Decentralised networks of care
https://www.neme.org/projects/toolkit-of-care/dnc
Preamble
It matters what matters we use to think other matters with; it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with; it matters what knots knot knots, what thoughts think thoughts, what descriptions describe descriptions, what ties tie ties. It matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories. 1
Although the Decentralised networks of care training school has its focus on care, it also recognises that care is perceived as subservient to politics, economy, and the environment. This training school aims to address these variables by instigating a cross disciplined discussion of shared concerns.
Not all arts funding policies are created equal in the EU. Official statistics 2 reveal that there are large disparities between countries. This cultural inequality is reflected in arts production, dissemination, presentation, but also the sustainable existence of both the organisations and the artists. Decentralised networks of care will address care for the cultural ecosystem and focus on the vital role of the non government organisations within this system.
During the period between 2021 and 2023, NeMe initiated a collaborative discussion between, 41 fine arts NGOs in Cyprus (now there are 51) in an effort to change our government’s funding regulations for culture. Our aim was to outline and upgrade working conditions for cultural workers in general, and the visual arts in particular. Through an online discussion open to all, we managed to reach a consensus between 39 of these NGOs which resulted in a 6 page letter that we submitted to the Ministry of Education and Culture outlining recommended changes to the existing regulations.
Although we have succeeded to improve some issues, there is still a lot of work to be done in order to make cultural work financially sustainable, as Cyprus is still in a the unique, and unfortunate position in the EU where our funding system, combined with the absence of other local or business funding sources, requires us to “pay for the ‘privilege’ to work in the arts.” 3
Introduction
the day that I stop following my heart, and talking about things in the world that matter is the day I don’t need to be onstage anymore… 4
Although art is big business, where some artists and organisations are able to command huge sums of money for their work, the vast majority are ignored, underfunded or dismissed by critics, and funders. According to Gregory Sholette marginalised artists, and NGOs are the “dark matter” 5 of the art world, and are essential to the survival of the mainstream, but he also asks the question “must the representation of institutional power function just as well as the real thing?” 6 As the hierarchies of our world are reflected in the art world, some non government organisations “speak clown to power,” for “clowns always speak of the same thing, they speak of hunger; hunger for food, hunger for sex, but also hunger for dignity, hunger for identity, hunger for power. In fact, they introduce questions about who commands, who protests.” 7
One form of care that most EU countries are yet to find a sustainable way to formulate and implement, is the care for cultural workers who are actively producing culture. This may be because culture has been commodified, and is either seen as property (i.e. owning a painting), entertainment, or as a superfluous luxury. This is of course a very false neoliberal view, as cultural production such as music, dance, sculpture, painting, etc, is enmeshed in all remote and ‘unmodernised’ communities, some of which have no, or minimal contact with the rest of the world. As such, culture can be witnessed in communities separate from the concept of property or entertainment, but as a functional necessity which through the use of symbols, abstraction, tradition, becomes an inseparable aspect of life, transcending our hegemonic economic system. We, however, do not live in such communities and we are subjected to a system that values profit and property over people.
Considering the way the international and local art markets function, artists income mainly relies on exhibition/performance fees and sales. This of course is limited to those artists who exhibit/perform in major commercial venues and are presented in major museums/auditoria. Alternatively, the presence of the NGOs within this ecosystem provides an alternative, more independent and risk taking platforms where artists can produce and/or exhibit more experimental works without the pressure of institutional or commercial constrains. Because of this, NGOs do not only assist in the survival of the artists, through exhibition fees, but also create opportunities for the showcase of more controversial, experimental works. This establishes NGOs as a vital part of many artists careers, their professionalisation, and their transformation from emerging to established practitioners. NGOs also work in the promotion, and development of arts and culture within communities, contribute significantly to cultural diversity, public engagement, and economic development. In spite of this, Cultural nonprofits also play a significant educational role within the cultural ecosystem. They often provide educational programs and workshops that engage community members of all ages that enhance students’ academic performance and social skills. 8
Furthermore, cultural nonprofits serve as community hubs that encourage participation and collaboration. They create spaces for dialogue and interaction among diverse groups, promoting social cohesion and understanding. According to Putnam, 9 NGOs can strengthen social capital by fostering networks of trust and reciprocity within communities. This engagement is particularly important in our multicultural societies, where cultural nonprofits can help bridge gaps between different cultural groups.
