AFIELD Events are in-person gatherings organized in collaboration with members of the network in different parts of the world. They are aimed at making new connections and facilitating mutual support across the globe.
The AFIELD Forum is a project by AFIELD co-produced with KANAL-Centre Pompidou, in partnership with CIVA & Établissements A. Dewitte & Filles. With the support of the Terra Foundation for American Art.
For its 10-year anniversary, the AFIELD network is launching a new public forum on systems change led by artists. The ongoing multiscalar crisis urges the arts and cultural field to take more concrete actions towards social and environmental justice. Aligning with its mission, AFIELD is embarking on a 3-year cycle of international gatherings bringing new perspectives on the role of art in society.
The AFIELD Forum, from September 27 to 29, will gather an international cohort of artists, activists, thinkers, cultural workers, and social entrepreneurs around a set of questions: how, why and should artists bring systems change for a better society? What do artists bring when they take on the roles of NGOs, educators, activists, and active agents involved in social transformation?
AFIELD has developed the themes for the forum over the past years via online studies on key issues such as transitional justice, ableism, ethics of representation, the commons and more. The AFIELD Forum will serve as a meeting point to inquire on these urgent questions, embodying the network’s belief in the profound capacity of artists to lead transformational change in their communities.
As the capital of Europe and the heart of a unique ecosystem of grassroots initiatives and NGOs, the city of Brussels is a natural host for this forum. The program is based on encounters between international guests and Brussels hosts. The forum is spread around different cultural spaces in Brussels and the last day is dedicated to walking tours of this ecosystem.
The list of speakers includes: Ambassade Universelle, Martha Atienza, Lauren Bon, Linda Goode Bryant, Anna Dantes, El Warcha, Future Farmers, Analida Galindo, Anand Giridharadas, Sergio Roberto Gratteri, Jessica Gysel, Ola Hassanain, Helena Kritis, Fernanda Laguna, Giuseppe Micciarelli, Eileen Myles, Majaw Njaay, Bernardo Robles Hidalgo, Sahad Sarr, TransfoCollect, Ana Vargas, Visible (Matteo Lucchetti and Judith Wielander), Waad, Andrea Yarbrough.
Facilitated by Diana Campbell, Grégory Castéra, Taeyoon Choi, Abi Tariq, Sandra Terdjman, and Chantal Wong.
The forum is free of charge and the audience is limited to the capacity of the venue.
Media partner: Alliance Magazine.
9:00-10:00: Welcome coffee
10:00-10:05: Welcome words
By Kasia Redzisz
10:05-10:15: Introduction
By Grégory Castéra and Sandra Terdjman
10:15-10:45: Warm up
By Sergio Roberto Gratteri
A vocal warm-up activity crafted to harness the liberating power of voice, guiding participants to explore diverse vocal expressions in a welcoming environment. To sharpen our listening skills, forge connection, and set an intentional tone to create a conducive space for meaningful discussions.
10:45-11:45: Propositions for Systems-Change #1: Rewriting Democracy
By Anand Giridharadas, followed by a Q&A with Taeyoon Choi
In this pivotal year, about half of the world’s population is heading to the polls, while authoritarian movements enjoy success not seen in decades. Drawing insights from the acclaimed book “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World,” the speakers will explore the essential role of creative grassroots activism and artist-led systems change in upholding democratic values; liberty, equality and justice.
11:45-13:15: Conversation on Livable City #1: Urban Commons
With Ambassade Universelle and El Warcha, moderated by Giuseppe Micciarelli
An abandoned embassy occupied by undocumented migrants in Brussels, a collaborative design studio in Tunis, a self-organized cultural center in Napoli: through the exploration of three initiatives offering different perspectives on the Commons, this conversation will explore how to reimagine the city and resist exclusionary urban development.
13:15-14:15: Lunch Break at K1
14:15-15:45: In Our Minds
With Martha Atienza, Anna Dantes, El Warcha, Sergio Roberto Gratteri , Fernanda Laguna and Sahad Sarr, moderated by Olivia Alvarez and Abi Tariq
Through the presentation of a work that remains “in their mind”, AFIELD’s 2024 cohort will introduce and discuss their approach on system-change by artists.
15:45-16:45: Conversation on Support Structures
With Sandra Terdjman and Visible (Matteo Lucchetti and Judith Wielander), moderated by Ana Vargas
The field of socially engaged practice thrives through cooperation. In this conversation, the speakers will map the ecosystem of arts and philanthropy, and reflect on the notion of “impact” through examples of artists-led initiatives around the world.
