From facilitation to emotional labour

What does it mean to be hospitable, make alliances, or navigate conflict in the sphere of contemporary art? Five European nonprofit art spaces—La Escocesa, OFF-Biennale, < rotor >, Shtatëmbëdhjetë (17), and tranzit.cz—present a new publication for cultural workers, curators, and artists. The book is available in Albanian, Czech, English, German, Hungarian, and Spanish free of charge at www.emotional-labor.eu in various formats (print-at-home, EPUB) and as plain text. The volume is entitled We Cannot Say That We Have Arrived Somewhere, Yet Neither Can We Say That We Haven’t: A Glossary of Commoning Terms, and it summarizes the experiences and learnings of the five socially and politically engaged organizations with community-based and participatory projects at the intersection of visual art, social work, and activism. The book comprises seventeen chapters tackling themes such as self-empowerment, facilitation, emotional labor, hospitality, anti-ableism, and intersectionality.

❝The term “minority” often implies subordination or lesser importance, reinforcing stigmas or stereotypes deeply rooted in colonial legacies. In contrast, “Global Majority” acknowledges that people of African, Asian, Latin American, and Indigenous descent make up the majority of the world’s population. This shift in terminology challenges Eurocentric views that position these groups as minorities, despite their numerical and cultural significance. It also exposes how colonial frameworks have historically erased and abused non-Western epistemologies, reinforcing systemic oppression.❞ — excerpted from the text Global Majority