Ecosystems, NGO-ization and the Future of Community Art: A close study on documenta fifteen

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Mi You
• Subject Area: Art History
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 558877381

This research aims to understand the infrastructures, organizational practices and conceptual positions of the contemporary artists and art collectives of the documenta fifteen (d15), which took place in Kassel (Germany) in 2022. Through this research we seek to address what is missing in the field of art theory and contribute to several strands of scholarship: (1) Scholarship on the NGO-ization of contemporary art through a focus on the role of financement and institutionalization of local art practices; (2) Scholarship on contemporary art’s “organizational turn” or “ecosystem turn”, a shifting focus within art practice and critique from aesthetic outcome to focus on organizational capacities, ecosystems, and social and political impact; and finally (3) Scholarship on the sustainability of community art in the Global South, as well as the legacy of d15. The research project starts with contextualizing ruangrupa’s socially-engaged, collaborative artistic-curatorial practice of lumbung in the cultural and socio-economic environments of the Global South. We will then examine the participation of artists and art collectives in d15 and the local context of these art collectives in two locations: Southeast Asia (Indonesia) and North Africa (Tunisia). We will analyze the financial relationship between funding infrastructures, political contexts, and organizations/ ecosystems in each site, and how contemporary art projects reconcile their artistic aims and interests in communal practice with the developmentalist interests of their funders. Each location presents different economic, political, and social contexts and will therefore provide ground for a critical comparison through which to understand the deployment of global financial infrastructures in relation to contemporary art practices. We will further assess the learnings and legacies from translocal community art practices enabled by d15, given and despite socio-economic disparities, in order to define requirements for underlying infrastructures that can support contemporary art in the Global South in sustainable ways. This application leans on social theory and issues of cultural politics and contextualizes the curatorial concepts of d15.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants