For Darat al Funun’s 2019 program At The Lab, the curatorial premise is to create junctions; allow different elements to touch. For the first time, participants work on projects concurrently in what we imagine is a space of co-existence, co-production and critical exchange. Rather than impose collaborations and dictate how artistic production should take place, the idea is to create the conditions for chance encounters and unexpected combinations, while giving creatives the choice to work on both individual and collective projects.
Conjunction, or bringing people together in the same place and time is proposed as productive in and of itself, be it through the impact selected participants may have on each other’s work or through collaborations that might come about organically. The space thus operates as a contact zone, where temporary communities emerge, and people and practices intersect.
In 2019, we seek to bridge gaps and build bridges, hoping for a bigger conversation and a larger community. We invite people to come together in an environment of constant change, an in-between situation, with a complex and dynamic series of feedback loops that can be brought into other contexts, nurturing a critical consciousness and creating fertile ground for new possibilities.
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