Eina Idea VARIANTZ/S/X/N program 2021–22

Eina Idea operates as a think tank, accelerator and programming platform at EINA University Center of Design and Art of Barcelona. Within and beyond the ecosystem of academia, Eina Idea autonomously creates conceptual spaces of divergence and situated production named cabinets. Each of these open-ended ventures integrates the asymmetrical currents of speculative design and aesthetic research in a feral perspective of post-humanities thinking and performative community building.

Since its launch in the early days of March 2020, literally on the eve of the current pandemic, Eina Idea has grown a multiplicity of projects in collaboration with music festivals, subway systems, theaters, art galleries, journals, and other schools; used a variety of channels from public spaces to classrooms and construction sites, from analog publications to gaming platforms; prototyped pieces of wearable furniture, typefaces, and signature protocols; and danced to the maddening arrhythmias of the present time in the company of poets, architects, curators, artists, activists, and of course designers.

Rather than thinking of a before/after any given diploma, Eina Idea addresses the praxis of invention and disruption in media res, transversally and across (in)disciplines, unraveling with each project a temporality that overarches terms and, sometimes accidentally, frictions with seasonal rites. The emphasis on Eina Idea’s native motility has been reinforced by the conditions of harsh digitization, ambivalent and/or intermittent restrictions, and the whole regime of volatilized cultural programming that has accompanied the successive coronavirus mutational waves. But while the current climate of health emergency forces unforeseeable folds and delays into every creative and cognitive process, it certainly should not be dissociated from a general climate emergency that elicits turbulence on broader, deeper, but also most diversified, scales. It is therefore absolutely vital not to assume these circumstances as a temporary crisis, not to wait, but to develop new climate-based skills for global co-existence.

Only the poetic and sympathetic dimensions of every action will be able to prove their value in the future world that is already, urgently, happening. Art and design are not lateral spheres of contemplation, diversion, and luxury; but core, radical organs for the production of societal immunities. Learning, more than ever, feels vital as higher levels of inventiveness, transformability, joy, and solidarity are required from all of us in order to live and increase the chances for life on Earth. In the current conditions, however, methodologies that are genuinely experimental and that speculate seriously can only suffocate under the imperative of quantifiable impact and guaranteed effect. Rather they demand to operate on a principle that we may call the infuturible.

With the general title of VARIANTZ/S/X/N Eina Idea launches a program of activities destined to mutate throughout 2021–22 and probably beyond. Imminent presentations include Ambushes, a series of site-specific interventions at EINA Bosc by guest agents such as Marc Vives, Julia Spínola, Sociedad 0, Pep Vidal, and MAIO Architects. A VR exhibition and public program titled SYNX, to be presented at the upcoming SónarCCCB in collaboration with S+T+ARTS and MindSpaces and featuring works by Haseeb Ahmed, Emmanuel van der Awera, Sarah Derat x The Radicant x ExperiensS, Emanuel Gollob, Joao Martino Moura, Michael Sedbon, and Zaha Hadid Architects. Simultaneously, from September onward, the Self-Assembly workshop series will offer multi-format sessions with such figures as Prem Krishnamurthy, Asier Mendizabal, Ludovica Carbotta, Sara Ramo, and Ester Partegàs, among others. In addition, a collaboration with FoodCultura and artist Antoni Miralda will unfold throughout the spring, while we also resume focused online seminars about curatorial ecologies, post-material tectonics, and the genealogies of artist books. 

Learn more here about Eina Idea’s upcoming activities, events, and publications.