Community & Praxis

Her passionate commitment to the field of African Diaspora has led to research on upward social mobility in New York, Amsterdam, and London. Her recent research project on organizational anthropology focused on social entrepreneurship in Black British communities from a postcolonial perspective. She is a board member at New Urban Collective and co-founder of The Black Archives, both Amsterdam.

With works that examine his communal and personal heritage—in particular, the intersection between pop culture and the postcolonial position, Achiampong crate-digs the vaults of history. These investigations examine constructions of “the self” by splicing the audible and visual materials of personal and interpersonal archives, offering multiple perspectives that reveal entrenched sociopolitical contradictions in contemporary society. Achiampong has exhibited, performed, and presented projects within the UK and abroad including Tate Britain/Modern, London; The Institute For Creative Arts, Cape Town; The British Film Institute, London; David Roberts Art Foundation, London; Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen; Bokoor African Popular Music Archives Foundation, Accra; Logan Center Exhibitions, Chicago; Prospect New Orleans, New Orleans; Diaspora Pavilion – 57th Venice Biennale, Venice; and Somerset House, London. Achiampong’s recent residencies include Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle; Praksis, Oslo; The British Library/Sound & Music, London; Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge; Primary, Nottingham; and Somerset House Studios, London. Achiampong lives and works in London.

Since 2013, with Oda Projesi she questions the transformation capacity of the artist-mother subject through a series of meetings with women precariously working in the cultural field. Hence, she is interested in reclaiming the fundamental and invisible act of “caring” as a support structure in the public sphere, beyond its trapped interpretations in the private realm. Her research within the BAK Fellowship focuses on the urgency of reclaiming public space as part of a culture of “living together” in the context of authoritarian attitudes and agoraphobia. The research asks: how can artists establish organic relations with social movements and develop “spectral tools” facilitating new socialities? Recently she participated in In the Blink of a Bird, nGbK, Berlin, 2019; First Marriage, Riverrun: Bunker Exhibitions, İstanbul, 2019; “Edit Your Future”, 8th Bucharest Biennale, Bucharest, 2018. And with Oda Projesi (with Güneş Savaş and Seçil Yersel), they took part in On Fail[e]d Tales and Ta[y]lors, Tabakalera, San Sebastian, 2020; Mobile Autonomy “Organizing Ourselves as Artists Today”, Middelheimmuseum, Antwerp, 2015; ANA, Astrid Noack’s Atelier, Copenhagen, 2013; Beyond Belonging, Ballhaus Naunynstrasse, Berlin, 2009; Collective Creativity, Kunsthalle Friedericianum, Kassel, 2005; İstanbul, 9th Istanbul Biennale, İstanbul, 2005; Structures of Survival, 50th Venice Biennale, Venice, 2003. She lives and works in Istanbul and is part of the Istanbul Bienali Research and Production Program, Istanbul, in the Fellowship for Situated Practice.

She was editor-in-chief of Art India (2000−2003) and in that role she sought to shift the emphasis of visual arts discourse in India from conventional art practices towards public art, new media, and the relationship between the visual arts and political intervention. Adajania has contributed essays and reviews to numerous magazines and her archive installation In Aladdin’s Cave was exhibited in Building Sight, Watermans Arts Centre, London, 2007; and On Difference #2: Grenzwertig, Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, 2006. Recent publications include a monograph of the artist Shilpa Gupta (ed., 2010). Recent (co)curatorial projects include: Landscapes of where, Galerie Mirchandani + Steinrueke, Bombay, 2009; Chalo! India: A New Era of Indian Art, Mori Museum, Tokyo, 2008; Thermocline of Art: New Asian Waves, ZKM, Karlsruhe, 2007; Avatars of the Object: Sculptural Projections, NCPA/Guild Art Gallery, Bombay, 2006; and Zoom: Art in Contemporary India, Culturgest, Lisbon, 2004. Adajania lives and works in Bombay.

Pelumi Adejumo is writer, poet, performer, and student at ArtEZ, University of the Arts, Arnhem, Enschede, Zwolle.

Her political work is based in anti-imperialist solidarity and collective praxis, particularly with the liberation struggles in Palestine and the Philippines. This is realized through on-the-ground mobilization; developing and delivering education; and facilitating sites for movement building. She is a co-coordinator of the Basic Activist Kitchen (2019–ongoing), a project born in the context of Trainings for the Not-Yet (2019–2020) at BAK, which she participated in with her political collective Revolutionaire Eenheid (RE). The Basic Activist Kitchen is being developed to a long-term initiative, rooted in facilitating community building. In RE, her role is in alliance and coalition work, she is active in the International Women’s Alliance, and sits on the coordinating committee of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle, an organization that strives to realize the unity, cooperation, and coordination of anti-imperialist and democratic struggles throughout the world. Ahmed lives and works in Amsterdam.

Often working collaboratively, Ahmed integrates methodologies from the hard sciences into his art production. He recently worked with the von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics, Brussels, to create Wind Egg Trilogy, which blends art and aeronautics, myth and technology, to create new narratives for the present, and a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp, 2018. Ahmed has been a resident at the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, and the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, Madison, ME, and his work has been exhibited at: Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago; Göteborg International Biennial of Contemporary Art, Gothenburg; Museum Bärengasse Zurich, Zurich; and Symposium Alanica, Vladikavkaz. He is represented by Harlan Levey Projects in Brussels. Ahmed lectures at Zurich University of the Arts, Zurich, and has taught courses and workshops at a number of universities.

Al-Barbary was born in Beit Jibrin refugee camp, Palestine, and currently lives and works between Amsterdam and Bethlehem. He has shown his work (carried out collaboratively) at Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven and the Serralves Museum, Porto. His work has been included in Bienal de São Paulo, São Paulo; Qalandya International, Jerusalem; Documenta 14, Kassel; and Chicago Architecture Biennial, Chicago. He was a BAK Fellow and a participant and coordinator of Campus in Camps, an educational program that activated collective critical learning environments in Palestinian refugee camps. Al-Barbary is a founding member of Al Maeishah, a communal learning environment in which participants explore and practice neighboring and hospitality as radical political acts.

For the past twenty years, he has worked with children and youth living in the Burj al-Shamali camp, a Palestian refugee camp near Tyre, Lebanon, both through the scout group he founded with his friend and colleague Wassim Said, and as a volunteer and folklore dance and music trainer. Al-Joumah has established the Palestinian Youth Initiative and is a member of the core team of the National Campaign for the Implementation of the Procedures for the Palestinian Popular Committees for Services in Lebanon. He participated in international youth conferences in Johannesburg and Jordan, and at the Interceltic Festival in Lorient, France. He has worked in many international community institutions, such as Terre des Hommes, World Vision, and Save the Children Foundation, as a social worker and trainer in non-violent communication. Al-Joumah was born and lives in the Burj al-Shamali camp in Tyre.

She has been the artistic co-director of SAVVY contemporary, Berlin from 2016 to 2020, curator of Sonsbeek2020, Arnhem, curator of Extra-City Kunsthal, Antwerp from 2017 to 2019, and curator of Beirut in Cairo, Egypt from 2012 to 2015. Alampi is a mother and lives in Berlin.

His recent work looks at militant poetics and radical critique through arts grounded in liberation struggles against class, gender, and racial enclosures. In practice, he produces contextually grounded installations often involving collective study, drawing, writing, and translation as spaces of politics. He has a DA in Contemporary Art Practice from Aalto University, Espoo; MA in Applied Art and Design at the University of Helsinki, Helsinki; and a license in Architecture from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City. He is Founder of the research studio NÆS—Nomad Agency/Archive of Emergent Studies (2011–ongoing), which claims the political space of research, and is a member of the editorial committee of Rab-Rab Press. Muñoz Alcántara lives and works in Helsinki.

He is a regular contributor to magazines and newspapers such as The Guardian, the London Review of Books, and CounterPunch, as well as a long-standing editor of the New Left Review. A prolific writer of non-fiction and fiction, Ali’s many books include: The Extreme Centre: A Warning (2015); On History: Tariq Ali and Oliver Stone in Conversation (2011); The Trials of Spinoza (2011); The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad (2010); The Protocols of the Elders of Sodom (2009); The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power (2008); Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope (2006); Conversations with Edward Said (2005); Rough Music: Blair, Bombs, Baghdad, London, Terror (2005); Speaking of Empire and Resistance (2005); Bush in Babylon: The Recolonization of Iraq (2004); The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity (2002); 1968: Marching in the Streets (1998); The Stalinist Legacy: Its Impact on Twentieth-Century World Politics (1984); and the acclaimed series of historical novels, The Islamic Quintet, published by Verso Books. He also operates a weekly online review show, The World Today, produced for Venezuelan broadcaster teleSUR’s English language channel. Ali lives and works in London. [Last updated 2015]

Allen-Paisant graduated from the University of Oxford, Oxford in 2015, and joined the University of Leeds in 2016 as a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow. In his own research, he explores the ways in which Afro-diasporic artists and communities shape their futures through embodied, living philosophies. Thereby, his work is deeply concerned with poetry; its embodied, spatialized, and sensed ontologies; and the overlaps between poetry and philosophy. His creative writing (poetry, memoir, and critical life writing) addresses issues of time, race, class, and the environmental conditions underpinning Black identity. It has appeared on BBC, in The Guardian, Granta, The Poetry Review, and Callaloo: Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters—whose editorial board he serves on. His book Thinking with Trees (2021) has garnered international critical acclaim.  Allen-Paisant lives and works in Leeds. 

The organization carries its messages of democracy, equality, and culture beyond the nation-state through means of participatory spaces, campaigns, events, publications, and the annual Transeuropa Festival.

Recent exhibitions include: Documenta 13, Kassel, Germany, 2012; Par ces murs, nous sommes mal enfermés, Musée d’histoire de Nantes, Château des Ducs de Bretagne, Nantes, 2012; and 29th São Paulo Biennial, 2010. Alves lives and works in Berlin.

Amaro is a design engineer by degree and researcher in the areas of machine learning, the philosophy of mathematics, black ontologies, and philosophies of being. Ramon’s work emerges at the level of enumerative logics to examine pathological organisations of the self that may inform the conditions of sentient and non-sentient sociality, as well as, he argues, the engineering of difference in socio-technical ecologies. Drawing on the work of Frantz Fanon, Sylvia Wynter and Gilbert Simondon, Ramon aims to open up new methodological considerations at the intersections of race, pathology, and empiricism, placing specific emphasis on speculative articulations in machine learning, data, mathematics, engineering and black study. Ramon completed his PhD in Philosophy in the Department of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies (the former Centre for Cultural Studies) at Goldsmiths, while holding a Masters degree in Sociological Research from the University of Essex and a BSe in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

She has written extensively on Eastern and Central European art, with a focus on gender issues and social engagement, as well as the post-socialist condition and on nationalism in the region. Recent publications include: Cultural Cross Dressing: Art on the Ruins of Socialism (2009); and the anthology Transitland, Video Art from Central and Eastern Europe 1989–2009 (2009). Her articles have appeared in the journals Acta Historiae Artium, ARS, Ars Hungarica, ArtMargins, e-flux journal, Idea, Springerin, Third Text, as well as several collected volumes and catalogues. András lives and works in Budapest and Long Island, New York.

He studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and was a resident at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam, and currently teaches as Core Tutor at MaHKU Graduate School of Visual Art and Design. He participated in the 1st Asia Biennial/5th Guangzhou Triennial, Guangzhou, 2015; Biennale Jogja XII, Yogyakarta, 2013; 1st Tbilisi Triennial, Tbilisi, 2012; Manifesta 8, Murcia, 2010; 7th Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai, 2008 and 2004; Plateau of Humankind, 49th Venice Biennale, Venice, 2001; 4th Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, 1995; and 5th Havana Biennial, Havana, 1994. Recent solo exhibitions include: Unwanted Celebration, Lynch Tham Gallery, New York, 2014 and How To Act, Lumen Travo Gallery, Amsterdam, 2013. Ang lives and works in Amsterdam

Nico Angiuli is an artist whose work broaches subjects such as immigration, labor conditions, and (the mediatization of) border politics, most notably of those between Albania, Italy, and Greece. His most recent solo project is The Tools’ Dance, Careof, Milan, 2017. Angiuli lives and works in Bari and Tirana.

Peace is not only when there is no war, it is also defined as the absence of violence of all kinds, of conflict, and of discrimination (on the basis of gender, ethnicity, color, or religion), as well as the countering of extremism. Following this definition, IDIP creates space for women to meaningfully contribute to conflict resolution and peacebuilding at grassroot level. IDIP engages and supports women in gaining skills and capacities in peacebuilding, facilitates their access to higher-level peacebuilding structures, and empowers them to participate in peacebuilding in a more meaningful and influential way. Anwar lives and works in Utrecht.

With a background in choreography and human geography, Aparna has been critically engaged with questions of spatial relations as central to power struggles, borders, and identities. Her current practice articulates the deep entanglement of research and pedagogical practices with everyday processes of producing asylum citizenship in the EU, while challenging eurocentrism in such relations. She has published in scientific journals such as Geoforum & Etnografia e Ricerca Qualitativa; edited volumes like Decolonising the University: Context and Practice (2018); Migration, Squatting, and Radical Autonomy (2017); independent media platforms like openDemocracy and Amateur Cities; and magazines like AGORA, Geografie, Social Kritik, and MONU. Aparna lives in Den Bosch and works in Nijmegen.

Forensic Architecture Forensic Architecture is a research agency consisting of architects, artists, filmmakers, journalists, software developers, scientists, lawyers, and an extended network of collaborators from a wide variety of fields and disciplines. Founded in 2010 by architect and researcher Eyal Weizman, Forensic

Gigi Argyropoulou is a writer, artist, and activist working in the fields of performance and cultural practice. Argyropoulou has initiated and organized cultural programs, festivals, performances, conferences, and cross-disciplinary projects both inside and outside institutions. She is a founding member of Mavili Collective, Institute for Live Arts Research, Green Park, and F2 Performance Unit/Mkultra. As a member of Mavili Collective she co-initiated and took part in the reactivation/occupancy of the Embros Theatre in 2011, as well as a series of other activist/cultural-critique actions in Greece during recent years. Gigi received the Routledge Prize for her PSi 18 (Performance Studies International) conference paper, and her essays have been published in academic journals, magazines, and edited collections. She is a research fellow at Birkbeck College, London, and is currently a co-editor with Hypatia Vourloumis of the upcoming issue of Performance Research “On Institutions.” Argyropoulou is based in Athens and London. [Last updated 2015]

Katayoun Arian Katayoun Arian is a researcher, curator, and writer with a background in art history (Leiden University, Leiden) and a Master’s degree in organization science (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam). Her projects range from exhibitions, discursive events, and screenings to reading circles and other forms of

Barby Asante is an artist, curator, and educator. She received her BA in Fine Arts from the University of East London, London and went on to complete an MA in Visual Culture at Middlesex University London. A frequent invited lecturer and workshop leader on socially engaged and participatory art, Asante’s own dialogic practice explores subjects including cultural identity and representation, black music, and the cultural and social significance of blackness in the formation of a post-war British identity. In 2006, she initiated the Funk Chorus, a non-professional choir with a Funk repertoire and in 2004, she was the Lead Artist for the Roman Road Festival in Bow. Asante also worked on Africa Remix: Contemporary Art of a Continent, the largest exhibition of contemporary African art in Europe at the Hayward Gallery in London in 2005 and was the inaugural Thinker in Residence at the Live Art Development Agency. Her recent exhibitions and projects include: Baldwin’s Nigger R E L O A D E D, InIVA, London, 2014; To Gypsyland (with Delaine le Bas), 198 Contemporary Arts & Learning, London, 2014, Tramway, Glasgow, 2013, Bolton Museum and Art Gallery, Bolton, 2013, and Metal, Peterborough, 2013; Noise Summit, Pelican and Wyndham & Comber estates, 2013–2014; The South London Black Music Archive, Peckham Space, London, 2012 and Tate Modern, London, 2012; and Down at the Bamboo Club, Picture This, Bristol, 2009. Asante lives and works in London. [Last updated 2015]

Doug Ashford is a teacher, artist, and writer. Ashford uses documentation from social and political manifestations and demonstrations, as well as abstract painting, digital printing, cropping, and coloring, to contest the mediating role of artwork and explore new expressions and analyses of events. During the 1980’s and 1990’s, Ashford was a member of the New York-based artist collective Group Material, which advocated socially engaged public practice and took activist stances on issues such as consumerism, AIDS, and the relationship of the artist, art object, and the viewer. Since 1989, Ashford is Associate Professor at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, New York, where he has taught design, sculpture, and theory. His work has been exhibited at: Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, MA, 2017–2018; Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, Cleveland, OH, 2017–2018; 11th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, 2016; and dOCUMENTA 13, Kassel, 2012; among others.

Philadelphia Assembled Philadelphia Assembled is an expansive exhibition project initiated by artist Jeanne van Heeswijk and developed by hundreds of collaborators, which took place at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, 2014-2017. Philadelphia Assembled tells a story of radical community building and active res

Sarafina van Ast Because of their practice as a poet the following biography is in a different format than usual: 
 
"As child, I was raised within two different cultures, 
the Surinamese one 
and the Dutch one. 
This has made me more aware of the other, 
how they are perceived, 
and how they are listened to. 
Withi

Athena Athanasiou teaches at the Department of Social Anthropology at the Pantheion University of Social and Political Sciences, Athens. Her research interests include gender, feminist and queer theory, biopolitics, affect, nationalism, and memory. Publications include Agonistic Mourning: Political Dissidence and the Women in Black (2017); Dispossession: The Performative in the Political (with Judith Butler, 2013); and Life at the Limit: Essays on gender, body and biopolitics (in Greek, 2007). She also edited Deconstructing the Empire: Theory and Politics of Postcolonial Studies (2016); Biosocialities (2011); Rewriting Difference: Luce Irigaray and ‘the Greeks’ (co-edited with Elena Tzelepis, 2010); and Feminist Theory and Cultural Critique (2006). Athanasiou lives and works in Athens. 

Founded in 2013, State of Concept Athens is the first nonprofit gallery in Greece to promote Greek and international artists through exhibitions. In addition, State of Concept Athens organizes a variety of events, projects, and aims to be a bridge between Athens and the international contemporary art scene.

Kader Attia is an artist who explores the wide-ranging effects of western cultural hegemony and colonialism. Central to his inquiry are the concepts of injury and repair, which he uses to connect diverse bodies of knowledge, including architecture, music, psychoanalysis, medical science, and traditional healing and spiritual beliefs. Throughout his multimedia practice—ranging from sculpture to film installation—reparation does not mark a return to an intact state, but instead makes visible the immaterial scars of psychic injury. This approach is informed by Attia’s experience of growing up between Algeria and the Paris banlieues.Attia’s work has been shown in biennials such as the Shanghai Biennial; Gwangju Biennial; Manifesta, Palermo; Venice Biennial, Venice; and Documenta, Kassel. Notable solo exhibitions include Kader Attia. Remembering the Future, Kunsthaus Zürich, Zurich, 2020, The Museum of Emotion, The Hayward Gallery, London, 2019; Scars Remind Us that Our Past is Real, Fundacio Joan Miro, Barcelona, 2018; Roots also grow in concrete, MAC VAL, Vitry-sur-Seine, 2018; Repairing the Invisible, SMAK, Ghent, 2017; The Injuries are Here, Musée Cantonal des Beaux Arts, Lausanne, 2015; contre nature, Beirut Art Center, Beirut, 2014; and Continuum of Repair: The Light of Jacob’s Ladder, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2013. Attia has shown in group exhibitions at venues such as MoMA, New York; Tate Modern, London; and Centre Pompidou, Paris. Attia has been awarded the Marcel Duchamp Prize (2016), the Joan Miró Prize (2016), and the Yanghyun Art Prize (2017). In 2016, Kader Attia founded La Colonie in Paris’s Gare du Nord area as an open space for decolonial thinking, debate, and cultural activism. Attia is the appointed curator for the 12th Berlin Biennale in 2022. Attia lives and works in Berlin and Paris.

Sven Augustijnen is a filmmaker and artist whose work largely focuses on the permeable borders between fiction and reality. Using a wide range of genres and techniques, his publications, films, and installations mirror historiography and show a fondness for storytelling. In his well-known film Spectres (2011), Augustijnen traces Belgium’s colonial history, particularly the assassination of Congolese politician Patrice Lumumba. He has had solo shows at The Hugh Lane, Dublin, 2016–2017; La Loge, Brussels, 2016; Taipei Biennial, Taipei, 2016; Kunsthall Trondheim, Trondheim, 2015; CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, 2014; and Contour Mechelen, Mechelen, 2013.

Elvira Espejo Ayca Elvira Espejo Ayca is a plastic artist, weaver, and narrator of the oral tradition of her place of origin (ayllu Qaqachaka, Avaroa province, Oruro). A speaker of Aymara and Quechua, she is the director of the Museo Nacional de Etnografía y Folklore, La Paz. She is author of Kaypi Jaqhaypi/Por aquí,

Delaine Le Bas is an artist whose elaborate installations involve embroidery, painting, drawing, sculpture, found objects, and video. Her expansive works deal with issues of exclusion, identity, gender, untold histories, and misrepresentation—most notably in relation to Roma people. Le Bas lives and works in various locations across Europe and the United Kingdom.

Mustapha Seray Bah Mustapha Seray Bah is a trainer, organizer, discussion leader, and director of Stichting MOWAD (Migrants Organization for West Africans Development). MOWAD is a migrant organization for and by African youth, which encourages them to participate in social, economic, and political life in the Netherla

Homebaked Bakery Homebaked Bakery in Liverpool is a cooperative bakery, which grew alongside sister organisation Homebaked Community Land Trust from 2up2down, an art work by Jeanne van Heeswijk commissioned by Liverpool Biennial 2010–2013. The re-opening of the neighborhood bakery as a community business in the mids

Daniel Baker (born 1961) is an artist, curator, researcher, and activist. He holds a PhD from the Royal College of Art, London; the title of his dissertation is Gypsy Visuality: Gell’s Art Nexus and its potential for artists (2011). Baker’s artistic practice examines the role of art in enacting social agency through performance, installation, painting, and digital media. Previously he chaired the Gypsy Council from 2006 to 2009. Recent exhibitions include: Expansive Mood, Mansion House, London, 2011; Sovereign European Art Prize, Barbican Art Gallery, London, 2010; Suspect, Galerie Feinkost, Berlin, 2009; and Paradise Lost: The First Roma Pavilion, 52nd Venice Biennale, Venice, 2007. Baker also acted as a consultant on the project Call the Witness, 2nd Roma Pavilion, 54th Venice Biennale, Venice, 2011, and participated in the exhibition of the same title. Together with Paul Ryan, he curated the exhibition No Gorgios, Novas Gallery, London, 2007. Publications include: Ex Libris (2009). His work can be found in collections across Europe, America, and Asia. Baker lives and works in London.During his stay at BAK Baker continues his research into the concept of a Roma aesthetic. By integrating varied methods of inquiry including writing and artistic practice, he investigates themes of authenticity and authorship, focusing primarily on the possibility for objects to challenge notions of their assumed histories and origins. This project examines the complex relations between artifacts, their makers, and their audiences in order to consider how artistic practice can be used to rethink social relations.

Amy Balkin is an artist whose projects focus on climate change and its physical, political, and economic impacts. Ongoing projects include A People’s Archive of Sinking and Melting (2012–ongoing). Current exhibitions include 4.543 Billion: The Matter of Matter, CAPC Center of Contemporary Visual Arts, Bordeaux, 2017–2018. Balkin lives and works in San Francisco, CA.

Lynhan Balatbat-Helbock Lynhan Balatbat-Helbock is a curator and researcher at SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, where she is part of the participatory archive project Colonial Neighbours. She received her MA in postcolonial cultures and global policy at Goldsmiths, University of London, London. In her work within the permanent

Clara Balaguer Clara Balaguer is a cultural worker. She is the coordinator of the Social Practices course at Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam and teaches Experimental Publishing at Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam. In the Philippines, she co-founded Hardworking Goodlooking, a cottage industry publishing hauz,

Selçuk Balamir Selçuk Balamir is a postcapitalist designer, commoning researcher, and climate justice organizer working at the intersections of creative production, radical politics, and ecological transition. He specializes in strategic communications, community building, and making social transformation irresist

Yael Bartana is an artist whose videos, photography, installations, and performances deal with questions of cultural identity and national narratives, often informed by Jewish traditions. Recent projects include What if Women Ruled the World? (with Vicky Featherstone and Abi Morgan), 2017. Bartana lives and works in Amsterdam.

Amiri Baraka Amiri Baraka (1934–2014) was a writer of fiction, poetry, drama, political essays, and music criticism, and a founding member of the Black Arts Movement in the United States (which started in Harlem in the mid-1960s). His books include Blues People: Negro Music in White America (1963), Wise, Why's Y

Maria Barnas (Amsterdam) is a writer, poet, and visual artist whose work in different media approaches text and images as equal entities. Her recent practice questions to what extent language consists of images. Barnas studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. She is co-founder of the Missing Books publishing house. In 2014 Barnas was awarded the Anna Bijns Prize for her collection of poems Jaja de oerknal (Yes Right the Big Bang), 2013. She has published novels, poetry, and essays, and writes about art and literature for De Groene Amsterdammer and De Volkskrant, and other publications. Recent presentations of her visual work include Klemm’s Gallery, Berlin; ICi New York, Iglesia del Hospitalet in Eivissa (Ibiza); Stuk Kunstcentrum, Leuven; and Project Arts Centre, Dublin. Barnas lives and works in Amsterdam.

