The Global Informality Project conference will examine informality in artistic media, practices, creative labour, and cultural production. It will bring together artists, academics, and cultural practitioners to explore how informal networks, unwritten rules, and hidden practices shape cultural production across different contexts.

The accompanying exhibition 'The Impossible Encyclopaedia: Informality in the Arts' at Pushkin House (January–February 2026) will showcase artworks that challenge conventional categorisation. It will explore themes of decolonisation, visibility and invisibility, subversion, protest, and self and environmental care.

The conference and exhibition are organised as part of the interdisciplinary Global Informality Project, led by the FRINGE Centre in partnership with Pushkin House and the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies.

Programme, Thursday 15 January: 

9.30am Registration and coffee

10am Opening: Plenary Panel

Interventions by: 
1. Alena Ledeneva
2. Sergei Katran
3. Mark Lipovetsky

11am Panel 1: Informality and Creative Labour
Convener: Dzmitry Suslau

Interventions by:
1. Margarita Kuleva, “Between the Lines: Informal Creative Labour and Political Subjectivity of Cultural Institution Workers”
2. Ioanna Neophytou, “Cleanliness, Formality and Power: A Critical Inquiry Into Manual Labour”
3. Riitta Valijarvi and Jenni Salminen, “Critical Meme Art targeting Informal Networks in Finnish Society”

12.00 Panel 2: Informality and Creative Labour 2 (online)
Convener: Margarita Kuleva

Interventions by:
1. Vida Sačić, “Informal Networks in Participatory Projects”
2. Astrid Bridgwood, “Inside the House: Institutional Critique, Art World Authority, and Nan Goldin’s Activism”
3. Jepkorir Rose Kiptum, “Rebuilding, Art Infrastructures, Artistic, Curatorial, Practice, Nairobi”
4. Kapil Paharia, “The Informal Handling of Payment in Amateur Theatre in Delhi”

1pm Lunch

2pm Panel 3: Visibility / Invisibility
Convener: Katya Sivers

Interventions by:
1. Kitty Brandon-James, “The Night Movement: Camouflage or the Right to Opacity” (paper; in-person)
2. Ksenia Butuzova, “Rebuses as Informal Art in Late Imperial Russia” (paper; in-person)
3. Zlata Mechetina, “Temporary Architecture of Bass: Ephemeria of Club Hardcore Music” (paper; in-person)
4. Elli Leventaki, “Disrupting the Institution: A Curatorial Response to Informal Cultural Labour” (presentation; online)
5. Jelena Sofronijevic, “Chewed Up: Informal Representations of the Body through War” (presentation; online)
6. Katya Sivers, “Background: On the Aesthetics and Politics of Image Space” (paper; in-person)

3.30pm Coffee

4pm Panel 4: (Secret) Artmaking while working
Convener: Simon Farid

Interventions by:
1. Isobel Mei, “Double” (in conversation; in person)
2. Elena Denisova-Schmidt, “Using AI-generated Art to Explore Cheating Among Students at Chinese Universities” (in conversation; in person)
3. Ioanna Neophytou, “Hands in Bleach” (in conversation; in person)
4. Jacqueline Lääne, “Holding Something That You Can’t Have” (in conversation; in person)

5.00pm Reception with performances and displays

Image: Ioanna Neophytou, Hands in Bleach (still), split-screen documentary, 27 min., Greece/France, 2019. Courtesy of the artist.