In times of growing segregation and detachment of people from each other and from politics, can going back to the first recognition of society as the creator of its own norms, and the first emergence of a public space, help us imagine and ultimately create the future? How can the ancient Agora inspire us in exploring how spaces for collective thinking can be created today, spaces for re-creating democracy understood as “the collective capacity of a public to make good things happen in the public realm” (Ober)?

Influenced by Castoriadis thinking that “there are not and cannot be 'experts' on political affairs. Political expertise - or political 'wisdom' - belongs to the political community”, and that it is this very community that decides how it wants to live together, as “that which creates society and history is the instituting society, as opposed to the instituted society. The instituting society is the social imaginary in the radical sense”, and whatever has been imagined “strongly enough to shape behaviour, speech, or objects can, in principle, be reimagined by somebody else”, it seeks to explore how we as artistic researchers can contribute to this “instituting society”. 

What is, or could be, today, that makes people feel empowered, and in a position to participate in the collective process determining how we want to live together? Which role can art and artistic research play in this process, looking at creating inclusive and open spaces, raising questions, and including voices neglected in our current system? 

To respond to the crisis, how can we perform what we want to live, so that we can live what we perform?