The Imaginary Republic

Performance artists address the political possibilities of creative agency

This artistic research project addresses the challenges of global life today. In particular, it considers the creative constructs and poetic imaginaries found in articulations of contemporary agency and argues for a deeper engagement with what Elena Loizidou terms the "dreamwork" underpinning our political selves. Dreamwork is cast as the basis for mobilizing new forms of world-making activity. The Imaginary Republic brings together participating artists Tatiana Fiodorova, Sala Manca, Octavio Camargo with Brandon LaBelle and Joulia Strauss, whose practices engage with situations of struggle and autonomous cultures through a performative crafting of common spaces. From shared labors to camouflaged interventions, collaborative pedagogies to social fictions, their works operate to build unlikely scenes of solidarity. Additionally, the publication includes documentation of a related collective performance and exhibition held at Kunsthall 3,14 Bergen, as well as key essays by theorists and scholars Gerald Raunig, Rhiannon Firth, H l ne Frichot, Raimar Stange and Manuela Zechner.