The Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève launches Agora: A Gathering of Art and Philosophy, a fully funded online programme designed to address the challenges of our time by combining two disciplines capable of re-imagining the future in a unique way: art and philosophy. The call for applications is open until November 1st 2025.
Conceived by Andrea Bellini and Federico Campagna, Agora will offer free semester-long programmes with lectures in English, seminars and individual mentoring to a group of eight artists and philosophers active from January to April. The lectures will subsequently be made available free of charge on the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève’s digital platform, the 5th floor, and will also be featured on Mousse Magazine’s digital channels, opening up the dialogue to a wider audience.
Each participant will receive a scholarship to ensure equal access. All lectures will be held online so that students from all over the world can participate. In addition to lectures and seminar-style discussions, students will also develop their own personal work in private meetings with lecturers.
‘With Agora, the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève is introducing a new idea of the museum as a public space: free lectures by world-renowned thinkers and professionals, scholarships for participating students, and a year-long dialogue with philosophers, curators, and artists,’ said Agora co-founder and director, philosopher Federico Campagna. ‘We are delighted to create a new home for the next generation of world builders,’ he said.
Speakers include Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi, Nicolas Jaar, Jota Mombaça, Nora N. Khan, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Laura U. Marks, Hito Steyerl and John Tresch. These internationally renowned thinkers and art professionals will also accompany students in seminars and individual sessions, encouraging them to probe prevailing contemporary worldviews and forge new paths for the imagination.
The lectures will be grouped into three main areas of inquiry: Technologies of Consciousness, Materiality, and Social Imagination. Agora’s goal is to combine philosophical inquiries with the perspectives of marginalised groups, the urgency of developing a new environmental consciousness, and the technical challenges posed by artistic practice. Strongly committed to opening up artistic discourse to pluralistic worldviews, the expert talks and tutorials will explore “post-contemporary” visions of the future, a future in which art takes on a leading role in reshaping the realm of what is imaginable, possible or necessary.
“The Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève is thrilled to launch this free online cultural programme, which builds on the hundreds of videos, artist interviews and podcasts on art, philosophy, music and literature that we have already shared with the public through our digital platform, the 5th Floor,” says the Centre’s director and Agora co-founder, Andrea Bellini. ‘Open to artists and art lovers from around the world, Agora will be a vibrant new space for imagining, sharing and creating contemporary culture and art.’
Once students have completed the programme, the Agora lecture archive will be made available to the public free of charge via the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève’s digital platform, the 5th floor.
Agora’s initial horizon will be three years, with new groups of students selected each winter. Agora encourages candidates with an interesting artistic and philosophical background to apply to the programme, particularly those with proven experience in the visual arts, cinema, dance, performance art, theatre, music, architecture and design, or with research experience in philosophy. Applications will be evaluated based on the candidate’s previous work and letter of motivation. No academic qualifications are required.
Selected participants will be announced in mid-December 2025, with lectures and tutorials taking place from early January to mid-April 2026.
Applicants have until November 1st 2025 to submit their applications. Apply here.
