Marking its fifth anniversary, SYSTEMA examines the structural mechanics of collective expansion. Working as a decentralised curatorial chain, this edition initiates by reconnecting with participants from previous editions. Each was invited to nominate an independent initiative, artist-run project to integrate this year’s assembly. Through this process, the act of invitation becomes an operative tool—expanding the network pre-existing relationships while enabling encounters.
Against Interpretation Club brings together musicians, DJs, and contemporary artists to explore performance, music, video and sound.
Curated by Berlin based Courtesy, Against Interpretation Club is a touring concept, previously presented at OHM / Tresor, RAUM Club, Schinkel Pavillon, Berghain/Panorama Bar and ICA London. Past contributors include Josephine Pryde, Lolina, Richard Hawkins, Mathis Altmann, Olga Hohmann, Jan Vorisek, Michel Wagenschütz, DJ Carpenter (Merlin Carpenter), DJ Vodka (Richard Sides), Camille Aleña & K. Desbouis, Lola von der Gracht, Rico Scagliola & Michael Meier, Ian Wooldridge, Samuel Haitz.
AGAINST INTERPRETATION CLUB
BELIN, DE / COPENHAGEN, DK
Benny's Video is a nomadic curatorial project for freaks and lovers, housed in temporary studio sublets around New York City since 2025, operated by Craig Jun Li.
BENNY’S VIDEO
BROOKLYN, USA
Common Pink is an art magazine that focuses on contemporary writing that reflects and circulates in autonomous ways and bethinks concepts of literary production. The magazine is the collaborative editorial practice of Helene von Schirach and Juri Groß and designed by Emil Feinweber.
COMMON PINK
NICE , FR / LEIPZIG, DE
Courtney Jaeger is an exhibition space in Basel.
Rather than accepting existing static models as inevitable or inescapable, Courtney Jaeger seeks to develop a framework that operates within and between the roles of a gallery, publisher and artist collective. In doing so, it aims to offer an alternative that is neither compliant nor predictable, but instead confronts and challenges established structures and modes of operation.
Through dialogue, negotiation, and critical discourse, Courtney Jaeger fosters community and collective engagement. Driven by research, curiosity, and a genuine interest in experimentation, we pursue a conceptual approach that responds to the present not with anxiety, but with confidence. In this way, we seek to articulate new, positive, motivating, and future-oriented realities for art, their practitioners, and their audiences.
COURTNEY-JAEGER
BASEL, CH
DOOM SPA was founded in 2015 by artist Roseline Rannoch and adapts existing spaces or creates new ones. DOOM SPA has made appearances in various formats such as GIFs, texts, exhibitions, performances and concerts at unique urban locations across Berlin. Since 2019, DOOM SPA has been active primarily in western Berlin, spending much of that time on the 13th floor of a high-rise behind Wittenbergplatz.
DOOM SPA
BERLIN, DE
GDL525 is a curatorial office and studio located in the Amsterdam South-Eastern suburb, on the 5th floor of Gouden Leeuw - a monumental concrete complex of 400 apartments built in 1974 - initiated in 2022 and directed by Filippo Tocchi (MRZB 2014 - 2024) and Rin Suemitsu. The curatorial proposal experiments possibilities of making the conditions we live and work within into materials for the staging of scenarios, exhibitions, performances and events.
GDL525
AMSTERDAM, NL
Established in 2020 in Marseille, Giselle’s Books is a non-profit organisation operating across two locations.
One site houses an exhibition programme and, at times, a writer residency; the other hosts a publishing house and a bookstore.
Between them, public events convene a community of readers and collaborators around publications as tools, evidence, and social infrastructure.
GISELLE’S BOOKS
MARSEILLE, FR
JULIET is an artist‑run curatorial project established by Maria Jooyoung and Laura Katzauer in Berlin. The project brings together practices in performance, music, and literature to explore how archival materials and texts can be activated in real space.
JULIET’s work is situated in the residential architecture of a shared flat balcony overlooking a courtyard. Architecture functions simultaneously as stage, audience space, and resonant chamber. The balcony serves as a point of address and encounter, recalling the act of speaking across thresholds and shaping how performances are seen and heard. Past activations have included harpsichord, flute, guitar‑based works, and text‑based musical formats, with future extensions toward violin, choir, piano, and vocal practices. Music structures duration, attention, and proximity, shaping how space is inhabited and shared.
The domestic setting is a key dimension of JULIET’s practice. Performances unfold at the threshold between private and public life, where neighbors and invited audiences may encounter work from balconies, windows, or shared outdoor spaces. With careful consideration of staging, sound, and presence, JULIET creates situations that unfold within the rhythms of everyday life.