16:45-17:00: Pause
17:00-18:00: Relating to Food Politics
With Martha Atienza, Lauren Bon, Linda Goode Bryant and Amy Franceschini
This moment draws AFIELD Forum participants into relational activities inspired by artistic thinking around how humans relate to land water and food security in diverse cultural and geographic contexts.
18:00-18:15: Closing Sound
By Sahad Sarr
9:00-10:00: Welcome coffee
10:00-10:15: Introduction
By Diana Campbell and Chantal Wong
10:15-10:45: Warm up
By Analida Galindo
Drawing from her work with Programa Enlaces, Analida Galindo’s practice blends contemporary dance techniques with community-building exercises to emphasise personal growth and community connection.
10:45-11:45: Propositions for Systems-Change #2: An Artist for President
By Eileen Myles, followed by a Q&A with Jessica Gysel
In 1992, Eileen Myles ran for president of the United States, a campaign that still inspires many artists regarding the role of art and poetry in the political sphere. Sharing materials from this campaign, Myles will reflect on the language of politics and the role of artists and poets in advocating for social justice.
11:45-12:45: Collective Discussion: Theory as Resistance
With Waad, moderated by Taeyoon Choi
The Learning Palestine Pamphlets is a collection of online essays across various genres, periods, and topics for a comprehensive understanding of the Palestinian history and resistance. The session will begin with the project’s context and a collective discussion about the Learn Palestine Pamphlets.
12:45-14:15: Lunch Break at K1
14:15-15:45: Conversation on Participative Performance
With Majaw Njaay and TransfoCollect, moderated by Helena Kritis
Often associated with inclusion and diversity, participative performances carry many ethical challenges and require in-depth engagement from artists and institutions. This conversation will focus on projects developed in Belgium and Senegal in collaboration with young people, where performance and storytelling become tools for political action.
15:45-17:15: Knowledge Market on Survival Skills
MCs: Majaw Njaay and Abi Tariq
In the Knowledge Market, originally conceived by ruangrupa, participants share knowledge of different kinds, becoming alternately teacher and student, a learning practice where conviviality becomes a condition for collective imagination.
17:15-17:30: Closing Remark
19:00-20:30: Conversation on Livable City #2: Participative Urban Design
With Ola Hassanain, Bernardo Robles Hidalgo, Ana Vargas and Andrea Yarbrough, moderated by Analida Galindo
The speakers in this conversation have developed critical approaches to urban design, where participation becomes a practice of regenerating urban landscapes, reactivating forgotten areas, and reappropriating spaces transformed by urban development. They will discuss the ethics of participation and spatial tactics for more livable cities.
11:00-14:00: Visits
Social initiatives from Brussels Region will open their doors to informals visits. Please register below to join the walking tour.
11:00 – Meeting at Recyclart (13-15 rue de Manchester 1080 Molenbeek-Saint-Jean)
11:45 – Cinemaximiliaan (36 rue de Manchester , 1080 Molenbeek-Saint-Jean)
Screening of Cheers! by Angela Al Souliman
12:30 – Decoratelier (47 rue de Courtrai, 1080 Molenbeek-Saint-Jean)
13:15 – Oui Grow – Laure Provost studio
14:00 – End of the visits
FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Ambassade Universelle
Twenty three years ago, Universal Embassy was founded in Brussels in the abandoned building of the Somalian embassy which had lost its function following the break-up of the Somali state. It became a place where undocumented migrants from more than fifteen countries around the world lived and fought for their papers. With the help of volunteers from various sectors of civil society, they developed methods of mutual aid, including legal support and raising public awareness.
Martha Atienza
Martha Atienza (b. 1981, Manila, Philippines) is a Dutch-Filipino video artist based in Bantayan Island, Philippines. Her work explores environmental, community, and development issues, influenced by her dual cultural heritage. Atienza’s videos focus on the interplay between local traditions, human subjectivity, and the natural world, using art to drive societal change. She won the Baloise Art Prize at Art Basel in 2017 and has received the Ateneo Art Awards (2012/2016) and the Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artist Award (2015). She has participated in notable biennales and triennials, including the 17th Istanbul Biennial (2022) and the 9th Asia Pacific Triennial (2018). Her solo exhibition The Protectors opened at Silverlens New York in 2022.
