The urge to protect human rights, culture, and art has rarely been as present as it is today. A polarised world, war, and conflicts are restricting artistic freedoms. The numbers of persecuted artists and activists, as well as artists in exile have increased dramatically. The ITI Academy LAB offers artists and cultural researchers a space to engage with collective strategies of resistance and to explore resilient working methods and structures in the face of repressive systems and authoritarian regimes.  

Stories of resistance from different regions and communities of the world are told and brought into correspondence with each other. For five days, individual artists will aesthetically and discursively explore the space that emerges between these stories and their respective praxises. 

How do these people take action against censorship, against the restriction of the diversity of artistic means of expression? How do artists manage to organize in repressive systems and continue to pursue projects without giving up or succumbing to exhaustion, self-censorship, and fear. How to carry on? To counter hate with empathy? What forms of collective organizations and synergies can resist oppression and the restriction of human rights? At the end of these “Artistic Research Days”, the experiences, processes, and reflections on these questions will be shared in a public event. 

In LAB I (July 2024), Dora Yuemin Cheng and Sara Amini worked together with Jaber Ramezan strategies of resistance in Iran and China. The collaboration was born during the ITI Academy Week during Theater der Welt 2023.

The ITI Academy Labs continue in June with LAB II, and November with LAB III.