GROUND TALK
Tuesday, 18.11.2025, 6.00 p.m. | IfA Forum

Renan Laru-an
Soil Accompaniment: Exercises for Architecture after Architecture

In his lecture, Renan reflects on the Project Soil-beings (Lamánlupa), currently being exhibited at the Venice Biennale of Architecture. He elaborates on the capacity of soil and soil-beings to produce methods of accompaniment (companionship or even comradeship) within and alongside the development of architecture. To do so, his lecture draws on experiences during the course of research-making and field communion across the Philippine archipelago in preparation for the Biennale, in which the project encountered a persistent display of architectural imagination from non-architects. While discussing soil being architecture, Renan will talk about “creative exercises” and how soil can transform architectural imagination by transforming initiatives/projects into an adventure in relationality that offers another durable foundation for practising the built environment. The lecture concludes with a discussion on the vulnerability and tenacity of such a commitment: where else can it be accommodated when disciplinary boundaries are enforced? And what practical and epistemic support does it need to be taken seriously by professionals in architecture and engineering?

Renan G. Laru-an is a curator and theorist in contemporary arts. He creates exhibitionary, public, and research programs that study “insufficient” and “subtracted” images, subjects, and artistic works unsettled by development and integration projects. Renan is the founder of DiscLab | Research and Criticism, co-founder of the Philippine Contemporary Art Network (PCAN) at the Vargas Museum of the University of the Philippines and was formerly the artistic director of SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin. His practice includes the organisation of festivals, biennials and cross-disciplinary initiatives in Prague, Singapore, Jakarta, Sharjah and Yokohama. Involved in pedagogy and the institutional development of art, he is artistic advisor to the Istanbul Biennale (2024-2029) and to esea contemporary Manchester (since 2023), lecturer at Art in Context - Universität der Künste Berlin, and faculty Fellow at the Centre for Arts, Design, and Social Research. He is the current curator of the Philippine Pavilion at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia (2025).

The lecture is followed by impulse presentations by Prof. Dr. Antoine Vialle (Chair for Transitioning Urban Ecosystems) and artist and researcher Marina Resende Santos.

Moderation: Prof. Dr. Anke Hagemann and Natacha Quintero González
Organisation: Dr. Juliana Canedo, Francesca Ceola, Prof. Dr. Anke Hagemann and Natacha Quintero González