Lauren Bon
Lauren Bon is a Los Angeles-based environmental artist and activist. Part of a global art cohort addressing our current environmental crisis, she uses living systems and infrastructure to create durational, large-scale, place-based projects, and performance, photography and sound to activate these works and engage her audiences. Through her multidisciplinary approach, Bon has carved out a space between land art, conceptual art, and transmission art. Her questioning of the status quo and persistent alteration of civic infrastructure demonstrates the power of artists to provoke change and shape opinion through soft diplomacy. Forthcoming projects include Amazon Watch, a two-year residency project in Manaus, Brazil, now in development, that aims to draw global attention to the crisis and wider ramifications of the Amazon watershed and multiple projects at Getty’s PST ART: Art & Science Collide, a landmark regional event opening in Fall 2024 that explores the intersections of art and science, past and future. During PST ART, Bon’s work will be presented across Southern California as part of related public programming and at sites including California State University Dominguez Hills, Desert X, Fulcrum Arts, and the La Jolla Historical Society. Bon’s work has been exhibited at Desert X, as part of the collateral events of the 59th edition of La Biennale di Venezia; at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); The Hammer Museum at UCLA; The Exploratorium; DePaul Art Museum; The George Eastman Museum; The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA); The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MoCAD); Les Rencontres d’Arles, France; and The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. She has also appeared on panels at Art Basel and UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design.
Linda Goode Bryant
Linda Goode Bryant is an artist, filmmaker, and Founder and President of Project EATS–a living installation transforming vacant lots and rooftops into neighborhood- based farms catalyzing creativity and cultivating greater food sovereignty across New York City. She is also the Founder of Just Above Midtown gallery–a laboratory that foregrounded the work of African American artists between 1974–1986. She won a Peabody Award for the film Flag Wars (2003) and in 2020, she was a recipient of an Anonymous Was a Woman Award and a United States Artists Berresford Prize. She is a former Guggenheim Fellow. In 2021, Goode-Bryant created the installation “Are We Really That Different” in collaboration with architect Liz Diller for the exhibition, Social Works, at Gagosian Gallery (NY). In 2022 she was lead faculty for the RAW Material Academy Session 9 and Exhibition, in collaboration with the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Philadelphia. She worked in collaboration with Thomas J. Lax, Curator and Lilia Rocio Taboada, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Media and Performance, in organizing the Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, October 2022 – February 2023.
Diana Campbell
Diana Campbell (Los Angeles, 1984) is a Princeton educated American curator who has been working in South and Southeast Asia since 2010, primarily in India, Bangladesh, and the Philippines. Since 2013, she has served as the Founding Artistic Director of Dhaka-based Samdani Art Foundation, Bangladesh and Chief Curator of the Dhaka Art Summit, leading the critically acclaimed 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020 editions. Campbell Betancourt has developed the Dhaka Art Summit into a leading research and exhibitions platform for art from South Asia, bringing together artists, architects, curators, and writers from across South Asia through a largely commission-based model where new work and exhibitions are born in Bangladesh, also adding a scholarly element to the platform with a think tank connecting modern art histories in and across Africa, South and Southeast Asia in collaboration with the Getty Foundation, Cornell University Center for Comparative Modernities, the Asia Art Archive, and the Samdani Art Foundation.
Grégory Castéra
AFIELD Advisor Grégory Castéra is a curator, educator, and editor working at the intersection of visual arts, performing arts, and political ecology. Castéra conceives exhibitions, collaborative research, study programs, and infrastructures that reflect on art’s contribution to environmental and social justice. Along with Sandra Terdjman, he co-founded Council, an office for art and society situated in Paris. In addition to directing Council, Castéra is the co-editor of The Against Nature Journal (along with Aimar Arriola and Giulia Tognon) and a founding member of the Afield Network for social initiatives from arts and culture. He teaches as a Guest Professor of collective practices at the Royal Institute of Art (Stockholm), is an adviser for the Jan Van Eyck Academy (Maastricht), and he is the infrastructure and program advisor for Kerenidis Pepe (Paris and Anafi). Before this, he served as coordinator at Betonsalon (Paris, 2007-2009), he was co-director of Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, a center for art and research situated on the outskirts of Paris (along with Alice Chauchat and Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez, 2010-2012) and he was a member of The Encyclopédie de la parole, an art collective exploring the spoken word in all its forms (2007-2014). Castera was the Witte de With Curatorial Fellow (2017), a Resident Researcher at Villa Medicis Hors les Murs (2013), and a Gwangju Biennial Curatorial Fellow (2016).
