1st International Conference
Ruralities, Sustainable Developments & New Ecologies
29 & 30 October 2025
Conference Directors: Anna Maria Guasch (Universitat de Barcelona), Julia Ramírez-Blanco (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), Olga Sureda (Universitat de Barcelona).
Organized by: Research Project “Visuality and Geoesthetics in the Age of Ecosocial Crisis” (VIGEO, PID2022-139211OB-I00), Universitat de Barcelona
At a time of multiple ecological, economic, and social crises, rural areas are gaining renewed attention as spaces of possibility, resistance, and imagination. In contrast to models that concentrate resources in cities, widening the rural-urban gap and subordinating the countryside to urban and industrial growth, new cultural geographies and ecological epistemologies are emerging—ones that revalue rural knowledge, ways of life, and sustainable practices. These rural modalities present alternatives to both the hypercapitalist urban centres and to industrial agro-economies which include factory farming, monocrops and extractivism. Across many territories, especially in the Global South and in peripheral areas of the Global North, there is a genealogy of rural communities that have long developed ways of life based on care, self-management of resources, and cooperation. Far from being residual, these forms of organization are now being reimagined as viable alternatives for envisioning sustainable futures in both rural and urban contexts.
The 1st International Conference “Ruralities, Sustainable Development and New Ecologies” stems from this plural reality to open a critical and transdisciplinary space for reflection on the growing role of ruralities in shaping resilient, diverse, and sustainable futures. The program is organized into three thematic panels, offering complementary lines of inquiry:
- Panel 1 · Rural Imaginaries & Translocal Practices explores the symbolic construction of the rural through a translocal lens, examining how links are forged between geographically distant contexts that are nonetheless connected through artistic, cultural, or activist practices rooted in shared approaches to the rural as a site of critical action and creative potential.
- Panel 2 · Art, Agroecologies & Institutional Critique investigates the intersections between contemporary artistic practices, agroecology, and strategies of institutional critique. This panel focuses on initiatives that operate in rural contexts to imagine new production models (both cultural and agricultural), rethinking the relationship between art, territory, and sustainability.
- Panel 3 · Art & Rurality Between Centers and Peripheries addresses art and rurality projects in the tension between centers and peripheries. With a special emphasis on the Spanish context (which hosts this conference), this panel engages with case studies that trace the geography of rurality within a complex multi-focal scenario.
Together, these panels offer a complex, multidimensional reading of ruralities—not only as physical geographies but also as epistemic, symbolic, and political spaces. Through dialogue between researchers, artists, activists, and local agents, this conference seeks to share situated knowledge and foster collaborative networks that contribute to imagining more just, sustainable, and liveable futures from rural contexts.
PROGRAM
First day,
October, 29.
9:00-9:10 h.
Inscriptions,
9:10-9:30 h.
Welcome. Martí Peran. University of Barcelona Director of the project Visuality and Geoesthetics in the Age of Ecosocial Crisis (VIGEO, PID2022-139211OB-I00).
Presentation: Anna Maria Guasch, Julia Ramírez-Blanco, Olga Sureda.
PANEL 1. Rural Imaginaries & Translocal Practices
9:30-11:00 h.
Keynote: Wapke Feenstra. Myvillages. Rural Undercurrents.
Myvillages is an artist-led collective founded in 2003 to challenge the cultural dominance of the urban by focusing on the rural everyday as an active and critical ground. Their work explores how the rural can offer (un)learning, rerooting and new perspectives in art. Feenstra co-edited The Rural (DoCA-MIT, Whitechapel Gallery) with Kathrin Böhm and joined the Rural Imaginations research group at University of Amsterdam from 2018.
https://www.myvillages.org/ https://www.ruralschoolofeconomics.info/
Moderators: Martí Peran & Olga Sureda,
11:00-11:30 h.
Coffee break.
11:30-11:50 h.
Teresa Weissert (University of Kassel). What if the rural becomes real? Encountering the Simultaneity of Emancipatory Imaginaries and Regressive Realities in Rural Practice. In person.
11:50-12:10 h.
Barbara Benish (ArtMill, Czech Republic ). In person.
