New Agents is a program that brings together a group of people from across arts fields from the Arab world, whose practices are singular, future facing, and committed to public engagement. The participants come from across territories whose pasts and presents are defined by overlapping cultural conditions, but whose futures remain wholly unpredictable given the precariousness of the Arab world. This reality, while harsh, is also ripe with possibility, since the constant changing of this landscape provides ample opportunity to imagine, speculate, and experiment. New Agents is an invitation to harness this chaos and put it to use towards an inventive future vision that is a result of collective processes and desires.
Practically, New Agents is a working group collaborating and learning together over an 18-months period, which will eventually lead to co-developing a speculative proposition. This proposition (for collective action) would be made public, in the form of a live event such as a conference, festival, exhibition, or something else.
The six participants joining the program come from a limited pool of candidates who have been invited to apply due to the relevance of their practices to such a collective endeavor. To fulfill New Agents’ aspirations, the participants in the program must be ambitious, collaborative, curious, and precise. Mophradat provides each participant with a stipend, along with making available a budget for each person to attend an international event useful to their professional development during the course of their participation.