Symposium "Practices of Cooperation"
Proposals for the collaborative project "Digital Sovereignty for Art Academies"
At the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe in collaboration with the Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe and the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart
Karlsruhe, November 4–6, 2026
Today, "cooperation" and "collaboration" are widely regarded as core values, shaping artistic and academic practice in particular. At the same time, many educational and institutional structures remain heavily focused on individual performance, competition, and clearly defined responsibilities.
This contradiction is particularly evident in the digital realm, as digital cooperation is often reduced to the use of digital tools and apps. However, particularly in inter- and transdisciplinary contexts, it also means negotiating shared processes, critically examining tools, sharing knowledge, tolerating uncertainty, and learning new forms of collaboration.
With the symposium "Practices of Cooperation", we aim to examine cooperation and collaboration at art and design academies more closely, identify challenges, and at the same time explore new forms of digital collaboration.
Who and What We Are Looking For
The symposium is conceived as a working conference - a space for collective thinking, experimentation, learning, documenting, and further development. It is a place where formats, questions, and forms of collaboration can emerge - whether practical, critical, artistic, technical, educational, activist, or institutional.
We are therefore seeking a wide variety of contributions: Innovative and artistically-activist processes, situations, tools, interventions, and practices are just as welcome as traditional academic presentations.
We expressly welcome submissions from people with diverse perspectives, experiences, and working methods, regardless of institutional affiliation or academic status. We particularly welcome perspectives from:
- Art and design
- Digital education
- Open-source and FLOSS contexts
- Hackspaces and community infrastructures
- Research and teaching
- Activism and commons practices
- Collective work contexts
What interests us
- Where and how is digital collaboration learned?
- Which institutional structures foster or hinder collaboration?
- Do digital systems connect our perspectives and ways of working, or do they create new boundaries, dependencies, and exclusions?
- Which digital tools align with a culture of sharing and collaborative learning, as well as with the working methods, perspectives, - and values at art colleges?
- How can art colleges collaboratively design digital infrastructures?
- What experiences from hackspaces, FLOSS communities, or collective art practices can be applied?
- How can digital sovereignty be understood as a cultural and pedagogical practice?
- How can knowledge, responsibility, and decision-making processes be shared?
- How can digital systems remain open to critical scrutiny, understandable, and malleable?
- And how can spaces be created where uncertainty, experimentation, and failure are possible?
Submit Proposals
Anyone interested in contributing to the symposium is invited to send us a brief outline of their idea, along with a short CV or brief introduction of the participants (e.g., as an abstract, outline, audio or video file, links, or in another format), to: symposium@atelier-dsk.org . Submissions can be sent until the end of June.
Submission Deadline: June 30, 2026
Contact
Atelier Digitale Souveränität
symposium@atelier-dsk.org