The Hauntologists a project that emerged through experimentation and collective research within the 2021/2022 BAK Fellowship for Situated Practice, taking place at BAK, basis voor actuele kunst in Utrecht, GUDSKUL in Jakarta, and IKSV in Istanbul.  

BAK Studies: Former West (In the Imperialist Refrain). At a moment of history when the world seems to have returned to the Cold-War imperialist paradigm, and as the war in Ukraine makes ever more palpable the continued state of brokenness of the world, this module of BAK Studies revisits the propositions of BAK’s eponymous project from 2008-2016.

BAK Studies: Toward the Not-Yet: Art as Public Practice. This module of BAK Studies builds on the learnings from two projects: Trainings for the Not-Yet (2019–2020), convened by artist Jeanne van Heeswijk and BAK as “an exhibition as a series of trainings for a future of being together otherwise,” and the publication Toward the Not-Yet: Art as Public Practice (2021).

In this initiative, collective duo Dika+Lija activates collaborative, casual online note-taking, taking form as a Telegram group chat. The chat layers over the happenings of the real-world domain, roguishly archiving their stay and the instances of convivialities in Utrecht. They seek to archive a glimpse of the friendship that they have built over the 2021/2022 BAK Fellowship for Situated Practice, with a medium that pays homage to the 10-month long program which was mostly held online.  

Performance by Gayatri Kodikal. A story of when mangroves grew in the detention floor of the Bucharest International Airport. The detention floor floats in an in-between space, a threshold that holds the extent of human limit and its contractions. How do you check your privileges of free movement, to be able to travel to any destination with no dire consequences, reaping the rewards of trade and spontaneous flight?