Acupuncturing Accra

Acupuncturing Accra is an ongoing metropolitan-scale artistic research and mapping project commissioned by and developed with the Foundation for Contemporary Art, Accra (FCA), under the umbrella project ACCRA—one50 (2026–2027). Over the past term, selected participants from the I oA, Angewandte, together with Accra-based young architects and artists, collaboratively investigated three sites across three neighborhoods of Accra—Adabraka, Dansoman, and Madina. These open spaces mark specific waypoints where everyday practices, a multiplicity of networks, and spatial expressions shape the city's urban fabric and social life in the context of Accra's 150th anniversary in 2027.Through processes of walking, photographing, drone-based observation, scanning, mapping, drawing, and counter-mapping, the project revealed the city’s latent spatial potentials and alternative urban narratives.

This term, the lab focuses on the (re)presentation, distribution, and archiving of the research material emerging from the Acupuncturing Accra field lab in September 2026. Participants will develop a series of booklet-format publications that curate and communicate the project's mappings, counter-mappings, and spatial investigations. Particular attention will be given to questions of authorship, knowledge production, visual representation, and public dissemination, exploring how artistic research can circulate across institutional, civic, and digital platforms while contributing to ongoing debates on urban transformation and collective memory.

Lead: Baerbel Mueller, with Abdul-Rauf Issahaque in collaboration with the FCA and invited guests

closed team, no new participants can be taken at this point