Taeyoon Choi
Taeyoon Choi, (USA) works with computer programming, drawing, and writing, often in collaboration with fellow artists, experts, and community members, exploring the poetics of science, technology, society, and human relations. Distributed Web of Care is an initiative that brings together coders, curators, artists, and activists to build the future of the internet that is responsible and caring for marginalized people and the environment. The project explores how technology and society can open up space for artistic expression, cultural connection, and create caring community relations through collaborations, educational resources, skillshares, writing and performance practices.
Anna Dantes
Anna Dantes works on extending the editing experience to other formats – laboratories, workshops, magazines, curatorships, exhibitions, fashion collections, study cycles and films. Since 1994, she has been creating, carrying out and collaborating on projects to pass on knowledge and memory. For the last thirteen years, she has been working with the Huni Kuin people in Acre on the project Shubu Hiwea, Escola Viva. From this experience was born Selvagem, a cycle of studies on life, roundtables, films and books on the correspondence between scientific, artistic and traditional knowledge. From Selvagem came the Living Schools project to strengthen traditional knowledge in five indigenous territories. It’s all happening thanks to a large collaborative network.
El Warcha
El Warcha, means workshop in Arabic, it is a collective and maker-space founded in 2016 in the medina of Tunis, Tunisia. It aims to promote hands-on education and civic actions through the making of temporary urban furniture, art installations and public events with local inhabitants. With members of its community moving around, the project established itself in Tottenham, north London in 2018 and in Lisbon since 2020. They also work in Nefta, south Tunisia regularly since 2019.
Future Farmers
Amy Franceschini is an artist whose practice draws from her training as a photojournalist and having grown up amidst the divergent agricultural projects of her father as an industrial farmer in the San Joaquin Valley of California and her mother who owned and operated a small-scale bio-dynamic farm and was involved in the ongoing struggle to transition conventional farms to organic farms. Amy is interested in the notion of “farming” as a relational practice, involving a complex ecology of the material, social and the immaterial where dailyness and seasonality, orality, ritual, myth and an acute awareness of one’s bioregion organize our collective imaginaries and how we live together.
In 1995, Amy founded Futurefarmers, a collaborative platform to consider the social, political and environmental organization of space. Futurefarmers are artists, architects, computer programmers, farmers, writers and anthropologists who form situated working groups informed by the contexts in which they work. They find themselves entangled in overlapping lines of inquiry in the commons, hi/low tech horizons and a critical view on the tools we create. Based in enmeshed acts of wandering and material processes, Futurefarmers interweave their practices to cultivate public life in place. Through time and the practiced presence of Futurefarmers, the meeting place of people and materials transform from provisional arrangements into durable forms and functions of their works.
Futurefarmers have been the lead artists of Flatbread Society (2010-2018), a permanent public farm and community baking house in Oslo, they have been artist/researchers in residence at the University of California in Santa Cruz (2018-2020) and the lead artists on the sea-faring Seed Journey (2016- 2018+).
Amy received her Master in Fine Art from Stanford University (2002) and her Bachelor in Fine Art in Photography from San Francisco State University (1992). She is the recipient of a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2017 Herb Alpert Award and is currently visiting faculty in the Master of Eco-Social Design at the Free University in Bolzano, Italy.
Collectively, Futurefarmers have published A Variation on Powers of Ten, Sternberg Press, 2012, For Want of a Nail, MIT Press, 2018. Exhibitions include Solomon R. Guggenheim, 2010 (solo), New York Museum of Modern Art 2008, Whitney Museum of American Art, Biennial 2000, Sharjah Biennale 2017 and the Taipei Biennale 2018.
Analida Galindo
AFIELD Fellow Analida Galindo is a contemporary dancer, choreographer, teacher and cultural advocate from Panama. She has been working towards developing the contemporary dance scene in Panama for about 20 years. In 2010, she founded the Enlaces Program, which seeks to provide opportunities to youth from at-risk communities through artistic training focused on dance, today under the umbrella of Fundación Espacio Creativo. In 2012 she co-founded PRISMA, the international festival of Contemporary Dance of Panama. She is also the co-director of Fundación Espacio Creativo, created in 2014 as a platform to provide opportunities through dance, education and culture, and Steps Academy, a leading contemporary dance school in Panama.
