L’Internationale and the Democracy Pavilion for Europe

L’Internationale’s Democracy Pavilion for Europe aims to reenergize democracy as a desire and practice. It takes the arts’ potential as a starting point for imagining new epistemologies and ethics of living together within the limits of the planet. The pavilion responds to the current political moment and the fact that the idea of democracy that undergirded the post-1945 European order is in peril. Fostering open, creative debate, the pavilion serves as a source of inspiration to reframe art and museums as spaces for experimentation and analysis that critically engage current developments in Europe. The Democracy Pavilion is the response of L’Internationale to the European Cultural Foundation’s call to promote critical thinking and radical imagination. The panelists represent institutions affiliated with L’Internationale, a confederation of seven European art museums from Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands, Turkey, Sweden, Slovenia, and Ireland. Taking the Democracy Pavilion as their core idea, the presentations together explore new relations between arts, heritage, and emancipatory politics.