Arts of the Working Class in collaboration with AICA Germany
Symposium: June 21, 2025
Berlin 12099
Germany
This symposium explores transitional states like grief, healing, and collective re-imagination and their relation to art critique. It asks how the spiritual, aesthetic, and political labor of art—attending to pain, mapping intergenerational trauma, and tracing fragile architectures of care—intertwines with the urgency to reform the language that articulates such work.
Examining notions of art critique after linear media, the symposium positions critique as a metabolism of rupture, a form of listening otherwise. Art critique becomes a midwifery of consciousness: holding space for what has yet to come into language, for the unformed and the ungraspable.
In the context of Berlin, Stav Yeini’s sonic architecture, drawing from perinatal care, a practice of critique that insists on witnessing as an act of solidarity rather than mere observation and deep listening, provides a holding environment where critique becomes a co-present witnessing of what struggles toward form. Yeini’s work sets the tone for critique as a practice of presence, not authority.
Issa Amro brings a vital perspective shaped by years of protecting civic infrastructures in Hebron, emphasizing how political realities can be addressed without exploitation and the accumulation of moral capital. In collaboration with Barbara Debeuckelaere, he works with mothers from Hebron to create posters from photographs they produced together, directing all proceeds to support families in Tel Rumeida—transforming acts of witnessing into concrete aid.
These are modes of engagement where critique becomes a shared ritual for relearning how to speak, witness, and listen—across difference and through rupture. Drawing from feminist and decolonial thought, the conversations in this symposium privilege porousness over certainty. Critique thus becomes not merely analysis but a gesture of reciprocity.
Together with participating members of the AICA Germany, this symposium links critique with the unconscious, waves of trauma, and connections that resist consensus, creating space for coexistence. Here, art critique is reimagined as an infrastructure for gathering, metabolizing pain, and sustaining critical joy—a practice of being present without possessing.
Curated by María Inés Plaza Lazo, member of AICA Germany, a publisher and founder of Arts of the Working Class. Kindly supported by Atelier Gardens and the Institute for Film and Performance Expanded.
Schedule
11am, Opening remarks & sound intervention: Stav Yeini’s sonic field invites the body to become a listening organ, preparing for a mode of thinking-feeling grounded in attentiveness and care. Keynote by María Inés Plaza Lazo.
12pm, AICA panel I—Writing about Art as Healing Process: With Will Furtado, Kristian Vistrup Madsen and Ruth Noack. This panel explores how art writing can ground the self within a broader social context, serving as a vessel for psychic and social repair.
1pm, AICA panel II—Writing about Art as Mycological Communication: With Stav Yeini, Julieta Aranda and Stanton Taylor. This panel explores critique as a networked practice akin to mycelium, sustaining underground networks of solidarity.
2pm, Lunch break: A sound installation by Stav Yeini continues the work of tuning through frequencies that speak directly to the nervous system. Food by Roots Radicals.
3pm, Conversation with Issa Amro and Barbara Debeuckelaere: A dialogue exploring how critique can inhabit political realities without instrumentalizing them, touching on the body as an archive and the poetics of resistance.
4pm, Closing remarks and concert: Wrapping notes by Kate Brown and a final musical offering by Stav Yeini, threading affective resonances into rhythm, opening space for verbal and non-verbal continuity.
Participants
Issa Amro is a nominee for the Nobel prize for peace, Holder of the Franco-German Human Rights Award and State of Law Prize 2024. He focuses on advocating for nonviolent resistance and collective action against systemic oppression.
Julieta Aranda creates conceptual work that navigates the intersections of time, speculative infrastructure, and alternative systems of circulation.
Kate Brown engages with contemporary art and cultural politics through her work as a senior editor of Artnet News and journalist based in Berlin.
Barbara Debeuckelaere weaves memory studies and political testimony into visual narratives that reflect on post-colonial histories and intergenerational trauma.
Will Furtado examines decolonial ecologies and queer futurities through writing and curatorial practice.
Kristian Vistrup Madsen is a writer whose reflective prose navigates themes of incarceration, intimacy, and artistic practice from his base in Berlin.
Ruth Noack grounds her curatorial and art historical work in feminist thought and critical theory, centering marginalized narratives.
Maria Inés Plaza Lazo is an editor, curator, and publisher whose work focuses on experimental publishing, curating and critical theory.
Stanton Taylor investigates embodiment and collective memory through art and writing.
Stav Yeini is a musician who draws from ritual and perinatal practices to explore embodied knowledge as a resource for collective healing.
AICA Deutschland e. V. is the German section of the Paris-based International Association of Art Critics (AICA), which today counts 65 national sections and one open section with a total of more than 5,000 members in 95 countries. The globally active association was founded in 1948/1949.