Anand Giridharadas
Anand Giridharadas is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Persuaders, the international bestseller Winners Take All, The True American, and India Calling. A former foreign correspondent and columnist for The New York Times for more than a decade, he has also written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Time. He is an on-air political analyst for MSNBC. He is the publisher of the newsletter The Ink.
Sergio Roberto Gratteri
Sergio Roberto Gratteri is a musicologist, cultural mediator and a pioneering cultural entrepreneur with a mission to redefine classical concerts, reconnect with audiences, and positively impact society. He is the driving force behind “DAS HAUS,” a unique venue designed as a radically informal safe space for musicians and audiences. Gratteri’s innovative approach focuses on creating holistic experiences that blend various art forms, aiming to foster a deeper appreciation and engagement with culture. His efforts are geared towards making cultural events more meaningful and accessible to a broader audience.
Bernardo Robles Hidalgo
Bernardo Robles Hidalgo (1984) studied architecture (ENSAPB) and project management for construction (Brighton University). He has collaborated with the organisation Toestand as a coordinator, project assistant and CJO (chief janitor officer), analysing the uses and redevelopment of a public space in Brussels during its temporary occupation in anticipation of the future development. He is a painter and illustrator; his work has been exhibited at the RAA (Royal Academy of Arts, London), WSC (Watercolor Society Competition, London) and Het Nieuwe Instituut (Rotterdam) amongst others. He worked as an illustrator and dismantler for Rotor. Presently developing a parental project with Marianita Palumbo at BOSCH (co-housing and shared domestic/community space in Brussels).
Toestand is dedicated to reactivating underutilized public spaces by developing a socio-cultural dynamic that is both accessible and inclusive. The organization prepares and manages these sites, actively seeking partnerships with individuals, collectives, and organizations in need of space to work, create, relax, learn, and meet. Through these collaborations, the spaces are revitalized and given new, meaningful functions, with Toestand primarily facilitating cooperation and interaction among the various partners and users.
In Brussels, Toestand serves as a bridge between empty, forgotten places and those searching for space. This mission has guided the organization for years, and while vacancy is now recognized on political and social agendas, their work continues.
The rise of temporary occupancy projects over the past decade prompts Toestand to reflect on important questions: What is actually happening inside these spaces, and can the organization continue to play a role in them? These questions remain central to Toestand’s ongoing efforts.
Vacant spaces remain the starting point for their projects, whether it’s an old garage, a disused site turned park, a large monastery, or a former kindergarten. However, the consistent goal across all initiatives is to build and support communities.
Jessica Gysel
Jessica Gysel (she/her) is an editor, writer and organizer. She’s the publisher of Girls Like Us magazine and one of the founding members of Mothers and Daughters, a lesbian & trans bar. She’s interested in all things feminist and queer, and has a knack for collaborative projects and collective processes. Recent publications include Linda Nochlin Fanzine, edited by Els Roelandt and Jessica Gysel, KIOSK Publications, Ghent, 2022; Elements, edited by Jessica Gysel, Christoph Miler and Isabel Seifert, Jan van Eyck Academie, 2021 and ‘Anyone With A Link Can Edit’, Brad Haylock and Megan Patty (Eds.), Art Writing in Crisis, Sternberg Press, Berlin, 2021. She currently works as coordinator Team Public at Kaaitheater and lives and works in Brussels, Belgium.
Ola Hassanain
Ola Hassanain leads a critical spatial practice as an visual Artist with architecture training. Ola premises her work on an idea of “space as political discourse” an expanded notion of space, that tries to develop a spatial literacy which can aid us to imagine different political ecologies. Ola’s development of critical spatial practice is partly informed by her post-academic training; an ongoing Rijksakademie residency, a BAK fellowship 2017-2018, teaching and development of the Blackerblackness Master course Sandberg Instituut 2021- 2023, teaching at HKU University of the Arts Utrecht at the Fine Art Department, amongst other international collaborations like Chicago Architecture Biennial 2019 and Sharjah Architecture Triennale 2019.