Bassam El Baroni (born 1974) is a curator, an art critic, and the director of the non-profit art space Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum, which he co-founded in late 2005. He is also a PhD researcher in the Curatorial/Knowledge program at Goldsmiths, University of London, London. El Baroni is co-curating Norway’s Lofoten International Art Festival, Lofoten Islands, 2013 and recently curated the group exhibition When it Stops Dripping from the Ceiling (An Exhibition That Thinks About Edification), Kadist Art Foundation, Paris, 2012. In addition, he was co-curator of Manifesta 8, 2010, Murcia. His other projects include: the ongoing online collaboration The ARPANET Dialogues (with Jeremy Beaudry and Nav Haq), 2010–present; the publication Fifteen Ways to Leave Badiou (2011); and the exhibition Trapped in Amber (co-curated with Helga-Marie Nordby), UKS, Oslo, 2009. El Baroni lives and works in Alexandria. [Last updated 2012]

Chloë Bass Chloë Bass is a multiform conceptual artist working in performance, situation, conversation, publication, and installation. In her work, daily life functions become sites of deep research to address and make visible different scales of intimacy. She asks where patterns hold and break as group sizes

BAVO Gideon Boie & Matthias Pauwels

Kerem Ozan Bayraktar Kerem Ozan Bayraktar is an artist and researcher. His work inspects the domains of real and fictional entities: their dynamics of individuation and patterns of complexity by means of research, installation, digital media, text and speech. These entities range from spontaneous invasive plants to exop

Asia Bazdyrieva Asia Bazdyrieva is a researcher and art historian. Her research interests range from histories of modernist utopia to grassroots expressions that challenge dominant historical narratives. She studied analytical chemistry at the National University of Kyiv and art history at The City University of Ne

Merve Bedir is a co-founder of Land+Civilization Compositions, and a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at Delft University of Technology, Delft. She is a member of Matbakh-Mutfak, a transnational women’s collective in Gaziantep, a founding member of the Center for Spatial Justice in Istanbul, and part of Future+Aformal Academy, an independent school for urbanism and art in Shenzhen. Her first book Vocabulary of Hospitality is forthcoming (2017).

Dave Beech is an artist in the collective Freee as well as a writer and curator. Currently, he is Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Arts, London. As an artist, he has exhibited at the Istanbul Biennial in 2013 and the Liverpool Biennial in 2010. Beech has contributed to debates on participation and art’s publics, and the legacy of the avant-garde and conceptualism in books such as Art and Text (2011); Locating the Producers (2011); and Curating the Educational Turn (2010). Beech is a co-founding editor of the journal Art and the Public Sphere, co-founder of The Internationaler magazine, and joint founding editor of The First Condition. With Paul O’Neill, he also co-curated, the exhibition We Are Grammar at Pratt Manhattan Gallery, New York in 2011. His book Art and Value (2015) is an extensive study of the exceptionalism of art in classical, neoclassical, and Marxist economics. Beech lives and works in London. [Last updated 2016]

Neïl Beloufa (born 1985) is an artist whose mixed media installations take a highly narrative approach influenced by science fiction in considering political and economic systems. Recent exhibitions include: Documents are Flat 4, Kunstraum Innsbruck, Innsbruck, 2012; Functions of Light, Balice Hertling and Lewis, New York, 2012; and Superpower: Africa in Science Fiction, Arnolfini, Bristol, 2012. Beloufa lives and works in Paris. [Last updated 2013]

James Benning (born 1942) is a filmmaker whose work features long takes and focuses on everything from his travels to complex contemporary figures. His recent exhibitions include James Benning—One Way Boogie Woogie 2012, ARGOS Centre for Art and Media, Brussels, 2012 and BUSY. Exhausted self/ Unlimited ability, 21er Haus—the new Museum of Contemporary Art, Vienna, 2012. Benning lives and works in California. [Last updated 2013]

John Berger was a British essayist, poet, cultural thinker as well as a novelist, painter, activist, and screenwriter. He is best known for his book Ways of Seeing (1972) which was adapted from the BBC television series of the same name, and which had a meaningful impact on the way people looked at art. As a novelist, he won the Booker prize in 1972 for his novel G. He was politically engaged throughout his life, supporting international social struggles from his youth to older age. He died in 2017 in Hauts-de-Seine.

Claudia Bernardi is an activist and researcher at the self-managed ESC Atelier and founder-member of LUM (Free Metropolitan University) in Rome. She is active in social movements, organizer of various transnational networks, and collaborator of DinamoPress. She has been founder-member of the projects Edufactory and Uninomade. She animated the artistic project Draftsmen Congress in Rome and Kiev, and is currently working to the conception and realization of the transdisciplinary research program Studio Roma. She holds a PhD in Euro-American Studies from the University of Roma Tre (Rome), is a fellow of the Weatherhead Initiative on Global History at Harvard University, and is visiting fellow at the Europa Institut. Institute for European Global Studies at the University of Basel. She co-edited the texts Lessico Marxiano (2009), Towards a Global Autonomous University (2009), and Fare spazio. Pratiche del comune e diritto alla città (2015). She is currently working on a research project focused on the global history of migrant labor and the regimes of mobility in North America and Europe. Bernardi lives and works in Rome. [Last updated 2015]

Homi K. Bhabha (1949) is the Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities, Director of the Mahindra Humanities Center, and Senior Advisor to the President and Provost at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. He is a cultural and literary theorist whose work centers on postcolonial theory, cultural change and power, cosmopolitanism, and human rights, among other themes. His publications include The Location of Culture (1994) and Nation and Narration (1990). Bhabha lives and works in Cambridge. [Last updated 2013]

Hemali Bhuta Hemali Bhuta is an artist who creates site-responsive installations and sculptural interventions that embrace entropy. She uses materials and processes susceptible to decay and disintegration to challenge the conventional material and temporal conditions of a work of art. Bhuta holds a diploma in pa

BAK 2017/2018 Fellow Sepake Angiama co-curates the 2019 Chicago Architecture Biennial …And Other Such Stories.  As part of the program, Fellow 2017/2018 BAK Fellows Ola Hassanain’s work was part of the exhibition. From the curators’ statement: “Titled …and other such stories, the 2019 Chicago Architecture Biennial is rooted in close readings of the spatial realities of its […]

Franco “Bifo” Berardi (born 1948) is a writer, media theorist, activist, and was a key figure in the Italian Autonomia movement of the 1970s that embraced the worker’s capacity for social change. His writing examines contemporary media and post-industrial capitalism. Recent publications include: The Uprising (2012); The Soul at Work: From Alienation to Autonomy(2009); and Precarious Rhapsody: Semiocapitalism and the Pathologies of Post-alpha Generation (2009). Berardi lives and works in Bologna.

BLMUK is the United Kingdom chapter of the Black Lives Matter Global Network, working for Black empowerment and the end of violence on Black communities. The coalition is committed to all Black lives, works in coordination with other anti-racist groups, is not affiliated with any political party, and embraces intersectionality within the movement.

Sarafina Paulina Bonita Sarafina Paulina Bonita is a queer Surinamese-Dutch performance artist who works with language, translation, ancestry, gender codes, and racial biases. They create performances and poetry from an intersectional approach that focuses on the lived experience of the other.

Sopawan Boonnimitra is a filmmaker and photographer. She recently completed her PhD in Artistic Research at Goldsmiths College, London, Malmö Art Academy, Malmö, and Lund University, Lund with a thesis entitled “Lak-ka-pid-lak-ka-perd: Contemporary Urban Conditions with Special Reference to Thai Homosexuality.” She is also a regular lecturer at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok. For further information on her previous research and art projects see www.leavetoremain.com. Boonnimitra lives and works in Bangkok.Taking Lak-ka-pid-lak-ka-perd (“Sometimes closed-sometimes open”)Sopawan Boonnimitra, through her long-term research project Leave to Remain, investigates the condition and meaning of “other spaces” occupied by those who are considered to be the “other” in the general consensus of a society, such as the space allotted for homosexuals. Taking Lak-ka-pid-lak-ka-perd (“sometimes closed-sometimes open”) as the guiding notion, she also focuses on how the changing conception of “home” reflects the condition of mobility and migration as well as the presence of the body of the “other” in contemporary society.Building upon this research project, Boonnimitra explores the particular psychological and social condition of immigrants and refugees in Thailand. In a similar way, the Netherlands becomes another case study. Encountering various NGOs and spaces which deal with the status and condition of illegal migrants and refugees, Boonnimitra met and interviewed various refugee families in a refugee camp in Amersfoort. A series of photographic works were also made, which will ultimately take the form of a complex installation including video and text.

Mariana Botey Mariana Botey is an art historian, artist, and curator. She is associate professor in modern and contemporary Latin American art history at the Visual Arts Department at University California San Diego, San Diego. Botey received her PhD in visual studies at University of California, Irvine. She is a

Mark Boulos Mark Boulos, born 1975, lives and works in Amsterdam and London. He was an artist-in-residence at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam in 2007. Boulos’s documentaries represent belief so devout that it becomes real; his films often focus on political militancy and religious ecstasy.

Dhanveer Singh Brar Dhanveer Singh Brar is a scholar of Black studies, cultural studies, sound studies, and critical theory. He has published in journals such as Social Text, darkmatter, and Cesura//Acceso, and is a founding member of the London based collective Black Study Group. He lectures in visual cultures at Gold

Marsha Bradfield is an artist, curator, writer, educator, and researcher. For the last decade, she has worked almost exclusively in collaboration exploring cultural production through co-authored projects. This research-based approach often results in events that Bradfield later re-presents in publications and performative lectures. These accounts combine the rhetorical styles of fact and fiction as Bradfield works across sites, objects, images, structures, and processes. Her current body of work explores the intersection of economies and ecologies in co-production, and has been developed through her practice with the Precarious Workers Brigade, Critical Practice Research Cluster, and many more besides. Bradfield is co-director of Pangaea Sculptors’ Centre, London; a visiting scholar at Chelsea College of Arts; and has recently joined the Board of Mentors for the Barbican’s Fish Island Labs, London. Bradfield lives and works in London. [Last updated 2015]

Rosi Braidotti is a philosopher whose work intersects with social and political theory, gender studies, feminist theory, and cultural studies, with a particular emphasis on poststructuralism and critical theory as well as epistemology and Deleuze studies. She is Distinguished University Professor and founding Director of the Centre for the Humanities at Utrecht University, Utrecht, where she has taught since 1988, beginning with her initial appointment as founding professor in Women’s Studies. Braidotti is renowned for her pioneering work in European Women’s Studies, having served as founding Director of the Netherlands Research School in Women’s Studies (in 1995) and founding the inter-university Socrates Network of Interdisciplinary Women’s Studies in Europe (NOISE), as well as the Socrates Thematic Network Project ATHENA, which she directed until 2005. In 2005–2006, Braidotti held the Leverhulme Trust, Visiting Professorship in the Law School of Birckbeck College at the University of London, London. Between 2001–2003, she was the Jean Monnet Visiting Chair at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, Florence. Previously, she was a Fellow in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University, Princeton in 1994–1995. In addition to regularly contributing to international journals and anthologies, Braidotti serves as advisor to differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, and Theory, Culture & Society. Her many books include: The Posthuman (2013); Nomadic Theory: The Portable Rosi Braidotti (2011); Transpositions: On Nomadic Ethics (2006); Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming (2002); Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory (1994); and Patterns of Dissonance: A Study of Women and Contemporary French Philosophy (1991). Braidotti lives and works in Utrecht.BAK specifically acknowledges Braidotti for introducing us to Michel Foucault’s notion of “non-fascist life.”

Jan Breman is Emeritus Professor at the Amsterdam Institute of Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam and Honorary Fellow at the International Institute of Social History, both in Amsterdam. His research interests span employment and labor relations in contemporary Asia (focusing mainly on India and Indonesia), the history of colonialism, labor migration, conditions of poverty and the social question in a global perspective. Breman has held numerous visiting professorships worldwide, including at: the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi; the School of Public Affairs, Xiamen University, Xiamen; and Bogor Agricultural University, Bogor. His many books include: Profit from Unfree Labour in Colonial Java (In press), Outcast Labour in Asia (2013); At Work in the Informal Economy of India (2013), Taming the Coolie Beast (1989); and Of Patronage and Exploitation (1974). He is also on the editorial board of journals such as Development and Change, The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, The Journal of Agrarian Change, and The Journal of Southeast Asian Studies. In addition to his scholarly work as an anthropologist and sociologist, Breman has carried out consultancy missions for a variety of international organizations in both Asia and the Netherlands. Breman lives and works in Amsterdam. [Last updated 2015]

Ethel Brooks (born 1967) is a writer and researcher whose work explores critical political economy, globalization, social movements, and postcolonialism. She is working on the forthcoming publications Disrupting the Nation: Land Tenure, Productivity and the Possibilities of a Romani Post-Coloniality and (Mis)Recognitions and (Un)Acknowledgements: Visualities, Productivities and the Contours of Romani Feminism. Brooks lives and works in New Brunswick. [Last updated 2013]

Tania Bruguera is an artist who has initiated several long-term projects dedicated to social change, among them is Migrant People Party (2010–2015) and the socio-political Immigrant Movement International (2010–ongoing). Bruguera lives and works in Havana.

Paul de Bruyne Paul De Bruyne is a Belgian theater maker and director, teacher, playwright, and art critic. He has written numerous articles and books on the relationship of artistic craftsmanship and societal developments, and has provided workshops, given lectures, and been a resident at diverse universities and

Olga Bryukhovesta Olga Bryukhovesta is associate professor of cultural studies at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Kyiv, where she teaches courses on film theory and visual culture. She is co-founder of the Visual Culture Research Center at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Kyiv. Her rese

Bernadette Buckley is a writer and academic whose research explores the relationship between art and politics, art and conflict, cultural studies, and philosophy. Currently, she is Lecturer in International Politics at Goldsmiths College, London, where she also convenes the MA program in Art and Politics. Prior to joining Goldsmiths in 2007, she taught Contemporary Art Theory & Practice at the International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, where she established the Gallery and Art Museum Education Studies MA program. Buckley was also Head of Education and Research at the John Hansard Gallery, University of Southampton, Southampton. In addition to writing for journals and art publications such as Brumaria, Postcolonial Studies, and Review of International Studies, her writings have appeared in numerous exhibition catalogues and anthologies, including Art and Conflict (2014), The Destruction of Cultural Heritage in Iraq (2008), and Art in the Age of Terrorism (2005). Buckley sits on the academic Advisory Board for Tate Papers and the Journal for Museum Education. She is on the steering group for Tate Learning Research Centre and the advisory committee for Artaker, which promotes encounters between peace-builders, researchers, and cultural organizations on the one hand, and artists and creative practitioners on the other. Her research has been supported by grants from the Arts & Humanities Research Council, Arts Council England, En-quire, Heritage Lottery Fund, and the Wellcome Trust. Buckley lives and works in Bristol and London. [Last updated 2015]

Matthew Buckingham (born 1963) is an artist who makes use of photography, film, video, audio, writing, and drawing to question the role of social memory in contemporary life. Recent exhibitions include: Matthew Buckingham, MCA Denver, Denver, 2009; and Matthew Buckingham: Time Proxies, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 2009. Buckingham lives and works in New York. [Last updated 2010]

Sabeth Buchmann is an art historian and art critic. She is currently Professor of Modern and Postmodern Art and the Head of the Institute for Art Theory and Cultural Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She regularly contributes to books, magazines and catalogues. Her publications include Film, Avantgarde und Biopolitik (Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, 2009) and Art After Conceptual Art (The MIT Press, 2006).

Boris Buden (born 1958) is a writer, cultural critic, and translator. He studied philosophy in Zagreb and received his PhD in Cultural Theory from Humboldt University, Berlin. In the 1990s he founded and was editor of the magazine and publishing house Arkzin in Zagreb. He is a board member of European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies, Vienna. His essays and articles cover topics related to philosophy, politics, translation, linguistics, the post-communist condition, and cultural and art criticism. Among his translations into Croatian are some of the most important works by Sigmund Freud. Buden’s writings appear in numerous books, including the BAK publication Concerning War: A Critical Reader in Contemporary Art(2006/2010) and Art and Contemporary Critical Practice: Reinventing Institutional Critique(2009). He has co-edited and authored several books, including: Zone des Übergangs: Vom Ende des Postkommunismus Zone of Transition: On the End of Post-communism; Übersetzung: Das Versprechen eines Begriffs Translation: Promises of a Concept (2008); and Der Schacht von Babel: Ist Kultur übersetzbar? The Pit of Babel: Is Culture Translatable?. He is currently Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Art and Design, Bauhaus University, Weimar. Buden lives and works in Berlin.

Clare Butcher is an art educator from Zimbabwe, who cooks as part of her practice. She was an education Coordinator for documenta 14 and has taught at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam; the Piet Zwart Institute’s Master of Education in Art, Rotterdam; and the University of Cape Town, Cape Town. Her formal education includes an MFA from the School of Missing Studies, Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam; an MA in Curating the Archive from the University of Cape Town, Cape Town; and participation in the De Appel Curatorial Program, Amsterdam. Butcher curated If A Tree…, 2nd Johannesburg Biennale, Johannesburg, 2012.

Campus in Camps is an experimental education program that activates critical learning and egalitarian environments in Palestinian refugee camps. It was founded by Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti in 2012, when it was based in Dheisheh refugee camp, Bethlehem Palestine. It began as a space for communal learning and production of knowledge grounded in lived experience and connected to communities. Campus in Camps now exists within four Palestinian refugee camps on the West Bank, with both self-organized courses by participants and a collaboration with both local and international universities.

Graciela Carnevale is an artist who participated in the avant-garde of Argentina through exhibitions such as Rosario 67 and Estructuras Primarias II (Primary Structures II), both held in 1967 in Buenos Aires. In 1968, Carnevale contributed to the Ciclo de Arte Experimental (Experimental Art Cycle) organized by the Grupo de Artistas de Vanguardia de Rosario, and participated in Tucumán Arde (Tucumán Is Burning), a collective project and exhibition denouncing hardship in the Tucumán region. She has preserved and organized an archive of those practices. Since 2003 she co-organized El Levante, an independent collective project to develop critical thinking through art practice. Until recently she has been teaching at the University of Rosario’s School of Arts and is part of Red de Conceptualismos del Sur. Carnevale lives and works in Rosario.

Grégroy Castéra is a co-founder and co-director of Council, Paris. He has served as a co-director of Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, Aubervilliers, a coordinator of Bétonsalon, Paris, and is a co-author at the online project Encyclopédie de la Parole (Encyclopedia of Spoken Words).

Beatrice Catanzaro Beatrice Catanzaro is an artist, researcher and teacher. She is a doctoral candidate at the Oxford Brookes University with the Social Sculpture Research Unit, and the co-founder of the Women Centre and Social Enterprise Bait al Karama in the city of Nablus, Palestine. Catanzaro’s practice questions

Carolina Caycedo Carolina Caycedo is an artist whose work contributes to the construction of environmental historical memory as a fundamental element for the non-repetition of violence against human and nonhuman entities. Caycedo’s work aims to generate a debate about the future in relation to common goods, environm

Tony Chakar is an architect and writer. He teaches history of art and architecture at the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts, University of Balamand, Beirut. His work incorporates literature, philosophy, and theory, and has been included in numerous exhibitions internationally, including the 31st Sao Paulo Biennial, Sao Paulo, 2014. Further selected exhibitions and performances include: One Hundred Thousand Solitudes, Sharjah Biennial 11, Sharjah, 2013; An Endless Quick Nightmare, MDE11, Medellín, 2011; The Sky Over Beirut, Beirut, 2009; and Four Cotton Underwear for Tony, exhibited at Ashkal Alwan, Beirut, TownHouse Gallery, Cairo, Tapies Foundation, Barcelona, and Witte de With, Rotterdam as part of Contemporary Arab Representations, curated by Catherine David, 2001–2002. He is a contributor to Al Mulhaq, the cultural supplement of the daily newspaper Annahar, and to several European art journals. Chakar lives and works in Beirut. [Last updated 2015]

Sara Sejin Chang (Sara van der Heide) is an artist whose practice consists of political and poetic interventions, drawing series, performances, and films, through which she proposes a more inclusive modernity. In 2016, she was an artist-in-residence at WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels. She is currently part of the Piet Zwart Institute MFA tutorial team, Rotterdam. She has recently participated in the 1st Asia Biennial/5th Guangzhou Triennial, Guangzhou, 2015–2016; The School of Kyiv: Leipzig Class. Seminar: Politics of Form, Kyiv Biennial, 2015; 19th Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, 2014; Beyond Imagination, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 2012; and the 44th and 45th International Film Festival Rotterdam, Rotterdam, 2015 and 2016. Her durational political drawing series Hollands Kabinet was shown at De Appel, Amsterdam and Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven in 2011 and 2012. Sara Sejin Chang (Sara van der Heide) lives and works in Amsterdam and Brussels.

Olga Chernysheva (born 1962) is an artist who holds a BA from the Moscow Cinema Academy, Moscow (1986), and graduated from the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam (1995–1996). Through her paintings, watercolors, objects, videos, and photographs, Chernysheva engages in a complex process of observing, interpreting, and recomposing her surroundings in an exploration of art’s methods of representing reality. She often concentrates on individuals in mundane situations, but in so doing is able to reveal larger meanings about society, marked as it is by the post-communist and neoliberal conditions of the world. Recent publications on her work include: Olga Chernysheva: Works 2000–2008 (2009) and Olga Chernysheva: Acquaintances (2008). Recent exhibitions include: Artes Mundi 4, National Museum, Cardiff, 2010; Over the Counter: Economy in Post-Socialist Art, Műcsarnok Kunsthalle, Budapest, 2010; 6th Berlin Biennale, Berlin, 2010; Olga Chernysheva, Calvert22 Foundation, London, 2010; International Center of Photography Triennial, New York, 2009; and 3rd Moscow Biennale, Moscow, 2009. Chernysheva lives and works in Moscow. [Last updated 2011]

Chen Chieh-jen (born 1960) is a filmmaker whose practice regularly considers the impact of colonial and oppressive political structures in his native Taiwan. Recent exhibitions include: Taipei Biennial, Taipei, 2012; 4th Guangzhou Triennial, Guangzhou, 2012; and Chen Chieh-jen, Stiftelsen 3,14, Bergen, 2011. Chen lives and works in Taipei. [Last updated 2013]

Curator at BAK from 2005 till 2008 and current artistic director at Casco, Utrecht

Habiba Chrifi-Hammoudi Habiba Chrifi-Hammoudi is a social worker. She is an informal care consultant and coordinator at U Centraal, Steunpunt Mantelzorg Utrecht, and volunteers at Alzheimer Nederland. In her work, she focuses on caregivers with diverse backgrounds. She is the initiator and coordinator of the traveling Alz

Keti Chukhrov is an art theorist and philosopher. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature and works as an editor and translator for Logos-Altera Publishers. She also writes for Moscow Art Magazine and has authored numerous publications on art theory, culture, politics and philosophy in various Russian and foreign magazines, such as New Literary Review, Logos, Critical Mass, and others. Her monograph Pound &£ (Logos, 1999) was the first in Russian dedicated to Ezra Pound’s works, investigating the interrelation between poetics and politics; in 2004 she published War of Quantities-A Book of Dramatic Poems (Borey-art). In 2007 Keti Chukhrov lectured in the Slavic Department at Humboldt University in Berlin. She is currently teaching at the School of Contemporary Art Problems in Moscow, and is finishing post-doctoral research and a book on The Concept of “Theatre” in Philosophical Criticism of Art at the Philosophy Institute of Moscow’s Academy of Sciences, Department of Analytical Anthropology. [Last updated 2010]

Sebastian Cichocki is a curator, writer, and art critic. He is chief curator of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and curator of the Sculpture Park in the Warsaw district of Bródno. In the years 2005 to 2008 he was program director of the Contemporary Art Centre in Bytom. Cichocki’s main focus is the conceptual reflection in art, land-art, and the book as a form of exhibition. He has curated a number of solo and group exhibitions including Monika Sosnowska’s presentation in the Polish Pavilion at the 52nd, and Yael Bartana at the 54th Venice Biennale, Venice. He has produced a number of experimental exhibitions in the form of books, as well as residency programs and staged lectures. Cichocki lives and works in Warsaw. [Last updated 2015]

Homebaked Community Land Trust (CLT) Homebaked Community Land Trust (CLT) is based in the neighborhood of Anfield, on the high street just opposite the Liverpool Football Club. Starting from having saved their neighborhood bakery building from demolition in response to stalled regeneration in the area in 2010, Homebaked CLT works towar

Cristina Cochior Cristina Cochior is a researcher and designer. She is a member of the everyday technology collective Varia (2017–ongoing), as well as a tutor in the Hacking Department of the Willem de Kooning Academie, Rotterdam (2020–ongoing) and in the Experimental Publishing Department of the Piet Zwart Institut

Tony Cokes Tony Cokes is a post-conceptualist artist whose practice foregrounds social critique. He currently serves as a Professor in the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University in Providence, RI. Cokes’ video, installation, and sound works recontextualize appropriated materials to reflect

Karrabing Film Collective is a grassroots Indigenous media group that produces films representing their lives, analyzing society, and intervening in the representation of Indigeneity. Recent screenings have been held at Contour Biennale, Mechelen, 2017; documenta 14, Athens, 2017; and Berlinale 67, Berlin, 2017. The Karrabing Film Collective is based in the Northern Territory, Australia

freethought collective The freethought collective came together in 2012 amid growing crises in the education sector, specifically the need for new knowledges to flow in and out of academia unhampered by strict protocols of evaluation and the metric assessment of the outcomes of knowledge. The “free” in freethought’s chose

Megan Hoetger / Zone Collective Zone Collective is a collaborative duo consisting of Megan Hoetger and Kirila Cvetkovska. Hoetger is a performance and media historian, and currently curator with Amsterdam-based If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution. Cvetkovska is an independent cultural practitioner alternat

Black Audio Film Collective Black Audio Film Collective was a seven-person film collective inaugurated in the United Kingdom in 1982 and dissolved in 1998.

