It is with great sadness to learn that on 16 December 2022 Professor Jose Maria Sison passed away. Having lived in exile in Utrecht, Professor Sison taught at the first New World Academy in 2013, Towards a People’s Culture , which we convened together with artist Jonas Staal in 2013. Professor Sison’s learnings on solidarity, friendship, resilience, and joy of the world in spite of its many hardships and struggles, will continue resonate strongly. Rest in power.
For mangoes where there are apples,
For orchids where there are tulips,
For warmth, where it is cold,
For mountainous islands,
Where there is flatland . . .
. . . The well-purposed exile continues
To fight for his motherland
Against those who banished him,
The unwelcomed exploiters of his people,
And is certain that he is at home
In his own country and the world.
Jose Maria Sison, “Sometimes, the Heart Yearns for Mangoes,” 30 March 1994
In dialogue with Jose Maria Sison, Jonas Staal edited the first New World Academy reader: New World Academy Reader #1: Towards a People’s Culture (Utrecht: BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, 2013). The reader can be accessed online here.
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La Colonie opened its doors on rue La Fayette, Paris on 17 October 2016 as a radically open space of discussion and exchange for diverse cultural and political communities.
For this first session of "In Proximity," an ongoing series featured on Prospections, BAK’s Curator of Public Practice Rachael Rakes enters into a conversation with artist and BAK 2017/2018 Fellow Wendelien van Oldenborgh.
A videorecording of the online event Practicing Tactical Solidarities: A Roundtable on Mutual Aid, Emergency, and Continuous Care, livestreamed via Prospections on Wednesday 29 April 2020, 19–21 hrs.
Interviewed and introduced by Irene Calabuch Mirón and Sanne Karssenberg (BAK, basis voor actuele kunst).
From: Trainings for the Not-Yet, an exhibition as a series of trainings for a future of being together otherwise, convened with a multitude of collaborators by Jeanne van Heeswijk and BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht (2019–2020)
From: New World Academy, an alternative learning platform for art and politics established by Jonas Staal and BAK, basis voor actuele kunst (2013–2016).
From FORMER WEST: Art and the Contemporary After 1989, Maria Hlavajova and Simon Sheikh, eds. (Utrecht: BAK, basis voor actuele kunst and Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016), pp. 379-390.
