Figure It Out
The Art of Living Through System Failure
Figure It Out highlights practices and phenomena of coping, tinkering, making-do and circumventing exclusions that are developed by marginalized, underserved, discriminated and vulnerable communities. Gendered, racialized, bordered and exploited, these communities are often forced to develop tools and strategies that are considered unacceptable to the institutions of the system, sometimes out of necessity, and sometimes to exercise rights or to secure access to basic services. FIO project is not so much about these systems of exclusion as about the ingenuity of common people to avoiding their detrimental effect on their lives and lives of their communities.
The Creative Europe project takes the form of a series of actions by partners across Europe (Croatia, France, Greece, Malta and Serbia); research, workshops, exhibitions, interventions and performance. Two key phases make up the project; namely gathering experiences and stories, and communicating these stories through the curatorial and theoretical framework to the general public.
Experiences and stories are gathered among communities that are in some way discriminated against and develop what we call figure-it-out practices. The different research approaches used by each partner are linked by a structured inventory and by events where participants can participate in story sharing.
14, 15, 16, June 2024
Site-specific performance by Tania El Khoury, created in 2018 commissioned by Dal-Baħar Madwarha, curated by Maren Richter
Performance: Chakib Zidi and Mohamed Ali “Dali” Agrebi
Sejjaħ lil Malta is a performance that happens on two shorelines. It invites the audience to take a Maltese water taxi boat from Valletta to Senglea, and to listen to seashells that were picked up from the Tunisian coastal city of Sousse. Sejjaħ lil Malta explores our changing perception of the Mediterranean Sea, a fluctuating space of multiple borders, a leisure destination for some, and a death trap for many of those seeking refuge. The water taxis themselves tell a local story of Malta’s internal borders as a result of the privatisation of the seashore.
Proudly part of Refugee Week Malta 2024
More info here
Call for presentations and artist-talks
We are happy to announce the call for presentations for the upcoming symposium titled “Figure it Out: The Art of Living Through System Failures”. This multidisciplinary gathering welcomes proposals from the fields of humanities, social sciences and artistic practice. Alongside academic papers and panel discussions, we welcome non-traditional and experimental formats.
Call closed: more info on symposium coming soon.
Figure it Out: The Art of Living through System Failures
International Radio Conference
From13 - 15 December 13 2023, the arts organisation VEKTOR Athens presented the International Radio Conference Figure it Out: The Art of Living through System Failures, curated by Katerina Gkoutziouli. Artists, curators, activists, academics, researchers and technologists discussed their counter strategies and practices in the technological realm. Through three key areas, namely: Figure it Out: Art & Tech, Figure it Out: Environment & Tech and Figure it Out: Community & Tech, the radio conference reflected a growing realisation that the current tech landscape is rife with disparities and shortcomings which need to be addressed.
Participants:
!Mediengruppe Bitnik, Tatiana Bazzichelli, James Bridle, Heath Bunting, Yuchen Chen, Kris De Decker, Daphne Dragona, Mara Ferreri, Anna Watkins Fisher, Kyriaki Goni, Valeria Graziano, Marinos Koutsomichalis, Alex Lu, Jonas Lund, Niels Plotard, RYBN.org & La Labomedia.
The Conference was coordinated by Katerina Gkoutziouli, co-founder – Director, VEKTOR Athens, and Yannis-Orestis Papadimitriou, journalist.
The conference can be heard here.
Project Partners:
Drugo more (Croatia) (Lead Partner), Unfinished Foundation (Malta), Kiosk (Serbia), Labomedia (France), VEKTOR (Athens)
Collaborators:
Dr Mara Ferreri and Dr Valeria Graziano, Dr Adnan Hadziselimovic, Škart art collective (Ljubljana/Belgrade), !Mediengruppe Bitnik (Berlin), RYBN collective (Paris
Supporters:
This project is co-funded by the European Union, and by the NGO Co-financing Scheme of the Malta Council for the Voluntary Sector.
