The projects presented on TBA21 on st_age are an invitation to sense different realities through the lens of art and to engage with those topics raised by the actual artworks.

These threads aim to challenge the connections between the presented artworks, that sometimes are distant in their final presentation but really close in their moving force. With these, we are creating a living archive that grows with time, and an invitation to let yourself go interweaving the different threads.

  • Who Are We?

    This is an opportunity to explore the creation and composition of social initiatives and worlds that imagine diverse forms of communality—remarkable ways of coexistence under contested and often violent conditions.

  • Politics of Speech and Silence

    Within this thread we aim to address the act of speaking out as a specific form of advocacy as well as the voice as a tool against repression. On the other hand, what power lies in the withdrawal of words? What is the difference between political speech and speaking politically?

  • Displaced Histories and Deviant Practices

    What does it take to live and act in the world “otherwise”? This thread relates to how contemporary art has become, in many instances, a field for alternatives and proposals, for divergent models, both inside and outside of the institution.

  • The Undisciplined Form

    These projects connect with the sensibilities and methods undertaken by artists who see themselves as researchers, who bear witness to the troubled ecologies of life, and who deploy new ways to register and encounter the world around us.

  • Thinking From and Within the Ocean

    We would like to challenge the obsolete dualities of humanity and nature, of earth and mind, of technology and culture, to acknowledge the vast changes and disruptions taking place in the ocean.

  • The Planet in Transformation

    We are looking for alternative forms of research into ecological and ecopolitical issues concerning air, water, and land. Here artistic practices seek to unravel the multiple meanings and intertwined definitions of nature and ecology, while aiming to create more-than-human communities of care.

  • Spaces of Unexpected Learning

    Certain kinds of knowledge perpetuate imperial hierarchies, violent and colonial systems of power. This thread explores other ways of being and learning, of listening and unlearning. The exercise of social freedom opens a debate on what counts as knowledge and the ways in which it can be accessed, guarded, and passed on.

  • Trailblazing into the Unknown

    An investigation into the burial of raw words and sounds, so that the great silence within can finally be deciphered. A practice of intuitive conversation with our purpose toward healing.