This time last year, An Institution is not an Island took place at KASK & Conservatorium in Ghent, responding to a deanery meeting room on campus filled with portraits and busts depicting central figures in the institution’s history—with one exception, all men. 

The project invited Sanie Irsay, Nikolay Karabinovych, Celine Aernoudt and Lázara Rosell Albear to develop site-specific artistic interventions in this room and other spaces across campus, as an opportunity to collectively question institutional, historical, infrastructural and spatial hierarchies.

An Institution is not an Island was documented throughout, forming a short film of the same title. Situated somewhere in between a vlog and a documentary, the film captures the behind-the-scenes of installing each intervention at KASK & Conservatorium throughout May 2025. It highlights the project as a collaborative, collective process shaped by encounters and conversations, reflecting on the notion of an ‘intervention’ as not only a singular act or final presentation, but a continuous gesture of negotiation, adaptation, and engagement.

From 3–5 June, the film will be shown at Komplot in a continuous loop and extended spatially with echoes of each artistic intervention reactivated in Komplot. We hope to see you there!