Join us in Matera for COOP SUMMIT 2026: an assemblage of happenings
“Matera has been scripted as shameful, primordial, rupestrian, apocalyptic, messianic, pre-modern, photogenic, subaltern, redemptive, peripheral, anthropological, mediterranean, cinematic, romanticized, scenographic, stratified, unfinished. Each description reveals a dimension of Europe’s self-construction. To gather here, then, is not incidental. It is to enter a terrain where the contradictions of modernity are sedimented in stone.” —Excerpt from Archipelago Weaver 2026 Elisa Giuliano's introduction to Roaming Assembly#33 ~The Script That Passes Through Here ~ a field of unresolved presence
Dear friends,
The DAI as Roaming Academy is temporarily rooting there, where it is welcomed as a friend by friends. Mutual friendships were firmly cemented in March 2026, when DAI first landed in Matera for Confluence#4. Against the backdrop of ongoing genocide, imperial warfare and the glooming rise of techno-feudalism, the DAI community returns to the 10.000 year old city of Matera for COOP SUMMIT 2026—the culmination of this year’s COOP study trajectory. COOP constitutes one, out of DAI's four distinctive curriculum components and foregrounds intensive collaboration and group work empowered by the collaboration between DAI and its core partners:
- De Appel Amsterdam
- Archive Ensemble (Berlin, Dakar, Milan)
- Hosting Lands (Copenhagen)
- If I Can't Dance I Don't Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution (Amsterdam)
- Neringa Forest Architecture (Nida, Vilnius, Zurich)
- SAVVY Contemporary (Berlin, Limbe)
As COOP convenor, DAI embraces that transformative education thrives outside static institutions. By commissioning self-organised cultural platforms to guide roaming, transdisciplinary study groups, DAI bridges the academic and the vernacular to address pertinent contemporary concerns. By championing alternative, less extractive research methodologies, it prompts a critical rethinking of how art, theory, and the world intersect.
After a year of assembling across Europe, the DAI now shares the experimental outcomes of collaborative research, curated by each of the six COOP study groups. Join us for three days of thoughtful intra-action in Matera, Southern Italy, on July 15–17, 2026.
We look forward to welcoming you!
Warm greetings,
Philippa Driest, education leader COOP
&
Gabriëlle Schleijpen, artistic director | head of program DAI,
on behalf of a large number of amazing people: please scroll to see their names and roles.
For PRESS & SOCIAL MEDIA acquires: please contact Giulia Crispiani at giulia.crispiani@dutchartinstitute.eu.
PROGRAM OVERVIEW
Wednesday, July 15
Casa Cava, Giardino del Silenzio, TAM (Tower Art Museum)
17:30 | Aperitivo at Casa Cava
18:00–20:00 | Folding Forests
20:00–21:00 | Dinner* at Casa Cava
~ meeting point is at 21:30 at TAM bookshop
21:30–23:30 | Moving Through Porosities
Thursday, July 16
Parco Scultura la Palomba ~ the bus leaves at 18:00 from Sant’Anna
18:00–20:00 | Summoning Water from Stone: Words to be Passed On
20:00–21:00 | Dinner* at Parco Scultura la Palomba ~ Casa Paradiso
21:30–23:30 | The Sweet We Make When Words Aren’t Enough
~ at 00:00 the bus leaves back to Sant’Anna
Friday, July 17
Le Monacelle, Parco Scultura la Palomba
17:30 | Aperitivo at Le Monacelle
18:00–20:00 | Never for the first time
~ at 21:00 the bus leaves from Sant’Anna / dinner* will be served on location
21:30–23:30 | Be a little slow, a little late. (Re)fusing. (Im)printing. Conspiring.
~ at 00:00 the bus leaves back to Sant’Anna
*Dinners are upon reservation, please read information below
PROGRAM PER COOP
Wednesday, July 15
17:30 | Aperitivo at Casa Cava
18:00–20:00 | COOP study group TENDING FORESTS IN OUR MINDS
~ starting from and returning to Casa Cava
DAI & Neringa Forest Architecture present
Tended over and through time, forests archive political inflictions and ideologies. To listen to the echoes of erosion and catastrophe, regeneration and abundance Amalie Sveske Ourø, Ella Tegenbos, Emma Caspers, Hannah van der Schaaf, Keit Bonnici, Lío Spinnewijn, Richard Liu, Veronika Marxer, Yindi Chen with tutors Jurga Daubaraitė, Egija Inzule and Jonas Žukauskas bring memories into movements.
Invitation to Folding Forests
Wednesday, July 15
21:30–23:30 | COOP study group Publishing Practices – In the Wake of Erasure
at TAM (Tower Art Museum)
~ meeting point is at 21:00 at TAM bookshop
DAI & Archive Ensemble present
Refusing romanticized readings of Matera, Ayris Taban, Bea Secchia, BiBi, Dariya (dar) Trubina, Ginevra Collini, Ivor Glavaš, Jamie Donald, Josse Vessies, Liam Warren, Moss Lutz, Salome Erni, Tomaso de Luca with tutors Chiara Figone and Kamila Metwaly observe Sassi** as living formations shaped by displacement, contamination and cycles of repurposing that resist fixed narrations of “primitive” and “modern.”
