FERTILE RESISTANCE: KADIST Collection-in-Residence is a summer-long program of film and video screenings launching a three-year collection-in-residence collaboration between the ICA and KADIST, the pioneering Paris-based contemporary art organization. Founded on the belief that artists make an essential contribution to a progressive society, KADIST supports work that engages urgently with the present day.

Drawn from KADIST’s collection, the six films gathered here travel across Chile, Whiskey’s Country (Aboriginal land), California, Asia’s modern-day trade hubs, Ukraine, and Guatemala. Together they span poetic and playful meditations on memory, belonging, and resistance; uncanny and critical explorations of labor politics, western historiography, and colonization; and searching studies of the social, sonic, and ecological impacts of war. Lush, immersive, and formally profound, many of these works have been presented at major international events including the Sharjah and Havana Biennials, the Venice Biennale, and past Documentas. They explore societies shaped by militarization, climate change, and ecological precarity — vanishing and reemerging landscapes, and the enduring power of artistic and civil resistance to remake the world.

FERTILE RESISTANCE: KADIST Collection-in-Residence is designed to encourage sustained viewing and return engagement, positioning the ICA Auditorium as both an exhibition space and a site of collective reflection.