Helena Kritis
Helena Kritis (b. 1981, BE) is the chief curator at WIELS Centre for Contemporary Art in Brussels. Her interest lies mainly with time-based and performative practices and she has worked with Mounira Al Solh, Nora Turato, Wu Tsang & Boychild, Kiluanji Kia Henda, Pauline Boudry & Renate Lorenz, Christian Nyampeta, Ed Atkins etc. At WIELS, she curated solo exhibitions of Oscar Murillo (2024), Danai Anesiadou (2023), Shezad Dawood (2023) and Lucy Raven (2022), and she co-curated the group exhibitions Regenerate (2021) and Risquons-Tout (2020). She has (co)commissioned new performative projects by Alexis Blake (2024), Billy Bultheel and James Richards (2023), Nikima Jagudajev (2023) and Moya Michael (2024), and is currently preparing a solo presentation of Christopher Kulendran Thomas (2024). Previously she was a member of the experimental short film selection committee for the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR). Between 2008 and 2019 she was in charge of the visual and audiovisual arts program at the multidisciplinary arts centre Beursschouwburg in Brussels.
Fernanda Laguna
Fernanda Laguna has mobilized and influenced a whole generation of artists through her various projects since the mid-1990s. Interested in the potential of affects, her practice cannot be detached from her personal life and political commitments as a feminist. Together with Cecilia Pavón, Laguna initiated the seminal independent space Belleza y Felicidad (Beauty & Happiness) in the late 1990s, and with Washington Cucurto and Javier Barilaro the publishing cooperative Eloísa Cartonera. For the past 15 years, she has been active in the marginalized community of Villa Fiorito in the outskirts of Buenos Aires where she has strengthened her activism against gender-motivated violence, working with women in situations of risk, and offering pleasurable experiences to the community as a means to expand their creative potential. Laguna is interested in women’s pleasure as a political force, and in the expressiveness of popular handicrafts, often resorting to poor materials, such as ribbons, glitter, little chains, or cotton, in her works. This serves as a perfect example of her belief in art as a carrier for spontaneous expression of subjectivity and in the political weight such expression might have. In 2017 she started El Universo, a small shop where she informally exhibits and sells all sorts of objects “belonging to the universe” such as sand, trash, buried insects, earrings, wood, stickers, and a limitless list of other things. Additionally she initiated the programs at the public high school in 2007″
“Between 2007 and 2008, the Federal Education Law of the 90s was repealed and a new law was created, by which secondary education is mandatory, and this was socially accompanied by an educational implementation to guarantee its continuity. It was there where chance brought us together with the artist Fernanda Laguna in a chair at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires to talk about our experiences within the artistic field. There we realized that we both worked in Villa Fiorito, and we decided to start giving extracurricular workshops at the school, which at that time was called No. 44 of La Cava de Fiorito. Fernanda was a very important driving force of the school in the first stage; She gathered all the first members, such as Mariela Scafati, Flor Cabeza, Inés Raitieri, Lola and Magdalena Jitrik, among others. The projects were just beginning; We didn’t know if that was going to last or not, nor to what extent it could affect reality. This project changed over time, and is in continuous process.”
Giuseppe Micciarelli
Giuseppe Micciarelli is a legal sociologist and political scientist (University of Naples Federico II). He has published numerous essays and articles on commons and critical theory on neoliberalisation of public and private institutions. With his political and legal hacker methodology supports social movements, practitioners, associations, and local administrations to empower democratization tools. He is one of the researchers and activists who developed the governance of urban commons in Naples, setting up civic and collective urban use; he designed the policy of creative and care income for cultural workers and supported dozens of regeneration experiences around the world, helping them to deal with public administrations and market coptation. He is part of networks of artists and cultural workers such as Asilo Filangieri, AFIEL, IRI and different academic and political networks of urban commoning. He coordinates the democratic module on democratic innovation of the ProPart Master (IUAV of Venice). He is currently working on the transformations of democracy and participation in algorithmic governmentality, focusing on the risks of the platform society and the potential of digital politics. He was awarded with the Elinor Ostrom Award, and is president of the Commons Observatory of the city of Naples.
Eileen Myles
Eileen Myles, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, studied at the University of Massachusetts-Boston. They moved to New York City in 1974 to pursue poetry and became involved with the St. Mark’s Poetry Project, where they studied with notable poets. From 1984 to 1986, Myles was the artistic director of the Project. They have published twenty volumes of poetry and fiction, including Not Me (1991), Chelsea Girls (1994), Cool for You (2000), and Skies (2001). Recent works include Sorry, Tree (2007), The Importance of Being Iceland (2009), Inferno (2010), I Must Be Living Twice (2015), Afterglow (2017), and evolution (2018). Myles has received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Andy Warhol/Creative Capital Arts Writers grant, and multiple Lambda Book Awards. They have taught at NYU and Naropa University and live in New York City and Marfa, Texas.