Invitation to Moving Through Porosities
Thursday, July 16
18:00–20:00 | COOP study group The Salt of the Earth
at Parco Scultura la Palomba
~ the bus leaves at 18:00 from Sant’Anna
DAI & De Appel Amsterdam present
Moving between geology and speculation, field recording and folklore, between the politics of listening and acts of attunement, Agnese Spolverini, Aimeé Phillips, Asmaa Barakat, Erik Peters, Javier Rodriguez Perez, Jip van der Hek, Oliver Turvey, Rana Kelleci, Sarmistha Bose, Shiva Yourdkhani with tutors Noor Abuarafeh and Marina Christodoulidou ask how narratives travel across soundwaves, carrying resistance across time and space.
Invitation to Summoning Water from Stone: Words to be Passed
Thursday, July 16
20:00–21:00 | Dinner* at Parco Scultura la Palomba ~ Casa Paradiso
21:30–23:30 | COOP study group Cemeterial Ecologies, Grieving and Zombie Time
~ at 00:00 the bus leaves back to Sant’Anna
DAI & Hosting Lands present
Inviting you to take your grief to the table—and in the collapse of all language and spectacle, Agnese Krivade, Billie Meiniche, Dimitris Chimonas, Giuliana Beya Dridi, Magdalena Beliavska, Masha Domracheva, Noa Storrs Gokul, Sanna J. Hirvonen, Seta Astreou-Karides, Sharon Romie, Shoshana Walfish, Tara White with tutors Aziza Harmel and Harun Morrison tread, knowing that we owe our freedom to the corpses sleeping beneath us.
Invitation to The Sweet We Make When Words Aren’t Enough
Friday, July 17
17:30 | Aperitivo at Le Monacelle
18:00–20:00 | COOP study group Body as Memory to Sing
at Le Monacelle
DAI & If I Can't Dance I Don't Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution present
Gathering as one squeaking body reenacting a rehearsal, Ayse Idil Idil, Carlos Azeredo Mesquita, Dory Samuel, Henriks Zegners, Ilja Schamlé, Leo Hugendubel, Nika Pećarina, Olfa Arfaoui, Patrick Freriksen, Rikke Lundgaard Ebling, Sophie Dandanell with tutors Frédérique Bergholtz and Angelo Custodio begin and end with listening. An air mattress full of moist breath in 40+° Matera—a foreign body and it listens.
Invitation to Never for the first time
Friday, July 17
~ at 21:00 the bus leaves from Sant’Anna / dinner* will be served on location
21:30–23:30 | COOP study group Native, Primitive, Insurgent—Arrows of God
~ at 00:00 the bus leaves back to Sant’Anna
DAI & SAVVY Contemporary present
God is a search. To search is to chew and swallow a kinship deadened by forced removal, concealment and forbidding. Anahi Saravia Herrera, Dana Andrei, Despina Sanida Crezia, Egle A. Benkunskytė, Fagner Lima, Gianfranco Colla, Muyang Teng, Nanna Stigsdatter Mathiassen, Ratri Notosudirdjo, Zhuang Leng and tutors Mokia Dinnyuy Manjoh and Daniellis Hernandez Calderon all brought salt and hot things. Soup. Salt. Flame. Fabric still warm from the press. Inky paper. Sound you walk into. Singing after. Laughs and laughters. Hot things.
Invitation to Be a little slow, a little late. (Re)fusing. (Im)printing. Conspiring.
*Dinners are upon reservation, please read information below
**The Sassi di Matera are cave dwellings carved directly into limestone cliffs.
*DINNER RESERVATION
It is possible for visitors to join us for our communal dinners, but our chefs need to know in advance! If you haven't booked yet please get in touch with giulia.crispiani@dutchartinstitute.eu.
Dinner (+one glass of wine) costs 10€.
Payment in cash only ~ at the venue.
Without timely reservation we cannot guarantee your meal.
DAI Confluence#4:
Framework & core local partners
Framework: Philippa Driest in close conversation with Elisa Giuliano and Gabriëlle Schleijpen.
Guest Writers: Sara Alberani, Dalia Maini, Niccolò Masini
Local Research, Guidance and Support: Marco Laterza
Local Facilitator: Mattia de Vito
Local Partner: Mauro Acito (Tower Art Museum, TAM)
Crew present on the ground, making it all possible:
Production Leader Facilities and Technical Support: Peter Sattler
Senior Co-ordinator Logistics & Hospitality: Jacq van der Spek
Chef de Cuisine: Sophia Zbinovsky Braddel
Crew making it all possible remotely:
Inhouse Design: Lauren Alexander & Hanna Rullmann
Production Assistant: Georgia Stellin
Financial Assistant: Corine van der Wal
Travel Arrangements: Hemminkways
Visit BULLETIN#4 and BULLETIN#7 to see how COOP SUMMIT 2026 is embedded in longer work periods in Matera.