Homegrown Collective Homegrown is a collective part of Homebaked Community Land Trust. Co-owned and co-produced by people who live and work in the area and led by local resident Samantha Jones, Homegrown Collective has turned an unused piece of land in the neighborhood of Anfield into a gardening and growing project. Th

Phil Collins (born 1970) is a video and installation artist who, through his intense engagement with his subjects, examines both the representation and reality of their social and political situations. He is Professor of Video Art at Academy of Media Arts Cologne, Cologne. Recent exhibitions include: the meaning of style, Gallery of Modern Art, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 2012; Revolution vs. Revolution, Beirut Art Center, Beirut, 2012; and Phil Collins: marxism today, British Film Institute, London, 2011. Collins lives and works in Berlin and Cologne. [Last updated 2013]

Beatriz Colomina is Professor of Architecture History and Theory, and director of the PhD Program of the School of Architecture, Princeton University, Princeton. She is the founding director of Princeton’s Program in Media and Modernity, which takes an interdisciplinary view of the links between culture and technology. Colomina has served on the editorial boards of the journals Assemblage, Daidalos, and Grey Room. Her books include: Domesticity at War (2007); Doble exposición: Arquitectura a través del arte Double Exposure: Architecture through Art; Cold War Hothouses: Inventing Postwar Culture from Cockpit to Playboy (2004); and Sexuality and Space (1992). The exhibition Clip/Stamp/Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines, which she curated together with Princeton PhD students, was presented at the Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York, and traveled to Documenta 12, Kassel, 2007, among other locations. Colomina lives and works in New York. [Last updated 2010]

MTL Collective MTL Collective (Amin Husain and Nitasha Dhillon) joins research and activism with artistic practice. MTL’s work has been curated in major international art exhibitions and festivals around the world including the 2016 Athens Biennale; 2015 Venice Biennale; MediaImpact International Festival of Activ

La Colonie Founded by Kader Attia, La Colonie opened its doors on 17 October 2016, the anniversary of the 1961 Paris massacre in which police officers attacked and killed demonstrators for Algerian independence. From 2016-2020, La Colonie was located in Paris’s Gare du Nord area. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic,

Launched in June 2014, Barcelona en Comú functions as a citizen platform. Its political agenda advocates social justice and community rights, promotes participatory democracy, and develops a new model of tourism for Barcelona. Through collective action, the platform proposes a transparent and collaborative model for the city and its institutions.

Land+Civilization Compositions, based in Randstad and Istanbul, uses multidisciplinary practices and collaborations to work on the issues surrounding built form in a variety of contexts.

New Women Connectors New Women Connectors is a movement to provide a platform that strives to connect newcomer and migrant women to the host society, and to amplify the voices of those who often feel voiceless. Initiated by Anila Noor, it is envisioned, created, and led by migrant and refugee women, ensuring all voices

Coppola has developed projects, performances, and exhibitions in international contexts, including: Fondazione Merz, Turin, 2018; Kumu Art Museum, Tallinn, 2017; Teatro Continuo, Milan, 2016; Parckdesign, Brussels, 2016; Athens Biennale, Athens, 2015; Teatro Valle Occupato, Rome, 2013; Kadist Art Foundation, Paris, 2012; Steirischer Herbst, Graz, 2012; and Democracy Biennale, Turin, 2009. Coppola lives and works in Brussels and Lecce.

Danilo Correale is an artist who analyzes temporal and bodily relations of labor-leisure and sleep. Recent solo exhibitions include Tales of Exhaustion, La Loge, Brussels, 2016 and his most recent publication is No More Sleep No More (2015). Correale lives and works in Naples and New York.

Miguel Cordero Miguel Cordero is an installation, sculpture, and mixed media artist. His latest work, Jorge Chávez sweater for a Boeing 737-200, concerns aero-commercial domains, drug trafficking, improper negotiations, real estate speculation, the need for heroic references, and relational art with a community re

Cosmin Costinas (born 1982) is a writer, art critic, and curator who studied art history at the Babes Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. He is contributing editor of the magazines Idea Arts + Society (Cluj) and Version (Paris/Cluj) as well as an advisory board member of PATTERNS/ERSTE Foundation (Vienna). Recently he co-authored the novel Philip (Project Press, Dublin, 2007) and has contributed to magazines, books, and exhibition catalogs across Europe and South-East Asia and has lectured in institutions and universities in Europe and China. Costinas was one of the editors of documenta 12 magazines (Vienna/Kassel). Recent curatorial projects (selection): After the Happy Nineties, Goethe Institute, Bucharest, 2005; Tales from the Other Side, DSBA, Bucharest, 2005; and Textground, Display Gallery, Prague, 2004. Costinas lives and works in Bucharest and Vienna.

Council is a nonprofit organization based in Paris that assembles knowledge from the arts, sciences, and civil society in order to foster new understandings of societal issues. Founded in 2013, Council curates exhibitions, creates public programming, commissions artworks and texts, and has a fellowship program.

Terra Critica Birgit M. Kaiser and Kathrin Thiele, Utrecht

Chris Cyrille Chris Cyrille is a poet, art critic and freelance exhibition storyteller. After two master degrees, one in art theory, and the other in philosophy at Paris 8, he decided to work for several magazines in France. Cyrille is member of AICA (International Association of Art Critics), and has received th

Josef Dabernig (born 1956) is an artist and filmmaker whose work uncovers the monotony and coercion that can dominate even the most expected daily actions. Recent exhibitions include: ROUNDTABLE, 9th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, 2012; Don’t Smile. On the Humour of Art, Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz, 2012; and Josef Dabernig. Panorama, Kunsthaus Graz and Neue Galerie, Graz, 2013. Dabernig lives and works in Vienna. [Last updated 2013]

Jeremiah Day is an artist whose work employs photography, speech, and body language to re-examine political conflicts and resistances, unfolding their subjective traces. Day studied under an d often collaborates with postmodern dance pioneer Simone Forti, using her improvisational research-moving-talking method as an open-ended, unfolding, embodied form of questioning. He graduated from the Art Department of the University of California, Los Angeles and attended the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam. Recent solo exhibitions and performances include: To a Person Sitting in Darkness (#2 Perimeter’s Walk), Galleria SpazioA, Pistoia, 2015; The Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness, Arratia Beer, Berlin, 2015; and If You Want Blood, Arcade, London, 2013. Recent group exhibitions include: Istanbul: Passion, Joy, Fury (with Can Altay), MAXXI, Rome, 2015–2016; Giles Bailey & Jeremiah Day, Centre for Contemporary Arts Glasgow, Glasgow, 2015–2016; and 5th Thessaloniki Biennale, Thessaloniki, 2015. Day lives and works in Amsterdam and Berlin.

Jodi Dean is a political theorist and writer who holds the Harter Chair in Humanities and Social Sciences at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York. She received her BA from Princeton University and her MA, MPhil, and PhD from Columbia University, New York. Her research and writing focus on the contemporary space of politics. She has authored and edited eleven books. Recent publications include: The Communist Horizon (2012); Blog Theory (2010); and Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies (2009).[1] Her most recent book, Crowds and Party, is forthcoming in 2016, published by Verso. Dean lives and works in Geneva and New York. [Last updated 2016]

Mariana Castillo Deball (born 1975) is an artist who won the Prix de Rome, Amsterdam, for her project and the accompanying publication Institute of Chance. Prior to that, she worked as a Researcher in Fine Art at the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, in 2002 and 2003. Together with artist Irene Kopelman she is the initiator of the Ugbar Foundation, a fund that organizes interdisciplinary projects in the fields of science and history. Recent publications include: Report (Not Announcement), BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht and e-flux (2006), Interlude: The Reader’s Traces (2005), and Never Odd or Even (2005). Recent exhibitions include: undo redo, Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, 2006 and Mercury in Retrograde, De Appel, Amsterdam, 2006. Castillo Deball lives and works in Amsterdam and Berlin.Mariana Castillo Deball’s practice resembles archeological or anthropological investigation into the fields of scientific studies in the past and present society. With playful irony and wit, Deball’s projects intervene in existing systems of knowledge and learning, and create a niche wherein one can observe and imagine a new way of investigating and distributing knowledge. Taking a short break from production and public presentation (while nevertheless contributing to BAK’s project Concerning Knowledge Production (2006), Deball spends her residence in “constructive retreat” and conducts preliminary research for upcoming projects.

Sky Deep Sky Deep is much more than a DJ/Producer, and has experience launching a label, curating, running club nights, and producing awardwinning films. Recently, she has been touring as a DJ/performer, lead guitarist, vocalist, and MC; creating the music tech YouTube series How I Do Dat Like Thatwhere she

Ekaterina Degot (born 1958) is an art historian, art writer, and curator whose work focuses on aesthetic and sociopolitical issues in Russia, predominantly in the post-Soviet era. She teaches at the Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia and Moscow State University. Since 2008 she has been senior editor of OpenSpace.ru, a Russian independent online magazine of art news, art criticism, and cultural analysis. She recently co-edited Post-Post-Soviet?: Art, Politics and Society in Russia at the Turn of the Decade (with Marta Dziewanska, et al.), 2013, and with David Riff convenes the first Bergen Assembly, Bergen, 2013. Degot lives and works in Moscow. [Last updated 2013]

Chto Delat?/What is to be done? is a Russian collective, established in 2003, that open a space between theory, art, and activism, creating and developing a dialogue of different positions on the politicization of knowledge production and place of art and poetics in this process. Chto Delat operates through collective initiatives organized by “art soviets” inspired by the council politics originated in revolutionary Russia in the early 20th century. Selected solo exhibitions include: Time Capsule. Artistic Report on Catastrophes and Utopia, Secession, Vienna, 2014–2015; The Lesson on Dis-Consent, Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden, 2011; and The Urgent Need to Struggle, Institute of Contemporary Art, London, 2010. Selected group exhibitions include: The Excluded. In a Moment of Danger, São Paulo Biennale, São Paulo, 2014; Really Useful Knowledge, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 2014; and FORMER WEST: Documents, Constellations, Prospects, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 2013. Chto Delat? works in St. Petersburg and Moscow. [Last updated 2016]

Burak Delier (born 1977) is an artist who explores the relationship between capitalism and contemporary artistic practices. His work incorporates guerrilla art tactics and absurdist humor, and also employs the strategies of the very neoliberal media with which he disagrees. Recent projects and exhibitions include: the research project Art Facts, SALT, Istanbul, 2012; and 8th Taipei Biennial, Taipei, 2010. Delier lives and works in Istanbul. [Last updated 2012]

T.J. Demos is a writer and critic teaching in the Department of Art History at University College London, London. In 2010, he co-curated Uneven Geographies: Art and Globalization at Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham. During 2008–2009, he organized Zones of Conflict: Rethinking Contemporary Art During Global Crisis, comprising a series of research workshops in London and an exhibition in New York. Demos’s essays on modern and contemporary art and politics have appeared in numerous international magazines and journals, among them Artforum, Grey Room, October, and Texte zur Kunst. He is author of The Migrant Image: The Art and Politics of Documentary During Global Crisis (2013) and Return to the Postcolony: Specters of Colonialism in Contemporary Art (2013). His book, The Exiles of Marcel Duchamp, was published by the MIT Press in 2007. Demos lives and works in London. [Last updated 2016]

Lynnée Denise Lynnée Denise is an artist, scholar, writer, and DJ whose work reflects on underground cultural movements, the 1980s, migration studies, theories of escape, and electronic music of the African Diaspora.

Zoénie Liwen Deng Zoénie Liwen Deng writes semi-ekphrastic poems and art-related essays, and organizes events around social practices. She works as the civic praxis/community portal coordinator at BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht and at Waag Society as concept developer on arts and technology projects. She obta

Allan deSouza Allan deSouza is a transmedia artist whose works restage colonial-era material legacies through counter strategies of humor, fabulation, and (mis)translation. His works cross different disciplines, including photography, digital media, text, performance, and pedagogy. DeSouza is a professor of photo

To Be Determined To Be Determined is an undocumented organization that has recently migrated to the Netherlands from the Philippines and other places, assuming a new name and identity. It is curious about models of collectivizing authorship (be it credited, anonymous, or divested), underground railroads (in plain si

Souleymane Bachir Diagne Souleymane Bachir Diagne is a writer, philosopher, and educator. He works as professor in the Department of French and Romance Philology at Columbia University, New York. Diagne received his PhD in philosophy at Sorbonne University, Paris. He taught philosophy for many years at Cheikh Anta Diop Univ

Manthia Diawara (born 1953) is a cultural, literary, and film theorist as well as a filmmaker whose main area of research is African studies. He is the author of several books including African Film: New Forms of Aesthetics and Politics (2010) and We Won’t Budge: An African Exile in the World (2003). His Recent films are Édouard Glissant: One World in Relation (2010) and Maison Tropicale (2008). Diawara lives and works in New York. [Last updated 2013

Mike Dibb Mike Dibb is an award-winning British independent filmmaker who has been producing and directing films for television for many years on a wide range of subjects, from cinema and jazz to art, sport, literature, science, and popular culture.

Rod Dickinson (born 1965) is an artist and lecturer at the University of West England, Bristol. Much of his research centers on re-enactment and the investigation of social structures. His work Greenwich Degree Zero (made together with Tom McCarthy) was shown in the exhibition The Art of Iconoclasm (part of BAK’s project The Return of Religion and Other Myths, 2008–2009) and was previously exhibited in the following exhibitions (selection): History Will Repeat Itself – Strategies of Re-enactment in Contemporary Art, Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Dortmund, 2007, Kunst Werke, Berlin, 2007–2008, and Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, 2008; Greenwich Degree Zero, Beaconsfield Gallery, London, 2006; and The Western Front Gallery, Vancouver,During his residency, Rod Dickinson worked on the installation of Greenwich Degree Zero for the exhibition The Art of Iconoclasm. In addition, he gave a number of presentations and lectures on re-enactment at Dutch art academies and universities (including Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam; Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht; and Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen). Dickinson also developed a script together with writer Steve Rushton for the artwork Media Burn, a live performance and document of video and stills. The project consists of staging a press conference using a script composed of fragments of presidential-style press conferences and military briefings from around the world, spanning the last thirty years. The script focuses on the use of language to neutralize acts of state sanctioned violence. During a public seminar at BAK in November, organized by Dickinson, Steve Rushton, and Michael Uwemedimo, he staged a first rehearsal of the work with two actors.

Bülent Diken teaches social and cultural theory at the Department of Sociology, Lancaster University, Lancaster. He studied urban planning at the Aarhus School of Architecture, Aarhus, and previously taught at the Institute of Geography, Roskilde University, Roskilde. Diken’s research interests include social theory, post-structuralism, political philosophy, urban sociology, and immigration and he is currently working on two book projects: Revolt, Revolution, Critique: The Paradox of Society and The Sociology of Terrorism. Recent publications include: Nihilism (2009); and Strangers, Ambivalence and Social Theory (1998). Together with Carsten Bagge Lausten he has authored the books Sociology Through the Projector (2007); The Culture of Exception: Sociology Facing the Camp (2005); and I Terrorens Skygge (2004). Diken lives and works in Lancaster. [Last updated 2010]

Angela Dimitrakaki is a writer and Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Art History and Theory at the University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh where she co-directs the MSc in Modern and Contemporary Art and the Global Contemporary Research Group. Working across Marxism and feminism, she focuses on labor, social reproduction, the political in globalization, and the resurgence of fascism. She is working on two books, Feminism, Art, Capitalism and The Economic Subjects of Contemporary Art. Her fiction received a 2017 Academy of Athens award. Dimitrakaki lives and works in Athens and Edinburgh.

Paolo Do is an activist and researcher at the self-managed ESC Atelier and founder-member of LUM (Free Metropolitan University) in Rome. He is also a founder-member of Edufactory and Uninomade, and a collaborator of Dinamopress and Roars. Do holds a PhD in Critical Management and Political Economy from Queen Mary University of London, London and has written on the critique of the political economy of knowledge, organization and strategy of transnational social movements, and new international division of labor. He is author of Il tallone del drago: capitale globale e conflitti in Cina (2010), and co-editor of Lessico Marxiano. Dieci concetti per ripensare il presente (2009), and Towards a Global Autonomous University (2009). Currently Do is working on the relationship of knowledge, art, and politics within art institutions. He is also working at the concept and organization of the transdisciplinary research program on the contemporary, Studio Roma; the art program Openings Out to Reality; and the artistic projects Draftsman Congress and Cattedrale, among others, based at the Swiss Institute of Rome. Do is based in Rome. [Last updated 2015]

Anfisa Doroshenko Anfisa Doroshenko is a PhD student at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Kyiv. She is interested in different concepts and conceptualizations of “shimmering,” or light effects, which represent instability and uncertainty. She is a senior research fellow at the Khanenko Museum, Kyiv, and

Helmut Draxler (born 1956) is an art historian, art critic, curator, and Professor of Art Theory at the Merz Academy in Stuttgart. He was the director of the Kunstverein Munich from 1992 to 1995. In 2004–2006 he organized (with Sabeth Buchmann and Stephan Geene) the project Avant-garde Film Biopolitics at the Jan van Eyck Academy, Maastricht. More recently Draxler curated the exhibition Shandyismus. Autorschaft Als Genre [Shandyism. Authorship as Genre] at the Secession, Vienna, 2007. He writes extensively on contemporary art and theory for a variety of international magazines and artists’ catalogs. Recent publications include: Film, Avantgarde, Biopolitik Film, Avant-garde, Biopolitics (2009); Gefährliche Substanzen. Zum Verhältnis von Kritik und Kunst Hazardous Material. On the Relationship between Criticism and Art; Coercing Constellations. Space, Reference, and Representation in Fareed Armaly (2007); and Shandyismus. Autorschaft Als Genre Shandyism. Authorship as Genre. Draxler lives and works in Berlin, Stuttgart, and Vienna. [Last updated 2009]

Her research asks: how can independent social housing, cultural agencies, and city-making organizations work in the aftermath of lawful squatting-based community models, while maintain agency in a neoliberal city where institutional co-optation and neoliberal planning regimes dictate cultural and living spaces? Through her manifold projects, she has participated or organized the following exhibitions: KIOSK has been part of A Funeral For Street Culture, Framer Framed, 2021; Pension Almonde has been part of Het Ontwerp van het Sociale, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam, 2021; Heimweewoning, Pension Almonde, 2020; Open Nova, Galerija Nova, Zagreb, 2019; The Temporary Autonomous Bureau, Tent, Rotterdam, 2018. List of publications include: Pension Almonde Book (2021), Conversations we happen to be part of (2020), Skrenuti Desno, Nakon Dvjesto Metara Skrenuti Lijevo(2019). Philippa lives and works in Rotterdam, and is part of the BAK Cell, Utrecht, in the Fellowship for Situated Practice. 

Marlene Dumas (born 1953) is an artist whose practice mainly encompasses painting and drawing. She often portrays people who have been deemed “Other” by society, drawing attention to our own systems of belief. Recent exhibitions include: Sorte, Fondazione Stelline, Milan, 2012; Forsaken, Frith Street Gallery, London, 2011; and Against the Wall, Fundação de Serralves, Porto, 2010. Dumas lives and works in Amsterdam. [Last updated 2013]

Jimmie Durham (born 1940) is an artist and writer whose work deals with cultural representations and countering western narratives of history and nation. Recent exhibitions include Jimmie Durham: A Matter of Life and Death and Singing, Museum voor Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen, Antwerp, 2012 and Documenta 13, Kassel, Germany, 2012. Durham lives and works in Berlin. [Last updated 2013]

Övül Durmuşoğlu (born 1978) is a curator and critic who completed a BA in Translating and Interpreting at Bogazici University, Istanbul and an MFA in the theory branch of Visual Arts and Visual Communication Design at Sabanci University, Istanbul. She also participated in the Critical Studies program at Malmö Art Academy, Malmö. In addition to contributing to local art and culture magazines such as Cogito, Kaos GL, and icon, Durmuşoğlu has been working with Altyazi Monthly Cinema Magazine (Istanbul) since its foundation. She has also given public talks on feminism, performance art, and pornography in Istanbul and Ankara. Recent publications include: Paletten (Gothenburg); n.paradoxa (London); Muhtelif (Istanbul/Berlin); and Kulturrise (Vienna). Recent curatorial projects include: Data Recovery, GAMeC, Bergamo, 2007; Nightcomers, 10th International Istanbul Biënnal, Istanbul, 2007; EXOCiTi, Istanbul, 2006; and Ittihad Sigorta, Istanbul, 2005. In 2007, she was awarded the 4th edition of the Premio Lorenzo Bonaldi Young Curators Award in Italy. Durmuşoğlu lives and works in Istanbul and Vienna.During her RIR stay, Durmuşoğlu considered questions such as: how can the postsecular discussion in terms of contemporary art be reflected upon? May contemporary art be an agonistic zone for the clashes and polarizations between secularist and religious groups? Can we still pose that most crucial question, “can we live together?,” urging people to create a common ground for thinking where the methodologies of social science do not work anymore?Art schools or academies where people have chosen to become artists may be claimed to be interesting “case studies” in searching after the above stated questions. In the Netherlands, there are many people coming from various countries to study art. However, the portion of immigrant residents in art academies has been rarely studied. There must be some people coming from Turkish, North African, and Asian communities residing in the Netherlands. Choosing to become artists represents such a different choice of future, because their families who arrived here probably escaped from difficult living conditions in their homelands. Do they think they belong to second or third generation in the Netherlands? Why have they chosen to become artists? What is the response from their communities? Is art seen as a secular condition there? Do they feel that they need to deal with the liberal system of art education? How do they negotiate? How do they feel about fake terms such as multiculturalism? Do their conflicts shape their positions?One feels that one question creates the succeeding one, and actually we don’t have enough information to discuss further without falling into quick generalizations and prejudices. That’s why I—coming from Turkey and having studied art in Western Europe myself—desire to follow up these queries from a different position in my research during the RIR stay. The research consists of two steps: first, getting in touch with selected art academies in he Netherlands, visiting collaborating students’ studios and collecting information; the second step will be turning the information collected into production in the form of an interview book and a workshop designed in collaboration with BAK. In the end, I hope not to reach definitive answers, but to create a possible collective and collaborative thinking ground where my questions can find different answers or pose their own questions.

Yasmine Eid-Sabbagh Artist Yasmine Eid-Sabbagh has a background in photography. She combines research, conversational, image and (meta)archival practices with long-term involvement to reflect on the agency of photographs and notions of collectivity and power. Her work connects to the interhuman relationships that come

Andrea Elera is a visual artist, educator, and organizer. Since 2008, she has organized art projects and platforms for critical action centered on the public role of artists and cultural institutions. She served as head of the visual arts office at the Municipality of Miraflores, Lima, and has been part of the curatorial team of Sala Luis Miró Quesada Garland, Miraflores. She has previously worked in the educational department of Lima Art Museum, Lima. In 2008, she co-founded the art space Casa Pausa (2008–2018). She holds a master’s degree in art education from ArtEZ, Arnhem, and a bachelor’s of fine arts from Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima. She is currently studying as part of the Art and Performance Research Studies Department at University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam.

Okwui Enwezor is a curator, critic, poet, and the director of the Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany. In 2015 Enwezor was the artistic director of 56th Venice Biennale. In addition to writing extensively on contemporary African art and artists, as well as on American and international art, he regularly writes books, edits publications, and contributes his writing to periodicals such as Artforum, Frieze, Parkett, Texte zur Kunst, and Third Text. He has curated and co-curated numerous ground-breaking exhibitions around the world including: 7th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, 2008; Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art, International Center of Photography (ICP), New York, 2008; Documenta 11, Kassel 2002; and The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945–1994, Museum Villa Stuck, Munich, Gropius Bau, Berlin, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and P.S.1 and Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2001. He received the Award for Curatorial Excellence from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York in 2009. Enwezor lives and works in and New York. [Last updated 2016]

Köken Ergun Köken Ergun (born 1976) is a video and performance artist whose work focuses on marginalized communities and the political and social aspects of their rituals. Recent exhibitions include: Intense Proximity, La Triennale, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2012; About Stupidity, Petach Tikva Museum, Petach Tikv

Gabriel Erlach Gabriel Erlach is a social entrepreneur. She is the owner of Gabrielevents, organizer of social events and festivals, presenter with TV channel RTV Utrecht and radio station Bingo FM, and co-initiator of Verspoetry. With Gabrielevents, she organizes spoken word poetry workshops in schools. In her pr

Mitchell Esajas Antropoloog, curator en sociaal ondernemer Mitchell Esajas is onderdeel van verschillende gemeenschapsprojecten op het gebied van onderwijs, werkgelegenheid, diversiteit en duurzaamheid. Hij is medeoprichter en voorzitter van New Urban Collective, een netwerk voor studenten en young professionals va

Etcétera… (established 1998) is a collective founded in Buenos Aires who work across multiple categories including poetry, theater, and visual art. Their artworks, manifestos, and actions often take part in public demonstrations and connect with other groups engaged in struggle. Recent exhibitions include: From the Relative Truth to the Absolute Error, Smart Project Space, Amsterdam, 2011; and 11th Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, 2009. Etcétera… is based in Buenos Aires. [Last updated 2012]

İnci Eviner’s body of work is comprised of multilayered pieces that originate from drawings. Ranging from drawings and video to performative and collaborative practices, she explores politics of desire, space, and subjectivity and its potentiality. As an artist, she is aware of the traumas with which we live, which demand a new kind of listening and witnessing. She holds a PhD in Fine Arts from Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Istanbul and has been a lecturer at the Faculty of Art and Design at the Kadir Has University, Istanbul since 2011. She participated in the following group exhibitions and biennials: Rainbow Caravan, 3rd Aichi Triennale, Aichi, 2016; Les Parfums de l’Intranquillité, Hotel des Arts, Toulon, 2016; and İstanbul: Passion, Joy, Fury, MAXXI, Rome, 2015. Recent solo exhibitions include: İnci Eviner Retrospective: Who’s Inside You?, Istanbul Modern, Istanbul, 2016; Runaway Girls, The Drawing Center, New York, 2015; and Stages of Everyday Politics, Mario Mauroner Contemporary, Vienna, 2014. Eviner lives and works in Istanbul.