Despite their significant contributions to the artists, communities, and the economy, cultural nonprofit organisations face numerous challenges, including funding constraints, competition for resources, and changing audience demographics, 10 and cultural NGO workers are considered in many countries as hobbyists and their work is not sufficiently recognised as a vital part of the economy and societal health.
According to Tronto, care encompasses “everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair ‘our world’ […] so that we can live in it as well as possible in a complex, life sustaining web.” 11 Although the definition problematically places humans in the centre of care, what is important with Tronto’s theses is that she introduces the ethical necessity of care, within political thought. As such, what is it that we can do in order to empower NGOs whose decentralised work assist in the support, maintenance, and repair of our world?
Proposal
The political, economic, social, and hierarchical (patriarchal) managerial systems and power structures in which cultural workers (in the case of fine arts: art directors, curators, historians, producers, artists, etc) try to function, force them into a survival mode and compels them to compete with each other for very limited funding.
On the funders’ side, the formatted application for funding reflects a subjective and collective compartmentalisation of work that unfortunately leads towards a homogenisation of agencies.
For example, the EU system and structure is built to discipline the art world toward serving a productive ideal. This restriction clashes with the realities involved in the arts such as funding and time limitations for research and development, production, presentation, dissemination, and distribution.
The cultural workers are expected to perform, because that is their perceived role. Cultural work has become a paradigmatic immaterial practice of bio-political (re)production as all the public and digital communications are contributing towards bio-commodification. Given that there are fundamental steps for professional artistic work, it is no wonder that throughout our widespread and diverse community there are very few variations in scale regarding the initiatives, and plans to redress acute institutional needs and calls for change. Our challenges, perhaps especially in the arts which rely on a creative mandate, are to resist compartmentalisation and homogenisation.
“The issues that require urgent intervention today are shifting and evolving very fast. The digital revolution has given rise to new models of collaboration and knowledge production but also to new forms of exploitation, precariousness and dependency that have been likened to feudalism.” 12 We are operating in continuous tension between purposes and agendas dictated by a questionable ideology, but if we can change agendas with agencies, perhaps we can dream up alternatives, and solutions to institutional problems such as the expanding precarity and flexibilisation of work demanded from cultural workers. We furthermore, have to challenge and disqualify the normalisation of the perception of cultural work as a labour of love, in contrast to well paid bullshit jobs that make no meaningful contribution to the world. 13 According to Graeber, there are hordes of people—human resources consultants, communication coordinators, telemarketing researchers, corporate lawyers—whose jobs are useless, and, tragically, they know it. As such, it is necessary to expose the binary ideology of so-called productive work, and the supposedly non-productive labour by cultural workers.
The training school Decentralised Networks of Care is symptomatic of our experience in cultural work in Cyprus and abroad and recognises its constitutive role in supporting the artists in ways which enables them to generate and present artistic value.
Notes
- Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press, 2016.
- “File:General government expenditure on cultural services, broadcasting and publishing services, 2022 (% of total expenditure) .png.” EUROSTSAT. ec.europa.eu/eurostat… )_.png.
- Letter to Prodromos Prodromou, Minister of Education, Culture, Youth, and Sports, 15 Oct 2021.
- Mackelmore, twitter.com/bern_identity… /1787924725613871398.
- Gregory Sholette. Dark Matter. Pluto Press 2010.
- Gregory Sholette. “Speaking Pie to Power: Can We Resists the Historic Compromise of Neoliberal Art?” In Imagining Resistance - Visual Culture and Activism in Canada. Keri Cronin and Kirsty Robertson (eds). Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2011.
- Gregory Sholette. “Speaking Clown to Power.” NeMe, 7 December 2013
- R. J. Deasy. Critical Links: Learning in the Arts and Student Academic and Social Development. Arts Education Partnership, 2002.
- R. D. Putnam. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Simon & Schuster, 2000.
- S. Baker. The Arts and Public Policy: A New Agenda for the 21st Century. New York: Routledge, 2008.
- Joan C. Tronto. Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care. Routledge 1993.
- Evgeny Morozov, “Towards High-Tech Feudalism: How the Digital Economy Enslaves Us.” YouTube, November 2017.
- David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs. Simon & Schuster 2018.
