30 Lunch
13:30 Keynote: Sabeth Buchmann (Head of the Institute for Art Theory and Cultural Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna)
14:15 Conversation with Sabeth Buchmann moderated by Ronny Heiremans and Vincent Meessen
15:00 Performance: Fermentation and Speculation in Art and Wild Ale – Bureau of Analogies (Tobias Van Royen & Scott William Raby)
16:30 Keynote Lecture: Emily Rosamond, “Performing Infrastructure”
17:30 Sound performance: Justin Bennett, an infra-sonic journey – sounding the infrastructure of New Babylon – listening to utopian infrastructures – a parallel trip through Eavatea and New Babylon
Extra muros
Location: Out of Sight, Somersstraat 31, 2018 Antwerp
Monday 16 June 2025, 18:00 – 21:00
Reading Room: Archipelago of Artistic Practices
Jubilee’s 2025 cycle of Reading Rooms focuses on the library of artist Kobe Matthys (1970-2023). For this fourth reading session Jubilee invites Raphaël Pirenne, curator, teacher and board member of Agency. Raphaël Pirenne proposes a text to reframe notions of ‘institutional critique’. Exceptionally, this Reading Room does not take place at Agency’s Praticauthèque, but at Out of Sight.
Kobe Matthys (aka: Agency / Agence / Agentschap) was an internationally renowned artist, but also an activist, involved in permaculture, working member of SOTA and a beloved teacher and mentor of art students at the École de recherche graphique (ERG, Brussels).
Libraries are research tools of a specialised and subjective nature, but also eminently sustainable and social. Forms and practices of knowledge transfer are always central to Jubilee’s practices. The diverse book collections that exist among and around Jubilee’s members can provide entry points for collective study and exchange. In 2024, Jubilee organised a Reading Room programme that drew on Fred Dewey’s library. In 2025, Jubilee opened up Matthys’ thematically vast library (with an estimated 4000 books, magazines and other titles) for its Reading Rooms.
A small group of enthusiasts have been keeping Matthys’ archive and library alive since his passing. With this archive, Matthys created a unique source of knowledge surrounding the history of (intellectual) property rights and, more precisely, the vague and contestable boundaries of authorship, which to this day define the legal context of the arts. But property law also determined the way ‘modern man’ has come to experience, understand, categorise and value the world over the past 300 years and is the basis for modern capitalism, whose social, economic and environmental ramifications we are increasingly experiencing. The monthly selection will provide a source of conversations, discoveries and encounters with participants Jubilee do not yet know.
Out of Sight is a venue for contemporary art, aiming to find the potential hidden within what is often perceived as different, marginal or even unwanted. It makes room for the ephemeral and the ambiguous. Out of Sight is a space where the poetic and the political meet. The programme is built around international cooperations among artists, curators, researchers and the public at large. It strives for a critical and flexible approach, with the objective to support a development and experimentation in arts that is outside the logic of consumption and markets.
Thursday 19 June 2025, 19:30 – 21:00
Archipelago of Artistic Practices: Live Conversation
Conversation with members of Eavatea partner organisations Jubilee, nadine, Atelier Cartographique and f.eks. at Out of Sight, Antwerp
Spaces for artistic work are crucial for artists and precious for ecosystems of cultural life. Their availability, affordability and quality differ heavily and are ever more under pressure in neoliberal contexts. With Eavatea, Jubilee initiated such an infrastructure for development and collaboration, even if its basis is online. How can different kinds of environments for artistic work be shared, maintained, used sustainably, collectively and generatively?
Live Conversations are part of Eavatea’s co-initiator nadine’s curated activities in collaboration with artists and or partners. The conversations focus on specific topics or practices affiliated with nadine. This fourth Live Conversation is organised in the context of Jubilee’s Archipelago of Artistic Practices, a Research Summit organised by Jubilee and M HKA. The programme and exhibition are built around Eavatea, a digital infrastructure for mapping research-based and transdisciplinary practices. During this live conversation Eavatea’s partners reflect on ways in which an extended community of actors can create an economic model for Eavatea, using their own versions of the tool.
In the company of Dušica Dražić (artist and independent curator), we will visit the exhibition currently on view, followed by an informal discussion (max. 25 ppl) on sustainable models of support for these artistic initiatives, and how we can maintain them collectively offline and online.
In 2025 ontvangt Jubilee ondersteuning via de deelname van M HKA aan het L’Internationale-programma Museum of the Commons en via het ontwikkelingsprogramma Permanently Practicing van Kunsthal Gent. Archipel van Artistieke Praktijken is een discursief platform dat tot stand komt als gezamenlijke productie van Jubilee en M HKA, in coproductie met Atelier Cartographique (Brussel), het Vlaams Centrum voor Kunstarchieven (CKV, Antwerpen), f.eks. (Aalborg), Kunsthal Gent (Gent) en nadine (Brussel). Het programma wordt ondersteund door de Vlaamse Gemeenschap (VG) en de Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie (VGC).
L’Internationale wordt gefinancierd door de Europese Unie. De geuite standpunten en meningen zijn echter uitsluitend die van de auteur(s) en weerspiegelen niet noodzakelijkerwijs de zienswijzen van de Europese Unie of het Europees Uitvoerend Agentschap onderwijs en cultuur (EACEA). Noch de Europese Unie, noch EACEA kan aansprakelijk worden gesteld voor deze inhoud.