Michèle Faguet is a writer and curator. Faguet is a graduate of the MA program in Art History at Columbia University, New York. She has taught critical theory at the Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá (2002–2003) and was a visiting curator at the Banff Center, Banff, and a guest lecturer at the California College of the Arts MA Curatorial Practice program, San Francisco and the Dutch Art Institute, Enschede. In addition she has served as director/curator of the Or Gallery, Vancouver (2005–2007); Espacio La Rebeca, Bogotá (2002–2005); and La Panadería, Mexico City (2000–2001); as adjunct curator of the Alliance Française, Bogotá (2004–2005); and exhibitions coordinator of the Swiss Institute, New York (1997–1999). Faguet has organized exhibitions with a diverse group of international artists including Sharon Hayes, Miguel Calderón, Javier Téllez, Wilson Díaz, Kristin Lucas, and Phil Collins. She has written extensively on contemporary art for a variety of publications, with a special interest on the contextualization of recent practices from Chile and Colombia. Recent publications include: “New York, Capital of the Third World,” Local People: Johanna Unzueta, Queens Museum of Art (2009); “Pornomiseria or How Not to Make a Documentary Film,” Afterall (Summer 2009); “Soy mi madre: Conversation between Phil Collins and Michèle Faguet,” El Tiempo Celeste (Spring 2009); and “Je est un autre: la estetización de la miseria,” Ensayos sobre Arte Contemporáneo en Colombia 2008 (2008). She is a 2008 recipient of the Creative Capital | Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. Faguet currently lives and works in Berlin.

Simone Fattal Simone Fattal is an artist who makes abstract and figurative ceramic sculptures, paintings, and collages. She studied philosophy at Ecole Modèle des Lettres, Beirut and at the Sorbonne, Paris. In 1969, she returned to Beirut and began painting. In 1980, she settled in California and founded Post-Apo

Carl Martin Faurby is a freelance curator and writer. He often invents platforms for cultural investigations by means of contemporary art, which usually take place outside of institutional contexts. He is the curator of Alt_Cph 15, a non profit and experimental art fair for so-called “alternative art spaces.” Faurby is a member of the board of UKK (Young Artists and Art Workers), an organization that strives for better working conditions for art workers within the first 10 years of their careers, through lobbying and discursive projects. He is the author of Object This Picture (2012/2013) and co-author of Force Majeure (2014), and is a regular contributor to the art magazine Kunsten.nu. Faurby lives and works in Copenhagen. [Last updated 2015]

Maya Felixbrodt plays viola, composes, draws faces, makes large-scale collages, dances, researches movement and music, makes performance art, sings, improvises, makes videos, writes about her dreams, writes poetry, performs as a soloist and with ensembles, and initiates and takes part in many musical and interdisciplinary collaborations, including her ensembles Zvov, 32, and GHOM. She is also the curator of Synzine, a magazine for musical games.

E. C. Feiss is a researcher, critic, and a PhD candidate at the History of Art Department of University of California, Berkeley. In 2014–2015 she was a resident at the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht and an instructor at the Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam. Most recently, her writing appeared in Cinema Olanda: Wendelien van Oldenborgh (ed. Lucy Cotter, 2017) and White Paper: On Land, Law and the Imaginary (ed. Adelita Husni-Bey, 2017) and she has contributed to Afterall, Camera Austria, Little Joe, Radical Philosophy, and Texte zur Kunst. Feiss lives and works in Berkeley, CA.

Frente 3 de Fevereiro Frente 3 de Fevereiro is a collective founded in 2004 following the murder of Flavio Sant’Ana, a young black student, by São Paulo police. Based in São Paulo, the group comprises 21 members involved in the arts, academia, and other fields. They use research and forms of direct action to call attenti

Jesko Fezer (born 1970) is an architect and an artist. His projects, in cooperation with institute für angewandte urbanistik, are realized in Munich, Stuttgart, Berlin, Utrecht, Graz, New York, and London. He is Professor for Experimental Design at Hochschule für bildende Künste, Hamburg, co-manager of the thematic bookshop Pro qm, and co-editor of the political architecture magazine An Architektur. Active as an author, a curator, an artist, and an exhibition designer with Kooperative für Darstellungspolitik, Fezer teaches at various universities and researches post-war modernism, design methodology, process-based urbanism, participation, and the politics of design. He lives and works in Berlin. [Last updated 2012]

Joanna Figiel is a doctoral candidate at the Centre for Culture and the Creative Industries, City University London, London. Her research focuses on labor issues, precarity, and policy within the creative and cultural sectors. She completed her Master of Arts at the Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths University of London, London. She is a member of the editorial collective of the journal ephemera: theory and politics in organization. Figiel is based in London and Warsaw. [Last updated 2015]

Mark Fisher (born 1968) is a writer, theorist, and Programme Leader of the MA in Aural and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, London and a lecturer at the University of East London, London. He is a founding member of the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit and author of Ghosts Of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures (2014), and Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (2009). Fisher’s writing has appeared in many publications, including Frieze, The Guardian, New Humanist, New Statesman, Sight & Sound, and The Wire. He has also produced two acclaimed audio-essays in collaboration with Justin Barton: londonunderlondon (2005) and On Vanishing Land (2013). Fisher lives and works in Suffolk and London. [Last updated 2014]

Stranded FM Stranded FM is an online radio station, founded in 2015. Stranded FM strives to provide a stage for the (as of yet) unknown Utrecht music scene, and connect its broader cultural landscape, among other things through making online radio shows five days a week. In addition, Stranded FM regularly organ

Migrant Domestic Workers network FNV is part of the Netherlands Trade Union Confederation (FNV). It represents the interests of domestic workers working in the Netherlands and campaigns for the ratification of International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention 189. The Migrant Domestic Workers network FNV is based in Utrecht.

Iliana Fokianaki is a writer and curator. She is a co-founder of the platform Future Climates, is conducting PhD research on the synapses between art, identity, politics, and economy at Panteion University, Athens, and since March 2017, is a curator of Extra City Kunsthal, Antwerp. Fokianaki is the founder of State of Concept Athens, Athens.

Gabriel Fontana Gabriel Fontana is a social designer. He is the initiator of Multiform, a tool that challenges and examines ideas of identity, community, and inclusion by proposing games for sport classes at schools, generating an openness and empathy that later on filter into wider society. Through a queer framewo

Laura Grace Ford Laura Grace Ford is an artist and writer concerned with the politics and poetics of place.

Maja and Reuben Fowkes are art historians and curators whose interests in the fields of art and ecology are manifest in their curated exhibitions, organized symposia, and writings, exploring key ideas and practices around green curating, environmental art history, and the sustainability of contemporary art. Their work also focuses on the theory and aesthetics of Eastern European art, from the art production of the socialist era to contemporary artistic responses to the transformations brought on by globalization. Maja completed her PhD at University College London, London with a thesis titled “Central European Neo-Avant-Garde Art and Ecology under Socialism,” while’s Reuben’s thesis at the University of Essex, Colchester was on socialist realist public monuments in postwar Eastern Europe. In 2010, their collaborative practice was recognized with a grant from the Igor Zabel Award for Culture and Theory. Maja is the author of The Green Bloc: Art and Ecology under Socialism (forthcoming). Their current engagements include a paper at the 2014 annual conference of the Association of Art Historians on “Planetary Awareness under State Socialism,” an article titled “Green Critique in a Red Environment” in ARTMargins journal, as well as organizing a year-long River School on the Danube on art and sustainability. They work out of Budapest and London through the Translocal Institute. [Last updated 2014]

Chandra Frank is an independent curator and feminist scholar. She interrogates the roles of archives, transnational queer kinship, and the politics of pleasure, with an emphasis on the Black, Migrant, and Refugee women’s movement in the Netherlands during the 1980s. She holds an MPhil in African Studies from the University of Cape Town and is a PhD candidate at Goldsmiths, University of London. Currently, Frank holds a guest lectureship at the California State University Los Angeles Pan African and Latin American Studies Department.

René Francisco is an artist, activist, and teacher. In his work, he adopts an approach that seeks to overcome social fragmentation. Known for his thorough research, he explores problems of Cuban national identity and social justice. Driven to promote interaction between students and teachers, he created the Galería DUPP, Desde una Pedagogía Pragmática (Through a Pragmatic Pedagogy) in 1989. He has won several international awards, including the UNESCO Prize (2000) and the National Prize of Plastic Arts of Cuba (2010). Recent solo exhibitions include: Venceremos, Galeria Nara Roesler, São Paulo, 2016; Entropía, Factoría Habana, Havana, 2015; and Work in Progress, Xin Dong Cheng Space for Contemporary Art, Beijing, 2012. He also participated in recent group exhibitions, such as: Dark Mirror: Art from Latin America since 1968, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg, 2015–2016; and La Otra Bienal (René Francisco-Fidel Yordán Castro), Museo de la Perseverancia, Bogotá, 2013. Francisco lives and works in Havana.

Elizabeth Freeman Elizabeth Freeman is a researcher, educator, and writer specialized in American literature and gender, sexuality, and queer studies. She holds both an MA and a PhD from the University of Chicago, Chicago, and is currently teaching at University of California, Davis. Her articles have appeared in num

Freehouse Freehouse is a foundation in Afrikaanderwijk in Rotterdam that makes the qualities of the neighborhood and its residents visible. It does so by focusing on the outdoors as the space where connections and people meet. Considering the trend that, nowadays, people feel less involved with public spaces

Urban Front Urban Front is a transnational urban consultancy group formed by independent associates around the world, and was initiated by David Harvey and Miguel Robles-Durán, who, since co-founding the National Strategy Center for the Right to the Territory in the Republic of Ecuador in 2013, have been involv

Péter Fuchs (born 1978) is an art historian who studied Art Theory and Media at the Faculty of Humanities, Eötvös Lóránd University, Budapest. He has been giving lectures on new and digital media in the same department over the last two years, as well as at the Hungarian Independent Media Center. He received his Master’s degree, working on the subject of aesthetic approaches towards historically constructed national identities (especially its relation to the representation of tools of destruction—different weapons of war as pure aesthetic objects). Previously Fuchs worked as a computer game designer (2000–2002) and began hosting and editing his own show on computer games and digital media for Hungarian State Television (since 2003). In addition, he has been engaged with Tranzit (an international art initiative) and the Ludwig Museum – Contemporary Art Museum in Budapest, where he is now working as a program coordinator. Fuchs lives and works in Budapest.During his RIR stay, Péter Fuchs worked on an experimental research project, aiming to explore new means of (pre)production for contemporary art venues. The research project took the form of an unpublished blog, in which colleagues can follow the ongoing process of the research. On one hand the blog is an experiment in presenting material about contemporary visual culture in a digital environment rather than a physical one—but not excluding those, of course. On the other hand, it is an attempt to construct new methodologies for visual studies—is art theory to deal with temporal subjects which emerge from the digital landscape of the Internet and to try to attain the interest of those people, whose primary public experience is based around this media. The project tried to expand the notion of exhibition—through research into a new audience: the blog-sphere, a large, internationally diverse body of possible cultural practitioners who might discover standing cultural institutions by means of digital media, or create new ones.The key aspect of cultural production nowadays is the excess production of images and texts, hence one of the main roles of institutions is to collect and filter the production of the so-called creative industries, in other words, to curate them. Hence this blog tries to act as an institutional tool for curating online content regarding the position of religion in a secular/postsecular condition.The other aspect of Fuchs’s Research-in-Residence project is to map up a basic cybernetics of “information network of contemporary art field,” aiming to discover new meaning of digital image reproduction on the World Wide Web.

Avishek Ganguly Avishek Ganguly is a researcher and currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Literary Arts and Studies at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, USA. He holds a PhD in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University, New York. His published and forthcoming work foc

Claudia Martínez Garay Claudia Martínez Garay is an artist whose practice encompasses painting, sculpture, print media, video, and installation. Her work deals with the sociopolitical memory and history of Perú. Through her work, she seeks to challenge the persistence of the colonialist frameworks and reviews (un-)officia

“In 2017, The Economist famously claimed that “data is the new oil.” At the time, Wendy Chun’s response to this statement was: “Big data is the new COAL. The result: global social change. Intensely energized and unstable clouds.”12 Still, both coal and oil are likely to decline as energy sources. Another question worth asking, then, is: what […]

Edward George Edward George is a writer and researcher. Founder of Black Audio Film Collective, George was a researcher, presenter, and actor for the ground-breaking science fiction documentary Last Angel of History (1996). George is part of the multimedia duo Flow Motion (1996–ongoing), and the electronic music

Katherine Gibson (born 1953) is a Professorial Research Fellow in the Institute of Culture and Society and Director of the Urban Research Centre at the University of Western Sydney, Sydney. She is an economic geographer with an international reputation for innovative research on economic transformation and over 30 years of experience in working with communities to build resilient economies. She has conducted action research projects in Asia, the United States, the Pacific, and Australia. As J.K. Gibson-Graham, the collective authorial presence she shares with the late Julie Graham (Professor of Geography, University of Massachusetts, Amherst), her books include: Take Back the Economy: An Ethical Guide for Transforming Our Communities (with Jenny Cameron and Stephen Healy) (2013), A Postcapitalist Politics (2006), and The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy (1996). Gibson lives and works in Sydney. [Last updated 2014]

Wilson writes about abolition, racial capitalism, organized violence, organized abandonment, changing state structure, the aesthetics and politics of seeing, labor and social movements, and internationalism. She is the author of the prize-winning book Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (2007). Forthcoming books include Change Everything; Abolition Geography: Essays Toward Liberation; and Stuart Hall: Selected Writings on Race and Difference (co-edited with Paul Gilroy). The Antipode documentary Racial Capitalism with Ruth Wilson Gilmore (2020) features her internationalist work. She has co-founded many grassroots organizations including California Prison Moratorium Project; Critical Resistance; and Central California Environmental Justice Network. Gilmore is co-recipient (with Angela Y. Davis and Mike Davis) of the 2020 Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize. Gilmore lives in Lisbon.

Paul Gilroy (born 1956) is a sociologist and writer. He is currently the Anthony Giddens Professor of Social Theory in the Sociology Department at the London School of Economics, London. In the fall of 2009, Gilroy was the first visiting Professor to hold the Treaty of Utrecht Chair, Utrecht University, Utrecht. Prior to that he was the Chair of the Department of African American Studies and Professor of Sociology and African American Studies at Yale University, New Haven from 2002–2005. He is the author of numerous articles published in periodicals such as Critical Quarterly, Cultural Studies, Ethnicities, International Journal of Cultural Studies, and Third Text, among others. His wide-ranging and highly influential publications include: Darker Than Blue: On The Moral Economies of Black Atlantic Cultures (2009); Black Britain: A Pictorial History (2007); After Empire: Melancholia or Convivial Culture? (2004) (published in the USA as Postcolonial Melancholia (2005)); Against Race: Imagining Political Culture Beyond The Color Line (2001); Between Camps (2000); The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (1993); and There Ain’t No Black In The Union Jack (1987). Gilroy lives and works in London. [Last updated 2009]

Jérôme Giller Jérôme Giller is an artist, filmmaker, and curator. His artistic work being transdisciplinary, he uses a variety of media, including photography, video, and installations. Giller uses walking as a method of collaborative artistic creation and as an instrument for the physical experimentation over te

Larne Abse Gogarty Larne Abse Gogarty is a writer, art historian, and critic. She is the Terra Foundation for American Art Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at Humboldt University, Berlin. Her research focuses on the involvement of social and political aspects with modern and contemporary art, specifically those in the Uni

Goldsmith.Company Goldsmith.Company is an architectural firm that operates within the boundaries of architecture and urbanism. The firm tries to solve complex spatial issues in the most direct and efficient manner. Goldsmith.Company aims for simple but significant solutions. The firm works independently and in interd

Kasia Górna is visual artist. From 2011, Górna has been engaged in activities aimed at improving the social and economic conditions of artists and the group broadly termed as “cultural workers.” She was co-organizer of the Artists Strike in 2012; co-founder of the “Pracownicy Sztuki” Commission; and a member of the group collaborating with the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy on social security for artists. Górna is based in Warsaw. [Last updated 2015]

Douglas Gordon (born 1966) is an artist. He works with video, photography, sound, text, and other media. Gordon was awarded the Turner Prize in 1996, and his work was presented in the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale the following year. Gordon’s work is exhibited worldwide; selected exhibitions include: Retrospective, Gagosian Gallery, New York, 2008; Timeline, MOMA, New York, 2006; Douglas Gordon Superhumanatural, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2006; The Vanity of Allegory, Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, 2005; and 24 Hour Psycho, Tramway, Glasgow, 1997. One of his recent works, a collaboration with Philippe Parreno, is a cinematic portrait of the French football player Zinedine Zidane, Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, first shown at both Cannes and Edinburgh Film Festival in 2006. Gordon lives and works in Berlin. [Last updated 2009]

Janna Graham is a writer, organizer, educator, and curator who has initiated community, pedagogical, artistic, and research projects in and outside of the arts for many years. Prior to her current appointment as Head of Public Programmes and Research at Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, Graham was a curator at Serpentine Gallery in London, where she worked with others to create The Centre for Possible Studies, an artistic residency, community research space, and popular education program in the Edgware Road neighborhood. There, artists and local people developed “studies of the possible” in response to the social inequalities of urban space. She also ran a three-year program of artists working in care contexts, culminating in the recent publication Art + Care: A Future (2013) to which she contributed. Graham is also a member of the international sound and political collective Ultra-red and has been an artist, researcher, and educator at institutions such as the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; the Whitechapel Gallery, London; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; and Plymouth Art Centre, Plymouth. [Last updated 2015]

Menno Grootveld is a journalist, translator, and publisher with a background in pirate radio, television editing, and organizing media conferences. He is a member of Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25) The Netherlands.

Amelia Groom Amelia Groom is a writer and art historian. She is currently working on a collection of essays on the politics of silence, as well as on a long-term project on gossip and rumour as queer-feminist epistemologies. Her writing has been published in e-flux journal, frieze, Art Agenda, The Contemporary J

Bakudapan Food Study Group Bakudapan Food Study Group is a study group formed by Elia Nurvista, Gatari Surya Kusuma, Irindhita Laras Putri, Khairunnisa, and Monika Swastyatsu. The group discusses ideas on food, believing that food is not merely about filling the stomach. Moreover, food is not restricted to cooking, history, c

Boris Groys is a philosopher, art critic, and curator whose research centers on modern Russian philosophy, French poststructuralism, and contemporary media. He is the Global Distinguished Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies at New York University, New York. In addition Groys is Professor for Philosophy and Media Theory at the Academy for Design (Hochschule für Gestaltung) in Karlsruhe since 1994. He has curated several exhibitions: Reactivation, 9th Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai, 2012; After History: Alexandre Kojève as a Photographer, BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, 2012; and Empty Zones, Russian Pavilion, 54th Venice Biennale, Venice, 2011. Selected publications include: Under Suspicion: A Phenomenology of Media (2012); Introduction to Antiphilosophy (2012); The Communist Postscript (2010); and Art Power (2008). Groys lives and works in New York. [Last updated 2016]

Ferenc Gróf is an artist and teacher. He is a graduate of the Hungarian Academy of the Arts, Budapest, and since 2012 he has taught at the École Nationale Supérieur d’Art (ENSA) in Bourges. His work considers ideological footprints, at the intersection of graphic design and spatial experiences. He is a founding member of the Parisian co-operative Société Réaliste—founded in 2004—whose work considers questions of contemporary political representations, ideological design, and text-based interventions. Société Réaliste’s recent solo exhibitions include: amal al-gam, acb Gallery, Budapest, 2014; Universal Anthem, tranzit.ro, Cluj, 2013; A Rough Guide to Hell, P!, New York, 2013; Thelema of Nations, Galerie Jérôme Poggi, Paris, 2013; and Empire, State, Building, MNAC, Bucharest, 2012, Ludwig Museum, Budapest, 2012, and Jeu de Paume, Paris, 2011. Société Réaliste’s work has also been included in numerous group exhibitions and biennials in Shanghai, 2012; Lyon, 2009; and Istanbul, 2009. Gróf lives and works in Paris. [Last updated 2015]

Ramin Haerizadeh is an artist who works in collage, computer imaging, and mixed media to articulate critical positions on political histories and practices. His work has recently been exhibited at AB43 Contemporary, Thalwil/Zurich, 2017 and Plutschow Gallery, Zurich, 2016. Haerizadeh lives and works in Dubai.

Rokni Haerizadeh is an artist whose paintings and rotoscope video animations serve as social commentary. His works have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions internationally. His works are held in public and private collections, including: British Museum, London; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Devi Art Foundation, Gurgaon; and Tate Modern, London. Haerizadeh lives and works in Dubai.

Max Haiven Max Haiven is a writer and teacher and Canada research chair in the radical imagination. His most recent books are Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire (2022), Revenge Capitalism: The Ghosts of Empire, the Demons of Capital, and the Settling of Unpayable Debts (2020), and Art after Money, Money after Art:

Lawrence Abu Hamdan (Beirut) is an artist whose work, taking the form of film, writing, performance and installation, is concerned with the politics of voice and listening. In 2015 Abu Hamdan was the Armory Show commissioned artist and was included in the New Museum Triennial: Surround Audience. His work has been exhibited internationally. Selected solo exhibitions include: Taqiyya, Kunsthalle, Sankt Gallen, 2015; Tape Echo, Beirut/Van Abbemuseum, Cairo/Eindhoven, 2013; The Freedom of Speech Itself, Showroom, London, 2012; The Whole Truth, Casco, Utrecht, 2012. Additionally, his works have been exhibited and performed at venues such as the Shanghai Biennial (2014), The Whitechapel Gallery, London, MACBA Barcelona, Tate Modern, London, M HKA, Antwerp, the Beirut Art Center, and the Taipei Biennial (2012). His writing can be found in Forensis (Sternberg Press), Manifesta Journal, and Cabinet Magazine.

Rose Hammer Rose Hammer (Stacey E. Devoe, Dora Garcia, Nora Joung, Per-Oskar Leu, and Niels Munk Plum; Oslo) Rose Hammer is an artistic persona consisting of twenty artists that was created as a response to an invitation from osloBIENNALEN to create a work in public space. Rose Hammer aims to escape the logic o

Ilgın Hancıoğlu Ilgın Hancıoğlu is an artist and researcher, currently assisting artist İnci Eviner in various projects alongside making independent short animations. Her interests encompass the storytelling potential of public spaces and authorities' manifestations in them, as well as speculative biology and exp

Triwish Hanoeman Utrecht-born rapper/producer with Surinamese-Hindustani roots, Triwish Hanoeman, started out in 2003 as rapper 3wish and has since become an entrepreneur in the music and cultural scene. His projects range from performing arts workshops and talent development, to project management organizing, progr

Nicoline van Harskamp is an artist whose work considers acts of language and solidarity. Van Harskamp currently teaches as a Professor for Performative Art at the University of Fine Arts in Münster, Germany. Her live works were staged, among other places, at Museum of Contemporary Art Anwerp, Urbane Künste Ruhr, Steirischer Herbst in Graz, Project Art Centre in Dublin, Tate Modern in London, KunstWerke in Berlin, New Museum in New York, Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Arnolfini in Bristol, Serralves Foundation in Porto, and the Kaaitheater in Brussels. She has exhibited her video and installation works in art centers, universities, and festivals internationally. Her works about “Englishes” in relation to artists is accessible as a massive online open course in www.englishes-mooc.org. Van Harskamp works and lives in Amsterdam.

David Harvey David Harvey is Distinguished Professor of Geography and Anthropology at the Graduate Center of The City University of New York, New York. He works in the fields of anthropology, geography, Marxist studies, political-economy, urban studies, and cultural studies. For decades, Prof. Harvey has been de

Sharon Hayes (born 1970) is an artist who investigates the formation of the individual or collective in relation to politics, history, and speech through artistic and research-based performance, installation, and video works. Recent exhibitions include: Andrea Geyer | Sharon Hayes, Göteborgs Konsthall, Gothenburg, 2010 and Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, St. Gallen, 2009; and The Future is Unthinkable, Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp, 2009. Hayes lives and works in New York. [Last updated 2010]

Adrian Heathfield Adrian Heathfield writes on, curates, and creates performance. He is the author of Out of Now (2008), a monograph on the artist Tehching Hsieh; editor of Ally and Live: Art and Performance (2017); co-editor of Perform, Repeat, Record (2012); and his essays have been translated into ten languages. He

Jeanne van Heeswijk is an artist who facilitates the creation of dynamic and diversified public spaces in order to “radicalize the local.” Her long-scale community-embedded projects question art’s autonomy by combining performative actions, discussions, and other forms of organizing and pedagogy in order to assist communities to take control of their futures. Her work has been featured in numerous books and publications worldwide, as well as internationally renowned biennials such as Liverpool, Shanghai, and Venice. She was the 2014–2015 Keith Haring Fellow in Art and Activism at Bard College, Annandale-On-Hudson, NY; received the Curry Stone Prize for Social Design Pioneers, 2012; and the Leonore Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change, 2011. Van Heeswijk was a BAK 2018/2019 Fellow and convened Trainings for the Not-Yet 2019-2020, together with BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht. She is the co-editor, with Maria Hlavajova and Rachael Rakes, of Toward the Not-Yet: Art as Public Practice (BAK/MIT Press, 2021). She lives and works in Rotterdam

Stefan Heidenreich (born 1965) is a writer and researcher who studied philosophy, communication, and German literature in Bochum and Berlin. From 2001–2003 he directed the project History and Systematic of Digital Media at the Humboldt University, Berlin. He writes for numerous publications including Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung, taz, and Die Zeit. His topics of interest include media, economy, and art, on which he wrote the books Was verspricht die Kunst What does Art Promise; Mehr Geld (2006); and Flipflop (2004), and as co-editor Suchbilder. Visuelle Kultur zwischen Algorithmen und Archiven Search-Images: Visual Culture Between Algorithms and Archives. Heidenreich lives and works in Berlin. [Last updated 2009]

Pablo Helguera Pablo Helguera is an artist, performer and educator. His work focuses in a variety of topics ranging from history, pedagogy, sociolinguistics, ethnography, memory, and the absurd, in formats that are widely varied including the lecture, museum display strategies, musical performances, and written fi

Ernst van den Hemel is a researcher at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Utrecht University, Utrecht and an activist. His scholarly work covers topics of nationalism, populism, and religion.

