Algo-Rhythmic Ideation Assembly (ARIA) is a summer school hybridizing art, education, and theory with immersive (role)play, which we initiated and curated in Ljubljana in 2023 and 2024. ARIA took the form of a week-long intensive bringing together an international cohort of artists and thinkers for a public programme and closed-door workshops embedded in an immersive role-play experience created by OMSK Social Club.
The summer school adopted a role-play format to break free from entrenched ways of being and thinking, both individually and collectively, in a time of political and ecological upheaval. Inspired by mystical techniques, contemporary cultural theory, speculative thinking, occult traditions, and digital technologies, ARIA sought to prototype other possible selves, collectivities, and worlds, allowing for new forms of subjectivities to emerge and bleed into our consensus reality.
In our talk, we will outline the context, motivations, approach, and challenges of designing ARIA. Drawing on practices and discussions with the mentors and participants that shaped its two editions, we will reflect on how methods involving embodied and participatory fictions, such as role-playing, might shift understandings of identity, collectivity, and agency beyond identity politics. We will ask what possibilities this opens for creative practice, curatorial work, and institutional change.
Tjaša Pogačar is a curator and editor-in-chief of Šum. She curated the 34th Ljubljana Biennale, exhibitions at Kunsthalle Bratislava, viennacontemporary, SUMO, Museum of Contemporary Art Ljubljana, Cukrarna, among others. She co-created ARIA and runs the Plaza Protocol off-site project. Her writing appeared in e-flux, ETC, Fotograf, and publications by L’internationale, MG+MSUM, and elsewhere. She is pursuing a PhD at AVU Prague, exploring exhibition-making as a collective world(build)ing practice.
Brandon Rosenbluth b. Los Angeles, who graduated from Bard College, is an art and music curator and practitioner based in Ljubljana. He is the co-creator/curator of ARIA and curator for the Indigo Festival. His texts have been published by OFLUXO, Atlas der Daten Körper, Kamizdat, Cukrarna, and ŠUM, and he has hosted ŠUM and Cartogenesis podcasts. Counted amongst his artistic and curatorial collaborators are Mariechen Danz, Saša Spačal, Aïsha Devi, CTM, Sonica, Urvakan, ISO LABS, and Reforester festivals.
