Contra-hegemonía mágica is an artistic research project based on practice, encounters and embodiment. Grounded in specific affective relationships with human and non-human entities, as well as places, it encompasses complex, empathetic and situated communication; daily life dialogue; and shared experiences, rituals and spiritual practices that shape existence. 

The project frames magical practices as anti-hegemonic technologies that can mend human–non-human ties, exploring how magical knowledge can inform artistic strategies that seek to re-enchant fractured relationships with the land, aiming to demonstrate fairer forms of interspecies and inter-entity communication. During their research, the Aliens Institute undertook two immersive trips: one to the Pájaro Jaguar Reserve in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, and one to Casilla Naira in the Amazon rainforest. They also held a series of conversations in Bogotá, where they are based, and in Medellín during their one-month residency at Platohedro. 

Part of the insights from the research, including three publications, a set of posters, a Tarot of Other Spirits, an amulet and more, are contained in a physical box that has been conceived as a provocation and a challenge to the fictional ontological boundaries erected by the West and its dualisms: between humans and non-humans, reason and magic, consciousness and matter, and what we consume and what consumes us.  The box interacts with a digital archive containing all accessible resources, to which it adds a selection of audio material, including soundscapes and a podcast series. This sonic proposal presents concrete records of specific voices in all their particularities and depths, inviting to listen and being traversed by their sensitivities and thought paths. These records are not a monolithic representation of an identity or alternative knowledge; what Aliens Institute aims to share is powerful due to its specificity to place, heritage and lineage.

Aliens Institute is a collective constituted by Maria Adelaida Samper and Gabriel Zea and active in the Global South. With a deep understanding of its geopolitical context, the duo operates the means of contemporary art as tools to explore different ways of coexisting on the planet. From within the fields of critical and horizontal pedagogies, they experiment with various ways of producing and circulating knowledge that reconfigure pre-established categories and hierarchies. Aliens wish to destabilize ideas and interpersonal relations, using the hybridization of critical theory and subaltern knowledge as tricksters. Affective relationships and friendships constitute the substratum of their work, in which they activate networks of people and mobilize energies through deep hangings, speech circulation, and active listening.