Femke Herregraven Femke Herregraven is an artist who investigates which material base, geographies, and value systems are carved out by financial technologies and infrastructures. Currently, she is a practice-based PhD candidate at Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam, 2020–2023. She is also an alumnus of the Rijksakademie

We Are Here (Amsterdam) is the first large-scale organization of refugees in limbo in the Netherlands. It was established in 2012 to stand up against the structural denial of its members’ right to citizenship. It consists of individuals whose request for political asylum was denied, yet who cannot (be) return(ed) to their countries of origin. Together with artists and activists, the group has been exploring this possibility of art as a space to rethink the questions of visibility, solidarity, representation, survival, and action. Examples of previous artistic and educational projects (including: Collective Struggle of Refugees. Lost. In Between. Together. New World Academy #2 by artist Jonas Staal and BAK (2013); establishment of artists initiative Here to Support (with artistic practitioners Savannah Koolen and Elke Uitentuis) (2013–today) and We Are Here Academy (2014–today); and Labyrinth, an interactive theater play realized with Frascati Theater, Amsterdam (2014).

Gamze Hızlı Hafıza Merkezi (Truth Justice Memory Center) is an independent human rights organization founded in Istanbul in 2011 by a group of lawyers, journalists, and human rights activists. Hafıza Merkezi’s aim is to uncover the truth concerning human rights violations in Turkey; to strengthen the collective

Maria Hlavajova is founding general and artistic director of BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, since 2000. In 2008–2016 she was research and artistic director of FORMER WEST, which she initiated and developed as an internationally collaborative research, education, publication, and exhibition project, culminating with the publication Former West: Art and the Contemporary After 1989 (co-edited with Simon Sheikh, 2017). Hlavajova has instigated and (co-)organized numerous projects at BAK and beyond, including the series Propositions for Non-Fascist Living (2017–ongoing), Future Vocabularies (2014–2017), and New World Academy (with artist Jonas Staal, 2013–2016), among many other international research projects. In 2011, Hlavajova organized the Roma Pavilion titled Call the Witness in the context of the 54th Venice Biennale, Venice, and in 2007 she curated the Dutch Pavilion titled Citizens and Subjects at the 52nd Venice Biennale, Venice. In 2000, Hlavajova co-curated Manifesta 3 in Ljubljana, titled Borderline Syndrome: Energies of Defense. In addition, Hlavajova is co-founder (with Kathrin Rhomberg) of the tranzit network, a foundation that supports exchange and contemporary art practices in Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia. Hlavajova lives and works in Amsterdam and Utrecht.

Klaas Hoek (born 1950) is an artist, researcher, and lecturer. Hoek studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam. From 1987-1996 he was a senior advisor at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam. In his own artistic practice Hoek applies a number of different media including print, painting and photography. He studies the relationships between reproduction and representation and the connections between artistic traditions and their contemporary contexts. He is currently investigating the role and place of photo/graphical reproductions on our understanding of fine art and the role and place of the image in science.
Klaas Hoek is Fine Art core tutor at the MaHKU, Utrecht Graduate School of Visual Art and Design.

Brian Holmes is a cultural critic and political activist. His essays revolve around art, free cooperation, the network society, political ecology, and grassroots resistance and he has published in Brumaria, Multitudes, and Springerin. Currently, he teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, where he is a member of the Compass group. With Claire Pentecost and the 16 Beaver Group he co-organized the Continental Drift seminars (2005–2010). Selected books include: Volatile Smile (2014); Escape the Overcode: Activist Art in the Control Society (2009); and Unleashing the Collective Phantoms: Essays in Reverse Imagineering (2007). Recent contributions include collaborations with the following projects: South West Corridor North West Passage (with Rozalinda Borcila); Midwest Compass (with Matthias Regan); and Environmental Laboratory (with the Southeast Environmental Task Force). Holmes lives and works in Chicago. [Last updated 2016]

Christian Höller (born 1966) is editor of springerin–Hefte für Gegenwartskunst and writes extensively on art and cultural theory. Between 2002 and 2007, he was Visiting Professor at l’École supérieure des beaux-arts in Geneva, and from 2006 to 2007, he was scientific editor of documenta 12 magazines. His curated projects include: the exhibition Hauntings–Ghost Box Media, Medienturm Graz, and the accompanying concert series Sonic Spectres, 2011; the special program Pop Unlimited?, the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, 2000; No Wave New York 1976–84, the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, 2010, Austrian Filmmuseum Vienna, 2010, and Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, 2011; and Site.Sound.Industry within the exhibition See This Sound, Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, 2009. He has edited the following anthologies: Techno-Visionen (co-editor) (2005); Hans Weigand (2005); and Pop Unlimited? (2001). He is the author of the volume of interviews Time Action Vision: Conversations in Cultural Studies, Theory, and Activism (2010). Höller lives and works in Vienna. [Last updated 2011]

Tom Holert is an art historian and writer. He recently co-founded the Harun Farocki Institut, Berlin and is currently finishing a book-length study on contemporary art and knowledge politics. An exhibition on writer Carl Einstein and the thresholds of the avant-garde around 1930 is forthcoming at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, (with Anselm Franke, 2018). His recent research on spaces of knowledge and learning has led to the exhibition Learning Laboratories: Architecture, Instructional Technology, and the Social Production of Pedagogical Space Around 1970, BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, 2016–2017, and among his books are: Übergriffe: Zustände und Zuständigkeiten der Gegenwartskunst (2014) and Regieren im Bildraum (2008). Holert is a (co-)editor of Marion von Osten: Once We Were Artists (A BAK Critical Reader in Artists’ Practice) (with Maria Hlavajova, 2017) and Troubling Research: Performing Knowledge in the Arts (with Johanna Schaffer et al., 2014). Holert lives and works in Berlin.

Marijke Hoogenboom is a professor at the Amsterdam University of the Arts, Amsterdam, where she is the head of the cross-faculty Artist in Residence program, part of the management of the Academy for Theatre and Dance, one of the directors of the DAS Graduate School, and the head of DAS Research, Amsterdam. Hoogenboom was previously involved in the founding of DasArts, Amsterdam, which is now the master’s program for various theater disciplines. She is, among others, an advisor for the Performing Arts Fund NL, part of the council of the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts, and of the council of the Berlin Centre for Advanced Studies in Arts and Science at the University of the Arts, Berlin. Hoogenboom has co-initiated Het Transitiebureau, the Cultuurparlement van de Lage Landen, and De Agenda, three critical platforms in the Netherlands with and for a diverse group of professionals from the field. Hoogenboom lives and works in Amsterdam.

Tehching Hsieh Tehching Hsieh is a performance artist best known for his One Year Performances. Using long durations, making art and life simultaneous, he was at the forefront of radical approaches to contemporary art. As a high-school dropout and after serving the army in Taiwan, Hsieh experimented with painting

Héctor Huerga is a philologist, activist, and novelist, as well as social networks facilitator and Community Manager of @15MBcn_int. Huerga began the International Commission of the 15M, or Indignados movement, in Barcelona, with a focus on social participation and critical-mass development. Huerga has spent recent years training in internal organization tools and external communication strategies, and has collaborated with Data Analysis 15M, Outliers, and Krytyka Polityczna. He has lectured and given workshops on social networks to organizations, universities, and collectives in Spain, Italy, Germany, Algeria, Austria, and Poland. Huerga participates directly in the strategies of NGOs and social movements and has co-organized on and offline campaigns across Spain, Greece, Germany, Italy and Turkey about (among others) gender, HHRR, migration, art, housing, culture, and the environment. Huerga studied Spanish Philology at the University of La Laguna (ULL), La Laguna, and holds a Master’s degree in Contemporary Latin American Literature, from CONACULTA, Mexico City. Huegra lives and works in Barcelona. [Last updated 2015]

Ashley Hunt is an artist, activist, and writer who engages with the ideas of social movements, public discourse, and intersections between politics and subjectivity. His primary work of the past eight years has been the development of The Corrections Documentary Project ( www.correctionsproject.com), which deals with the contemporary growth of prisons and their centrality to today’s economic restructuring and politics of race. His most recent work is 9 Scripts from a Nation at War ( www.9scripts.info), made in collaboration with Andrea Geyer, Sharon Hayes, Katya Sander, and David Thorne for documenta 12. Ashley Hunt and Taisha Paggett collaborated during their RIR stay. More information on Hunt’s work is available at www.ashleyhuntwork.net. Hunt lives and works in Los Angeles.The basis for our collaboration comes directly from our sharing of space and time, to which we each bring the training, habits, perspectives, subjectivities, and aporias of the respective disciplines through which we have become artists living in the world. Whereas Paggett’s investments have centered upon movement-based practices and movement theories, and Hunt’s investments have centered upon visual arts practice and theory, our collaborative practice has emerged from the need to negotiate them both—considering the kinetic along with the visual, the cerebral and the corporeal, and ultimately, chipping away at what appears to separate them. In this way, our interests lie in forms of intelligence and knowing that are not exclusively cerebral or “in the head.” Yet, instead of this locating our inquiry in strictly internal phenomenological investigations, we are interested in such intelligence and knowledge as politics, as political, economic, and social life are not abstractions but work materially upon, through, and across bodies. This might lead to more critical understandings of the politics that touch, give us new analytical tools for speaking about them, and new ways to act as an agent in the world.Our proposal for the BAK Research Residency is to study a selection of emergent and historical somatic disciplines against a selection of philosophical traditions that claim to know and describe the subject, its determinations, limitations, and possibilities. This will take place in three layers: study, experimentation, and choreography. The study will simply be reading, discussing, and testing of the various disciplines; the experimentation will include conceptual tests that introduce somatic and philosophical disciplines into one another; and the choreography will be an attempt to develop the results of these experiments further, into loose organizational forms that can be placed upon other bodies in contexts where one would typically refer to as protests, organizing, and so forth. This latter strand may not be possible to complete within the limited time frame of this residency, but it will be present as a possibility throughout all of our research.

Adelita Husni-Bey Adelita Husni-Bey is an artist and pedagogue interested in anarcho-collectivism, theater, law, and urban studies. She organizes workshops and produces publications, radio broadcasts, archives, and exhibition work focused on understanding and using collective and non-competitive pedagogical models. S

Abdulaal Hussein Abdulaal Hussein is an actor. He was born in Sudan and has lived in the Netherlands since 2016. In 2017, after many wanderings through the Netherlands, he ended up in the asylum seekers center in the Utrecht neighborhood Overvecht. It was during WijkSafari AZC (UrbanSafari ASC), a theater project by

Rosalba Icaza Rosalba Icaza is a scholar, activist, and decolonial feminist. She works as senior lecturer in governance and international political economy at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University of Rotterdam, Rotterdam. Icaza is member of La Red Transnacional Otros Saberes and collab

Fran Ilich Fran Ilich is a media artist, essayist, novelist, and activist. His work focuses on the theory and practice of narrative media, experimental economies and finance, hacktivism, and social organizations. He is the author of novels Circa 94 (2010); Tekno Guerilla (2008); and Metro-Pop (1997), and creat

Walidah Imarisha Walidah Imarisha is an educator, writer, and spoken word artist. She is an assistant professor in the Black Studies Department at Portland State University, Portland, where she is also director of the Center for Black Studies. Imarisha’s fields of interests include Oregon Black history, carceral sys

Cooperativa Cráter Invertido Cooperativa Cráter Invertido is a collective of 11 artists and activists educated in visual arts and free media who run an archival space that functions as a workshop for multidisciplinary projects, a forum for various events, and as an exhibition space. Their activities converge around a common pri

Elena Isayev is a historian and professor at University of Exeter uses the ancient Mediterranean to explore migration, belonging, displacement and spatial perception. Her research is based on the intersection of Hospitality and Asylum, Potency of Displaced Agency, Common and Public Space. Her interdisciplinary and inter-practice approach has led to collective learning and research beyond the […]

Lisa Ito teaches art history and theory at the College of Fine Arts, University of Philippines, Diliman and is a member of the Concerned Artists of the Philippines (CAP).

Sanja Iveković is an artist whose practice includes photography, performance, installations, and actions, often from an activist, feminist stance. Recent projects include Monument to Revolution, documenta 14, Athens, 2017. Iveković lives and works in Zagreb.

Zuzana Jakalová Zuzana Jakalová is a curator and cultural manager; works as a curator at Display – Association for Research and Collective Practice along with Zbyněk Baladrán. For five years, she worked as a curator of the Center for Contemporary Art MeetFactory AiR Program in Prague. From 2012 she was the curator-

Michal Janák Michal Janák completed his studies of Architecture at Sint Lucas in Gent. Since 2013 he works at PLURAL studio in Bratislava. Conceptual approach towards architecture as form is characteristic for the studio. At present, he is a student of PhD at FaSTU in Bratislava, aimed at research on history and

Vladan Jeremić is an artist whose artistic practice comprises of drawing, text, and video. Since 2002 he has been developing a joint artistic and curatorial practice with Rena Räedle that explores the overlapping space between art and politics. In their artistic work they focus on social and economical conditions of reproduction, unveiling these by provoking the contradictions that exist in society today. Their recently curated exhibitions include: A Real Work of Art – art, work, and solidarity structures, 2015, RAM Gallery, Oslo, which incorporated the seminar Art Production in Restriction; Possibilities of Transformative Art Production and Coalition-Building, 2015, Trondheim, Norway; and I Will Never Talk About the War Again, 2011, Färgfabriken, Stockholm. Jeremić is also co-founder of the ArtLeaks and editor of the ArtLeaks Gazette. His recent exhibitions include: Mundus vadit retro, 2014, Kibla, Maribor; Red Winter at Deep Sites, 2014, LevArt, Levanger; To the Square 2, 2014, Perpetuum Mobilε, Checkpoint Helsinki, Helsinki; Between Worlds II, 2013, Kraljevic Gallery, Zagreb; Places of memory—Fields of vision, 2012, Contemporary Art Center of Thessaloniki; Absolute Democracy, 2012, Rotor, Graz; Oktobar XXX, 2012, 15. Pančevo Biennial, Serbia; The Housing Agenda, 2012, Cable Factory Gallery and Ateneum Museum, Helsinki, and La maison Folie Wazemmes, Lille; Moving Forwards, Counting Backwards, 2012, MUAC, Mexico City. Jeremić lives and works in Belgrade. [Last updated 2015]

JJJJJerome Ellis JJJJJerome Ellis is a blk disabled animal, stutterer, and artist. He prays, reads, gardens, cycles, wanders, and plays. Through music, literature, performance, and video he researches relationships among blackness, disabled speech, divinity, nature, sound, and time. Born in 1989 to Jamaican and Gren

Samantha Jones Samantha Jones is an artist, research scholar, and social entrepreneur. She works within the field of operations to create alternate models of locally owned economic production. Jones is a Fellow of the School of Social Entrepreneurs and co-founder of Homegrown Collective. With a background in arts

Nancy Jouwe is a cultural historian. She is Chairwoman of BAK Supervisory Board, co-founder of Framer Framed, and one of the initiators of Mapping Slavery, a transnational research project that maps the Dutch colonial history of slavery.  Jouwe has a broad experience in the NGO sector as a managing director and curator on the crossroads of women’s rights, transnational movements and art, culture, and heritage. As a researcher, curator, and project manager she focuses on cultural and social movements in postcolonial Netherlands. Jouwe has lectured in platforms such as Utrecht University, SIT Study Abroad, and Willem de Kooning Academy, and now teaches at Amsterdam University College, CIEE, and HKU University of the Arts Utrecht. She has co-authored the series The Amsterdam Slavery Heritage Guide (2014) and Dutch New York Histories (2017), and published several books, including Paradijsvogels in de polder. Papoea’s in Nederland (2012) and Caleidoscopische Visies. De zwarte, migranten- en vluchtelingenvrouwenbeweging in Nederland (with Maayke Botman and Gloria Wekker, 2000). Jouwe lives and works in Utrecht.

Britt Jürgensen Britt Jürgensen is an activist, artist and creative facilitator working within social movements that reclaim common ownership of housing, land, and energy. She played an integral role in developing both Homebaked Community Land Trust and bakery co-operative. Trained as a performance maker, Jürgensen

Hiwa K is an artist whose often participatory works draw on oral histories and address the value of knowledge obtained through lived experiences. He participated in documenta 14, Athens and Kassel, 2017 and recent solo exhibitions include Don’t Shrink Me to the Size of a Bullet, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, 2017. Hiwa K lives and works in Berlin.

Patricia Kaersenhout Born in the Netherlands but a descendant from Surinamese parents, visual artist, activist, and womanist Patricia Kaersenhout developed an artistic journey in which she investigates her Surinamese background in relation to her upbringing in a west European culture. Her work raises questions about the

Alexandra Karyn Alexandra Karyn is an artist, art teacher, and activist. She currently teaches information and interpretation in art and design as well as conceptual writing, and light approach classes at Erudio Indonesia, Jakarta. Karyn is one of the initiators of the environmental activism coalition Jeda Untuk Ik

Sanne Karssenberg Sanne Karssenberg is a cultural worker and educator. She works as a producer/project coordinator at BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht. Her main focus is ‘BAK basis voor…’ in which BAK joins forces with local communities and organizations in addressing shared urgencies and developing proposition

Femke Kaulingfreks is a political philosopher and anthropologist. Her research topics include activism related to housing, youth empowerment, social justice, and political exclusion. She has cooperated with partners such as Forum Institute for Multicultural Affairs in Utrecht, Municipality of Amsterdam, and Vrijwilligers Centrale Amsterdam. Currently, she is a lecturer at Utrecht University.
Last updated in 2018

Mira Keratová Mira Keratová is art historian and curator. Some of her recent curatorial projects include research project Working Memory (tranzit, Bratislava since 2009) with archive on action and performative art of so called Czechoslovakian “normalisation”; exhibition The Romance of my Young Days, the Future of

Çağlar Keyder is Professor of Sociology at the Ataturk Institute for Modern Turkish History, Bogaziçi University, Istanbul and SUNY-Binghamton, Binghamton, NY. His academic research focuses on the Ottoman Empire, the contemporary Middle East and Turkey, and on the social structure of global cities. He is co-editor of Spatial Conceptions of the Nation: Modernizing Geographies in Greece and Turkey (2010); and Ways to Modernity in Greece and Turkey: Encounters with Europe, 1850–1950 (2007). Recent essays include: “A Brief History of Modern Istanbul,” The Cambridge History of Modern Turkey (2008); “Europe and the Ottoman Empire in Mid-Nineteenth Century,” East Meets West: Banking and Commerce in the Ottoman Empire, ed. Philip Cottrell (2008); and “Moving in from the Margins: Turkey in Europe,” Diogenes (May 2006). Keyder lives and works in Istanbul and Binghamton, NY. [Last updated 2010]

Nora N. Khan Nora N. Khan is a critic, editor, and curator, focused on art and technology, with a focus on the politics of software. She is on the faculty of the Digital + Media Department at Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, where she teaches critical theory, artistic research, writing, and technologic

Sami Khatib is a writer and lecturer. He earned his PhD degree in Media and Communication Studies from Freie Universität, Berlin (2013). In 2015 he was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the American University of Beirut (AUB). Previously he was a researcher at the Theory Department of the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht (2012). His main research interests are in Walter Benjamin Studies, Critical Theory, Psychoanalysis, Modern Continental Philosophy, Art Theory, and German Studies. Recent publications include: Politics of ‘Pure Means’: Walter Benjamin on Divine Violence (2015); Walter Benjamin and the Subject of Historical Cognition (2015); Messianisches Medium. Benjamins Sprachpolitik (2014); and ‘To Win the Energies of Intoxication for the Revolution’: Body Politics, Community, and Profane Illumination (2014).[1] Khatib lives and works in Berlin and Beirut. [Last updated 2016]

Szabolcs KissPál is an artist and teacher. He teaches at the Intermedia Department in Budapest and leads a studio at the Intermedia Department of the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava. Since 2012 he has developed an activist practice through co-founding the protest group Free Artists, with whom he has taken part in various actions of civil disobedience. His main field of interest lies in the intersection of new media, visual arts, and social issues. Selected solo exhibitions include: Hit Gallery, Bratislava, 2008; Arrivals>Hungary, Turner Contemporary/Project Space Bilton Square, Margate, Kent, 2007; and Backlit Gaps, Galerie van Gelder, Amsterdam, 2005. Selected group exhibitions include: Regardless of the Weather, Karton Galéria & Museum, Budapest, 2006; Redistrans; Voltage of Relocation and Displacement, Apex Art, New York, 2006; and 3rd Seoul Biennial, Seoul, 2004. KissPál lives and works in Budapest and Bratislava. [Last updated 2015]

the Basic Activist Kitchen the Basic Activist Kitchen is run by a group of Utrecht-based activists, artists, and researchers with backgrounds in theatre, art, squatting, organizing, anthropology, history, and gender studies, in collaboration with food for good, asia komarova (Casco and the outsiders), M. G Lostia and Sofia Fo

Adriana Knouf Adriana Knouf works as an artist, writer, and xenologist. She engages with topics such as wet media, space art, satellites, radio transmission, non-human encounters, drone flight, queer and trans futurities, machine learning, the voice, and papermaking. She has a PhD in information science from Corn

Gayatri Kodikal Gayatri Kodikal is an artist, writer, educator, and game maker known as gamedevi. She is currently the speculative fiction coach at MAMA, Rotterdam, and is an invited guest artist at the Posthuman & New Materialism Summer School at Utrecht University, Utrecht. She has previously worked as a free

Job Koelewijn is an artist. His work, ranging from installations to photography and multiples, invites the use of hearing and smelling to heighten optical experiences. He studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and the Sandberg Instituut, both in Amsterdam, after which he held a residency at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York. Among other prizes, he was awarded the prestigious Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for Art in 2006. Recently, his work has been exhibited in various solo exhibitions: Real Fiction Cinema, Dongguan, 2015; The Real Fiction Cinema Tour, Claus Littman Bureau, Zürich, 2010; and Loco Motion, Museum De Pont, Tilburg, 2008. Recent group exhibitions include: ONZIJN, WOW Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 2016; Broken White, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 2016; and 1st Asia Biennial/5th Guangzhou Triennial, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, 2015. Koelewijn lives and works in Amsterdam.

Nina Valerie Kolowratnik Nina Valerie Kolowratnik is an architect and PhD researcher within the Human Rights Centre at Ghent University, Belgium. Her doctoral research focuses on Indigenous peoples’ knowledge in human rights courts and the impact of its evidentiary regimes on access to justice and knowledge representation.

Július Koller (born 1939, died 2007) was an artist whose practice considered the status of art in utilizing ready-made objects from daily life and symbols while referring to political processes and the position of the artist in (Czecho)Slovakia. Recent exhibitions include: Spirits of Internationalism, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 2012; Science-Fiction Retrospective, Slovak National Gallery, Bratislava, 2010; Space is the Place, GB Agency, Paris, 2007; and Juliús Koller, Galerie Martin Janda, Vienna, 2007. Koller lived and worked in Bratislava. [Last updated 2013]

Frans-Willem Korsten is a researcher and professor and holds the chair by special appointment in Literature and Society at the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication, Rotterdam; is associate professor at LUCAS: the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society, Leiden; and runs the seminar Critically Committed Pedagogies in the Master Education in Arts program of the Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam. He worked on Dutch baroque, theatricality, and sovereignty and on the relation between literature, art, and capitalism. He was responsible for the NWO internationalization program Precarity and Post-autonomia: the Global Heritage, together with Joost de Bloois (professor, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam). With colleagues from Ghent University, Ghent, Free University of Brussels, Brussels and VU University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, he runs a program funded by NWO/FWO under the acronym ITEMP: Imagineering Violence – Techniques of Early Modern Performativity in the Northern and Southern Netherlands 1630-1690 – a program that focuses on theatrical representations of violence. Together with Yasco Horsman (university lecturer, Leiden University, Leiden), he is currently working on justice and the role of literature and art at the limits of the law under the umbrella of CALL: the Centre for Art, Literature and Law. One project he focuses on in particular is how, in art and literature, the implications are explored for our conceptualisation of justice through an ethics of becoming.

