A public talk by Eduardo Castillo-Vinuesa, Director of TBA21Academy, organised by SATA in collaboration with LACMA’s Digital Leaders ‘Toward an Infrastructural Activism: Applied Critical Ecologies For A More-Than- Human World’, 14 June 2026

During a recent session hosted by the Society Arts Technology Asia (SATA), Eduardo Castillo Vinuesa, Director of the TBA21 Academy, offered a deep dive into how contemporary art can move beyond mere representation to enact real-world ecological and political change. Operating as the research and action wing of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Foundation, the Academy functions less like a traditional cultural programmer and more like an experimental laboratory. By exploring the Earth’s hydrosphere—particularly the oceans, which make up 97% of it—the Academy creates unique frameworks where art, science, policy, and activism intersect. Its operations are built on three pillars: research agendas focusing on conservation and ecological governance, active programming lines, and physical laboratories distributed across Madrid, Venice, Jamaica, and various nomadic deployments.

In Madrid, the Academy partners with the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza to host Organismo, an applied research program that fundamentally challenges the orthodox role of the museum. Instead of acting merely as a space to collect and display objects, the museum becomes an active agent in addressing socio-ecological systems. Every year, interdisciplinary teams of artists, researchers, and institutions embark on an eight-month process to tackle pressing themes. Recent cohorts have examined how the tourism industry operates as a terraforming force shaping entire landscapes, and how society can build resilience using alternative financial mechanisms around climate disasters, such as the severe wildfires and extreme weather events impacting the Iberian Peninsula.

Beyond fixed locations, the Academy’s nomadic deployments bring cultural intervention directly into geopolitical arenas. At the UN Ocean Conference in Nice, France, TBA21 presented Ocean Futurism, a collaboration with the Stockholm Resilience Center and the artistic collective Inferstudio. Instead of simply warning about the future, the project utilized “scenario fictions”—speculative short films projecting 50 years forward—to depict potential realities involving deep-sea mining and supranational oceanic governance. These films were then used to “backcast” with policymakers, helping them determine what specific decisions must be made today to avoid (or achieve) some of these outcomes. This nomadic approach is further sustained by The Current, a multi-year fellowship that embeds researchers in specific ocean regions, such as the Indian Ocean, to generate deep, localized knowledge that occasionally crystallizes into major physical exhibitions.

In Venice, Italy, the Academy’s headquarters at Ocean Space—located within the restored Church of San Lorenzo—serves as a testing ground for eco-social practices and environmental repair. Recognizing that Venice sits atop a highly fragile ecosystem, the Academy goes beyond community engagement to pioneer new forms of ecological intervention. An example is Nature Speaks, an initiative and policy lab lead by Pietro Consolandi and Amalia Rossi where Venetian citizens together with scholars and activists are working to draft a legal proposal to grant personhood to the Lagoon of Venice under Italian and European law. Taking this a step further, Ocean Space is adopting the Zoöp model, establishing a Lagoon Council that officially integrates non-human entities—like the lagoon itself—into the institution’s actual decision-making structure.

A radically different environment shapes the Jamaica laboratory, where TBA21-Academy  partners with the Alligator Head Foundation at the East Portland Fish Sanctuary. Here, the focus shifts from “segregation conservation”—the traditional model of simply keeping humans out of nature—to designing sustainable, relational models between human communities and marine habitats. A striking example of this approach is the work of resident artist Marco Barotti, who explores bioacoustics. By recording the acoustic signature of a healthy coral reef and broadcasting those specific sounds through underwater sonic sculptures into degraded reefs, researchers have found that the healthy sounds actually encourage new marine species to return, visibly aiding the reef’s recovery within a matter of weeks.

Ultimately, TBA21 Academy demonstrates the unique power of interdisciplinary collaboration, proving that when artists strip away their traditional professional boundaries, they can help scientists and policymakers reframe questions and discover entirely new approaches. During the event’s Q&A, Castillo Vinuesa candidly addressed the complexities of this work, noting that its agility depends on constant critical vigilance to avoid institutional blind spots. To capture the true value of these intangible, long-term interventions, the Academy is even challenging how cultural success is measured—moving away from traditional Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), like exhibition foot traffic, and instead prototyping alternative impact assessment indicators to accurately track deep, structural impacts on the world.

On Activism vs. Representation in Art
Q1: How do you transition from simply “raising awareness” to actually acting upon the world?
Edu’s Take: Awareness matters, but infrastructural activism uses art to intervene directly in the conditions that shape reality. This kind of work can help shift political paradigms, but it also involves trial, error, and the acceptance of failure as a necessary part of the process. 

On the Value of Art in Science and Policy
Q2: Why bring art into policy and science spaces, such as the lagoon project?
Edu’s Take: True interdisciplinarity requires stepping out of one’s professional framework and learning to think from another position. Artists can help reframe the initial questions, opening up unexpected responses that more rigid disciplinary approaches might miss.

On Navigating Institutional Conditions
Q3: How do institutional structures affect this kind of activism?
Edu’s Take: Every institutional framework has its own contradictions. Some structures offer safeguards and accountability, but can also become slow, bureaucratic, or politically gridlocked. Others allow for greater agility and experimentation, but require constant critical vigilance to avoid institutional blind spots. The challenge is to remain aware of these tensions while preserving the capacity to act.

On Working with Scientists Globally
Q4: How do you persuade scientists to collaborate with artists?
Edu’s Take: In Europe, these collaborations have become increasingly common and institutionally supported, even within highly technical environments such as supercomputing centers. In other contexts, however, more rigid or hierarchical structures can make it harder to introduce artistic practices into scientific domains, especially when the value of art is misunderstood as merely aesthetic.

On Measuring Impact
Q5: How do you justify funding and measure the impact of such intangible projects?
Edu’s Take: Traditional Key Performance Indicators, such as counting attendance, are often inadequate for transformative artistic practices. TBA21 is currently working with a network of institutions to prototype alternative impact assessment indicators capable of measuring qualitative impact rather than only quantitative.

On Blind Spots
Q6: With work operating at such a large scale, how does an organization identify its own blind spots?
Edu’s Take: Institutional insight often exists in the brief space between being an outsider and becoming fully embedded. In the first months of joining an organization, one can combine a fresh perspective with emerging internal access. After that, it becomes essential to rely on honest external conversations and trusted critical voices to remain aware of what the institution can no longer see.