Michele Masucci is an artist, researcher and lecturer at the Royal Institute of Art. Their work combines performance, writing, archival research and collective methods to investigate how political imagination takes shape through language, labour, care, organisation and shared infrastructures.
At the Centre for Art and the Political Imaginary (CAPIm), Masucci works as a researcher. Alongside their teaching and research, they help plan and carry out the centre’s research programme, courses, public events, institutional collaborations and visiting-researcher activities. They also convene research seminars and reading groups, including Our Common Grounds, which focuses on rural revolt, agrarian struggle and practices of commoning, and Modes of Domination, which examines racial capitalism, colonialism and liberation struggles.
Masucci’s artistic research project Territories of Imagination: The Republic of Maschito begins with the 1943 revolt in Maschito in Southern Italy, when villagers challenged fascist authority and briefly established a self-governed republic. Through archival research, fieldwork, oral accounts, performance, song and gesture, the project examines rural struggle, collective organisation and the material conditions of political imagination.
Teaching is an integral part of Masucci’s artistic and research practice. At the Royal Institute of Art, they are responsible for the course Experimental Writing, contribute to MA essay seminars, and regularly develop elective and intensive courses. They have previously taught at Konstfack and regularly contribute courses, lectures, seminars and workshops at institutions including HDK-Valand and Stockholm University of the Arts (SKH). Their current teaching at HDK-Valand includes Politics of Friendship and the course What Does It Mean to Change? Alongside university teaching, Masucci is involved in independent and self-organised forms of education, including reading circles, night-study formats and public seminars.
Masucci holds a PhD in Medical Science from Karolinska Institutet, an MFA and a post-master’s degree in Art and Architecture from the Royal Institute of Art, and a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from Södertörn University. They are also a doctoral candidate in Critical Theory at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.