Vasif Kortun is a writer, curator, and teacher in the field of contemporary visual art. He is the programs and research director of SALT, to open in 2011 in Istanbul, and was the founding director of several spaces including: Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center, Istanbul (2001–2010); Proje4L Istanbul Museum of Contemporary Art, Istanbul (2001–2004); and the Museum of the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson (1993–1997). Kortun has curated numerous exhibitions in Turkey and internationally. He was the chief curator of the 3rd Istanbul Biennial, 1992, and co-curator (with Charles Esche) of the 9th Istanbul Biennial, 2005. In addition, he co-curated the 6th Taipei Biennial, Taipei, 2008; 2nd Biennale of Ceramics in Contemporary Art, Albisola, 2003; 24th São Paolo Biennial, São Paolo, 1998; among others. Kortun organized the Turkish Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale, Venice, 2007, and he is curator of the UAE Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale, Venice, 2011. In 2006, he received the Award for Curatorial Excellence from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College. Kortun lives and works in Istanbul. [Last updated 2011]

Helianthe Kort Helianthe Kort is Full Professor and Chair of Building Healthy Environments for Future Users at Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven. Her areas of expertise include technology in medicine and health care, sanitary engineering gerontechnology, domotica, and smart technology. She specializes

Erden Kosova (born 1972) is a writer and theorist, currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths College, London, whose work focuses on the critique of nationalist ideology in contemporary art practice from the Balkans and the Near East. He is a regular contributor to two Istanbul-based contemporary art magazines: art-ist and Siyahi, and was co-author of the book Szene Turkei: Abesits aber Tor! (with Vasif Kortun) (2004). He was also co-curator (with Katerina Gregos) of the exhibition Leaps of Faith, the Green Line (UN buffer zone), Nicosia (2005). Kosova lives and works in Istanbul._ National Identity and Artistic Engagement _Erden Kosova, a Ph.D. candidate in the Theory of Visual Culture department at Goldsmiths College in London, has done extensive research on issues of national identity and contemporary artistic practice’s critical elaboration, particularly in the context of the development of contemporary art in Turkey, as well as in the Balkan region. Also an anarchist and activist, Kosova is engaged in critical cultural and political writings and organizing “movements.” In 2006–2007, Kosova concentrates on completing his Ph.D. thesis, an extension and articulation of his research and related activities.

Michał Kozłowski is associate professor in the Philosophy Department at the University of Warsaw. He received his PhD from EHESS (School for Advanced Studies of the Social Sciences, Paris) in 2004. His work concerns subjectivity, history and historicity, capitalism, and art as a social practice. He makes extensive use the concepts of Foucault, Bourdieu, Marx, Spinoza, and the first generation ideas of Operaismo. He is Editor in Chief of Bez Dogmatu (quarterly review on politics and culture published since 1993), and co-editor of Le Monde Diplomatique. Polish Edition. He has published the books Les contre-pouvoirs de Foucault (2011) and Sprawa Spinozy (2011), and is co-author of the research paper on labor relations in contemporary Polish art The Art Factory (2014). Kozłowski is based in Warsaw. [Last updated 2015]

Nicolas Kozakis (born 1967) is a painter and sculptor whose work features contradictory materials and figures, lending insight into the conflict that pervades life. He is Professor of Drawing at l’Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts de Liège, École supérieure des Arts de la Ville de Liège, Liège. Recent exhibitions include: Manifesta 9, Genk, 2012; Panoramic Refuge, Sart-Tilman Open-air Museum, Liège, 2011; and Nicolas Kozakis, Bart Lodewijks en Jan Wyffels, LOODS12, Wetteren, 2011. [Last updated 2013]

Elke Krasny Elke Krasny is a curator, cultural theorist, urban researcher, and writer. Krasny is professor for art and education and head of the Department of Education in the Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. Her scholarship, academic writings, curatorial work, and international lectures address questi

Annette Krauss is an artist and lecturer. Exploring the possibility of participatory practices, her often research-based work addresses the intersection between art, politics, and everyday life. She is currently a PhD researcher at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna and has been teaching at HKU University of the Arts Utrecht since 2010. She took part in the IASPIS Residency program and was a member of the team that conceived and developed the first children and youth program at documenta 12, 2007. She (co-)initiated various long-term collaborative practices, such as: Hidden Curriculum, Sites for Unlearning, and Read-in. These include exhibitions, such as (selection): Regimes of Memorizing, Kunci, Yogyakarta, 2015 and Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 2014; Randzonenlesung, Kunstverein Wiesbaden, Wiesbaden, 2014; In Search of the Missing Lessons, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2013; and (In)visibilities, The Showroom, London, 2012. Krauss lives and works in Utrecht.

Katia Krupennikova Curator and critic Katia Krupennikova is a docent at HKU University of the Arts, Utrecht, and a part of the curatorial team at V-A-C Foundation, Moscow. She is the curator of the 11th edition of Survival Kit Festival in Riga, Being Safe Is Scary, 2020.  Through her projects, Krupennikova attempts to

Gatari Surya Kusuma Gatari Surya Kusuma, called Gatari, is a writer, curator based in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. After graduating from the Department of Photography at the Indonesian Institute of the Art in 2016 (BA), she has been developing and sharpening her collectivity practices with her two collectives, doing action r

Natalia Kulik Natalia Kulik is a public speaker and moderator whose interests lie bringing different perspectives of people to the surface through dialogue. She did a MA in Cultural Studies in 2013 at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. Currently she works as a moderator at Utrecht in Dialoog, since August

Freedom for Abdullah Öcalan/Peace in Kurdistan is an international initiative launched in 1999 after the arrest of the Kurdish leader. It works for a peaceful and democratic solution of the Kurdish question. The initiative is committed to lobbying, public relations work, and publishing.

Aylin Kuryel Aylin Kuryel is an academic working at the Literary and Cultural Analysis department of the University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam. She completed her undergraduate education at Bosphorus University, Istanbul, and her MA and PhD at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, Amsterdam. Her fields of rese

Brigitta Kuster (born 1970) is an artist, cultural researcher, and writer, primarily interested in visual and film studies, postcolonialism, and migration and border studies. In 2010 and 2006, respectively, she was recipient of the Swiss Art Award. Kuster is a member of the artist collective Artefakte, with Regina Sarreiter and Dierk Schmidt. Her recent research projects, exhibitions, and works include: Ndana! (2014), a video on the legacies of colonialism in Cameroon in the framework of the longtime filmic research project choix d’un passé (with Moïse Merlin Mabouna); research into migrant participation in transnational digital networks, border crossing, and biometric identities within the context of the project Mig@Net, 2010–2013; Rester et partir [Staying and Leaving], Musée de Bamako, Bamako, 2011; and Traces the Sand Left in the Machine, Forum Expanded, 60th Berlinale, Berlin, 2010. She is currently at work (with Artefakte) on the transnational research and exhibition project artificial facts / künstliche tatsachen, initiated by Kunstaus Dresden, Dresden, in cooperation with partners from South Africa and Benin, and supported by the TURN Fund. She has contributed texts to the following publications: Der Standpunkt der Aufnahme Point of View; Radikal Ambivalent. Engagement und Verantwortung in den Künsten heute Radically Ambivalent. Commitment and Responsibility in the Arts Today; The Space Between Us (2013); and Colonial Modern: Aesthetics of the Past (2010). In 2013, she co-edited a special issue of the journal darkmatter, titled “Afterlives.” Kuster lives and works in Berlin. [Last updated 2014]

Evi Lachana is a producer of traditional and environmentally friendly skin care products. She recently collaborated with Otobong Nkanga for the project Carved to Flow (2017–ongoing) and works for Laouta. Lachana lives and works in Piraeus.

Ernesto Laclau is a political theorist and Professor Emeritus of Government at the University of Essex, Essex, where he was director of the doctoral program in Ideology and Discourse Analysis for many years. Laclau is also Distinguished Professor of Humanities and Rhetorical Studies at Northwestern University, Evanston. Active in the new social movements of the 1960s, he developed, with Chantal Mouffe, a theory of radical democracy in their landmark book Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (1985). Laclau is a member of the editorial boards of the journals Journal of Political Ideologies, Latin American Perspectives, and Philosophy and Social Criticism. His many books include: On Populist Reason (2005); Contingency, Hegemony, Universality (with Judith Butler and Slavoj Žižek) (2000); and Emancipation(s) (1996). Laclau lives and works in Buenos Aires and London. [Last updated 2010]

Pablo Lafuente (born 1976) is a writer, editor, and curator. He is a co-editor of the journal Afterall, London and an associate curator at the Office for Contemporary Art Norway, Oslo. Lafuente has published his writing in catalogs and periodicals such as Afterall, Art Monthly, Parkett, Radical Philosophy, and The Wire, on topics including the possibility of criticism and the relationship between images and ideology, as well as on the work of artists Hito Steyerl and De Rijke and De Rooij, among others. Lafuente has participated in numerous conferences and symposia at ICA, London; Camden Arts Centre, Camden; Neue Berliner Kunstverein (N.B.K.), Berlin; and documenta 12, Kassel, among others. He is currently developing, within Afterall, a research project on the history of contemporary art exhibitions, and is also working on a PhD on political change in the work of Louis Althusser and Jacques Rancière at Middlesex University, London. Lafuente lives and works in London. [Last updated 2009]

Lisette Lagnado is a writer and curator, holding a PhD in Philosophy from the University of São Paulo, São Paulo. She is professor in the Postgraduate Masters Programme in Visual Arts at Faculdade Santa Marcelina, São Paulo. Lagnado was the coordinator of the archive of Hélio Oiticica’s work (Projeto HO, Instituto Itaú Cultural, São Paulo), and her original approach to this research has led to increased study of the artist. In 2007 she was chief curator of the 27th São Paulo Biennial, São Paulo, and she recently curated Drifts and Derivations: Experiences, Journeys and Morphologies, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 2010. Lagnado has contributed to publications on many artists such as Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Thomas Hirschhorn, and Rivane Neuenschwander. Recent published articles include: “Documenta 12 in Kassel,” Afterall.org (2008); “Home and Homeland: About Ahlam Shibli’s photo series ‘Eastern LGBT,” Nafas Art Magazine (February 2007); and “Turning So Many Corners,” (on the work of Renata Lucas), Frieze no. 107 (May 2007). She is also editor of the online art magazine Trópico. Lagnado lives and works in São Paulo. [Last updated 2010]

Sandra Lange Sandra Lange is a performance designer and researcher whose primary interest lies in designing spaces, exchanges, and trainings that are rooted in sociopolitical engagement, act as a shared activity of felt thinking, and resist the oppression of the norm. Lange creates participatory performances tha

Charl Landvreugd Charl Landvreugd is an artist, writer, and curator working on mapping a continental European artistic environment that emerges from migrant aesthetics. His PhD dissertation at the Royal College of Art in London looked at Dutch Afro citizenship and belonging and how this is expressed in contemporary

Nina Støttrup Larsen Nina Støttrup Larsen is artist and performer. She uses artistic strategies and long term research as a tool to plot out global structures of power in relation to economy, legal infrastructures, geopolitics, and the (post)colonial present. Her works materialize in different editions of installations,

Liz Magic Laser is a video and performance artist who also works with sculpture and installation. Analyzing ideas of power and how it is performed, she closely looks at and enters semi-public places, such as movie theaters and newsrooms. Her latest works question the intellectual and emotional manipulation that takes place in conferences and political speeches, and investigate the orchestrated dramatization of settings and gestures. These include The Thought Leader (2015), a script adapted from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel Notes from Underground (1864) staged as a mock TED talk by a 10-year-old child; and The Digital Face (2012), in which performers replicate the hand gestures of former United States Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush. Her most recent solo exhibitions have been presented at Jupiter Artland, Wilkieston, 2017; and Centre d’art contemporain Brétigny, Brétigny-sur-Orge, 2017.

Stefan Laxness Stefan Laxness is an architect, researcher, and Project Coordinator at Forensic Architecture. Having previously worked in architectural practice, Laxness joined the Forensic Architecture team in 2016 and has since been the Project Coordinator of The Ayotzinapa Case while working on analyzing airstri

Daniel Lazare is a writer and journalist. He studied at the University of Wisconsin and holds a Masters in English Literature from Columbia University, New York. He is currently completing his fourth book entitled From Moses to ISIS: The Intelligent Heretic’s Guide to Monotheism, a materialist history of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Lazare has written for The Nation, The London Review of Books, and Jacobin and Consortiumnews websites. He is perhaps best known as a critic of the U.S. Constitution and American politics, government, and social policy in general. He is author of The Velvet Coup: The Constitution, the Supreme Court, and the Decline of American Democracy (2001); America’s Undeclared War: What’s Killing Our Cities and How We Can Stop It (2001); and The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy (1996). Lazare lives and works in New York. [Last updated 2015]

Rita Ponce de León Rita Ponce de León is an artist with a focus on drawing and installation. She is currently studying psycho-corporal techniques for human development at the Argentinean organization Rio Abierto. Ponce de León’s way of working engages in situations that allow, through artistic and learning processes,

Dika+Lija Dika+Lija (Anathapindika Dai and Liza Markus) are art workers. After naive school dreams and the sobering truth of contemporary art, they found themselves sharing similar pains within their full-time jobs: Lija, currently a gallery girl who hates the art market, and Dika, once a museum staff who hat

Aurélie Lierman is a radio artist, vocalist, and composer fascinated by the narrative power of abstract sound and music. She frequently adds dramatic and documentary elements to musical compositional structure (or vice versa), and presents new music by myriad emerging composers. She appears as a sound artist and vocalist on two albums by Nurse With Wound.

Lukáš Likavčan Lukáš Likavčan is a researcher and theorist. Originally trained as a philosopher, he elaborates on topics of philosophy of technology, political ecology, and media theory. Oscillating between academic practice and a broad zone in between art and design, he focuses on infrastructural conditions of su

Ana Longoni is a writer and researcher specialized in the articulations between art and politics in Latin America since the twentieth century. She received a BA in Literature and a PhD in Arts from the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA), Buenos Aires, where she currently lectures in graduate and postgraduate courses. She coordinates the research group Culture as resistance?: Interpretations of cultural and artistic productions during the last dictatorship in Argentina at the UBA. Longoni also teaches at the Programa de Estudios Independientes (Independent Studies Program) of MACBA, Barcelona and at other universities. She has published, alone or in collaboration, among others: Del Di Tella a Tucumán Arde From the Di Tella Institute to Tucumán Arde; El Siluetazo The Silhouettes; and Traiciones Treasons. Longoni is a member of the editorial group of the magazines ramona and des-bordes. She is also an active member, since its foundation in 2007, of the Red de Conceptualismos del Sur. Longoni lives and works in Buenos Aires. [Last updated 2009]

Miguel A. López (born 1983) is an artist, researcher, and writer. He studied Photography at the Center of Photography, Lima (2002−2005) and was scholarship holder of MACBA’s Independent Study Program (PEI), Barcelona (2008–2009). In 2007 he worked at the Oficina de Artes Visuales as a curator for the main two public art galleries in Miraflores, Lima: Sala Luis Miró Quesada Garland and Sala Raúl Porras Barrenechea. He co-curated the exhibitions Subversive Practices. Art under Conditions of Political Repression. 60s–80s/South America/Europe, Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, 2009 and Trafó Galéria, Budapest, 2010; and La Persistencia de lo Efímero. Orígenes del no-objetualismo peruano: ambientaciones/happenings/arte conceptual (1965–1975), Spanish Cultural Center, Lima, 2007, among others. He is a regular contributor to Ramona and Artecontexto and has written for Afterall, Papers d’Art, and Papel Alpha, among others. López is co-author of Post-Ilusiones. Nuevas visiones. Arte crítico en Lima, 1980–2006 (2007) and was an editor of the Peruvian contemporary art magazine Prótesis(2003–2005). Since 2007 he is a member of the editorial group of the art and politics magazine des-bordes and of the group Red Conceptualismos del Sur. Previously he was a member of Espacio La Culpable, Lima (2006–2008). López lives and works in Lima.During his residency at BAK, López continues his ongoing research project into some critical artistic experiences in the 1980s in Peru, during the violent civil war between the clandestine left, the self-proclaimed Communist Party of Peru the “Shining Path,” and the Peruvian state (1980–2000). It explores how aesthetics and visual culture act in response in that particular context, to create experimental and critical manifestations about the current political situation. During his stay in Utrecht López focuses on the artistic work of German artist Helmut Psotta and the collective led by him, Grupo Chaclacayo, formed with Sergio Zevallos and Raúl Avellaneda in 1983. The group established themselves on the margins of the city of Lima, working through actions and performances that intertwined reflections on the Peruvian colonial legacy, authoritarianism, religion, violence, racism, legality, and sexual disobedience. Although the group’s collective work was almost ignored in the local scene, their little-seen visual output became one of the most important references of political reflection and, for that same reason, one of the most repressed and publicly rejected. This research project by López, initiated in 2008 (with Peruvian historian and researcher Emilio Tarazona), comprises the first major research on the collective work of Grupo Chaclacayo and its archive, located in Germany since 1988, when the group moved to Europe because of political repression. This research is also part of the ongoing work of the group Red Conceptualismos del Sur, which considers some antagonistic practices in Latin America during the period from the 1960s to the 1980s.

Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz are an artist duo with an emphasis on film and installation. In their practice, they choreograph tensions between visibility and opacity. They upset normative historical narratives and conventions of spectatorship as figures and actions across time are staged, layere

Isabell Lorey is a political theorist at the European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies (eipcp) and an editor of transversal texts. Recent publications include State of Insecurity: Government of the Precarious (2015). Her book on presentist democracy is forthcoming in 2018. Lorey lives and works in Berlin.

Grace Lostia Grace Lostia is an activist involved in community building through food and music. Lostia has a background in political and inter-cultural anthropology; researches fermentation as a culinary and social phenomenon; and is involved in intercontinental squatting and do-it-yourself (DIY) communities. Cu

Italian born, Matteo Lucchetti is a curator, art historian, and writer. From 2017 to 2018, he was Curator of Exhibitions and Public Programs at BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht. His main curatorial interests are focused on artistic practices that redefine the role of art and the artist in society. His curatorial projects include: De Rerum Rurale, 16th Rome Quadriennale, Rome, 2016; Don’t Embarrass the Bureau, Lunds Konsthall, Lund, 2014; Enacting Populism in its Mediæscape, Kadist Art Foundation, Paris, 2012; and Practicing Memory, Fondazione Pistoletto, Biella, 2010. In the projects he curated, Lucchetti has worked with artists such as Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Rossella Biscotti, Nástio Mosquito, Marinella Senatore, Jonas Staal, SUPERFLEX, Stefanos Tsivopoulos, Pilvi Takala, and Stephen Willats, among others. Since 2010, Lucchetti also has co-directed, with Judith Wielander, the Visible project, a research endeavor and the first European biennial award devoted to socially engaged artistic practices in a global context, initiated and supported by Pistoletto Foundation, Biella and Fondazione Zegna, Trivero.Lucchetti has worked as curator in residence at Para Site, Hong Kong; Kadist Art Foundation, Paris; and AIR, Antwerp. During his residency at BAK in 2010, Lucchetti worked in the frame of the Former West project to develop curatorial and discursive possibilities for the new online platform of the research—the digital archive. He has organized and taken part in several seminars, talks, and debates at various institutions, such as the Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva; Steirischer Herbst, Graz; and the Centre for Historical Reenactments, Johannesburg. He lectured as a guest professor at HISK, Gent; Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam; Sint Lucas Antwerpen, Antwerp; and Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milan, and contributed to magazines such as Mousse Magazine, Manifesta Journal, and Art Agenda.

Wietske Maas is researcher, artist, and curator. Since 2014 she has worked as a researcher, curator, and (managing) editor for multiple programs and publication projects at BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht. Between 2008–2018 she worked as curator for the European Cultural Foundation. In her artistic practice she focuses on political ecology and the urban sphere as a site of transformative assembly. Maas has developed and participated in projects in international contexts including Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 2015–2016; e-flux, New York, 2015; and Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 2012. Recent co-edited publications include Propositions for Non-Fascist Living: Tentative and Urgent (co-edited with Maria Hlavajova, 2019) and Courageous Citizens: How Culture Contributes to Social Change (co-edited with Bas Lafleur and Susanne Mors, 2018). She has contributed to the edited volumes Botanical Drift: Protagonists of the Invasive Herbarium (2018); and Supercommunity: Diabolical Togetherness Beyond Contemporary (2017). Maas lives and works in Amsterdam and Berlin.

Antonio Vega Macotela Antonio Vega Macotela is a multidisciplinary artist whose research-driven work is often designed through lengthy fieldwork in dialogue with specific communities. Through his practice, he engages with notions of value and exchange, specifically regarding the system through which social relations are

Małgorzata Maciejewska is a sociologist who specializes in work from the feminist perspective. In 2014 she received her PhD from the Department of Social Sciences of the Wrocław University, having defended her thesis “Transformation and its consequences for the social reproduction in the Wałbrzych region. The living and working conditions of women.” From 2010, she has collaborated with the Feminist Think Tank, conducting research on the systemic reasons for poverty, precarization, and the functioning of “special economic zones” in Poland. She is a member of the Nationwide Workers Initiative Trade Union. Presently, she is involved in research as part of the international project PRECARIR – The rise of the dual labour market: fighting precarious employment in the new member states through industrial relations. Małgorzata Maciejewska is based in Warsaw and Wrocław. [Last updated 2015]

Tala Madani is an artist whose painting, drawing, and stop-motion animation work is characterized by a provoking, political, and satirical discourse on cultural and sexual identity. Madani juxtaposes and reverses binaries with sentiments of innocence, empathy, and irony, inciting a multi-layered imaginary. The artist won the Catherine Doctorow Prize for Contemporary Painting in 2013 and was shortlisted for the Future Generation Art Prize in 2010. Madani’s work was included in the 2017 Whitney Biennial, and solo shows include: La Panacée – Centre De Culture Contemporaine, Montpellier, 2017; MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA, 2016; and Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, MO, 2016.

Andrew Maerkle (born 1981) is an editor, writer, and researcher who holds a degree in Comparative Literature and Society from Columbia University, New York. He is currently deputy editor of the Japanese bilingual online publication ART iT (International Edition), and a contributor to publications such as Art & Australia, Eyeline, and Frieze. From 2006 to 2008 he was deputy editor of ArtAsiaPacific in New York where he helped develop the annual ArtAsiaPacific Almanac, which contains reports on the state of contemporary art in 67 nations and territories from Turkey to the Pacific Islands. Maerkle has interviewed artists, architects, and thinkers including Yael Bartana, Naoya Hatakeyama, Toyo Ito, Isaac Julien, William Kentridge, Ryue Nishizawa, Kazuyo Sejima, and Katsuhiro Yamaguchi. He has also translated a series of quasi-fictional essays on contemporary China by the curator and author Hu Fang from Chinese into English. Maerkle lives and works in Tokyo.During his residency at BAK, Maerkle develops his research into comparative intellectual histories by focusing on two situations: first, the March 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, which concomitantly generated an instantaneous archaeology of recent Japanese society; and second, the austerity measures reducing government support for the arts and prompting a reassessment of the priorities of artists and institutions in Europe. His research at BAK consists of interviews with artists (including Monica Bonvicini, Thomas Hirschhorn, Huang Yong Ping, Tadashi Kawamata, and Anri Sala) addressing themes such as the possibility for political expression and the instrumentalization of art in social regeneration projects. His research also entails short visits to cities such as Berlin and Beirut in order to investigate the idea that continuous postwar urban conditions offer alternatives to commercial and standardized modes of living.

Antonia Majaca is an art historian, curator, and researcher at IZK Institute for Contemporary Art, Graz University of Technology, Graz, where she works on her research and publishing project The Incomputable – Art in the Age of Algorithms. She has initiated the long-term discursive project Feminist Takes (2015–ongoing). Majaca lives and works in Berlin and Graz.

Ewa Majewska is a feminist philosopher and art critic. Since 2003 Majewska has lectured at the Gender Studies in the University of Warsaw, and has worked as adjunct professor at universities of Szczecin and Krakow, Poland. She held post-docs at the universitiy of Berkeley and universitiy of Orebro. She has published two books: Feminizm jako filozofia społeczna (2009) and Sztuka jako pozór? (2013); and has articles in: e-flux, Signs, Nowa Krytyka, Le Monde Diplomatique (PL) and other journals and volumes. She teaches a seminar on Art and public spheres, at the Graduate School of PAN, Warsaw. Currently is a fellow at the ICI Berlin, working on the project “Chasing Europe or on the Semi-Peripheral Publics.” Ewa Majewska is based in Berlin and Warsaw. [Last updated 2015]

Catherine Malabou Catherine Malabou is a philosopher, writer, and researcher. She is affiliated with the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP) at Kingston University, London as a professor of philosophy, and with the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine.  On

Georgy Mamedov (born 1984) is a curator. He is also artistic co-director of central Asian artistic, research, and activist platform, STAB (School of Theory and Activism—Bishkek), Bishkek. From 2007 to 2009 Mamedov was director of Bactria Cultural Centre, Dushanbe, Tajikistan. The center invites local as well as international artists, curators, and musicians to participate in and initiate projects. With Boris Chukhovich and Oksana Shatalova, Mamedov curated Lingua Franca/Франк тили, Central Asia Pavilion, 54th Venice Biennale, Venice, 2011. He also curated the educational and residency program, Artist and/in Community, which was initiated by Bactria Cultural Centre and traveled to towns in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan from 2010 to 2011. Mamedov lives and works in Bishkek.During his stay at BAK, Mamedov continues his research into the potential for contemporary artistic practice to function as a catalyst for political and social change. Throughout his residency he focuses on dialogue, networking, and exploration, in attempting to examine art as a complex and dialectical practice that produces statements of radical imagination as well as pragmatic propositions in response to the current social and political agenda.

