KISMIF Conference (2014-) is an international academic/cultural/artistic event based in the city of Porto (Portugal) and focused on discussing and sharing information about underground cultures, DIY practices, urban arts and other related topics. KISMIF focuses on cultural practices that are used to face more massive and uniform forms of cultural production/creation/mediation, by activating an anti-hegemonic ethos centered around the aesthetics and policies of the daily ‘arts of doing’.
KISMIF is, so far, the only congress in the world that analyzes the theory and practice of underground scenes and DIY cultures as increasingly significant cultural forms in a global context of precariousness and uncertainty.
The KISMIF Conference has a multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspective, open for contributions from the global community of researchers, artists and activists who work on all aspects of underground scenes and DIY cultures and conduct their research within a plural methodological approach. The objective is to debate not only about music, but also other artistic fields such as cinema and video, graffiti and urban art, theater and performing arts, literature and poetry, radio, programming and publishing, graphic design, drawing, architecture, or even cartoons and comics.
The first edition of the KISMIF Conference was held in 2014 and focused on ‘Underground Music Scenes and DIY Cultures’. The second edition (2015) was dedicated to the theme ‘Crossing Borders of Underground Music Scenes’. The third edition (2016) promoted a discussion about ‘DIY Cultures, Spaces and Places’. The fourth edition took place in 2018 and was focused on ‘Gender, differences, identities and DIY cultures’. The fifith edition that took place in 2021 focused on the theme of ‘DIY Cultures and Global Challenges’. The sixth edition happened in 2022 and it was about ‘DIY Cultures, Sustainability and Artistic Ecosystems‘.
The next edition will occur in 2024 and it will be focused on ” DIY Cultures, Democracy and Creative Participation’. All editions of the KISMIF Conference also offer a summer school / advanced seminar, where participants can discuss/analyze in more depth some specific issues around these themes.
Each edition of the KISMIF Conference, in addition to its scientific program, also consists of a diverse social and cultural program formed by a set of artistic events, with a focus on underground music and its artistic expressions. It is intended, therefore, to provide all participants with a unique sensory and scientific experience in terms of global DIY cultures.