[spectre] CFP: Curating Infrastructures (Yerevan, 1-3 Dec 26)

[Andreas Broeckmann LEU]

From: Ines Moreira
Date: Jul 11, 2026
Subject: CFP: Curating Infrastructures (Yerevan, 1-3 Dec 26)

Yerevan, Armenia, Dec 1–03, 2026
Deadline: Jul 20, 2026

Curating Infrastructures – Critical Spatial Research Encounters welcomes 
emerging social sciences and humanities researchers, artists, curators, 
architects, and editors to join a three-day gathering in Yerevan 
dedicated to examining infrastructures as spatial, political, and 
cultural conditions shaping contemporary life. The event is programmed 
by Daria Bocharnikova, Inês Moreira, Maria Gunko, and Lais Rabello de 
Andrade, and developed in collaboration with Yerevan Center for 
International Education (YCIE), TS&D Lab (Yerevan State University), the 
MILITENCE project (Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna), the Extreme Sites 
Project (CEAA-ESAP), and the Ecologies of Care Network.

Infrastructures range from grand, awe-inspiring technological 
achievements to mundane utilities and facilities. They are not
merely the technical backdrop against which social life unfolds: 
infrastructures are embedded in socio-spatial practice, taken for 
granted when functioning and revealed in their breakdown. The 
functioning of infrastructure is an ongoing achievement and an act of 
care – an attempt to extend the life of things while simultaneously 
catering to failures, gaps, wrongdoings, and leftovers of previous 
orders. Against this background, we are particularly interested in 
contributions at the intersection of the following topics:
- Civic, artistic, and curatorial practices of care, repair, reuse, and 
commoning in built and natural environments;
- Collaborative and collective approaches to maintaining, organizing, 
and governing spaces, places, and shared resources;
- Breakdown, abandonment, ruination, and afterlives through 
re-signification, adaptation and reenactment of inherited cooperative, 
industrial, transport, and labour infrastructures, including practices 
emerging around failure and interruption;
- Care, repair, and reassembling as reproductive labour for maintaining 
infrastructures under social, political, or environmental pressures;
- War and violent strategic destruction of infrastructures, their 
systemic support, and the practices of repair, reconstruction, and 
post-war recovery;
- Civic uses of former military infrastructures and the tensions between 
remilitarisation, security regimes, and green transition;
- Infrastructures of extraction, logistics, energy, and waste, and their 
spatial implications for environmental and social justice.

The program combines keynote lectures, roundtables, workshops, 
fieldwork, and portfolio sessions with invited researchers and 
practitioners, including Daria Bocharnikova, Inês Moreira, Nada Schroer 
(TBC), Maria Gunko, and Raluca Voinea. Structured as
a site-specific encounter with the city, the gathering begins with a 
full-day fieldwork session, Learning from Yerevan, developed in 
collaboration with Yerevan-based scholars and NGOs. These partnerships 
situate the discussions within the urban fabric itself, creating a 
shared ground where research, curatorial practice, and grassroots 
initiatives intersect. Focusing particularly on postsocialist contexts, 
the encounters examine how cultural and research practices engage with 
infrastructures as sites of struggle, care, memory, and transformation.
Rather than functioning as a conventional scholarly conference, the 
event aims to operate as a think tank and collaborative platform where 
participants explore practices emerging around infrastructures under 
pressure.

This call invites contributions from emerging researchers, as well as 
artists, curators, architects, and editors whose work relates to the 
themes of the event. Emerging researchers and cultural
practitioners from the South Caucasus region are especially encouraged 
to apply.

Working language: English
Format: In-person event only
Funding and Organization

How to Apply
- All materials must be submitted in English via the Submit button 
below; email
submissions will not be accepted.
- Deadline: July 20, 2026
- Notification of acceptance: By August 30, 2026
- Applicants must select one of the two contribution formats below. 
Applications submitted to both calls will not be considered.

1. Collective Atlas — Call for Emerging Researchers

Participants are invited to contribute a project to the critical spatial 
research encounters’ Collective Atlas, a collaborative and evolving 
cartography of research practices, references, and ongoing projects that 
will accompany the discussions throughout the event.
Conceived as a living archive, the atlas gathers visual and textual 
fragments shared by participants and gradually expands during the 
encounters through workshops and collective mapping sessions.
Selected contributions will be presented in the Collective Atlas 
installation and integrated into the event's collective mapping 
activities. All accepted applicants will be invited to take part in all 
event activities, including two workshops for emerging researchers. 
Their contributions may also be considered for a post-event publication, 
depending on available funding and editorial
arrangements.
Please submit the following:
- One image of a project (image credits must be provided, and any 
AI-assisted tools used must be disclosed );
- Short project description (up to 3,000 characters including spaces);
- Short CV in PDF format.

2. Portfolio Reading — Call for Artists, Curators, Architects, and Editors

Cultural practitioners are invited to submit the following:
- Portfolio of recent work (10–15 pages in PDF format);
- Short CV in PDF format.
Selected applicants will be invited to participate in portfolio review 
sessions during the event, creating opportunities for dialogue and 
exchange with invited guests and local cultural practitioners in 
Yerevan. Their contributions may also be considered for a post-event
publication, depending on available funding and editorial arrangements.

Travel and Accommodation
- YCIE will provide a limited number of travel and accommodation grants 
for the duration of the event, available upon request. Grants will be 
allocated based on the merit of the proposal and demonstrated  m Only 
one travel and/or accommodation grant may be provided per co-authored 
contribution.
- Grant decisions will be communicated together with acceptance 
notifications.
- There is no registration fee.
For any inquiries, please contact: curatinginfrastructures at gmail.com

The event is funded by the Yerevan Center for International Education 
(YCIE) and co-funded by Portuguese funds through FCT, within the scope 
of projects UID/04041/2025 and FCT2022.02125.CEECIND; along The European 
Union under the Horizon Europe research and innovation program.


Reference / Quellennachweis:
CFP: Curating Infrastructures (Yerevan, 1-3 Dec 26). In: ArtHist.net, 
Jul 11, 2026. <https://arthist.net/archive/53444>.