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FEINART Lecture juni 2021
From Art Institution to Community Portal
As part of the FEINART Lecture Series, BAK’s general and artistic director Maria Hlavajova presents an online lecture on 3 June 2021, From Art Institution to Community Portal.
FEINART (The Future of European Independent Art Spaces in a Period of Socially Engaged Art) is a PhD training network funded by the EU, in partnership with several universities and art spaces, amongst which BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht.
Talk Maria Hlavajova
In her talk, Hlavajova speaks from within the practice of instituting otherwise at BAK: a process of institution making as a continuous succession of interconnected “instituent” events, driven by the urgencies of the present. Within this process, BAK has evolved as a base where various forms and archives of knowledge—from art to embodied research, theory, lived experience, memory, and social action—converge around the question of how to be together otherwise? From within this composition, and in sync with the imperatives of social, cultural, and ecological justice, there emerges a collective practice of thinking through and reimagining the conditions of the world, and enacting these alternative imaginaries through propositional aesthetico-political experimentation.
With a focus on relation, collectivity, and coalitionality, such an understanding of institutional practice involves steering away from (western-modern) conventions premised on disinterested spectatorship, expert culture, disciplinary divisions, and representation, among others. It similarly avoids the (colonial-acquisitive) paternalist, instrumentalizing, and depoliticizing attitudes toward communities that customarily prevail across much of the art world in the global north. How can an art institution circumnavigate these sticky tropes so that a form of solidarity with its community can emerge to guide its institutional work? One that nonetheless recognizes that the art institution is always already implicated in the production of inequalities and disenfranchisement? One that respects that the community exists as a body of relations decidedly distinct from this institutional establishment? What forms of being together otherwise can be practiced in and with the cultural institution to come?
Driven by these concerns, BAK is collaboratively rethinking the art institution into a community portal. A porous gateway out of (and back into) the “normal order of things” of current conjuncture, the portal is what disrupts the spatial and temporal politics of this “normalcy” to open a (momentary) possibility to leave its unfreedoms behind, mobilizing unforeseen forms of encounters and otherwise improbable political subjectivities. Understanding such encounters as instances of collective anticipatory learning for and of the not-yet, here is where alternatives to today’s realities can be prefigured, rehearsed, and lived—as if it were possible.
As these processes are underway, the talk consists of tentative notes from BAK’s collaborative work and ongoing conversations. It further draws on knowledges from BAK’s ongoing research itinerary Propositions for Non-Fascist Living (2017-ongoing), and in particular the project Trainings for the Not-Yet, 2019/2020, co-convened with artist Jeanne van Heeswijk, as well as a continuing exchange with BAK’s 2020 Fellows. RegistrationThis lecture is organized by the FEINART network and can be attended free of charge via registration through Eventbrite, sign up via this link.
15 februari 2023, 10.00-18.00
A series of practical publishing workshops hosted by an active squat and anarchist social center in Amsterdam and organized by the Bookbinding Studio of Sandberg Instituut/Rietveld Academy and Lila Athanasiadou.
Community Portal
4 februari 2023, 13.00-18.00
Using the sancocho (a pan-Latin American soup with no fixed recipe) as a tool for research and encounter, Mercado Lourdes (Bogotá, Colombia) will host and organize a series of field meals. These events activate and connect the multiple affects that have resulted from ongoing research with local producers into the biodiversity of the territory.
Community Portal
16 december 2022, 15.00-17.00
In all continents, people have built matriarchal cosmologies sustained by complex rituals. In the advent of main modern religions and after centuries of colonizing invasions, the goddesses of antiquity were suppressed by the patriarchal structures that consolidated our era. However, they found ways to speak to us in the language of patterns, melodies, and poems. This workshop uses the voice as a method to reveal the presence of goddesses.
Community Portal
27 januari, 18.30–29 januari, 21.00 2023
During these sessions—part of the bASIC aCTIVIST kITCHEN (b.a.k.) program in collaboration with Berend Bombarius, De Voorkamer and BAK, basis voor actuele kunst—we want to collectively explore the topic of setting up community kitchens. Different strategies, tools, methodologies, and contexts are explored to learn more about the challenges and opportunities in the practices and theories of community kitchens.
Community Portal
With a focus on relation, collectivity, and coalitionality, such an understanding of institutional practice involves steering away from (western-modern) conventions premised on disinterested spectatorship, expert culture, disciplinary divisions, and representation, among others. It similarly avoids the (colonial-acquisitive) paternalist, instrumentalizing, and depoliticizing attitudes toward communities that customarily prevail across much of the art world in the global north. How can an art institution circumnavigate these sticky tropes so that a form of solidarity with its community can emerge to guide its institutional work? One that nonetheless recognizes that the art institution is always already implicated in the production of inequalities and disenfranchisement? One that respects that the community exists as a body of relations decidedly distinct from this institutional establishment? What forms of being together otherwise can be practiced in and with the cultural institution to come?
