Mission
The mission of the Institute of Radical Imagination is
- To bring together art, activism and pedagogy in order to transition towards a post-capitalist society.
- To work on the implementation of six steps towards post-capitalism, also intended as six forms of commoning – of money, labour, law, architecture, personhood and education.
- To co-produce the institute itself as a post-capitalist institution – or “quasi-institution”– that operates as interface between the institutional realms of Universities, Museum and Social Centers.
- To create processes of mutual contamination between art institutions and political organizations – museums and social centres – for the convergence of art and life.
- Refusing both statist notions of public art and the incorporation of activism inside the neoliberal museum the institute will (1) use art – its concepts, practices and competences – to experiment with activist forms of pedagogy and political economy (livelihood) and (2) use activist networks and expert knowledge outside art to democratise art and cultural institutions and build cultural commons.
- Ideally, the IRI “nodes” will be constituted by a loose coupling between a social centre and a museum/cultural institution even if these institutions do not figure officially.
- This institutional constellation may involve progressive Municipalities interested in co-managing the political and cultural commons with the Institute. In this sense IRI can be also a new independent, autonomous and collectively run public body.
Values
The Institute of Radical Imagination
- Operates openly, consensually and collectively as reflected in its governance structure.
- Valorises and combines different urgencies, abilities and outputs.
- Is committed to actions of international solidarity across the Mediterranean and the south.
- Considers culture as a field of struggle and emancipation and encourages cultural experimentation as a critical attitude towards what we already know and inter-disciplinarity.