Speakers
Leon Butler: A care based approach to making work with and about societal challenges
The contemporary cultural landscape is increasingly structured towards economies disparities in funding, resulting in a systemic capitalistic approach to arts production, dissemination, and institutional sustainability. A shift in how people perceive culture, particularly in the digital age, has been observed. Digital art helps us understand how these technologies can have an impact on various aspects of society.
This presentation examines how non-governmental organisations and independent practitioners constitute the invisible yet essential foundation of the mainstream art world. A care based approach to making work with and about societal challenges challenging the hegemonic managerial structures that enforce a state of perpetual precarity of the commercial approaches.
The discourse is grounded in the analysis of three practice based explorations that function as methodological interventions into these power dynamics. Imagined Islands employs machine learning and digital topology to investigate the socio-political and environmental precarity of European coastal peripheries, rendering visible the restless panorama of communities threatened by climate change and policy neglect. Foolish Flame facilitates a trans-disciplinary inquiry into cultural trauma and ecological synchronicity; through generative technology and digital ritual, it creates a liminal space for collective agency outside traditional institutional constraints. Phosphene provides a sensory translation of environmental datasets, utilising light and data sculpture to illuminate the intersection of urban density and atmospheric health.
Collectively, these works exemplify a decentralised approach to cultural care, demonstrating how artistic praxis can dismantle exploitative infrastructures. By making visible the the voices at the edges this session aims to contribute to an implementing framework that secures resources and fosters an environment where cultural work is recognised not as a peripheral hobby, but as a vital constituent of societal listening and the cultural economy.
Leon Butler is an artist and academic working at the intersection of art and technology. His working with and receiving plaudits along the way from Ars Electronica, The Arts Council, Snapchat, Adobe, 72andSunny, The Type Directors Club, 100 Archive, the Future Makers awards, Digital Media awards, Young Directors Awards and the Irish Design Awards.. Recent projects include Foolish Flame, Imagined Islands, Dwelling, Performance Surveillance, and Emperor 101 (SxSW, Dublin Theatre Festival, Boca Del Lupo, Vancouver). He has completed residencies with SVA New York, 72andSunny, Adobe, SnapChat, and Science Gallery. Leon has served as Research Fellow at University of Galway, Designer in Residence at Otis College of Art, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
He has exhibited nationally and internationally, receiving commissions and funding from the Arts Council, Ars Electronica, European Media Arts Platform, Enterprise Ireland, National Sculpture Factory, Digital Hub, and Science Gallery. In 2022, he was a Selected Artist of the European Media Arts Platform, showing Performance Surveillance in Latvia, Cyprus, and Poland. Dwelling, an XR dance performance, featured in Beta Festival Dublin and Galway Film Fleadh. Imagined Islands, was developed during a UNESCO residency and shown at Viborg Animation Festival 2024 as well as touring to Poland and Romania. Foolish Flame was commissioned by Ars Electronica and premiered at the Festival in Linz 2025 before showing in Beta Festival Dublin in November. Phosphene a commission for The Air We Share was exhibited at the Galway Arts Centre in August and September 2025.
Ceylan Hassan: Epistemic Justice and the “Dark Matter” of Cultural Labour
In the contemporary European cultural ecosystem, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and independent cultural workers often function as the “dark matter” of the art world – essential to the survival of the mainstream, yet systemically underfunded, marginalised, and forced into competitive survival modes. This structural inequality is not merely an economic issue; it is a crisis of knowledge production. Drawing on the premise that “the authoritative word belongs to those at the top; those at the bottom just provide the input” (Rivera Cusicanqui), this presentation argues that top-down bureaucratic, political, and economic frameworks extract the “raw material” of cultural labour to produce the “finished products” of institutional policy and elite art dissemination.
To challenge this exploitative dynamic, I suggest adopting critical interpretive epistemologies. True democratisation of the arts cannot be achieved by merely observing the precariousness of cultural NGOs or redistributing small pockets of funding; it requires a radical shift in how we understand, validate, and produce knowledge about cultural care. It requires epistemic justice.
This presentation seeks to deconstruct the dominant, patriarchal narratives of arts management and funding by centring the lived experiences and “subaltern sensibilities” of those disproportionately impacted by institutional neglect. Instead of viewing cultural workers merely as subjects navigating a restrictive EU bureaucracy, this talk positions them as the primary epistemic authorities on cultural care.
