Abstract Polariza(c)tion is an experimental, performance-based laboratory that responds to contemporary geopolitical conflicts and the increasing polarization of social and territorial spaces. Triggered by ongoing wars and their devastating human, social, and economic consequences, the lab investigates how performative art can function as a safe yet critical platform for exploring alternative modes of coexistence, dialogue, and peace-making beyond force-driven solutions.

The lab proposes a short performative experiment structured as a dynamic score to be activated by the participants. Participants are invited to collectively create temporary “living systems” through embodied interaction, attention, and relational decision-making. As with all living systems, this shared structure is fragile, unstable, and impossible to fully control. Within this framework, participants explore how power emerges, circulates, and shifts through proximity, negotiation, listening, resistance, and cooperation.

The research asks: How can we embrace and creatively adapt to situations of conflict? Is it possible to positively charge shared space and actively avoid polarization? Rather than aiming for harmony or consensus, the lab foregrounds tension as an inevitable and potentially productive condition of collective life. Conflict is treated not as something to be resolved, but as material to be experienced, negotiated, and reflected upon.

The performative experiment lasts approximately fifteen minutes and is followed by a brief collective feedback session. This reflection phase allows participants to articulate sensations, observations, and questions that emerged during the process, contributing to a shared evaluation of the lab’s provocations rather than fixed conclusions.

By situating embodied participation at the core of artistic research, Polariza(c)tion frames the experimental lab as a micro-political space in which power structures can be made visible, temporarily