When: Wednesday, 4 November 2026, 10.00 am – 5.30 pm
Where: Repräsentationssaal, Klosterstr. 79b, 50931 Cologne
First part of the two-part conference “Infrastructures and Forms of Community in Informal Art Spaces in a Global Context” convened by the Connecting – Excluding. Cultural Practices Beyond Global Networking research training group at the University of Cologne and the Käte Hamburger Research Centre global dis:connect at the LMU Munich in November/December 2026.
Concept and organisation: Burcu Dogramaci and Nina Möntmann
The two-part conference hosted by the “connecting – excluding: Cultural Dynamics Beyond Globalized Networks” research training group at the University of Cologne and the Käte Hamburger Kolleg global dis:connect at the LMU Munich addresses the infrastructure of art spaces and smaller organisations and their impact on the formation of social communities. The conference will discuss the infrastructural prerequisites (technical, material, immaterial, economic) of establishing alternative art spaces. From a global perspective, we are interested in structures of self-organisation (shared/parallel uses, informal infrastructures), curation (collective, creative as well as resistant processes), instituting practices (consolidation of informal infrastructures) and distribution (independent publishing houses).
Non-institutionalised spaces are likely a necessary starting point for political liberation through art. To what extent do non-institutionalised art spaces have emancipatory and/or decolonising effects, and how are they networked internationally?
What forms of community arise from the practice of alternative institutions, organisations and initiatives? What frictions emerge between informal and institutionalised spaces and in the relationship between (local) impact and (global) perception? How are neighbourhoods activated or commons enabled? What contributions do these communities make in a post-migrant society? What is their emancipatory content? Where do strategic connections and systemic exclusions take place?
These and other questions will be the subject of lectures and discussions at the two-day event in Cologne in November 2026 and in Munich in December 2026.