The Donbat Institute is currently run by a small team, reflecting its present phase of research, formalisation and initial activation. This page presents the current team and the form of governance envisaged for the Institute’s future development.
Current Team
Jérémie Pujau
Founder and current Director of the Donbat Institute
Jérémie Pujau is a French artist and filmmaker based in Berlin. His practice develops through situated interventions within the social field, at the intersection of image, politics and public space. His interests include collective behaviour, narratives of power, social structures, colonial continuities, nationalism and the political economy of art.
His work has taken the form of performances, videos, sculptures, photographs, books, documentaries and installations, before progressively moving towards an invisual approach and intervention-based systems.
In 2017, his documentary Voyage au Territoire du M² Artistique, devoted to Fred Forest, was presented at the Centre Pompidou as part of the artist’s retrospective. In 2018, his project Mise à jour received a response from President Emmanuel Macron. For the 2025/26 session, he joined ENDA — École nationale d’art de Paris, an institution of the Biennale de Paris, and has directed the Paris Biennale in Berlin since spring 2026.
Alongside his artistic practice, he maintains an ongoing practice in film and audiovisual production as a director, camera operator, editor, colourist and DIT. He collaborates with artists, cultural institutions and international productions, including Netflix, Constantin Film and X Filme. In 2016, he took part in the filming of Ai Weiwei’s Human Flow in the Middle East. He also works regularly for ARTE as a colourist, notably on the series Unhappy.
Within the Institute, Jérémie Pujau develops the Donbat methodology, the Institute’s theoretical orientations, its action research projects, texts, intervention systems and forms of transmission.
Marc Zory-Casali
Graphic design, solidarity catering, advice and friendship
Marc Zory-Casali is a graphic designer, art director, illustrator and musician based in Berlin. A freelance graphic designer since 2006, his practice focuses primarily on print, publishing, layout, visual identity and art direction.
His career has led him to work with a wide range of organisations and clients: independent winegrowers, communications agencies, record labels, cultural institutions and artistic projects. His graphic work spans a variety of formats — books, printed materials, logos, record covers, posters, visual identities, illustrations and web projects — with particular attention to clarity, formal precision and the responsibility of graphic design within an image-saturated environment.
Within the Donbat Institute, he supports the project’s visual development through its graphic identity, communications materials, layouts, signage and editorial forms. He thereby helps to make the Institute legible, identifiable and transmissible.
Alongside his graphic design practice, Marc Zory-Casali has worked in professional kitchens for several years. This experience informs his involvement in the Institute’s culinary and collective dimension, particularly through the development of the solidarity restaurant and the forms of encounter, hospitality and conviviality associated with it.
As a musician, Marc Zory-Casali was also the bass player for HushPuppies, a French independent rock band. This experience extends his interest in collective forms, independent cultures and spaces of cooperation.
Proposed Governance
The governance of the Donbat Institute is conceived as an extension of its fundamental principles: vigilance, ethics, responsibility, interdependence and the non-concentration of power.
As it develops, the Institute is intended to evolve towards a collegiate organisation structured around the three areas of R.I.T.: Research, Intervention and Transmission.
Collegiate Leadership
The Institute is envisaged as a structure led by a triumvirate, with each directorate corresponding to one of the three areas.
The Research Directorate would be responsible for overseeing research programmes, theoretical production and methodological development.
The Intervention Directorate would translate research into concrete systems for action, in connection with the situations encountered and their contexts.
The Transmission Directorate would disseminate the knowledge produced by the Institute and develop its educational formats, publications and sharing tools.
This collegiate leadership is intended to prevent the concentration of power and maintain a balance between the production of knowledge, situated action and transmission.
Strategic Council
A strategic council may support the Institute’s major orientations. It would bring together people from complementary fields, including research, law, the social and solidarity economy, ecology, artistic practices, public action and fieldwork.
Its role would be advisory. It could help validate medium- and long-term development priorities, examine structural partnerships and ensure compliance with the Institute’s ethical charter, without becoming involved in its day-to-day management.
Operational Team
The operational team will progressively bring together the people responsible for the Institute’s projects, infrastructures and programmes.
It may include roles related to audiovisual production, publications, training, law, digital tools, administration, solidarity catering and project coordination.
Its role will be to implement the decisions of the collegiate leadership, coordinate ongoing projects and propose improvements based on concrete experience in the field.
Contributing Community
The Donbat Institute aims to draw upon a wider community of contributors: associate researchers, artists in residence, educators, partner lawyers, economists, developers, practitioners, local organisations and people concerned by the situations being addressed.
This community constitutes a living space for collaboration, reflection and experimentation around Donbat.
Oversight Bodies
Certain systems developed by the Institute require specific forms of oversight.
The Philanthropic Speculation protocol may be supported by a committee responsible for ensuring the ethical coherence of beneficiary organisations, contractual monitoring, the traceability of resales and the transparency of redistribution.
The dynamic and solidarity-based pay model may be overseen by a dedicated evaluation committee. Its role would be to examine the system’s consistency with the principles of Donbat, assess its effects, ensure that it remains collectively understandable and propose adjustments.
These committees are not intended to make the organisation unnecessarily cumbersome, but to ensure that the Institute’s most sensitive systems can be monitored, assessed and corrected.
Annual Contributors’ Assembly
An annual contributors’ assembly may bring together the Institute’s partners, participants, collaborators and contributors.
It will provide an opportunity to assess completed actions collectively, discuss future orientations and incorporate feedback from projects and interventions. It will not necessarily hold direct executive power, but will contribute to guiding the Institute’s development.
Principles of Governance
The governance of the Donbat Institute is based on several structural principles:
non-concentration of decision-making power;
shared responsibility;
possible rotation of responsibilities;
transparency of processes;
cooperation between Research, Intervention and Transmission;
annual publication of an activity and impact report;
the possibility of an internal ethical alert mechanism.
This organisation is conceived as an evolving structure. It must enable the Institute to develop without losing the requirements upon which Donbat is founded: acting in a situated, responsible, proportionate and transmissible manner.