Institute for Provocation

The Institute for Provocation (IFP) is a Beijing-based workspace and think tank hosting residencies, research projects, workshops and lectures stretching the borders between art, architecture and design. As a workspace, IFP focuses on the thinking process before or even beyond the actual creation of an artefact: the collection of dramaturgical information, the testing of different architectural scenarios, the summarizing of existing artistic vocabularies and realized projects, experimenting with new media or disciplines, and so on. Cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural interaction serves as the Institute's main facilitator. Rather than similarities, IFP proposes differences (in culture, in vocabulary, in paradigms, in disciplines) as actual provocations of the research and thinking process of artists, architects and designers. IFP has a specific interest in research that proposes cross-disciplinary strategies to collect information, read or produce work or artistic/architectural experiment. IFP also opens up for research in disciplines other than the arts that can provide the contemporary arts with new insights, modes of thinking and/or research strategies. Residency proposals for China show a link with the local context without being limited to it.