Projects / The Destituent Lab
The question of destituent (non)practices is posed as a framework for exploring approaches to creative work, as well as contextual, relational and situational research methods and activities. Following Giorgio Agamben’s notion of “destituent power”, as grounded in withdrawal, dispersal or weak form, and a sensibility of non-performance (or the interrupted project), we’re interested to reflect upon in what ways the destituent may lend itself to conceptualizing new approaches to (non)practice. Might the destituent contribute to ways of doing that positively unsettle or stagger forms of life, that offer unlikely entry points or approaches to engaging contexts and situations, and that enable thinking otherwise about (political) subjectivity, citizenship, or agency? In what ways can the destituent contribute to addressing current urgencies and our general state of crisis and catastrophe? What becomes of the quest for visibilization from the perpsective of the destituent, which is more aligned with inoperative forms, disappearance, non-work and evasion?
These lines of inquiry may be extended toward questions of social engagement or issues of collaboration by following notions of the negative or non-community, as community shaped by stepping out of major constructs of affiliation; rather, community is elective, and in tension with itself, and often follows the sharing of particular passions, urgencies and survival strategies. What becomes of collective, collaborative or engaged practices by way of the destituent? Does the destituent provide a base for thinking community or the common today, beyond traditional forms of affiliation? And that can lend to what Asef Bayat terms “incursions onto the quotidian”?
To explore these topics, the project is organized around a series of creative workshops, or Destituent Labs, where a working group of participating practitioners and researchers collaborate on investigating, mapping, testing or manifesting the destituent. This includes the possibility of theoretical, performative and material processes, as well as sited investigations, which can lead to various creative manifestations or residues. Through such gatherings and processes, we hope to reflect upon the destituent as a power and poetics that can support new creative efforts and critical imaginaries.
First session, September 26 - October 9, 2022 Bucharest / with Anca Benera & Arnold Estefan, Daniela Custrin, Yota Ioannidou, Brandon LaBelle, María García Ruiz, Lise Skou, along with invited guests. Developed in collaboration with Quote-Unquote.
Second session, January 15 - 21, 2023 Berlin / with Anaïs Florin, Adam Kraft, Brandon LaBelle in collaboration with Speculative Urban Futures.
Third session, May 16 - 17, 2023 London / with Elena Loizidou, and participating scholars and practitioners, including Nathan Moore, Elin Eyborg Lund, Saul Newman, Julia Chryssostalis, Christos Marneros, among others.
Partners to the project: Brandon LaBelle, Quote—Unquote , Daniela Custrin, Yota Ioannidou, María García Ruiz, Lise Skou, Anca Benera & Arnold Estefan