Cosmophilosophy for the Arts: Rethinking Production

Cosmophilosophy for the Arts: Rethinking production is a program that invites artists, researchers, and cultural practitioners to rethink production as a field shaped by forces that exceed intention. Rather than approaching making as a linear movement from idea to object, the program explores production as an unstable zone where perception, material agency, and political and cosmological structures converge.

At the core of the program is a series of four theoretical sessions led by Giovanbattista Tusa, entitled “Theoria: A Very Practical Introduction to Contemplative Thinking.”

These sessions move through six conceptual thresholds – Crisis, Psyche, Cosmos, World, Energy, Matter – treated as passages into deeper modes of perception.

This philosophical terrain is activated through three workshops, with feminist collective Claire Fontaine, Alexandre Estrela and Michael Marder. Their workshops do not illustrate the seminar’s themes; they unsettle them.

Feminist collective Claire Fontaine brings a practice grounded in conceptual militancy and forms of artistic resistance, while artist Alexandre Estrela works with expanded perception, experimental image systems, and matter’s own expressive capacities. Philosopher Michael Marder interrogates fabrication as an operation of epinoia mediating intelligence and nature. By rethinking nature as artisan and artifice as a productive principle, his workshop examines how fabrication generates form through processes that bind creation to growth, corruption, and decay.

The program culminates in a public day of activation, during which participants collectively articulate the questions, processes, and fragments of research that have emerged throughout the seminar. The final event is not conceived as an exhibition of resolved works, but as an open exposure of processes.

Location

Avenida Vasco da Gama 11, Cascais, Portugal

Workshops (11am – 2pm)

Claire Fontaine: May 23 (Saturday)

Michael Marder: May 26 (Tuesday)

Alexandre Estrela: May 29 (Friday)

Note: All workshops are open to the general public.

Contributors:

PROGRAM BIOGRAPHIES

Cosmophilosophy for the Arts: Rethinking Production

GIOVANBATTISTA TUSA

Giovanbattista Tusa is a philosopher affiliated with the Nova Institute of Philosophy (IFILNOVA) in Lisbon, where he has been the coordinator of the X-CENTRIC FUTURES research seminar on philosophy, art, and climate change. He is the director of Planetary Conversations, and the founder of ECOPRAXIS at Galeria Zé dos Bois.

His most recent publications include Terra Cosmica: Traces of Georealism (Tenement Press, Bristol and London, 2024), Ecocosmismo: Terrae Incognitae da Filosofia (Cultura e Barbarie, Florianopolis, 2024), Ciò che rimane del futuro. Il tempo della decostruzione (Mimesis, Milano, 2024), and The End, co-authored with Alain Badiou (Polity Press, Cambridge, 2019), translated into French, Portuguese, Spanish and Italian.

During his residency at AiR 351, he is working on a manuscript on mysticism and elemental philosophy and is designing and leading the research-creation program “Cosmophilosophy for the Arts: Rethinking Production.”

ALEXANDRE ESTRELA

Alexandre Estrela is a multimedia artist (film and video) and teacher. He was born in Lisbon, where he lives and works. He holds a PhD from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Lisbon; a Master’s degree in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts, New York (1999); and a degree in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Lisbon (1996).

He was awarded a grant by the Ministry of Culture (1997–2000), and was artist-in-residence at International Studio & Curatorial Program (New York, 2002–2003) and Domaine de Kerguéhennec (Brittany, 2010).

He has exhibited regularly since the early 1990s, both individually and collectively, in Portugal and internationally. His works are part of several public collections, including Centro de Arte Moderna, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation; Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea do Chiado; Serralves Foundation; and FRAC Bretagne.

Estrela will represent Portugal at the Venice Biennale 2026.

CLAIRE FONTAINE

Claire Fontaine is a collective, conceptual, and feminist artist founded by Fulvia Carnevale and James Thornhill in Paris in 2004. Since 2017, they have lived and worked in Palermo.

Their work has been exhibited internationally and is present in numerous museum collections. The collective operates as a critical and conceptual position within contemporary art, questioning authorship, artistic branding, and the homogenization of cultural production in times of censorship and crisis.

The 60th Venice Biennale (2024), titled Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere, took its title from their neon series Foreigners Everywhere. Their works were presented across the Giardini and Arsenale, including a major installation of 60 neon works suspended over the lagoon at the Gaggiandre. Their practice was also featured in the Vatican Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2024 in the exhibition With Your Eyes, installed inside the women’s prison of Giudecca.

Their writings have been published in English, French, Italian, and Portuguese by Semiotext(e), Diaphanes, DeriveApprodi, and GLAC. Monographs include Foreigners Everywhere (Koenig Books, 2011) and Newsfloor (Koenig Books, 2020).

MICHAEL MARDER

Michael Marder is IKERBASQUE Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU), Vitoria-Gasteiz.

His most recent books include The Phoenix Complex (2023), Time Is a Plant (2023), co-authored with Edward S. Casey, Plants in Place (2024), Eco-Freud (2025), Metamorphoses Reimagined (2025), co-authored with Anaïs Tondeur, Fiori di fuoco (2025), and Of Joints and Other Articulations (2026).

More information: michaelmarder.org

Following an international open call, the selected participants for the seminars led by Giovanni Tusa are:

– Catarina Real

– Dela Christin Miessen

– Ilaria Sponda

– Isabel Medeiros

– Jean-François Daisy Krebs

– Karin Ferrari

– Maja Jankowska

– Nabuurs&VanDoorn

– Pablo Quiroga Devia

– S4RA – Sandra Araújo

– Teresa Arega