Jumana Manna Jumana Manna is a visual artist working primarily with film and sculpture. She graduated in aesthetics and politics at CalArts, Los Angeles and at the National Academy of Arts, Oslo.  Manna’s practice explores how power is articulated through relationships, thereby often focusing on the body, land,

Boyan Manchev (born 1970) is a philosopher and cultural theorist. Currently he is Director of Programs and Vice-President of the International College of Philosophy in Paris and Associate Professor of Philosophy at the New Bulgarian University in Sofia. Recently he was a fellow at the Kolleg Friedrich Nietzsche, Weimar (2009) and at the Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna (2008), a resident at apexart, New York (2007), a guest researcher at EHESS, Paris (2006), and Thinker in Residence and theoretical advisor for IDEE (Initiatives in Dance through European Exchange), Vienna (2006). He has organized and participated in numerous seminars and public programs on contemporary art, philosophy, and politics, among others in the project expo zéro by Musée de la danse at BAK in April 2010. In addition, he has contributed to a variety of curatorial and artistic projects at, among others, ZKM, Karlsruhe and Tanzquartier, Vienna. Among his many publications are: Rue Descartes 67: Quel sujet du politique? (ed., 2010); Rue Descartes 64: La metamorphose(ed., 2009); L’altération du monde: Pour une esthétique radicale (2009); La Métamorphose et l’Instant (2009); The Body-Metamorphosis (2007); “Transformance. The Body of Event,” in It takes place when it doesn’t. On dance and performance since 1989 (2006); “Der Totale Körper der Lust,” in Zurück aus der Zukunft. Osteuropäische Kulturen im Zeitaler des Postcommunismus (2005); and The Unimaginable. Essays in Philosophy of Image (2003). Manchev lives and works in Paris and Sofia.

Olivier Marboeuf Olivier Marboeuf is a writer, storyteller, and curator. Marboeuf founded the independent art centre Espace Khiasma, which ran from 2004 to 2018 in Les Lilas, in the Parisian suburbs. The program he developed there addressed minority representations and post-colonial situations through exhibitions, s

Lorenzo Marsili is a writer, political activist, the founding director of the transnational organization European Alternatives, and one of the initiators of the panEuropean movement DiEM25. He has previously worked in journalism and was the founding editor of Naked Punch Review. His latest book Citizens of Nowhere is forthcoming (2018).

Canan Marasligil Canan Marasligil is a feminist writer, editor, artist, literary translator and curator of cultural programmes, whose practice span from performing to making podcasts (most recently: A Dreamer’s Night Talks). She is fluent in English, French, Turkish, Dutch, and Spanish and she is active in the field

Vibeke Mascini Vibeke Mascini is a visual artist and writer. She is a sculpture tutor and research fellow at Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (KABK) and an artist in residence at Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam between 2021 and 2022. Previous teaching positions include Academie van Bouwkunst Amsterda

Eva and Franco Mattes, also known as 0100101110101101.org, are an artist duo that have contributed especially to the Net Art movement. Their works center the ethical and political concerns resulting from the inception of the internet and global systems of connection. Through what are often considered controversal interventions, the duo challenges notions of dominant power structures and investigates the significance and influence of technology in modern societies. Their work includes BEFNOED (2014–ongoing), an acronym for “By Everyone, For No One, Every Day,” in which the duo instructs anonymous workers hired through crowdsourcing facilities to perform webcam enactments. They were part of artist collective Chim↑Pom’s collaboration Don’t Follow the Wind (2012–2015), which took place inside the regulated radioactive district surrounding the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Okuma. In 2016, the artist duo was the recipient of the Creative Capital Award. Their work has been exhibited at: the 16th Art Quadriennale, Rome, 2016; Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2016; Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, 2016; and MoMA PS1, New York, 2009; among others.

Eva and Franco Mattes, also known as 0100101110101101.org, are an artist duo that have contributed especially to the Net Art movement. Their works center the ethical and political concerns resulting from the inception of the internet and global systems of connection. Through what are often considered controversal interventions, the duo challenges notions of dominant power structures and investigates the significance and influence of technology in modern societies. Their work includes BEFNOED (2014–ongoing), an acronym for “By Everyone, For No One, Every Day,” in which the duo instructs anonymous workers hired through crowdsourcing facilities to perform webcam enactments. They were part of artist collective Chim↑Pom’s collaboration Don’t Follow the Wind (2012–2015), which took place inside the regulated radioactive district surrounding the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Okuma. In 2016, the artist duo was the recipient of the Creative Capital Award. Their work has been exhibited at: the 16th Art Quadriennale, Rome, 2016; Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2016; Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, 2016; and MoMA PS1, New York, 2009; among others.

Natasha Matteson Natasha Matteson is onderzoeker en curator, en directeur van het Afghaanse vluchtelingenkamp bij Uplift Afghanistan Fund, waar hen evacuatie en hervestiging coördineert. Hiervoor evacueerde hen high-risk Afghanen bij Last Exit Kabul. Matteson werkte eerder als onderzoeker bij BAK, basis voor actuele

Achille Mbembe Achille Mbembe is a philosopher, political scientist, and critical thinker. Mbembe is professor at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER) at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He has worked as a visiting professor at several universities, including University of

Diana McCarty Independent media producer and feminist media activist Diana McCarty is a founding editor of reboot.fm, the award winning free artists’ radio in Berlin. She is a co-founder of the radio networks radia.fm and 24/3 FM Berlin; of the FACES (faces-I) online community for women; and of the elsehere assoc

Angela McKay Angela McKay is an Anfield resident, having lived there for the last 28 years and raised her two sons in the area. She is a founding member of the Homebaked Community Land Trust and the Operations Manager of Homebaked Bakery. She has a broad experience as a worker at the Whitechapel Centre, a leadin

Laura McLean is a curator, researcher, and artist. Holding an MFA in Curating from Goldsmiths College, and a BVA and MVA from Sydney College of the Arts, where she has also lectured. McLean also studied at the Alberta College of Art and Design and the Universität der Künste Berlin. Past residencies include: Slakthusateljéerna studios, Stockholm, 2014; ‘On Critical Tourism, Site-specificity and Post-romantic Condition’, Nida Art Colony, Lithuania, 2013; ‘Other Possible Worlds: Proposals On This Side Of Utopia’, Casino Luxembourg Forum d’art Contemporain, 2011; and ‘Expo-Exoskeleton’, Porosity Studios / COFA, Shanghai, 2010. Past curatorial projects include: the Contingent Movements Archive, Crisis Complex, 2012–2014, and Survey 2010. In 2013 she worked as Assistant Curator of the inaugural Maldives Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale. McLean lives and works in Sydney. [Last updated 2016]

József Mélyi is an art historian and critic. He is professor of the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts and visiting lecturer at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design at the University of Theater and Film Arts in Budapest. He is currently completing his PhD at the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. His work focuses on public art, institutional critique, and Eastern-European art of the 1960s and 1970s. He has published numerous articles on the topic of Hungarian contemporary art, and translated into Hungarian the work of writers such as Walter Benjamin and László Moholy-Nagy. Selected curated exhibitions include: Outer Space, co-curated with Eszter Kozma and Márton Pacsika, 2013; Amerigo Tot—Parallel Constructions, Ludwig Museum, Budapest, 2009; and Kempelen—Man in the Machine, Kunsthalle, Budapest and ZKM, Karlsruhe, 2007. Mélyi lives and works in Budapest. [Last updated 2015]

Hafıza Merkezi Hafıza Merkezi (Truth Justice Memory Center) is an independent human rights organization founded in Istanbul in 2011 by a group of lawyers, journalists, and human rights activists. Hafıza Merkezi’s aim is to uncover the truth concerning human rights violations in Turkey; to strengthen the collective

Eva Meyer Eva Meyer is a philosopher, writer, and filmmaker. She has been a visiting professor at various universities and art schools, most recently she was Eberhard Berent Goethe Chair at New York University, New York. She is the author of numerous books, among them: Legende sein (2016); Frei und indirekt (

Sandro Mezzadra is a political philosopher whose work in the last decade has centered on the relations between globalization, migration, and citizenship, as well as on postcolonial theory and criticism. He teaches political theory at the University of Bologna and is adjunct fellow at the Institute for Culture and Society of the University of Western Sydney. He is currently visiting research fellow at the Humboldt University, Berlin (BIM – Berliner Institut für empirische Migrations- und Integraqtionsforschung, October 1, 2015–July 31, 2016). His books include: In the Marxian Workshops. The subject and its Production (2014); The postcolonial condition: History and politics in the global present (2008); and The right to escape: Migration, citizenship, globalization (2006). With Brett Neilson he is the author of Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor (2013) and he has worked on several FP7 European research projects. Mezzadra lives and works in Bologna. [Last updated 2016]

Aernout Mik is an artist whose video installations, sculptures, and performances allow for a reflective engagement between spectator and artwork. He was awarded the A.H. Heineken Prize for Art in 2002. He represented the Netherlands in the Dutch Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale, Venice, 2007 with multiple works and an architectural intervention in the pavilion under the title Citizens and Subjects: Aernout Mik, curated by Maria Hlavajova. Mik’s recent exhibitions include: Cardboard Walls, BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, 2014; Global Prayers, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 2013; Communitas, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 2013, Jeu de Paume, Paris, 2011, and Museum Folkwang, Essen, 2011; Reactivation, Power Station of Art, 9th Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai, 2012; and Aernout Mik, CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Madrid, 2012. Mik lives and works in Amsterdam.

Niels van Mil (born 1979) is the financial-administrative assistant at BAK, basis voor actuele kunst. In addition to his work at BAK, Niels is also a self-employed administrator, in which role he carries out administrative work for various organizations in the cultural field. Van Mil lives in Arnhem and works in Utrecht

Mihnea Mircan (born 1976) is a curator and writer. He is the artistic director of Extra City Kunsthal, Antwerp where in 2011 he curated A Slowdown at the Museum and 1:1 Hans van Houwelingen & Jonas Staal. His upcoming projects at Extra City include a solo presentation by Jean-Luc Moulène and the group exhibition Allegory of the Cave Painting. From 2005 to 2006 he was curator of Le Pavillon, Palais de Tokyo, Paris. At the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest, Mircan curated exhibitions such as: Sean Snyder (with Florin Tudor), 2007; SUBLIME OBJECTS, 2007; Video Works—Jaan Toomik, 2005; and the series of site-specific interventions Under Destruction, 2004–2007. His other curatorial projects include: Image to be projected until it vanishes, Museion, Bolzano, 2011; the solo exhibition of Hans van Houweligen Until it stops resembling itself, Stroom Den Haag, Den Haag, 2011; History of Art, the, David Roberts Art Foundation, London, 2010; and Low-Budget Monuments, Romanian Pavilion, 52nd Venice Biennale, Venice, 2007. He edited the book Hans van Houwelingen: Undone (2012) and has recently contributed to the catalog of the exhibition Six Lines of Flight: Shifting Geographies in Contemporary Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, 2012 and to monographs of Pavel Büchler, Labor in Vain (2011), and of Nina Beier, Nina Beier: Text (2010). His writing appears in magazines such as Mousse and Manifesta Journal. Mircan lives and works in Antwerp. [Last updated 2012]

Irene Calabuch Mirón Irene Calabuch Mirón is a cultural worker. She is a researcher and producer at BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht. With a background in art history and political geography, she is interested in collective learning processes, radical housing models, spatial politics, and DIY culture as an exercis

Rastko Močnik is a sociologist, literary theorist, translator, and political activist who teaches the theory of symbolic formations at the Faculty of Media and Communication, Singidunum University, Belgrade. Močnik is co-chair of the International Board of Directors of the Institute for Critical Social Studies, Sofia and Plovdiv, and has written extensively for numerous international journals, including, among others: Diskurs, Eurozine, Filozofija i drushtvo, Kritika i humanizъm, Migrations Société, Rue Descartes, Sociologicheski problemi, Transeuropéennes, transversal, and Vestnik Permskogo universiteta. Filosofija, psihologija, sociologija. He has also contributed to many edited anthologies, including: (Mis)readings of Marx in Contintental Philosophy (2014); Encountering Althusser: Politics and Materialism in Contemporary Radical Thought (2012); Post-fordism and Its Discontents (2010); and Conflict, Power, and the Landscape of Constitutionalism (2008). Močnik lives in Ljubljana and works in Belgrade. [Last updated 2016]

Wayne Modest is the Director of Content for the National Museum of Worldcultures and the Wereldmuseum, Rotterdam and head of the Research Center of Material Culture. He is also professor of Material Culture and Critical Heritage Studies (by special appointment) in the faculty of humanities at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. Modest was previously, head of the curatorial department at the Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam; Keeper of Anthropology at the Horniman Museum in London, and Director of the Museums of History and Ethnography in Kingston, Jamaica.Modest has held visiting scholar positions at the Yale Centre for British Art, Yale University and the School for Museums Studies, New York University. His work is driven by a concern for more historically contingent ways of understanding the present, especially in relation to material culture/museum collections. His research interests include issues of belonging and displacement; material mobilities; histories of (ethnographic) collecting and exhibitionary practices; difficult/contested heritage (with a special focus on slavery, colonialism and post-colonialism); and Caribbean Thought. More recently Modest has been researching and publishing on heritage and citizenship in Europe with special attention for urban life, and on ethnographic museums and questions of redress/repair.

Avi Mograbi (born 1956) is an Israeli film director whose projects, regularly centered on the conflict between Israel and Palestine, examine how violence impacts the individual. Mograbi frequently appears in his films, taking the position of both director and concerned citizen in seeking to understand what he witnesses. Recent films include: Once I entered a garden, 2012; Z32, 2008; and Avenge But One of My Two Eyes, 2005. Mograbi lives and works in Tel Aviv. [Last updated 2012]

Narges Mohammadi Checking her mother’s CD-collection Narges Mohammadi accidentallyfound a treasure of a few dozen hours of contemporary Afghan europop and Bollywood-mashups. She combines this influence with dancehall booty bounce music, while at the same time celebrating her roots with Middle Eastern dance music

Massimiliano (Mao) Mollona is a writer, filmmaker, and anthropologist. He is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology, at Goldsmiths University of London, London. He has a multidisciplinary background in economics and anthropology and his work focuses on the relationship between art and political economy. He has conducted extensive fieldwork in Brazil, Italy, Norway, and the United Kingdom, mainly in economic and artistic institutions with a specific focus on work, class, and post-capitalist politics, and uses a methodology that combines pedagogy, artistic prefiguration, and activism. He is a member of the collective freethought and a co-founder and President of the Institute of Radical Imagination (IRI), which is a collective of activists, artists, and curators who aim to imagine and implement post-capitalist forms of art and life. He was Director of the Athens Biennale, Athens, 2015–2017, and with freethought Co-Director of the Bergen Assembly, 2016. Mollona lives and works in London.

Massimiliano (Mao) Mollona is a writer, filmmaker, and anthropologist. He is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology, at Goldsmiths University of London, London. He has a multidisciplinary background in economics and anthropology and his work focuses on the relationship between art and political economy. He has conducted extensive fieldwork in Brazil, Italy, Norway, and the United Kingdom, mainly in economic and artistic institutions with a specific focus on work, class, and post-capitalist politics, and uses a methodology that combines pedagogy, artistic prefiguration, and activism. He is a member of the collective freethought and a co-founder and President of the Institute of Radical Imagination (IRI), which is a collective of activists, artists, and curators who aim to imagine and implement post-capitalist forms of art and life. He was Director of the Athens Biennale, Athens, 2015–2017, and with freethought Co-Director of the Bergen Assembly, 2016. Mollona lives and works in London.

The freethought collective came together in 2012 amid growing crises in the education sector, specifically the need for new knowledges to flow in and out of academia unhampered by strict protocols of evaluation, examination, and classroom outcomes. The “free” in freethought’s chosen name signals this need to detach knowledges from disciplines, institutional settings, and predictable outcomes, and to define new modes for circulation. In this way, freethought argues against differentiating academic and artistic practices, insisting instead that they together can expand and challenge through diverse materials and conceptual questions. Moving toward this, freethought is dedicated to public study and public research. To them, this means exploring thematics though numerous points and modes of collective research, including establishing what a subject might even be and which materials can illuminate it. Given that knowledge operates as a political force, collective knowledge based in experience can allow for an expanded field of what it means “to know” and what the stakes are in “knowing.”

freethought was first part of “Truth is Concrete,” steirischer herbst, Graz, 2012, exploring conceptions of “Education Crisis,” “Labour Crisis,” and “Creative Strikes”; they collaborated with BAK, Utrecht and Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin to curate a strand of the final event of Former West, Berlin, 2013, on infrastructure; and co-curated the 2016 Bergen Assembly, Bergen focusing on how infrastructure is not a neutral mechanism of goods, services, and electronic supports, but the predominant condition of people’s lives, indoctrinating subjects in ways of thinking and acting—making “infrastructural beings.”

As BAK 2020 Fellows, freethought expands their infrastructure project to explore affective dimensions. They are calling this “Spectral Infrastructure,” the hidden and invisible textures that sustain undefinable and disruptive qualities in otherwise efficient seeming organisms or structures.

freethought-collective.net

Jota Mombaça Jota Mombaça is a non-binary bicha, born and raised in the northeast of Brazil, who writes, performs, and investigates on the relations between monstrosity and humanity, kuir studies, de-colonial turns, political intersectionality, anti-colonial justice, redistribution of violence, visionary fiction

Lorenza Mondada Lorenza Mondada is professor of linguistics at University of Basel, Basel. Her research deals with social interaction in ordinary, professional, and institutional settings, within an ethnomethodological and conversation-analytic perspective. Her focus is on video analysis and multimodality, research

Charm Mone Charm Mone (a.k.a Negroma) showcases her performances as hybrid amalgams within experimental pop music. The artist fractures the conventional spectrums of poetry, songwriting, and production as well as gender and sexuality, using sound as a framework for unleashing narratives in live performances. O

Louis Moreno Louis Moreno is Lecturer at the Department of Visual Cultures and the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London, London. He is also the joint program leader of the BA in History of Art at Goldsmiths. Moreno’s research explores the spatial, historical, and cultural systems

Nástio Mosquito (born 1981) is a multimedia and performance artist whose work plays with African stereotypes in western contexts, often using himself as a central figure through which to question his own role as well as that of the audience. Recent exhibitions include: 9 Artists, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 2013; Politics of Representation, Tate Modern, London, 2012; and 29th São Paulo Biennial, São Paulo, 2010. Mosquito lives and works in Luanda.

Serubiri Moses Serubiri Moses is a writer and curator, and is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Art Department at Hunter College, New York. He is cocurator of “Greater New York 2020,” MoMA PS1’s survey of contemporary art. He was also part of the curatorial team for the Berlin Biennale X (2017–2018). Moses liv

Fred Moten’s poetry and scholarship explores Black studies, performance studies, and critical theory. Currently Professor of English at University of California, Riverside, CA, Moten’s publications include poetry collections like The Little Edges (2014) and The Feel Trio (2014), and scholarly work like The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study with Stefano Harney (2013) and In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition (2003). Moten lives and works in Los Angeles.

Karl Moubarak Karl Moubarak is a designer, researcher, and web developer whose practice is rooted in the digital sphere and focuses on the development of on- and offline sites for connectivity and exchange. He is a member of Amsterdam-based workshop cooperative Hackers & Designers (2019–ongoing), Eindhoven-ba

Rabih Mroué (born 1967) is an actor, director, playwright, visual artist, and a contributing editor of The Drama Review (TDR) as well as a co-founder and board member of the Beirut Art Center (BAC), Beirut. His diverse practice spans numerous disciplines and formats, employing fiction and in-depth analysis to engage with his immediate reality and the associated political and cultural contexts. In 2010 Mroué was awarded an Artist Grant for Theatre/Performance Arts from the Foundation of Contemporary Arts, New York, as well as the Spalding Gray Award. Recent exhibitions include: Documenta 13, Kassel, 2012; FORMER WEST Research Exhibition I, the Undersigned, BAK, Utrecht, 2010; Performa 09, New York, 2009; 11th International Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, 2009; Tarjama/Translation, Queens Museum of Art, New York, 2009; Sjarjah Biennial, Sjarjah, 2009; Soft Manipulation – Who is afraid of the new now?, Casino Luxembourg, Luxembourg, 2008; and Medium Religion, Center for Art and Media (ZKM), Karlsruhe, 2008. Mroué lives and works in Beirut. [Last updated 2013]

Ronahi Muhamad is, among other things, an activist, student and language teacher. She is active for the Kurdish Women’s Movement in and outside the Netherlands.

Jean Katambayi Mukendi Jean Katambayi Mukendi is an artist and scientist working with technology, mechanics, geometry, and electricity. Throughout his practice—ranging from drawing to “machine” assemblages—he fuses his training as an electrician with impressions from daily life. Driven by complex electrical mechanisms and

Lisa Myers Lisa Myers is an artist and independent curator with a keen interest in interdisciplinary collaboration. Myers’s artistic work involves printmaking, stop-motion animation, and performance. She is assistant professor in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University, Toronto. Her wr

The Foundation of Free Women, Weqfa Jina Azad, Rojava

Zein Nakhoda Zein Nakhoda is een filmmaker en organisator die zich binnen verschillende media en gemeenschappen inzet voor sociale verandering. Hij is directeur van Trainings for Change, een organisatie voor capaciteitsopbouw gericht op bewegingen voor sociale rechtvaardigheid, en maakte gemeenschaps- en bewegin

Marina Naprushkina (born 1981) is an artist whose work in media including painting, video, and installation, concentrates on power structures in nation-states, often making use of nonfiction material such as propaganda issued by governmental institutions in Belarus. Since 2007 she runs the Office for Anti-Propaganda, which participates in and organizes political actions and also publishes newspapers. Recent exhibitions include: Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Moscow, 2012; Dear Art, Moderna Galerija Ljubljana, Ljubljana, 2012; How Much Fascism?, BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, 2012; and Self # Governing, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, 7th Berlin Biennale, Berlin, 2012 and Kalmar Konstmuseum, Kalmar, 2012. Naprushkina lives and works in Berlin. [Last updated 2013]

Arjuna Neuman Arjuna Neuman is an artist, filmmaker, and writer. He has recently exhibited and screened his work at Showroom Gallery, London; TPW Gallery, Toronto; Forum Expanded, Berlin Berlinale; Berlin Biennial 10, Berlin; Serpentine Gallery, London; Qalandia Biennial, Jerusalem; Gasworks, London; Or Gallery,

Yen Noh Yen Noh is a visual and performance artist. Her practice engages with modes of linguistic and paralinguistic performativity as a way to challenge the cyclical violence of racialised and gendered identity and its (re)presentation. Throughout, Noh is concerned with possibilities of language that embod

Rifandi Septiawan Nugroho Rifandi Septiawan Nugroho is a researcher and occasional curator working along the intersection between architecture, art and everyday life. Currently, he is involved as facilitator for spatial practice subject at Gudskul and working as editor for arsitekturindonesia.org . Since 2016, he has made se

Forensic Oceanography Forensic Oceanography is a research project within research agency Forensic Architecture, started in 2011 by London-based architect and researcher Lorenzo Pezzani and Tunis-based filmmaker and researcher Charles Heller. Forensic Oceanography was launched to support a coalition of NGOs demanding acco

Omedi Ochieng Omedi Ochieng is a researcher, teacher, and writer. He works as Assistant Professor of Communication at Denison University, Ohio. Ochieng’s teaching and research engagements are animated by the search for justice, wisdom, ethics, and beauty. His areas of expertise include rhetorical theory and criti

İlyas Odman İlyas Odman is a choreographer and performance artist whose interests lie in creating layers through what is happening to a specific body on a specific space, and the relationships between the layers and narrations created by the body and space. He is also a storyteller and an activist who prefers c

Jerrau Oehlers Jerrau Oehlers, better known by his stage name of Jerrausama, is a Dutch DJ of Surinamese descent residing in Amsterdam. His sound is strongly influenced by alternative hip hop, house, and bass club music, despite his genre-defying nature. His curiosity and enjoyment of discovering new music led him

Ahmet Öğüt is an artist who initiated the learning platform The Silent University. Current projects include Goshka Macuga & Ahmet Öğüt, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, 2017 and Ahmet Öğüt, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, 2017–2018. Öğüt lives and works in Amsterdam and Berlin.