The questions this presentation will explore include:
- What does systemic inequality mean when analysed from the viewpoint of the cultural workers living through it?
- How can we use critical interpretative methodologies to expose the exploitative issues embedded in institutional infrastructures?
- How can commoning struggles among cultural NGOs across different geopolitical contexts be connected to build genuine, counter-hegemonic networks of care?
Ceylan Hassan is a Cypriot animator turned PhD Researcher in Environmental Social Science at the University of Kent, specialising in epistemic justice and decolonial methodologies. Her doctoral research focuses on developing non-extractive methods for bioregional solidarity networks across eco-cultural communities in Cyprus and Northeast Brazil. With an MSc in Global Biodiversity Conservation, Ceylan’s interdisciplinary practice seeks to dismantle structural inequalities by preventing the extractivism of marginalised knowledge and centring subaltern sensibilities in both environmental and cultural ecosystems.
Theodoros Prodromidis: Cartographies of times for care in the South-East
This presentation maps practices of proposing, organising, transforming into legal tools, and archiving experiences across healthcare, care work, and the commons in South-East Europe and the Mediterranean. It approaches solidarity as a structural proposition emerging both within and beyond the former European social state, tracing initiatives that developed from the collapse of self-managedYugoslavia in the 1990s through the non stop crises of the 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s and into the need for the formation of contemporary decentralised networks of care in times of escalating conflicts.
Expanding on a workshop presented for OperacijeGrad at Institut MaMa (Zagreb, 2025), the talk focuses on access to language and access to health as key infrastructures of care. Departing from collaborative art practices and work across institutional and non-formal spaces, it proposes a collective mapping of conditions of participation and engagement in cultural and social labour. Drawing on experiences within the Institute of Radical Imagination, Solidarity Schools Network, Open School for Immigrants of Piraeus, and Scola Society, the presentation reflects on how to structuring time to enable care.
Theo Prodromidis is a visual artist based in Athens. He studied Contemporary Media Practice at the University of Westminster and graduated with an MFA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths in 2007, London, UK. Theo’s artistic research and practice on performativity, participation and citizenship has been activated in both institutional and non-formal spaces of knowledge, action and exhibition.
He has participated in international exhibitions in galleries, museums and festivals, including Riga Contemporary Art Space, Callirrhoe, Victoria Square Project, GMK Zagreb, 3rd Biennale of Industrial Art, Furtherfield Gallery, Galerija Nova, State of Concept, 1st and 5th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, 4th Athens Biennale, EMST, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Nanjing International Art Festival, Les Rencontres Internationales, Haus Der Kulturen Der Welt, Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre, Athens & Epidaurus Festival, Werkleitz zentrum für medienkunst, Contour Mechelen, State Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, Tramway Glasgow, Centre Pompidou, Fondazione Merz, Museum of Cinema, Thessaloniki, Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki i.a.
In 2020-21 he presented “An Album for Our Square”, supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Public Humanities Initiative (SNFPHI) at Columbia University and was also an AFIELD fellow. His artistic research has been supported by the Ministry of Culture and Sport, and he also participated, through the production of new artwork, in the project “Communities of Learning, Bridging the Gap of Isolation”, an initiative of WHW with the support of the Culture of Solidarity Fund of the European Cultural Foundation. In 2023 he was a guest artist at the Department of Public Activities of the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid. For 2024-2025, he was resident artist at the ArtExplora festival in the Mediterranean and he developed. a new body of work for tranzit.ro/Iași in the framework of Institution(ing)s.
Sakshi Jain: Crafting Care Outside Institutions: Cultural Labour and Informal Networks among Sikligar
Across global cultural ecosystems, much of the labour that sustains artistic production operates outside formal institutions, funding structures, and policy frameworks. This presentation examines the Sikligar community of Rajasthan who are hereditary Indian metal artisans historically known for crafting and decorating arms and armour, as a case study of how cultural knowledge survives through decentralised networks of care. Once embedded within courtly patronage systems under Rajput rulers, the Sikligars produced finely crafted weapons and developed intricate decorative techniques such as koftgiri, the inlay of gold or silver wire into iron surfaces. However, colonial policies such as the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871 disrupted their patronage networks and stigmatised the community, producing long-term economic and social precarity that continues to shape their lives today.
