Contra-hegemonía mágica – Magic as counterhegemony frames magical practices as antihegemonic technologies, able to mend human–non-human ties. By exploring rituals from three Colombian regions, it examines how magical knowledge can inform artistic strategies that wish to re-enchant fractured relationships with the land, aiming to demonstrate fairer forms of inter-species and inter-entities communication.

Structured in three phases (theoretical research, fieldwork exploration of local rituals alongside communities, participatory residency), the residency process will turn into a series of podcasts, collaborative events and actions, critical cartographies, ritual objects, blockchain-based smart (magical) contracts, ultimately resulting in a toolbox-like publication, replicable methodology, and intercultural dialogue tools.

«We work on crossing artistic practices, horizontal pedagogies, and critical theories to generate spaces of radical imagination and co-create situated knowledge to imagine new ways of inhabiting the world. The project further develop our research on how critical and decolonial theories can inform contemporary artistic practices. This residency will be a laboratory for co-creating situated knowledge, where theory and magic converge to imagine new ways of inhabiting the world».

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.