JULIET
BERLIN, DE
Le Bourgeois is an artist-led project based in London.
LE BOURGEOIS
LONDON, UK
Founded by Roisin Rowe in 2025, Machine is a project space that supports artists to develop ideas and exhibitions in Glasgow’s greater Southside.
MACHINE
GLASGOW, UK
Since 2025, messieurs-dames has been an independent exhibition space run by writer and curator Eva Mendes. Located in an old apartment in Lisbon’s city centre, the programme is dedicated to the subliminal affinities between historical and contemporary artistic practises, some of which are brought to light for the very first time. Aiming to create a stronger bond between distinct artistic approaches, the year-round exhibition programme alternates between archival and historical projects, visual arts proposals and one month of interdisciplinary marathons.
MESSIEURS-DAMES
LISBON, PT
Portland (Zurich, CH) and Sunnyside (Helsinki, FIN) are sibling initiatives—both operating as not-for-profit spaces which embody a hybrid usage of space, bridging storage area, private environment, and public venue for art and audiences. They are both housed in former garages in post-industrial neighbourhoods in their respective cities.
Portland is Cristian Zabalaga and Leevi Toija.
Sunnyside is Isa Lumme, Erika Ryppieva, Eero Karjalainen, and Leevi Toija.
PORTLAND
ZURICH, CH
SUNNYSIDE
HELSINKI, FI
Prosopopoeia is an exhibition space, program and host for text- and language-based artistic practices. Founded in 2023 by Inga Charlotte Thiele, Prosopopoeia explores different forms of communality and articulates the consciousness that writing as well as art making are social gestures. Prosopopoeia (Greek προσωποποιία; prosōpopoiía) is a rhetorical device in which a speaker or writer communicates to an audience by speaking as another person or object.
Prosopopoeia offers a changing selection of publications and titles that can be purchased in the space. A bookshelf is a permanent feature of the space and remains in place even during exhibitions and events.
PROSOPOPOEIA
VIENNA, AT
skēnē is a space for contemporary art in Malmö, Sweden, established late 2023. Dedicated to research-based, critical practices and art theory, the space facilitates close collaborations with local, national, and international artists, collectives, and curators. Rooted in the conversation as a form of knowledge production, skēnē serves as a site where new situations emerge through a methodology of care and attentiveness; cultivating an environment built on trust, dialogue, and intellectual hospitality.
Past and ongoing projects include collaborations and presentations with IASPIS, Shanzai Lyric, Karen Archey, Simian (Copenhagen), Vermilion Sands (Copenhagen), Pachinko (Oslo), Ariel Feminisms, Shamica Ruddock, and The Open Secret.
skēnē
Malmö, SE
Speedy Grandma is a Bangkok-based art collective named after a half-bodied ghost granny who supposedly haunts the streets. We liked her style—chaotic, persistent, a little strange—so we borrowed her name and just kept going.
Founded in 2012, Speedy Grandma began as an independent art space showing work by underrepresented artists and friends. But like any good ghost story, she evolved. Over time, she’s become many things: a DIY exhibition platform, a gathering ground for critical questions, a clubhouse for weird ideas, and a quiet (or sometimes very loud) rebellion against how art should be done.
Granny is not a single person or fixed identity—she’s a shape-shifter, carried by the people who orbit around her. Sometimes she’s hosting exhibitions. Sometimes she’s hiding. Sometimes she’s just throwing a party that accidentally turns into an artist talk. Her strength lies in collective energy, sustained by friendship, curiosity, and a refusal to take herself—or the art world—too seriously.
Speedy Grandma is a place where things happen, even when we’re not sure what we’re doing (especially then). She’s not fast. She’s not old. But she’s still here. Haunting, hosting, and holding space for anyone who wants to join the mischief.
SPEEDY GRANDMA
BANGKOK, TH
Mahasarakham Mid-Field Art Space (MMFA)
Founded in a house in the middle of a rice field at the end of a village in Ban Khi community, Khao Yai sub-district, Kantharawichai district, Maha Sarakham province, this place was originally a gathering place for alumni of the Faculty of Fine-Applied Arts and Cultural Science, Maha Sarakham University, who often visited to stay, relax, socialize, practice the Isan way of life, or practice art. The reason for the high number of visitors to this place could be due to Maha Sarakham province's location in the heart of the Isan region, often referred to as the “navel of Isan”. Many alumni use the term “will go KOR TOR MOR” or “Mid-Field Maha Sarakham” in Isan, a play on the abbreviation for Bangkok (BKK), which represents the centralization of power in Thailand.