Drawing on fieldwork conducted with artisans in Udaipur, this presentation explores how Sikligar families sustain their craft despite the absence of sustained institutional recognition or cultural policy support. Knowledge transmission occurs through family-based apprenticeship, shared workshops, and intergenerational teaching, while small-scale market exchanges with collectors, tourists, and ceremonial buyers provide fragile economic lifelines. Together, these relationships function as informal infrastructures of care that sustain both craft knowledge and community identity.
The Sikligar case illustrates how cultural labour often remains invisible within official heritage narratives. While museums and global markets celebrate the aesthetic value of decorated arms and armour, the artisans who produce them are frequently excluded from institutional recognition. By foregrounding the voices and experiences of Sikligar makers, this study argues that safeguarding heritage requires attention not only to objects but also to the decentralised social networks that sustain craft knowledge. Recognising these informal systems is essential for addressing structural inequalities within global cultural economies.
Sakshi Jain is a curator and cultural researcher from India and a PhD candidate at the University of Oslo within the ERC-funded ECOART project, examining early modern Eurasian art through ecological and material networks. Her research focuses on craft communities, cultural economies, and the global circulation of artisanal knowledge. An Erasmus Mundus Scholar, she studied art markets and cultural heritage management across Glasgow, Lisbon, Paris, and Rotterdam. Sakshi has worked with several museums in India as well as with international institutions.
Evagoras Vanezis: Working Within: Cultural Labour, Decentralised Care, and Artist-Focused Structures in Cyprus
This talk draws on over a decade of embedded practice in the Cypriot context – as a curator, president of Phytorio (Visual Artists and Art Theorists Association), and co-founder of Sic. Contemporary Culture – to examine how decentralised, artist-led structures sustain cultural life within conditions of structural neglect. In three interconnected threads, infrastructuring, activating, and unarchiving, it reflects on what it means to work from a “contested periphery.” The first addresses advocacy work and particularly the status of the artist: through Phytorio’s collective public lobbying and policy engagement, it considers how cultural labour is made legible within systems that routinely undervalue it. The second explores tactics of curatorial practice, focusing on initiatives such as Formworks at Thkio Ppalies Project Space (2019–2022) and the co-founding of Sic. Contemporary Culture in 2024, to show how artist-focused structures operate as vital infrastructure: absorbing risk, building trust, and sustaining communities across fragmented conditions. The third turns to the problem of memory and documentation in under-resourced contexts – what gets recorded, what disappears, and what forms of knowledge are produced when institutional continuity cannot be assumed. It asks how artist-led structures might practise a form of unarchiving: not the preservation of a stable record, but the active recovery and circulation of what risks being lost.
The talk argues that, in under-resourced contexts, such practices do more than compensate for institutional gaps. They constitute a distinct epistemology of care: one in which decentralisation is not a deficit but a structural condition that generates alternative forms of solidarity, knowledge production, and collective memory.
Evagoras Vanezis is a curator, educator, researcher, and writer whose work traverses curation, teaching, art theory and criticism, and creative writing. His hybrid methodology engages with cross- disciplinary narratives and practices, incorporating exhibitions publications, archives, and public programming. Since 2016, he has collaborated with institutions, communities, and initiatives across Cyprus and internationally. He is the co-founder and curator of Sic. Contemporary Culture, and contributes to the commons by serving as President of the Visual Artists and Art Theorists Association Cyprus – Phytorio.
Recent projects include Scoring for the Moment After, week-long artistic residency on the occasion of Milano Art Week 2025, BJCEM & Municipalities of Milan (curation, 2025); participation in International Visitors Programme of Office for Contemporary Art Norway (invitation, 2023); participation in A Natural Oasis?, Long-term research programme, Biennale of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean (BJCEM, 2022 – 3); Poetics of Dance Encounters, Dance House Lefkosia (researcher, 2022 – 2023); Key Change, group show, Pylon Art & Culture (curator, 2023); Take Us to the Water: Atlas of Mediterranean Liquidity, collaboration between Goethe Institutes of the Mediterranean (curator, 2023); fellow of Micro & Macro Dramaturgies in Dance, Anghiari Dance Hub and Marche Teatro (Italy), Bora Bora (Denmark), Dance House Lemesos (Cyprus), DansBrabant (the Netherlands) and Tanec Praha (Czechia), 2020 – 2022; Anachoresis: Upon Inhabiting Distances, the Cyprus Pavilion at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition, Venice Biennale (co-curator, 2021); Formworks, Thkio Ppalies Project Space (curator, 2019 – 2022). His writing has been published by various publishing houses and institutes in Cyprus and abroad, like Archive Books Berlin, Nero Editions, Grazer Kunstverein, ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen. He holds an MRes in Art Theory and Philosophy from Central Saint Martins.
