Empowered Care

This research will explore power dynamics within care structures for precarious groups (the homeless, sans-papiers, asylum seekers). The artistic focus will be on theoretically and practically re-imagining ethics through love as a relational aesthetics. This will provide a unique potential to integrate emotions and spiritual philosophy in a political context. This work grounds itself in the theories and practices of socially and politically engaged community art aiming at challenging established infrastructures of the state by exploring constructive alternatives; love in its public and political dimension as a force for solidarity; and resistance against the alienation produced by capitalism. Ultimately, it is aimed at developing the method of “empowered care” by tackling the challenges of empowerment of precarious groups without compromising the sustainability of the care structure. The practice-led research will take place within the everyday life of long-term housing projects in occupied buildings aiming at collecting, cultivating and collectivizing empowering practices of care while reflecting on the pitfalls of power asymmetries between facilitators and caretakers. It will explore the political potential of autonomous housing communities to be spaces of resistance and grounds for true alternatives that can spread and multiply, and contribute to a nurturing exchange between the fields of anarchist culture and community artist within the context of care ethics.