Training for the Not-Yet through Relational Practice and Radical ImaginationWith artist Jeanne van Heeswijk

Training for the Not-Yet through Relational Practice and Radical Imagination is a part of The Contamporary Art Days Summit 2026 and is co-produced by The Public Art Agency part of Moderna Museet, Kulturakademin and Skåne Region. The training will be organised once again 24 – 25 August in Malmö.

About the Training

How can we understand our belongings our relations, attachments, and positions as the starting point for imagining different futures?

This two-day course, led by artist Jeanne van Heeswijk, introduces working methods developed through her long-term collaborations with communities and institutions. Through the concept of Be-longing, we explore the movement from being constituted as an individual self toward longing with and through others communities, spaces, urgencies, conflicts, structures, and possibilities.

Building from this relational mapping, we move into Visionary Fiction a method articulated by Walidah Imarisha as a way of imagining and scaffolding more just futures. The premise is simple but urgent: We cannot build what we cannot imagine.

The course combines collective listening exercises), mapping practices, speculative writing, and collaborative narrative construction.

Purpose

• To deepen understanding of the relational, spatial, and political dimensions of one’s practice
• To examine how our “belongings” shape our capacity to act
• To develop tools for collective storytelling and speculative thinking
• To formulate seeds for future artistic or collaborative initiatives

Learning Outcomes

After the course, participants will have:

• Mapped their practice through spatial, contextual, and relational lenses
• Reflected on the political conditions and power structures shaping their work
• Practiced collective listening
• Developed a short visionary fiction draft (individually or in groups)
• Contributed to a shared speculative narrative that can function as future scaffolding

Target group: Artists, curators, producers, public servants, cultural practitioners, and others with an interest in socially engaged, participatory or community-based practices.