Majaw Njaay
AFIELD Peer Majaw Njaay (Senegal) is a performance artist whose work fuses his experiences in theater, circus, film and slam through performances in public spaces. His work is about societal transformation and themes related to youth, often evoking childhood. ArtXaleYi is an organization for social welfare for children through art based in Dakar. The project consists of orchestrating a series of performance-readings in several spaces with the purpose of providing children with a wide range of tools for the future; and to create new forms of learning and exchange through artistic interventions.
Sahad Sarr
Sahad Sarr, a Senegalese Afro-fusion artist, is the founder and lead vocalist of the group SAHAD, based in Dakar. Known for innovative and self-produced music, SAHAD blends various genres, including Afro, jazz, blues, folk, and funk. The group has gained international recognition, performing in multiple countries and winning several awards. They released their first EP “Nataal” in 2015, followed by the album “Jiw” in 2017, and “Lumma” in 2022. He has always pushed the political and cultural barriers, playing around West and East Africa, Europe and America. Multidisciplinary artist, Sahad signed a theater piece with Jiw and Luuma as part of his albums release and wrote in 2023 his last piece ”The Blue Forest”, a tale of migration, indigenous knowledge and African dignity. As a sociocultural activist, Sahad founded the independent label “Stereo Africa 432” to support and promote emerging local artists. The Label is also the instigator of the international world music festival Stereo Africa Festival since 2022, thought and created to offer diversity to the people and build structures in Africa, that represents local artistic needs and cultures. In 3 years, the festival has hosted more than 90 concerts, was a springboard for more than 20 artists, has taken place in more than 15 venues in Dakar and helped discover artists from around the wold. Sahad has worked in development as an environmentalist, founding the JiwNit Association and the Ecovillage of Kamyaak, based in Fatick, Senegal. The purpose of the Association and the village is to create and innovate on durable ecological solutions addressing issues like climate change, poverty, rural exodus and social justice. The ecovillage is conceived as a learning center working with the women and the youth throughout projects based on solar panels, eco construction, permaculture, organic farming, natural soap making and the valorisation of local cereals for the artisanal bakery. Every perspective of his projects is to help developing and offering alternatives to the senegalese youth and taking a strong part in building opportunities.
Abi Tariq
Abi works at the heart of the AFIELD, facilitating knowledge and skill exchanges between members of the network through programs and community building strategies. As an Pakistani artist based in France, Abi’s conceptual practice seeks to critically expose or subtly shift hierarchical structures through the prism of performance art. Inspired by the complex entanglement of language, culture and power, Abi questions behavioural norms by confronting issues of privilege, vulnerability and social expectation. Since 2014, Abi has been running the Silent Dinners, with Australian artist Honi Ryan. Recent works include: Is France Racist ?, a performative survey of otherness; ‘White Paper’ Performance, an examination of the rights of Russian artists under boycott (with Avant-Garde Lawyers), and an essay titled ‘Developing A Queer Lens Through The Work Of Apnavi Makanji’ for their solo ‘Psychopompe’ at TARQ Mumbai.
Sandra Terdjman
Sandra is a curator and advisor in arts and philanthropy. She supports the role of arts and culture in society as a founding member of different successful organisations like KADIST (Paris/San Francisco) an exhibition and residency program based on an international collection, COUNCIL (together with Grégory Castéra), an organisation that favors multidisciplinary projects at the crossroads between arts, sciences, and civil society, and more recently, AFIELD. She also advises different philanthropic organizations and was awarded in 2019 the Montblanc de la Culture Arts Patronage Award.
TransfoCollect
TransfoCollect brings together Brussels residents who want to develop artistically and shape future artistic communities together. TransfoCollect is a place to learn from each other and where practices of theater, dance, art and philosophy are embodied and made active in the studio and on the theater floor. The basic operation of TransfoCollect (THE GROUND) is a potential play space of bi-weekly Sunday workshops and work weeks (during school vacations) and takes place largely on the site of De Kriekelaar in Schaarbeek. A team of artists organizes the meetings on the floor. The workshops invariably begin with a shared meal. TransfoCollect focuses its research on precarious places in our society and investigates how theater, art and philosophy can play a meaningful role in heterotopic situations: a soccer field in Schaerbeek, an emergency village, a psychiatry, a market, etc. To this end, the collective energy is deployed nomadically and TransfoCollect goes on a journey in the Brussels region and beyond (THE MOVEMENT). For a given period, a number of artists settle down in a public place and develop an artistic work as a precarious place in society. In the process, they explore and share that precarious place as a possible studio. TransfoCollect itself goes out into the world. With our finger on the Brussels pulse, we seek (including through workshops) to meet the many people and artistic languages brewing in the city.
