Harvesting Otherwise

A Year of Farming: Depicting the annual farming cycle and 39 accompanying tasks and events in Ethiopia. University of Cambridge, Center of African Studies Library (2024).

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS

EARN Annual Gathering 4-6/11/2026

Deadline: 20 May 2026

Co-organized by the PhD in Practice (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna) and the Institute for Collective Place Leadership, Teesside University 

Venue: Akademie of Fine Art Vienna

With this open call we welcome proposals for Harvesting Otherwise, the EARN Gathering 2026. Conceived as a multi-format convening, the gathering will bring together scholars, artists, curators, and community practitioners to explore non-extractive, relational, and embodied approaches to knowledge-making through the lens of “Harvesting as a mode of knowledge production.”

Gathering Synopsis:

The gathering will approach the concept of the harvest not only as an agrarian cycle, but as a conceptual and methodological framework through which epistemic practices can be rethought. We want to expand the notion of the harvest to consider how knowledge is grown, shared, and regenerated across communities and generations through the arts. By drawing on lineages of collective stewardship—from existing ritual and ancestral practices (with a focus on Africa and Latin America) to contemporary artistic models of communal resource-sharing and long-term collective sustainability, such as ruangrupa’s lumbung practice, which has been enacted at multiple scales and platforms—we ask how artistic research might “harvest otherwise.”

We are particularly interested in how “harvesting otherwise” is situated within specific places; how knowledge emerges through local ecologies, infrastructures, and communities, and how artistic research engages with the lived, social, and political realities of place. To that end, we want to design a program that is committed to epistemologies that resist extractive academic paradigms. Within harvest-centered modes of knowing, knowledge is relational; it is held within cycles of cultivation, gathering, offering, and return, while also remaining attentive to other-than-human temporalities.

We therefore invite contributions that explore how these relational and non-extractive practices intersect with civic structures and institutional contexts, shaping more inclusive and responsive forms of place-based leadership. How can we learn from these modes of knowing? How can we develop a shared vocabulary for artistic practices that engage land, ancestry, and community not as subjects of study, but as co-researchers? How can we foreground slowness, intuition, and incompletion as critical methodological values? How can we engage the logic of call and response as a way of understanding knowledge as dialogic, situated, and ongoing? And how can we insist on the multiplicity of ways in which knowledge is gathered, held, circulated, and redistributed, and how artists, communities, and institutions co-produce knowledge and steward shared futures?

Proposed Formats:

The gathering unfolds as a multi-modal gathering, including: 

– Storytelling circles 

– Roundtables/Panels and Keynotes

– Listening sessions 

– Film programs 

– Collective doing (workshops or otherwise) 

– Reflective spaces 

– Call-and-response

We invite proposals that engage the theme through any (or several) of these formats, or that propose new hybrid formats in the spirit of the harvest. Contributions may take the form of artistic interventions, performative lectures, participatory workshops, screenings with discussion, collective readings, sonic or embodied practices, and/or other situated responses that foreground relationality, slowness, and non-extractive knowledge practices.

Proposals can operate across different scales: from intimate, micro-propositions—such as bringing a short story (5 minutes or less) to a storytelling circle, or contributing a film to the screening programme—to more expansive, macro propositions that unfold over longer durations or collective formats. We particularly encourage formats that generate outcomes beyond the gathering, offering tools, methods, or insights that can be carried back into communities and place-based initiatives.

Submission Guidelines: 

Please submit your proposal as a single PDF to: harvesting@akbild.ac.at

Proposals should include: 

1. Title and format (e.g., Storytelling Circle, Listening Session, Collective Workshop, etc.)
2. Description (300–500 words): How your contribution engages the theme of “Harvesting Otherwise”and and how non-extractive principles are enacted in practice (e.g., reciprocity, shared authorship, long-term engagement, or community-led processes); what you propose to do; duration (if applicable); technical/spatial needs; and how it relates to non-extractive, relational, or embodied knowledge practices.
3. Short biography (max. 150 words) for all contributors.
4. Visual or sonic material (optional but welcome): 1–3 images, sketches, links to short video/audio excerpts (Vimeo, SoundCloud, or similar – max. 5 minutes total).
5. Preferred session length ( 30/60/90 minutes)

Language: English

We especially encourage proposals from artists, researchers, curators, and community practitioners working with or from the global minority, as well as those engaging ancestral, land-based, or more-than-human knowledge. We also welcome contributions engaging with underrepresented or transitional places in the Global North, including rural, post-industrial, and migrant communities navigating questions of regeneration, belonging, and care

Key dates:

– Submission deadline: 20 of May 2026

– Notification of acceptance: 15th June 2026

– Gathering: 4–6 November 2026

There is no fee. Travel and accommodation costs must be covered by the applicants. However, we can provide support letters for those who wish to apply for funding from their respective institutions or other sources. Technical and spatial support will be provided in accordance with the capacities of the venue.

EARN (European Artistic Research Network) fosters exchange, mobility, and dialogue in artistic research through gatherings, working groups, symposia, and publications. This 2026 edition continues that commitment by centering harvest as a living methodology of knowledge production.

For inquiries: harvesting@akbild.ac.at

We look forward to receiving your proposals and to gathering together in November 2026 to harvest otherwise.