New Exhibition on the Architecture of Democracy at CAFx

We’re thrilled to announce the next exhibition at CAFx: “Soft Civic Infrastructures” by Cultures of Assembly.

From February 19th, Cultures of Assembly—founded by internationally renowned architect, writer and scholar Markus Miessen—will take over our exhibition space at Halmtorvet 27 with an exhibition where architecture is mobilized not as representation but as procedure: a method for structuring collective presence, dialogue, and negotiation.

Turning away from the spectacle and familiar choreographies of democracy—with its broadcast debates, election booths, screaming breaking news—the exhibition invites the audience back into their bodies in face-to-face meetings with their fellow citizens, local actors, and policymakers.

Here the audience is forced to rethink what they want from their city and local democracy, in an exhibition building on the Cultures of Assembly’s experience from The Esch Clinics, a citizen assembly located in Luxembourg. To have the discussions in close, friction-filled, and possibly awkward and antagonistic meetings of people in a soft and screaming green landscape of carpets.

Developed in dialogue with Vesterbro’s civic associations, the project bridges The Esch Clinics’ research on participatory governance with Copenhagen’s established local democratic infrastructure. The central themes will be examined in a series of events taking place in the exhibition over the coming months. More info on those soon.

For now, join us for the exhibition opening on February 19th and meet Markus Miessen and César Reyes Nájera—we’ll be serving drinks! 🍷

About Cultures of Assembly

Since opening its doors in Esch-sur-Alzette (Luxembourg) in 2023, Cultures of Assembly has worked as a platform for democratic repair, spatial justice, and inclusive urban regeneration.

The research platform consists of leading figures within the effort of the last twenty years to think critically about participation and the architectures of democracy—among them Markus Miessen, who has published central books on the topic, including “The Nightmare of Participation – Crossbench Praxis as a Mode of Criticality” and “Agonistic Assemblies: On the Spatial Politics of Horizontality”.

Mobilizing international guest research residents working with local agents and communities, The Esch Clinics develops policy proposals that ensure a more heterogeneous approach to shaping the city’s future, while devising public campaigns that prepare the groundwork for those changes.

The exhibition is devised and curated by Markus Miessen & César Reyes Nájera (Cultures of Assembly, COA).

The exhibition is designed in collaboration with Michaela Prunotto and Gustav Nielsen as part of the Chair of the City of Esch at the University of Luxembourg

Architectures of Democracy at CAFx

Ballots, booths, and broadcast debates. We are entering an “election year” in Denmark, and democracy hardens into a familiar apparatus of scripts, stages, schedules, and sanctioned gestures: endless livestreams, rhetorical wars declared on social media, and screaming yellow breaking news.

This is one way democracy can take shape. But democracy is not singular, and in a time of international uncertainty and unrest, we might be compelled to ask how it can be strengthened, maintained, and renewed.

The two upcoming exhibitions at CAFx therefore zoom in on the fundamental ways in which architecture shapes democracy: how rooms shape conversations, and how conversations shape decisions.