Olga Majcen Linn: Intense Curating as a Practice of Care: Case of KONTEJNER
This lecture situates intense curating as a critical practice within decentralised networks of care, focusing on the work of Kontejner. Contrary to assumptions that curatorial frameworks may overshadow artistic production, intense curating emerges as a deeply committed, risk-sharing mode of engagement in which curators align themselves with the conceptual, material, and ethical demands of the artwork.Rather than operating from a position of distance, intense curating implies co-responsibility: an investment in the processes, conditions, and potential consequences of artistic work. It requires curators to move beyond facilitation and into forms of active support that may involve legal, economic, and institutional risk, ensuring that the integrity of the work is not compromised. In this sense, curating becomes inseparable from care—not as a rhetorical gesture, but as a sustained, embodied, and often precarious practice.
Intense curating also entails the construction of a discursive and social framework in which such practices can exist and gain relevance. Through advocacy, publications, public programmes, and long-term collaborations, it creates the conditions for artworks to circulate, be understood, and remain active within broader cultural and societal contexts. This approach resists neutral or risk-averse institutional models, instead positioning curating as an engaged and ideological practice. Through the case of Kontejner, the lecture argues that intense curating offers a vital model for sustaining artistic practices and for redefining the role of cultural organisations within contemporary art ecosystems. It demonstrates how care can be enacted through long-term commitment, shared responsibility, and a willingness to take risks alongside artists.
Olga Majcen Linn is an art historian, curator, and researcher with a PhD in Art and Media, focused on subversive art practices. She is one of the founders of KONTEJNER | bureau of contemporary art praxis, an organisation dedicated to investigative and experimental artistic practices. Since 2002, she has curated and developed numerous international projects and festivals within KONTEJNER, including Device_art (exploring intersections of art, science, and technology), Touch Me Festival (dedicated to art and science), and Extravagant Bodies (addressing disability, normativity, and the body in contemporary art).Since 2003, she has also worked at Gallery VN in Zagreb, which focuses on supporting and presenting the emerging local art scene.Olga is currently a lecturer and mentor at the Academy of Fine Arts (ALU) in Zagreb, where she also teaches in the doctoral program. She regularly participates in international academic and artistic conferences such as Medea Art Histories, Taboo – Transgression – Transcendence, ISEA, FEMeeting, and Consciousness Reframed: Art Matters.
Andreas Zingerle: Root Access to Care: Nodes of Resilience in Collaborative Research and Innovation Labs
Drawing on 15 years of experience as a media artist and PhD researcher, this talk explores how participation in decentralised networks serves as a vital methodology for production, collective care, and knowledge sharing. The presentation examines how independent cultural nodes can provide the necessary infrastructure for emerging artists, specifically focusing on the intersection of technical maintenance and artistic research. I will discuss the development of collaborative research and innovation labs organised with servus.at (Linz) and residencies with subnet (Salzburg) and other like minded international organisations, illustrating that these decentralised platforms act as ‘discrete support systems’ that allow artists to subvert institutional constraints. The goal is to make cultural labour visible and propose a framework where “root access” to resources and expertise is shared across geographical and social boundaries, forming a robust critical network of care.
Andreas Zingerle is a media artist from Austria who addresses various pressing issues, including AI bias in the employment sector, vulnerabilities in IoT devices, the corporatization of city governance in smart cities, and citizen-centred projects that leverage technology to reclaim control over our living environments. Since 2010 he collaborates with Linda Kronman as KAIRUS collective. The practice-based research is deeply integrated with the artistic work, employing methodologies commonly used by anthropologists and sociologists. This approach is reflected in multimedia artworks, which are often shaped by archival research, participant observations, and field studies. Kairus has been awarded the Outstanding Artist Awards 2022 by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Arts and Culture.
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