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 artistic intervention '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 intervention 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, Friday 16 January:

9.30am Coffee Morning at the UCL

10am UCL homage to Jeremy Bentham and UCL tour, Bloomsbury walk to Pushkin House

11.30 am Panel 5.
Convener: Diana T. Kudaibergen

Interventions by:
1. Alena Ledeneva, “Suspended Punishment” performance and artwork, and the art composition "Nine Pieces, How Many Patterns?"
2. Hoyee Tse, "Clashing with the State: The Visual Depiction of Artist-Protestors in the 2019–2020 Hong Kong Social Movement"
3. Halyna Bakhmatova, "Informality of cultural and social life as the only opportunity to survive in the frontline city Kherson (for those who remained and for refugees)" 
4. Clara Cheung, "Performing the Hyperlocal Histories at the Mobile Museum of Harcourt Roads"
5. Anastasia Korableva, "Between the Seen and the Unsaid: Poetic Street Art in Authoritarian Space"
6. Natalija Stepanović, "Poor body, Big plans: Informal protocols of belonging in contemporary queer writing" 
7. Mahi Shah, "Making Room: The Politics of Space and Affect in Contemporary Cuban Art"  

1pm Lunch

2pm Panel 6. Performing Knowledge
Convener: Denis Maksimov

Interventions by:
1. Denis Maksimov, “Ancient to Contemporary: Transmitting Knowledge Informally” (paper; in-person)
2. Nikolay Karabynovich, "Say No More: On Transitional Hallucinations in the Chat Chippy Tea Era” (lecture performance; in person)
3. Nikhil God, “Informality as Resistance: Film Festival Networks as Critical Art Infrastructure” (paper; online)
4. Supraja Ramesh, “Cleaving the Artefact: Glitching Hyper-Sensory Radiance in Mandeep Raikhy’s Hallucinations of an Artefact (2023–)” (paper; in-person)
5. Sweety Taur, “Happy to meet you” (lecture performance; in person)

3.30pm Coffee

4pm Panel 7. The Art of Gathering: Creative Community Beyond Institutions
Convener: Chiara Amini

Interventions by:
1. Sophia Kok, “Criminal objects. Clandestine Publics in the Encounters of Activists and Police” (in-person)
2. Maria Morales, “Woven Histories, Defiant Gazes: Fabric, Refusal, and the In/Visibility of Black Women in Firelei Báez’s Paintings” (online)
3. Sara Wolferstan, “Archaeology South-East’s Excavation and Community Project in Whitechapel”
4. Simon James, “Deep Listening to the Unheard”
5. Katie Beinard, “Acts of Transfer: Reimagining Projects Through Collaborative Documentation Processes”
6. Dimitra Gkitsa & Chiara Mignani, title TBC

5.30pm Closing: Plenary Panel 2

Alena Ledeneva

6pm Reception

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