Ana Vargas
AFIELD Fellow Ana Vargas is a young architect who grew up in Caracas and has worked in Italy, India and USA. She holds an Architecture Degree from Universidad Central de Venezuela and a Master of Science in Architecture and Urbanism from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has been awarded the 2014 Dubai International Award for Best Practices with UN-Habitat and the 2014 Thesis Award MIT School of Architecture. She is currently professor and researcher for the Urbanism Institute at the Architecture Faculty of the Universidad Central de Venezuela as well as director of Trazando Espacios Públicos and her own architecture practice.
Visible (Matteo Lucchetti and Judith Wielander)
Since 2010, Visible researches, produces and connects long-term socially engaged art projects, working with artists dealing with the urgencies of our times such as the climate crisis, social justice, indigenous rights, gender and queer-based violence. Visible is a project by Cittadellarte–Fondazione Pistoletto and Fondazione Zegna in partnership.
Judith Wielander is an independent curator based in Brussels. Her curatorial research focuses on the intersection of art and social engagement. From 2002 to 2010, she was curator at Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto. In 2009, she initiated the Visible project in dialogue with Michelangelo Pistoletto, and has cocurated it since 2011 with Matteo Lucchetti. In 2010, she produced The Horror Show File, the first film in Wael Shawky’s trilogy Cabaret Crusades, which she co-initiated. Wielander was cocurator of Bordeaux Urban Art Biennale, Evento 2011, the Belgian Pavilion at the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2014 and curator of Le Jardin Essentiel at Parckdesign, Brussels, in 2016. Since 2021, she is researcher and cocurator at the Expanding Academy at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp with Nico Dockx. In 2023-24 she has been Lecturer at the Decolonizing Architecture Advanced Course at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm and in 2024-25 she collaborates with the HISK, Antwerp.
Matteo Lucchetti is a curator, art historian, and writer based in Rome. He is currently curator for contemporary arts and cultures at Museo delle Civilità in Rome. Since 2011, he has been co-curating Visible with Judith Wielander. He is also a guest curator for the project Pompeii Commitment. In 2017–18, he worked as curator of exhibitions and public programs at BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, and was curator of the 16th Art Quadriennale in Rome. Lucchetti’s most recent curatorial projects include Museum of Opacities, Museo delle Civiltà, Rome, 2023; DAAR’s Ente di Decolonizzazione, Borgo Rizza, winner of the Golden Lion at the 18th Venice Architecture Biennale, 2023; Climavore Italy with Cooking Sections, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, 2021; Marzia Migliora: The Spectre of Malthus, MA*GA, Gallarate, 2020–21; and Sammy Baloji: Other Tales, Lunds konsthall and Kunsthal Aarhus, 2020. He has been a visiting professor at HISK, Ghent; Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam; Sint Lucas Antwerpen, Antwerp; and Brera Academy of Fine Arts, Milan.
Chantal Wong
Chantal Wong combines contemporary art and education, to build communities and create impact. She is Convenor for AFIELD, an international network, advocacy and support platform for artists leading transformational change in society. She is co-founder of Learning Together, empowering refugees through project-based learning and scholarships; Women’s Festival HK; and Things That Can Happen (2014–2017), an experimental art space. She was founding Director of Culture, Eaton HK (2017-2021), a purpose-driven hospitality brand, and Head of Strategy, Asia Art Archive (2006-2017). She is also a Global Fellow with Ford Foundation.
Andrea Yarbrough
Andrea Yarbrough is a multi-disciplinary artist, curator, and educator born and raised on the south side of Chicago. She leads the collaborative placekeeping initiative, in c/o: Black women, pushing forward a Black womanist praxis of erecting sites of care by elevating the importance of witnessing and cooperative building as forms of care work. Her practice transforms everyday materials into art objects, exhuming the invisibility of understudied histories. Andrea earned an MA in Museum and Exhibition Studies from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is a worker-owner with Cooperation Racine, where she provides creative consultancy services and supports the development of a cooperatively owned and operated art center in West Englewood, Chicago.