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‘Alienation here is understood not as an individual phenomena but as based on social relations born from the “inter-projection” of private property. […] It is with this notion of alienation in mind that Tosquelles rejects a therapeutic practice based on an interiorized understanding of consciousness, arguing instead that the “the patient’s concrete society is itself the sick individual.” Treatment must consist in the “dis-alienation of the total fact of madness: the sick person, the asylum, and the psychiatrist at once.”’

We are delighted to announce the publication of Stella do Patrocínio's "Falatório/Chatter", edited by Iracema Dulley and Marlon Miguel. The book published by ICI Berlin Press is available in open access, as well as in paperback and hardcover editions.
"Falatório/Chatter" delves into the life and work of Stella do Patrocínio (1941–1992), who was confined in Rio de Janeiro’s Colônia Juliano Moreira psychiatric asylum from the age of twenty-one until her death. The unique form of relentless speech that Do Patrocínio produced while institutionalized was dismissed by doctors as mere ‘logorrhoea’. Yet her falatório is far more: a defiant and poetic act that resists erasure by psychiatry, racism, and patriarchy. Drawing on a wide range of archival material, this book presents transcriptions of Do Patrocínio’s chatter in Portuguese and English, amplifying her voice as a testament to survival, power, and resistance.

We are delighted to announce the publication of Elena Vogman’s new essay, “Séance: Technology of Disalienation” in e-flux Journal.

Institutional psychotherapy theorized madness as a double estrangement: both mental and social alienation of the self from its “participation in the environment.” Undertaking a Marxist rereading of psychoanalysis, the movement operated via group therapies and a radical restructuring of psychiatric institutions, involving patients in their capacity to actively participate in each other’s healing processes.

On October 1–2, 2025, the international symposium Lygia Clark: Artistic Practice in Transcultural Contexts will take place at the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut, Berlin. Organized on the occasion of the first German retrospective of Lygia Clark at the Neue Nationalgalerie, the event will bring together international scholars and practitioners to discuss Clark’s radical artistic practice and its transcultural resonance across art history, theory, pedagogy, psychiatry, and contemporary art.

We are especially delighted to highlight the contribution of Marlon Miguel, who will give a talk entitled:
“Preuve du réel: Relational Situations between Art and Clinic”
° Thursday, October 2, 2025
° 10:00 AM

For more information and the full program, please visit the conference page.

The event "Operativism. Social Intelligence and Mediation" is organized by Marietta Kesting and Elena Vogman.

The notion of ‘operativism’ had a notable career in the twentieth century, articulating the relation between Marxist theory and technological modernization, the working body and its optimization, machine vision and cinematic montage. This workshop proposes, on the one hand, to unearth a genealogy of operativism by engaging with archival research on Soviet film and media theory, and, on the other, to discuss its legacy in the context of materialist analyses of AI as an instrument of labour automation.

Date & Time: Thursday, 05 June 2025 | 14:30–20:00
Location: ICI Berlin, Christinenstr. 18/19, Haus 8, 10119 Berlin
For registration and a full description, visit the event's page.

A collaboration between Marlon Miguel, artist Violett e a. and the seminar "Lygia Clark ́s Participatory Art and the Politics of Memory: A Critical Exploration", by Mona Schieren and Monika Dorniak (Hochschule für Künste Bremen)

Date & Time: Monday, May 26, 2025 | 10:00–16:00
Location: KunstKartell Studio (Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin)
Registration is mandatory: marlon.miguel@uni-weimar.de

This workshop, conceived in dialogue with the on-going Lygia Clark's retrospective at the Neue Nationalgalerie, examines how her participatory practice—from Caminhando (1963) to Estruturação do Self (1976–88)—activates the body as a phantasmatic space: a permeable, destabilizing field where desire, trauma, and collective memory collide.

Join us on June 10, 2025, at Bauhaus University Weimar for the workshop “Everybody wants to be a fascist”: Media, Milieus, and Affect Politics through a Fascism-Critical Lens. Rather than seeking a fixed definition of fascism, this workshop aims "to discuss its mechanisms and media"—from micropolitics of desire to the affective economies of digital life.

Join us for Elena Vogman’s talk, "Marx’s ‘Sensuous Nature’ in Sergei Eisenstein’s Nonindifferent Nature”, as part of the panel "Proto-ecological Thought after the Socialist Revolution". This event is part of the conference "Marx in the Anthropocene", taking place from March 11–14, 2025, at Iuav University of Venice.

Date & Time: March 11, 2025 | 17:00–19:00
Location: the talk will be held online (find more info on how to attend on the conference's website)

Join us on February 21, 2025, at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (École des arts de la Sorbonne, Room 440, 47 rue des Bergers, 75015 Paris) for a talk by Marlon Miguel as part of the symposium Lygia Clark et les pédagogies d’artistes.

Excerpt from the abstract: "Unlike certain interpretations of Lygia Clark’s work that suggest a radical break between an "artistic" phase and a "clinical" one, this presentation aims to demonstrate that, on the contrary, art, the clinic, and relationality have always been central to her approach. A striking example of this continuity is Pedra e ar, Clark’s first sensory object, which later gave rise to the relational objects. This object was developed following a car accident and a resulting fracture she suffered. From that moment on, her research on objects became characterized by an intimate connection between the body, the object, and the healing process."

Join us on Thursday, February 13, 2025, at 8:30 PM at the New York Hilton Midtown for a talk by Elena Vogman as part of the REFRAMING MADNESS: ARTS AT THE INTERSECTION OF MENTAL HEALTH AND MAD STUDIES session at the CAA Annual Conference. Vogmans talk is titled "Madness, Aesthetics, and Politics – Challenging Primitivism with Tosquelles and Fanon".