Contact Zone: Repairing Crises 2023

Es Baluard Museu d’Art Contemporani de Palma presents the second edition of “Contact Zone. Laboratory of Art and Thought,” the annual education and research programme that aims to become a platform for ideas and a space for critical thinking through which to explore the potentialities of artistic practice and cultural production as mechanisms for intervention and social change.

After a successful first edition in 2022, in which more than 400 people participated in the training programme, the open conferences and the activities linked to the programme, the second edition maintains its structure in five thematic axes—New Institutionalisms, Environmentalisms, Works, Feminisms and Borders—integrated by activities of diverse formats such as conferences, seminars, working tables, research processes and laboratories. This 2023 edition will take place between February and May.

Among the participants of the different modules are key figures of contemporary thought, activism and artistic practices at both a local and international level such as Frances Morris, Rita Segato, Silvia Federici, Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Sandro Mezzadra, who will give opening lectures at the beginning of each of the modules.

The faculty is also made up of Steven Forti, Janna Graham, Pablo Martínez, Ildefonso Narváez, Jordi Colomer, Sebastià Mascaró, Aina Calafat, Monica Di Donato, Aniol Esteban, Yayo Herrero, Jaime Vindel, Ivan Murray, Nuria Alabao, Ana Dević, Marta Malo de Molina, Gabi Ncobo, Brigitte Vasallo, Arquitectives, Santiago Alba Rico, Tania Bruguera, Olga Bryukhovetska, Hamlet Lavastida, Gemma Pinyol, Remei Sipi, David Abril, Daniel García Andújar, Paola Lo Cascio, Isabell Lorey, Martha Rosler, Ibrahim Mahama, Luis Navarro, Rafael Borràs and Instituto del Tiempo Suspendido.

Imma Prieto, director of Es Baluard Museu, explains that “we launched ‘Contact Zone’ in order to create a space to be able to think about the future together, work to strengthen the territory and share with different communities and generations how we can face the world. After the good reception of the programme in the 2022 edition, both by the participants and the teaching team, we are once again putting the focus on debate, activating critical thinking devices and bringing the great challenges of our century to the discussion.”

“The distinctive feature of this edition compared to last year is that we have thought about the practicality of the work done with the participants. Instead of producing a work or report for each module or activity, as last year we did with demonstrations or various activities in the public space, this year we will work continuously with the aim of generating a document, a kind of code of good practices for the art sector that can be implemented by all institutional bodies. This document will be sent to all the institutions of the Balearic Islands and we will share it with the national sectoral committee,” added the director.

The programme reinforces the Museum’s identity understood as a living organism that generates knowledge from the debate on key issues of the present and is addressed to all those who are interested in the interrelations between art and culture as well as other political and social spheres, people from the fields of the humanities, communications, artistic practice, public politics, cultural production or management, activists, and people linked to social movements, or who are committed to social change.

The project is directed by Imma Prieto, director of Es Baluard Museu, with the external collaboration of cultural manager Berta Sureda and coordinated by the Museum’s Education and Public Programmes Department. In co-production with the Ministry of European Funds, University and Culture of the Government of the Balearic Islands.

“Contact Zone” is a pioneering project in the Balearic Islands that understands artistic practice as a territory of confluence of knowledge, multiple stories, disciplines and political or social interventions.