AGIT is a public residency space which engages with the historical materials from left and social movements to address contemporary questions and present day struggles.
Our work operates across three different areas;
- exploring movement histories and contemporary politics in Berlin and beyond;
- developing international collaborations focused on building left history and culture;
- experimenting with different technologies to develop ways of building and distributing open access archival collections.
Central to AGIT is a series of funded residencies, which will explore different historical materials to make critical interventions in our present. AGIT is a nascent organisation so each residency will leave something behind to help us shape the space going forward, be that a collection of material, or something else. The residences are open to individuals, groups or collectives involved in political organising, theory, cultural, artistic or technological production.
To support this work AGIT will also be engaged in creating physical collections, digital resources and open data sets around political and social histories. AGIT will build on the rich history of radical publishing, libraries, and self-archiving in the left, by developing new forms of archival dissemination, ways of making things public and building technological and social infrastructures of open-access and exchange.
AGIT runs an ad-hoc public programme that builds on the work of these residencies through activities, such as exhibitions, reading groups, work-sessions, screenings, talks, workshops, and publications.
The people involved in AGIT work on a number of ongoing open archiving and software projects; Leftove.rs digital archive and Pan.do/ra as well as supporting other archival initiatives that build collections and resources around labour and social movement histories. We will draw on this experience to collaborate and share skills and knowledge with our residents. The founders of the space are also involved in MayDay Rooms (London) and Ox2620 (Berlin). AGIT is currently a volunteer-run informal organisation supported by an advisory board of friends and supporters.
The space is also used on an ongoing basis by a number of social and labour movement groups, and self-organised education initiatives for meetings and other activities.
We are open to people running their own events at Nansenstrasse 2, where we can help resource with space, equipment and time. Drop us an email if you have something you want to run.
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