12:10-12:30 h.
Bharti Chhiber (University of Delhi, India). Rooted Expressions: Ecofeminism, Indigenous Art, and Agroecological Resistance in Rural India. In person.
12:30-12:40 h
Asli Suner and Iñaria Mazzoleni (NAHR , Italy and Turkey). Coexistence in the Rural Space: A Case Study Transect from the Italian Orobie Prealps. Online.
12:40 -13:30 h.
Discussion.
PANEL 2. Art, Agroecologies & Institutional Critique
15:30: 17:00 h.
Keynote. Fernando García Dory./INLAND (artist). A possible mutual reconfiguration of arts and the rural , and working at the 1:1 scale
Artist and agroecologist Fernando García Dory proposes understanding “the local” not as a fixed place, but as a relational context. His long-term project INLAND functions as a mobile para-institution that adapts to different geographies—publishing books, producing exhibitions, and making cheese—while activating shepherding practices, cooperative structures, and cultural infrastructure.
https://inland.org/about/what-is-it/
Moderators: Anna Maria Guasch & Julia Ramírez-Blanco
17:00-17:20 h.
Coffee break.
17:20-17:40 h.
Jule Kurbjeewll (Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Lisbon). To Eat with One Hand Touching the Ground. In person.
17:40- 18:00 h.
Nora Hauswirth (Instituto Tera Kuno – Pesquisa e Divulgação Agroecológica, an organization. Manaus, Brazil). Artistic Practices Rooted in Action: Education, Agroecology and Cultural Engagement in the Amazon. Online.
18:00- 18-20 h.
Paolo Bosca, Alessandra Faccini, Rosita Ronzini, Filippo Berta (University of Turin, University of Pollenzo, Italy). Im.Permanente Paradiso: preliminary notes on dwelling methodology. In person and online.
18:20-18;40.
Chu Hao Pei (Visual artist, Singapur). The Secret Rice Society. Online.
18:40-19:30 h.
Discussion
Second day,
October, 30.
Sala Jane Addams. 4th Floor. Faculty Geography and History. Universitat de Barcelona (UB).
PANEL 3. Art & Rurality Between Centers and Peripheries
9:30-11:00 h
Keynote. Iñaki Estella Noriega (Complutense University, Madrid). Carboneras: “escenas de la vida rural”
Art historian and tenured professor at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid’s Department of Art History. His research has focused on the history of contemporary art in Spain, with special attention to official and marginal narratives, as well as the Fluxus movement. Among his contributions is the pioneering study of an artists’ colony in Almería during the 1960s and 1970s, a hardly researched episode that connects landscape, periphery and avant-garde.
Moderator: Julia Ramírez-Blanco
11:00-11:20 h.
Coffee break.
11:20-11:40 h.
Laia Manonelles (University of Barcelona). Utopías de reconstrucción rural: arte y ecología en China. In person.
11:40-12:00 h.
Ane Rodriguez Zaitegui (Universidad del País Vasco). Comunidad como propuesta. Coexistencia interespecie en las montañas Orlické, un acercamiento a la práctica de Les / Woods. In person.
12:00-12:20 h.
Maga Viva – Aline Comignaghi and Silvia Bustamante (France). Corps-territorire. Online
12:20- 12:40 h.
Eulalia Grau Costa, Arnau Moreno Grau, Joan Miquel Porquer Rigo: Aproximaciones artísticas de revalorización de los oficios artesanales de la lana y la ruralidad. In person.
12:40-13:00 h.
Tai Lomas (Co-founder of NECTAR – Rural Centre for Artistic Creation, Research and Production). In person.
13:00- 13-45 h.
Discussion and final remarks.
Registration and contact
Participants interested in attending can register at the following FORM.
For any additional information, please email us at ruralitiesconference@gmail.com
Scientific Committee: Joaquin Barriendos (Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey), T.J. Demos (UC Santa Cruz), Martí Peran (Universitat de Barcelona), Isabel Valverde (Universitat Pompeu i Fabra, Barcelona).
© Fernando García Dory, Lament of the Newt, Gwuanju Biennale, 2016 /Courtesy of INLAND