Curating Infrastructures – Critical Spatial Research Encounters welcomes emerging social sciences and humanities researchers, artists, curators, architects, and editors to join a three-day gathering in Yerevan dedicated to examining infrastructures as spatial, political, and cultural conditions shaping contemporary life. The event is programmed by Daria Bocharnikova, Inês Moreira, Maria Gunko, and Lais Rabello de Andrade, and developed in collaboration with Yerevan Center for International Education (YCIE), TS&D Lab (Yerevan State University), the MILITENCE project (Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna), the Extreme Sites Project (CEAA-ESAP), and the Ecologies of Care Network.

Infrastructures range from grand, awe-inspiring technological achievements to mundane utilities and facilities. They are not
merely the technical backdrop against which social life unfolds: infrastructures are embedded in socio-spatial practice, taken for granted when functioning and revealed in their breakdown. The functioning of infrastructure is an ongoing achievement and an act of care – an attempt to extend the life of things while simultaneously catering to failures, gaps, wrongdoings, and leftovers of previous orders. Against this background, we are particularly interested in contributions at the intersection of the following topics:
- Civic, artistic, and curatorial practices of care, repair, reuse, and commoning in built and natural environments;
- Collaborative and collective approaches to maintaining, organizing, and governing spaces, places, and shared resources;
- Breakdown, abandonment, ruination, and afterlives through re-signification, adaptation and reenactment of inherited cooperative, industrial, transport, and labour infrastructures, including practices emerging around failure and interruption;
- Care, repair, and reassembling as reproductive labour for maintaining infrastructures under social, political, or environmental pressures;
- War and violent strategic destruction of infrastructures, their systemic support, and the practices of repair, reconstruction, and post-war recovery;
- Civic uses of former military infrastructures and the tensions between remilitarisation, security regimes, and green transition;
- Infrastructures of extraction, logistics, energy, and waste, and their spatial implications for environmental and social justice.

The program combines keynote lectures, roundtables, workshops, fieldwork, and portfolio sessions with invited researchers and practitioners, including Daria Bocharnikova, Inês Moreira, Nada Schroer (TBC), Maria Gunko, and Raluca Voinea. Structured as
a site-specific encounter with the city, the gathering begins with a full-day fieldwork session, Learning from Yerevan, developed in collaboration with Yerevan-based scholars and NGOs. These partnerships situate the discussions within the urban fabric itself, creating a shared ground where research, curatorial practice, and grassroots initiatives intersect. Focusing particularly on postsocialist contexts, the encounters examine how cultural and research practices engage with infrastructures as sites of struggle, care, memory, and transformation.
Rather than functioning as a conventional scholarly conference, the event aims to operate as a think tank and collaborative platform where participants explore practices emerging around infrastructures under pressure.

This call invites contributions from emerging researchers, as well as artists, curators, architects, and editors whose work relates to the themes of the event. Emerging researchers and cultural
practitioners from the South Caucasus region are especially encouraged to apply.

Working language: English
Format: In-person event only
Funding and Organization

How to Apply
- All materials must be submitted in English via the Submit button below; email
submissions will not be accepted.
- Deadline: July 20, 2026
- Notification of acceptance: By August 30, 2026
- Applicants must select one of the two contribution formats below.
Applications submitted to both calls will not be considered.

1. Collective Atlas — Call for Emerging Researchers

Participants are invited to contribute a project to the critical spatial research encounters’ Collective Atlas, a collaborative and evolving cartography of research practices, references, and ongoing projects that will accompany the discussions throughout the event.
Conceived as a living archive, the atlas gathers visual and textual fragments shared by participants and gradually expands during the encounters through workshops and collective mapping sessions.
Selected contributions will be presented in the Collective Atlas installation and integrated into the event's collective mapping activities. All accepted applicants will be invited to take part in all event activities, including two workshops for emerging researchers. Their contributions may also be considered for a post-event publication, depending on available funding and editorial
arrangements.
Please submit the following:
- One image of a project (image credits must be provided, and any AI-assisted tools used must be disclosed );
- Short project description (up to 3,000 characters including spaces);
- Short CV in PDF format.

2. Portfolio Reading — Call for Artists, Curators, Architects, and Editors

Cultural practitioners are invited to submit the following:
- Portfolio of recent work (10–15 pages in PDF format);
- Short CV in PDF format.
Selected applicants will be invited to participate in portfolio review sessions during the event, creating opportunities for dialogue and exchange with invited guests and local cultural practitioners in Yerevan. Their contributions may also be considered for a post-event
publication, depending on available funding and editorial arrangements.

Travel and Accommodation
- YCIE will provide a limited number of travel and accommodation grants for the duration of the event, available upon request. Grants will be allocated based on the merit of the proposal and demonstrated m Only one travel and/or accommodation grant may be provided per co-authored contribution.
- Grant decisions will be communicated together with acceptance notifications.
- There is no registration fee.
For any inquiries, please contact: curatinginfrastructuresgmail.com

The event is funded by the Yerevan Center for International Education (YCIE) and co-funded by Portuguese funds through FCT, within the scope of projects UID/04041/2025 and FCT2022.02125.CEECIND; along The European Union under the Horizon Europe research and innovation program.