Search
To search for an exact match, type the word or phrase you want in quotation marks.
Infrastructures of Relationship
Magazine
Infrastructures of Relationship
By Instituciones del Vínculo (Institutions of Connections)A Dry Branch Covered in Snails
This summer I discovered that the clusters of snails that gather on the branches of the Alt Camp region were in estivation, a form of summer dormancy that is, at the same time, a survival strategy in the face of adverse environmental conditions. This image led me to observe how a way of life organizes itself around a structure, in this case, an agglomeration of bodies, experiences, and time that come together on a branch which seems, at first glance, dry and lifeless.
The branch is not merely a support. It is that around which these bodies gather and find a way to survive. This image raises a question about what sustains our practices and relationships, and about what we mean when we talk about infrastructure.
Thinking about the infrastructures of relationships implies recognizing that, even where resources and institutional structures are precarious or nonexistent, there are ways of relating that sustain practices, transmit knowledge, organize work, and make shared ways of life possible. What would happen if, instead of adapting to existing institutions, we imagined other institutional forms based on the connections and needs that emerge from our practices?
Armando Perla uses the markets of Kuskatan and Guatemala as a starting point to explore a network of kinship, exchanges, and knowledge passed down through generations, in which these connections sustain forms of knowledge and practice that rarely find institutional recognition.
Maya Juracán shares the experience of La Revuelta and the search for collective ways to organize work, care, and resources to make artistic practice possible under dignified conditions.
Anna Santomauro, with Arts Catalyst, shifts the focus to territory and explores how the relationships woven with communities and organizations produce place, belonging, and shared spaces, opening up other ways of being together.
Finally, Antonia Alampi, through Spore Initiative in Berlin, addresses institutional design by thinking of institutions as structures that arise from the relationships they seek to cultivate, the communities they engage with, and the ways of life they aim to make possible.
These are institutions that do not precede relationships but instead are formed by them.
[Featured image taken by Xavi Reyes]
Veronica Valentini is a curator, educator, and researcher. She understands curatorial practice as a relational exercise that listens to contexts, choreographs affects, forms of knowledge, and diverse bodies, and cultivates connections toward new ways of being and acting together.
She is the founder and director of EMMA, and co-founder and co-director of BAR Project—a platform that currently develops the exhibition, public, and educational programming at HAUS–Espai d’art i pràctiques contemporànies. Since 2022, she has overseen international residency programs and research networks at Hangar, in Barcelona. As a founding member and mediator for Concomitentes in Spain since 2018, she has spearheaded initiatives such as Diversorium: Live Arts and Spaces for Coexistence—a project presented at music festivals and nightclubs in Barcelona, as well as in Paris, Stuttgart, and Stockholm, and within the framework of Manifesta. She is currently developing Parliament of the Sea, a project that bridges science and citizenship to prototype new forms of ecological governance within the marine and social territory of La Barceloneta.
In 2014, she served as one of the curators for the second CAFAM Biennial in Beijing, titled On Ambiguity and Other Forms to Play With. She has curated exhibitions and developed public, educational, and residency programs; she has also served on juries and led workshops and lectures at numerous art schools and institutions, both in Spain and internationally. Her publications include Dancing Diversity: Gestures and Affects for Encounters Between Diverse Bodies, Bartlebooth, 2024) and Reciprocity: Institutional and Artistic Practices as Metaphors for Mycelium, Ajuntament de Terrassa, 2026).