In 2018, after some members of the group had the opportunity to participate in the exhibition Common Exercises: Isan Contemporary Report at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre (BACC), or as some people may call it, the KOR TOR MOR Art and Culture Centre, some members initiated a tangible group. Initially, the group was known as Mahasarakham Mid-Field Artspace, a gathering of alumni from the Fine-Applied Arts and Cultural Science at Mahasarakham University, with the aim of expanding alternative spaces and fostering artistic expression among its members, art students, and community enthusiasts.
Originally, there were not many options for alumni to become artists, except for pursuing graduate studies at the first art university in Thailand, which has produced countless artists, or joining art competitions at the national level. As a result, Mahasarakham Mid-Field Artspace was founded with the initial goal of simply increasing the number of alternative spaces for alumni to display their work. However, at present, Mahasarakham Mid-Field Artspace focuses on opening up experiences, connecting, cultivating, and practicing art alongside the community’s way of life, without relying on safe spaces for the expression of ideas and aesthetics from art institutions. In 2023, Mahasarakham Mid-Field Artspace collaborated with TRA-TRAVEL/Osaka Art Hub and FIGYA, Japan. By conducting the exchange and organizing the Residency Program for the first time, we hope that Mahasarakham Mid-Field Artspace will play a significant role in completing the art ecosystem and promoting sustainable development within the community in the future.
— by Adisak Phupha, co-founder of Mahasarakham Mid-Field Artspace
Mahasarakham Mid-Field Art Space (MMFA)
Maha Sarakham province, TH
Switchboard was started in 2024 and is based in Berlin.
SWITCHBOARD
BERLIN, DE
The Racial Imaginary Institute (TRII) was founded to create spaces where artists and thinkers could examine how race shapes our collective imagination. Over the years, through exhibitions, publications, and public programs, TRII has sought to make visible the ways in which cultural life is constructed and contested. Each iteration of our work has asked how art might both reflect and reimagine civic life.
TRII Marseille extends that inquiry to a city whose layered histories and present realities embody many of the urgencies of our time. Marseille’s proximity to Africa and its position within Europe make it a site where questions of migration, belonging, and representation are lived daily. It is a city marked by extraordinary cultural vitality and deep social complexity—an environment that invites dialogue, experimentation, and the creation of new forms of relation.
Inspired by Villa Air-Bel, the wartime refuge that sheltered artists and intellectuals fleeing fascism in the 1930s,TRII Marseille seeks to reimagine what a place of refuge and exchange might look like today. The project envisions a home and gathering space for artists, writers, and cultural workers—American, European, and Mediterranean—who wish to think together about art’s role in times of crisis and transformation. Our intention is to root this initiative locally, collaborating with Marseille-based partners whose work already engages the city’s communities and histories. Through residencies, small exhibitions, and public conversations, we hope to foster connections that are both intimate and outward-reaching. The goal is not to found a new institution but to nurture an evolving network—a space of shared inquiry and creative solidarity.
In developing TRII Marseille, we hope to contribute to the region’s artistic and civic landscape by supporting dialogue across borders, disciplines, and lived experiences, and by asking, as always, how imagination might offer a form of resilience.
THE RACIAL IMAGINARY INSTITUTE
MARSEILLE, FR
Tonus is an artist-run space founded in 2014 by Jade Fourès-Varnier and Vincent de Hoÿm. The project was born out of a desire to support and showcase emerging local and international artists, offering a space for experimental exhibitions by new and up-and-coming talents. Tonus is built on a spirit of conviviality, generosity and authenticity. The program focuses on exhibitions developed in close collaboration with guest artists and curators. Over the years, Tonus has become a key player in the revival of the Parisian alternative scene, spotlighting a whole generation of artists.
TONUS
PARIS, FR
TseonTseon is a place where unnamed sensations and unfinished movements are allowed to stay. It makes room for what lingers and what takes time to take shape.
A curatorial project by Won Jin Choi.
TSEONTSEON
MARSEILLE, FR
Well Read is an art & design bookstore in Lisbon, Portugal. We foster an environment of critical curiosity, stocking fiction and non-fictions books from over 200 independent publishers from across the world.
WELL READ
LISBON, PT
Winona is an adhoc, on-again-off-again exhibtion space in Brussels, hosted by Charlie Usher, Sabrina Seifried, and Henry Andersen. Much of our program is informed by a sustained interest in different forms of display, from both in- and outside of exhibition-making.
WINONA
BRUSSELS, BE