Buen-TEK Assembly
Art Across Abya Yala
What does it mean to organize art across South America, often far from metropolitan centers and removed from funding opportunities, stable infrastructures, and institutional visibility? In Abya Yala, cultural work unfolds in territories shaped by rivers, forests, mountains, and dispersed communities, where travel can take days and production depends as much on weather, trust, and local knowledge as on budgets or schedules. Working beyond dominant urban frameworks requires constant adaptation—navigating multiple languages, logistical challenges, and unequal power relations, while resisting extractive models of collaboration.
At the same time, these conditions also open up other possibilities. Projects developed in dialogue with local and Indigenous communities shift artistic methodologies toward exchange, reciprocity, situated knowledge, and more equitable forms of collaboration. Improvisation, collective problem-solving, and locally grounded technologies—often emerging from scarcity—become forms of intelligence rather than limitations. In this context, art organizations operate less as producers than as facilitators of encounters, enabling cultural practices attentive to place and community, and capable of sustaining long-term ecological and social alliances.
In this session, representatives from several South American art organizations within the Buen-TEK network will share their experiences: Milena Godolphim & Lucas Albuquerques (Museo do Amanhã, Brazil), Fabiane Morais Borges (IO-USP LACO, Brazil), Estela Santana (Pivô Arte e Pesquisa, Brazil), Hygor Piaget (Universidade de Fortaleza, Brazil), Lorena Garcia and Elisa Arca (ATA – Alta Tecnología Andina, Peru), Jenny Campues and Karen Benalcázar (CICTA – Centro Intercultural Comunitario Tránsito Amaguaña, Ecuador), Alex Correa (Platohedro, Colombia), and Nataniel Álvarez (Liquenlab, Chile).
What else is on Saturday?
Check the timetable to visit more programmes with your Festival Pass (5-days) or Day Pass (1-day). With the passes you can also visit the festival exhibition Techno-Ancestrality at the IMPAKT [Centre for Media Culture] and BAK Basecamp.
Saturday day pass 5-day festival pass
For more information on the festival tickets please see here