Driven by these concerns, BAK is collaboratively rethinking the art institution into a community portal. A porous gateway out of (and back into) the “normal order of things” of current conjuncture, the portal is what disrupts the spatial and temporal politics of this “normalcy” to open a (momentary) possibility to leave its unfreedoms behind, mobilizing unforeseen forms of encounters and otherwise improbable political subjectivities. Understanding such encounters as instances of collective anticipatory learning for and of the not-yet, here is where alternatives to today’s realities can be prefigured, rehearsed, and lived—as if it were possible.
As these processes are underway, the talk consists of tentative notes from BAK’s collaborative work and ongoing conversations. It further draws on knowledges from BAK’s ongoing research itinerary Propositions for Non-Fascist Living (2017-ongoing), and in particular the project Trainings for the Not-Yet, 2019/2020, co-convened with artist Jeanne van Heeswijk, as well as a continuing exchange with BAK’s 2020 Fellows. RegistrationThis lecture is organized by the FEINART network and can be attended free of charge via registration through Eventbrite, sign up via this link.
15 februari 2023, 10.00-18.00
A series of practical publishing workshops hosted by an active squat and anarchist social center in Amsterdam and organized by the Bookbinding Studio of Sandberg Instituut/Rietveld Academy and Lila Athanasiadou.
Community Portal
4 februari 2023, 13.00-18.00
Using the sancocho (a pan-Latin American soup with no fixed recipe) as a tool for research and encounter, Mercado Lourdes (Bogotá, Colombia) will host and organize a series of field meals. These events activate and connect the multiple affects that have resulted from ongoing research with local producers into the biodiversity of the territory.
Community Portal
16 december 2022, 15.00-17.00
In all continents, people have built matriarchal cosmologies sustained by complex rituals. In the advent of main modern religions and after centuries of colonizing invasions, the goddesses of antiquity were suppressed by the patriarchal structures that consolidated our era. However, they found ways to speak to us in the language of patterns, melodies, and poems. This workshop uses the voice as a method to reveal the presence of goddesses.
Community Portal
27 januari, 18.30–29 januari, 21.00 2023
During these sessions—part of the bASIC aCTIVIST kITCHEN (b.a.k.) program in collaboration with Berend Bombarius, De Voorkamer and BAK, basis voor actuele kunst—we want to collectively explore the topic of setting up community kitchens. Different strategies, tools, methodologies, and contexts are explored to learn more about the challenges and opportunities in the practices and theories of community kitchens.
Community Portal
Community Portal
With a focus on relation, collectivity, and coalitionality, such an understanding of institutional practice involves steering away from (western-modern) conventions premised on disinterested spectatorship, expert culture, disciplinary divisions, and representation, among others. It similarly avoids the (colonial-acquisitive) paternalist, instrumentalizing, and depoliticizing attitudes toward communities that customarily prevail across much of the art world in the global north. How can an art institution circumnavigate these sticky tropes so that a form of solidarity with its community can emerge to guide its institutional work? One that nonetheless recognizes that the art institution is always already implicated in the production of inequalities and disenfranchisement? One that respects that the community exists as a body of relations decidedly distinct from this institutional establishment? What forms of being together otherwise can be practiced in and with the cultural institution to come?
Driven by these concerns, BAK is collaboratively rethinking the art institution into a community portal. A porous gateway out of (and back into) the “normal order of things” of current conjuncture, the portal is what disrupts the spatial and temporal politics of this “normalcy” to open a (momentary) possibility to leave its unfreedoms behind, mobilizing unforeseen forms of encounters and otherwise improbable political subjectivities. Understanding such encounters as instances of collective anticipatory learning for and of the not-yet, here is where alternatives to today’s realities can be prefigured, rehearsed, and lived—as if it were possible.
As these processes are underway, the talk consists of tentative notes from BAK’s collaborative work and ongoing conversations. It further draws on knowledges from BAK’s ongoing research itinerary Propositions for Non-Fascist Living (2017-ongoing), and in particular the project Trainings for the Not-Yet, 2019/2020, co-convened with artist Jeanne van Heeswijk, as well as a continuing exchange with BAK’s 2020 Fellows.
Driven by these concerns, BAK is collaboratively rethinking the art institution into a community portal. A porous gateway out of (and back into) the “normal order of things” of current conjuncture, the portal is what disrupts the spatial and temporal politics of this “normalcy” to open a (momentary) possibility to leave its unfreedoms behind, mobilizing unforeseen forms of encounters and otherwise improbable political subjectivities. Understanding such encounters as instances of collective anticipatory learning for and of the not-yet, here is where alternatives to today’s realities can be prefigured, rehearsed, and lived—as if it were possible.
As these processes are underway, the talk consists of tentative notes from BAK’s collaborative work and ongoing conversations. It further draws on knowledges from BAK’s ongoing research itinerary Propositions for Non-Fascist Living (2017-ongoing), and in particular the project Trainings for the Not-Yet, 2019/2020, co-convened with artist Jeanne van Heeswijk, as well as a continuing exchange with BAK’s 2020 Fellows.