Kevin Ochieng Okoth Kevin Ochieng Okoth is an independent writer and researcher. He holds an MPhil in political theory from University of Oxford, Oxford. In his writings, Okoth focuses on imperialism and twentieth-century anti-colonial struggles. Some recent writings include “Aufstehen’s Populist Revolt: Local Patrioti

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

Boris Ondreička (born 1969) is an artist, singer, and curator. Recent exhibitions include: Taipei Biennial, Taipei, 2012; Elementary Blues, Galéria HIT, Bratislava, 2012; and Denisa Lehocka & Boris Ondreička: Try to Describe the Colour of Pure (still) Water, My Dear, Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe, 2011. Ondreička lives and works in Bratislava and Vienna. [Last updated 2013]

Peter Osborne is a Professor of Modern European Philosophy and the Director of the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University, London. Osborne teaches and publishes on Modern European Philosophy and the philosophy of modern and contemporary art—with particular reference to Conceptual Art. He has written catalogue essays for a wide range of international art institutions including: Tate Modern, Biennale of Sydney, Walker Art Center Minneapolis, and the Norwegian National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design. He has acted as a consultant to the Education Programme at Tate Britain and was consultant for the Office of Contemporary Art Norway with regard to the representation of Norway at the 2011 Venice Biennale. He has played a major role in the bimonthly British journal Radical Philosophy for nearly thirty years and plays an active role in current debates about the future of universities in the UK. Selected books include: Anywhere or not at all: the philosophy of contemporary art (2013); Spheres of action: art and politics (2013); The state of things (2012); and El arte mas alla de la estetica: ensayos filosoficos sobre el arte contemporaneo (2010). Osborne lives and works in London. [Last updated 2016]

Elvira Dyangani Ose is Lecturer in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths College, University of London, London, and curator of the 2015 Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art, Göteborg. Between 2011–2014, She was Curator of International Art at Tate Modern, where she assumed a leading role in developing the museum’s holdings of art from Africa and its diaspora, working closely with the Africa Acquisitions Committee. Previously, she was curator at the Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno (2004–2006) and the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo (2006–2008), where she organized several exhibitions including works by, among others, General Idea, Viennese Actionism, Alfredo Jaar, and Ábalos & Herreros. While at Tate, Dyangani Ose was also responsible for Across the Board (2012–2014), a two-year interdisciplinary project that took place in London, Accra, Douala, and Lagos. In addition to serving as the Artistic Director of the third edition of the Recontres Picha. Lubumbashi Biennial in 2013, her recent curatorial work includes: Ibrahim El-Salahi: A Visionary Modernist, Tate Modern, London, 2013; Carrie Mae Weems: Social Studies, Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Seville, 2010; Salon Urbaine de Douala, SUD, Doual’art, Douala, 2010 (with Simon Njami and Koyo Kouoh); Arte inVisible / inVisible Art, ARCOmadrid, Madrid, 2009–2010; Bienvenidos al Paraiso / Nontsikelelo Veleko, Casa Africa, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 2009; and the interdisciplinary project Attempt to Exhaust an African Place (2007–2008). Dyangani Ose lives and works in London. [Last updated 2015]

Marion von Osten (born 1963) is an artist and cultural researcher. She works with curatorial, artistic, and theoretical approaches that converge through the medium of exhibitions, installations, video, and text productions. Her main research interests concern cultural production in postcolonial societies, technologies of the self, and the governance of mobility. She is a founding member of Labor k3000 in Zürich and of kleines post-fordistisches Drama (kpD) and the Center for Post-colonial Knowledge and Culture in Berlin. Between 2006 and 2012 she was Professor of Art and Communication at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Vienna. From 1999 through 2006 she was Professor of Artistic Practice and researcher at the Institute for the Theory of Art and Design (ith), Zürich University of the Arts, Zürich. She has also lectured at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York and the Critical Studies Program, Malmö Art Academy, Malmö. Prior to that she was curator at Shedhalle Zürich from 1996 to 1999. Recent research and exhibition projects include: Model House—Mapping Transcultural Modernisms, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Vienna, 2010–2013; Architectures of Decolonization, Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, Paris, 2011–2012; In the Desert of Modernity—Colonial Planning and After, Les Abattoirs de Casablanca, Casablanca, 2009 and House of World Cultures, Berlin, 2008; Projekt Migration, Cologne, 2002–2006; and TRANSIT MIGRATION, Zürich, Frankfurt, and Cologne, 2003–2005. Von Osten lives and works in Berlin. [Last updated 2013]

Joska Ottjes Joska Ottjes is a teacher, trainer, and board member of Vereniging de Kasko. De Kasko is a co-living community in Utrecht that opened its doors in 1985. De Kasko sprung from a socialist-anarchist pursuit of an alternative way of living. Today, the residents are for the larger part in control of the

Merijn Oudenampsen is a sociologist and political scientist. He is affiliated with Tilburg University, and recently defended his PhD on the intellectual origins of the Dutch swing to the right in politics. Oudenampsen has contributed to platforms such as De Groene Amsterdammer, Metropolis M, and De Gids.Last updated in 2018

Pages Nasrin Tabatabai & Babak Affrasiabi

Trevor Paglen (born 1974) is an artist, writer, and experimental geographer, whose photographs and videos focus on the intelligence community’s covert world of secrets. His work draws attention to everything from illusive budgets to military base locations to mysterious disappearances. Recent exhibitions include: After the Gold Rush, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2011; and Magical Consciousness, Arnolfini, Bristol, 2011. Paglen lives and works in New York. [Last updated 2012]

Taisha Paggett is a dance artist and co-instigator of the dance journal project itch. Her work is inspired by various discourses on the body as an expressive tool, and she is interested in bridging the sensibility and discourses of both the visual and performing arts. Her recent choreographic works include: “How we get by,” and “Living with – – – – is like living… .” As a dancer, Paggett has worked extensively in the projects of David Rousseve, Cheng-Chieh Yu, Victoria Marks, and Kelly Nipper, and she assisted Yvonne Rainer in the development of “Agon.” She is also a member of the audio action collective Ultra-Red. Taisha Paggett and Ashley Hunt collaborated during their RIR stay. For more information on her work and current projects, see www.taishapaggett.net. Paggett lives and works in Los Angeles.The basis for our collaboration comes directly from our sharing of space and time, to which we each bring the training, habits, perspectives, subjectivities, and aporias of the respective disciplines through which we have become artists living in the world. Whereas Paggett’s investments have centered upon movement-based practices and movement theories, and Hunt’s investments have centered upon visual arts practice and theory, our collaborative practice has emerged from the need to negotiate them both—considering the kinetic along with the visual, the cerebral and the corporeal, and ultimately, chipping away at what appears to separate them. In this way, our interests lie in forms of intelligence and knowing that are not exclusively cerebral or “in the head.” Yet, instead of this locating our inquiry in strictly internal phenomenological investigations, we are interested in such intelligence and knowledge as politics, as political, economic, and social life are not abstractions but work materially upon, through, and across bodies. This might lead to more critical understandings of the politics that touch, give us new analytical tools for speaking about them, and new ways to act as an agent in the world.Our proposal for the BAK Research Residency is to study a selection of emergent and historical somatic disciplines against a selection of philosophical traditions that claim to know and describe the subject, its determinations, limitations, and possibilities. This will take place in three layers: study, experimentation, and choreography. The study will simply be reading, discussing, and testing of the various disciplines; the experimentation will include conceptual tests that introduce somatic and philosophical disciplines into one another; and the choreography will be an attempt to develop the results of these experiments further, into loose organizational forms that can be placed upon other bodies in contexts where one would typically refer to as protests, organizing, and so forth. This latter strand may not be possible to complete within the limited time frame of this residency, but it will be present as a possibility throughout all of our research.

Stefania Pandolfo Stefania Pandolfo is an ethnographic researcher, writer, and anthropologist. Pandolfo is professor and advisor of the Medical Anthropology Program at the University of California, Berkeley. Pandolfo brings an anthropological perspective that incorporates contemporary philosophy, psychology, psychoan

Stefan Panhans (born 1967) is an artist who works with photography, video, and installation through which he presents skewed everyday scenarios that move us to question accepted customs and desires. Recent exhibitions include BUSY. Exhausted Self/Unlimited Ability, 21er Haus, Vienna, 2012 and Art is concrete. And so is truth?, Camera Austria, Graz, 2012. Panhans lives and works in Berlin and Hamburg. [Last updated 2013]

Marina Papazyan Marina Papazyan is an artist and writer. They thread together semi-fictions about themself by way of writing, voicing and recording. Their works rely on the body as a source of grammar where it is mainly through pores, cavities and intestines that the world is sensed and told. Their texts reflect a

Maria Papadimitriou is an artist who explores the relation between art and social reality by examining issues as identity, social integration, and exclusion through collaborative endeavors. She is Professor of Art and the Environment at the Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly, Volos and founder of T.A.M.A. (Temporary Autonomous Museum for All) (1998) and SOUZY TROS Art Canteen (2012). Recent group exhibitions include DESTE Prize: An Anniversary Exhibition, 1999-2015, DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art, Athens, 2017, and Urgent Conversations: Athens-Antwerp, National Museum of Contemporary Art – EMST, Athens, 2016. Recent solo-exhibitions include: Laboratory Antigone, Onassis Cultural Center, New York, 2016; Why Look At Animals? AGRIMIKÁ, Greek Pavilion, 56th Venice Biennale, Venice, 2015; and T.A.M.A. Overflow, Museum Alex Mylonas – Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, 2014. Papadimitriou lives and works in Volos and Athens.

Carmen Papalia Carmen Papalia is an artist who uses organizing strategies and improvisation to address access to public space, the art institution, and visual culture. Papalia’s walks, workshops, and interventions are an opportunity to model new standards and practices in the area of accessibility. Since 2015, Pap

Nikos Papastergiadis is Professor for Cultural Studies and Media & Communications, University of Melbourne, Melbourne. He often researches contemporary sociopolitical realities in relation to changes in art spectatorship. Recent publications include: Cosmopolitanism and Culture (2012); Spatial Aesthetics: Art, Place, and the Everyday (2006); and Metaphor and Tension: on Collaboration and its Discontents (2004). Papastergiadis lives and works in Melbourne. [Last updated 2013]

Founded in 2012, the Icelandic Pirate Party is a political party whose core policies include: democracy, transparency, civil rights, the right to self-determination, public access to information, and responsible decision making. In the 2017 parliamentary elections in Iceland, the party received 9.2 percent of the votes and now has six parliamentary seats.

Yuri Pattison Yuri Pattison is an artist with a focus on sculpture, video, and digital media. His practice explores how new technologies such as the digital economy and online communication have shifted and impacted the systemic frameworks of the built environment, daily life, and our perceptions of time, space,

Antonio Paucar Antonio Paucar is an installation and performance artist. He graduated as a visual artist from Universität der Künste Berlin, Berlin. His work centers on subjects such as Andean traditions, ancestrality, resistance, and ritual, as well as violence and migration. In his performances, Paucar carries o

Vjeran Pavlakovic is an assistant professor and Chair of the Department of Cultural Studies at the University of Rijeka, and holds a PhD in History from the University of Washington. He is lead researcher on the project Framing the Nation and Collective Identity in Croatia: Political Rituals and the Cultural Memory of Twentieth Century Traumas funded by the Croatian Science Foundation, 2014–2018. He has written numerous articles on the topics of Yugoslavs in the Spanish Civil War, the politics of memory, and transitional justice in the former Yugoslavia. Recent publications include: The Battle for Spain is Ours: Croatia and the Spanish Civil War 1936–1939 (2014), “Symbols and the Culture of Memory in Republika Srpska Krajina,” Nationalities Papers (2013), and “Fulfilling the Thousand-Year-Old Dream: Strategies of Symbolic Nation-building in Croatia,” in Pal Kolsto, ed., Strategies of Symbolic Nation-building in South Eastern Europe (2014). He is a co-editor of the book Confronting the Past: European Experiences (2012). Pavlaković lives and works in Rijeka. [Last updated 2015]

Zeyno Pekünlü Zeyno Pekünlü is an artist. She is currently running the Istanbul Biennial Production and Research Programme at Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, IKSV, Istanbul. She is co-founder of KIRIK, an initiative for people and topics in the cracks. She is part of the editorial board of e-journal Red

Alexei Penzin is Reader in Art at the University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton and Research Fellow at the Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow. His major fields of interest are philosophical anthropology, Marxism, Soviet and post-Soviet studies, and the philosophy of art. He lectures widely on these topics and has participated in many international research projects, seminars, and symposia, including: What Is Thinking? Or a Taste That Hates Itself, Documenta 13, Ständehaus, Kassel, 2012; The Cairo Seminar, Documenta 13, MASS Alexandria, Cairo, 2012; and Modernidad y la llamada acumulación originaria [Modernity and So-called Primitive Accumulation], seminar in the context of the project The Potosí Principle, Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid, 2010. In 2008, he initiated and organized a series of conferences and talks on the topic “Capitalism as Religion? Walter Benjamin, Critical Theory and Art Today” at the National Centre for Contemporary Art, Moscow. Penzin has written numerous articles and is author of Rex Exsomnis: Sleep and Subjectivity in Capitalist Modernity (2012). He is a member of the interdisciplinary artistic and intellectual group Chto Delat [What is to Be Done?], which works in the space between theory, art, and political activism. Penzin currently lives and works in London and Moscow. [Last updated 2014]

Felipe Esparza Pérez Felipe Esparza’s work creates dynamic links and tensions between cinema, visual arts, and video creation. In his projects, a strong interest in social content coexists with an exploration of themes such as nature, non-verbal communication, the sacred, its symbolic derivations and the relationship be

As part of a session convened by 2017/2018 BAK Fellow Otobong Nkanga, educator and political organizer in the arts Andrea Phillips gave a seminar on her current research focus: reorienting contemporary art’s ecology toward producing more emancipatory forms of sharing—not simply about spatial sharing and inclusivity, but also at the level of wage labor.   […]

Dr. Andrea Phillips is BALTIC Professor and Director of BxNU Research Institute, Northumbria University, Newcastle & BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead. Phillips lectures and writes about the economic and social construction of public value within contemporary art, the manipulation of forms of participation and the potential of forms of political, architectural, and social reorganization within artistic and curatorial culture. Her forthcoming book Contemporary Art and the Production of Inequality will bring together discussions on the politics of public administration and management with recent analyses of arts institutions, alongside debates on value (public and private) informed by research into the political functions of the art market and personal experience of organizing, lobbying, and governing contemporary arts institutions and arts education institutions. Phillips lives and works in London.

Black Quantum Futurism (Camae Ayewa and Rasheedah Phillips) Black Quantum Futurism is a multidisciplinary collaboration between poet, musician, and activist Camae Ayewa and artist, author, and activist Rasheedah Phillips. With a Black futurist approach to time and space, they explore the intersections of imagination, fiction, creative media, DIY-aesthetics,

Cesare Pietroiusti (born 1955) is an artist who creates ordinary situations, conducting exchanges with people, performing tasks, even making publications, but revealing their incidental, concealed, or seemingly insignificant qualities. In doing so, he sheds light on that which is often ignored or potentially problematic in our day-to-day existence. Recent projects in which he has been involved include: the exhibition Declining Democracy, Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, 2011; and the artist-run school Wide Open School, Hayward Gallery, London, 2011. Pietroiusti lives and works in Rome. [Last updated 2012]

Sarah Pierce is an artist. Working with performance, video, papers, interviews, exhibitions, and archival material, she researches sites and contexts of artistic practices and their public displays, often within the institution. She holds a PhD in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths, University of London, London and an MFA from Cornell University, Ithaca, and is a past participant of the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program, New York. In addition to teaching at the Roaming Academy of the Dutch Art Institute, Arnhem, she currently teaches art at the Dublin Institute of Technology, Dublin. Recent exhibitions include: Pathos of Distance, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 2015–2016; Positions #2, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 2015–2016; El Lissitzky: The Artist and the State, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, 2015; Lost Illusions/Illusions Perdues, Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff, 2014, Mercer Union, Toronto, 2014; and SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art, Montreal, 2014. Pierce lives and works in Dublin.

Ana Teixeira Pinto is writer and cultural theorist. She is a lecturer at Berlin University of the Arts, Berlin, and a research fellow at Leuphana University, Lüneburg. Her research examines the allegorical dimensions of scientific paradigms. She has recently been published in Alleys of Your Mind: Augmented Intelligence and Its Traumas (edited by Matteo Pasquinelli, 2015) and Nervöse Systeme (edited by Anselm Franke, Stephanie Hankey, and Marek Tuszynski, 2016). Teixeira Pinto lives and works in Berlin.

Amanda Piña Amanda Piña's artistic work is concerned with the decolonization of art, focusing on the political and social power of movement to temporarily dismantle ideological separations between the: contemporary and traditional, human and animal, and nature and culture. She studied painting before studying p

Piotr Piotrowski (born 1952, died 2015) was Professor Ordinarius and Chair of Modern Art History at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań where he was Director of the Institute of Art History from 1999 to 2008. Since August 2009, he was Director of the National Museum in Warsaw. From 1992 till 1997, Piotrowski was a Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the National Museum, Poznań. He has been a Visiting Professor at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY (2001) and at Hebrew University in Jerusalem (2003), among other institutions. Piotrowski was a FORMER WEST Research Advisor and was a fellow at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, where he worked on a book project entitled “New Art – New Democracy in Post-communist Europe.” He was also a fellow at, among others, Collegium Budapest, Budapest (2005–2006), the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (2000), Humboldt University, Berlin (1997), Columbia University, New York City (1994), and the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, Washington D.C. (1989–1990). He has advised and co-organized a number of exhibitions and projects including: 2000+: The Art from Eastern Europe in Dialogue with the West, Moderna galerija, Ljubljana, 2000 and The Central European Avant-Gardes: Exchange and Transformation, 1910–1930, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, 2001. Piotrowski has written extensively on Central European art and culture. He is the author of a dozen books including Art and Democracy in Post-Communist Europe (2012); Avant-Garde in the Shadow of Yalta. Art in Central-Eastern Europe, 1945–1989 (2009); Art after Politics (2007); Grenzen überwinded [Conquered Borders], co-edited with Katja Bernhardt (2006); and Meanings of Modernism. Towards a History of Polish Art after 1945 (1999). [Last updated 2015]

Adrian Piper Adrian Piper is an artist and philosopher. She has taught analytical philosophy at various American universities and is the author of publications on metaethics, Kant, and the history of ethics. As a conceptual artist, she produces artworks in a variety of media. Her work explores the nature of subj

Falke Pisano is an artist whose installations, sculptures, drawings, diagrams, and speech-performances explore the potential of language as an emancipatory tool that enables individuals to responsibly and critically make themselves part of the world. In 2013, she won the Prix de Rome and in 2016 she was an artist-in-residence at M4gastatelier, Amsterdam. Her recent exhibition projects include: The value in mathematics, Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe, 2016, Synagogue de Delme, Delme, 2016, and REDCAT, Los Angeles, 2015, among other locations; The Body in Crisis, The Showroom, London, 2013 and Vleeshal, Middelburg, 2012, among other locations. She participated in group exhibitions at the 20th Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, 2016; 13th Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, 2013; 53rd Venice Biennale, Venice, 2009; and Manifesta 7, Trentino, 2008. Pisano lives and works in Berlin.

Antonis Pittas is an artist who deploys the performative aspects of installation art and its social dynamics in his installations and sculptures. Recent exhibitions include Road to Victory, Hordaland Kunstsenter, Bergen, 2017. Pittas lives and works in Amsterdam.

Mutual Support Platform The Mutual Support Platform (MSP) is a space for conversations and actions by/between/for students, alumni, and teachers of the MAFA HKU, Utrecht. It emerged as a collective effort in response to the crisis of COVID-19, which we experienced with differing levels of privilege. The platform continues

Ethel Baraona Pohl Ethel Baraona Pohl is a writer, critic, and curator. She is co-founder of independent research practice and publishing house dpr-barcelona, and was editor at the architecture magazine Quaderns d’arquitectura i urbanisme, 2011–2016. Her work focuses on architecture and political theory and has been p

In April 2016, BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, brought to life the Here We Are Academy: a spirited temporary recomposition of a refugee-initiated platform for learning called We Are Here Academy. Established in Amsterdam in 2012, We Are Here is the first large-scale organization of refugees living in limbo in the Netherlands. Through projects organized […]

Established in 2002, Political Critique is the largest Central and Eastern European liberal network of institutions and activists. It organizes workshops, exhibitions, debates, seminars, an online quarterly magazine, a publishing house, cultural centers in Poland, and activist clubs in Germany, Poland, and Ukraine

Nicole Pollentier is a writer and curator who is currently completing her Master’s degree in Curatorial Studies from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York. Her MA curatorial project, entitled Degrees North: Six Artists and the Icelandic Landscape, includes work by Birgir Andrésson, Douwe Jan Bakker, Hreinn Friðfinnsson, Kristján Guðmundsson, Sigurður Guðmundsson, and Magnús Pálsson. She previously received a Master’s degree in Fine Arts/Creative Writing from San Francisco State University inPrior to that she worked with SECA (Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art) as coordinator, special projects coordinator, assistant to the Curator of Education and Public Programs, and special assistant to the Director of Development. Pollentier lives and works in New York.During my Research-in-Residence at BAK,basis voor actuele kunst, I researched the work of the Dutch Conceptual artist, Douwe Jan Bakker. I first learned about Bakker through researching the work of the Icelandic artist, Birgir Andrésson. In an essay, I read that Birgir considered Bakker to be his mentor. In Utrecht, I began asking about Bakker’s work and discovered that he was not often discussed in contemporary circles. I started looking for publications about his work, and found that the Centraal Museum had published a book about a piece of Bakker’s called A Vocabulary Sculpture in the Icelandic Landscape (1975). This book was in the collection of an art book dealer named Andre Swertz, who very conveniently lived in Utrecht and quite by coincidence had purchased Bakker’s “library” (the books that had been on the shelves in his studio) when he died. Going through this box of books, I was surprised to find that most of them were by or about Icelandic artists, some handmade, and many printed at Jan van Eyck Academy. Further investigation revealed that Bakker had been a tutor at Jan van Eyck, where he worked with Birgir Andrésson and became acquainted with the community of Icelandic artists who had moved to the Netherlands in the 1970s, including Sigurður Guðmundsson, his brother Kristján Guðmundsson, and Hreinn Friðfinnsson. Soon, Bakker began traveling to Iceland, and the Icelandic language and landscape became dominant forces in his work.Bakker was included in the Dutch Pavilion for the 1978 Venice Biennale, in a group exhibition called Nature Art, commissioned by Gijs van Tuyl (now the Director of the Stedelijk Museum). He was also included in several other group shows in the 1970s and was the subject of a retrospective at the Gemeente Museum in The Hague in 1996. However, since his death in 1997, Bakker’s work has fallen into relative obscurity in the Netherlands, although it is still highly celebrated in Iceland.My Research-in-Residence at BAK allowed me to gain direct access to Bakker’s library. Additionally, with the assistance of BAK artistic director Maria Hlavajova, I was able to meet with Gijs van Tuyl, who was the primary curator of Bakker’s work in the Netherlands in the 1970s. I also became acquainted with Jan Voss, owner of the artists’ book store Boekie Woekie in Amsterdam, who knew Bakker and many of the Icelandic artists in his circle. The work I did during my Research-in-Residence at BAK will support an exhibition I am developing, which will be on view in the Bard Center for Curatorial Studies galleries in the spring of 2008, in fulfillment of my master’s thesis.

Nina Potarska Since 2016, Nina Potarska has been Ukraine’s national coordinator for the International Women’s League for Peace and Freedom. The objectives of the program are to improve the organization of, to facilitate the participation of women in, and to ensure that gender perspectives and responses are made m

Nina Power is a philosopher and activist. She is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Humanities at University of Roehampton, London. She is a founding member of the group Defend the Right to Protest and author of One-Dimensional Woman (2009). Power lives and works in London.

Joram Kroon (Prace) Joram Kroon (Prace) is a composer, music-producer, pianist, DJ, music teacher, and musical adventurer. He is currently working on a live electronic music performance featuring visuals in which he searches for the connection between the domain of electronic music and the culture of the Gnawa, an ethn

Vijay Prashad is George and Martha Kellner Chair in South Asian History and Professor of International Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, CT. He writes regularly for AlterNet.org, BirGün, and Frontline. Recent publications include The Death of the Nation and the Future of the Arab Revolution (2016). Prashad lives and works in New Delhi.

BAK 2018/2019 Fellows Jessica de Abreu and Yasmine Eid-Sabbagh present at Propositions #7/6: Archive, the final iteration of the public series Propositions #7: Evidentiary Methods. The event also features Ariel Caine (Forensic Architecture, London) and takes place at BAK in the context of the exhibition Forensic Justice (18 October 2018–27 January 2019). This program is […]

Laced-Up Project Laced-Up Project is a safe, sane, and consensual community-building project founded by Sarah Mobley, based in Utrecht. The project has three branches: a boutique, an educational branch, and a social community. The boutique is for anyone who is interested in sexy and alternative clothing. The educati

BAK has published the first publication in a series on our research trajectory Propositions for Non-Fascist Living (2017–ongoing), Propositions for Non-Fascist Living: Tentative and Urgent (MIT Press, 2019). Moving from critique to propositions, the project attempts to articulate and inhabit methods of de-individualized living and to practice ways in which multiplicity and difference establish relations […]

Paul Purgas Paul Purgas is an artist and musician working with sound, performance, and installation. Purgas is one half of the electronic music project Emptyset (with James Ginzburg) that delves into the sonic possibilities of electroacoustic and computer music, architecture, and performance. Trained as an arch

QANAT QANAT is a collaborative platform that explores the politics and poetics of water to reflect and act (up)on the multiple contextual understandings and forms of (re)production of the commons in Morocco and beyond. A subterranean water-harvesting system of channels and wells across Africa, Southern Eu

Colored Qollective Colored Qollective is an organization that was founded in 2018 and focuses on the position and safety of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual (LGBTQIA+) people of color in society. Everything Colored Qollective does is from a perspective of positionality and intersection

Morgan Quaintance is a writer, curator, musician, and broadcaster. He received his undergraduate training in Sound Art and Design at the London College of Communication and went on to complete the MA program in Curating Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art, London. Quaintance regularly contributes to Art Monthly, Art Review, Frieze, and Rhizome, among other journals, curatorial sites, and blogs. He is a contributing editor for e-flux’s online publishing portal Art Agenda and is a founding member of the curatorial collective DAM PROJECTS. His recent curatorial projects include: Letter from Istanbul, Pi Artworks, London, 2017; Here Comes a New Challenger and Simeon Barclay: They Don’t Like It Up ‘Em, Cubitt Gallery, London 2016. Quaintance lives and works in London.

Ying Que Ying Que is an anthropologist, facilitator, and a cultural activist. Since 2016, she has been part of Read-in, a collective that experiments with reading and memorizing collectively. She is also co-initiator of the queer collective niet normaal*, which has organized parties in music venue Ekko based

In the waves of devastation as war is waged on Ukraine, we republish the video statement made by Oleksiy Radynski (filmmaker and writer, Kyiv) in 2017.

Judy Radul (born 1962) is an artist. She studied at Bard College in New York, where she obtained her Masters degree in Fine Arts in 2000. Currently she teaches visual arts at the Simon Fraser University, School for the Contemporary Arts, Vancouver, Canada. Radul’s practice involves the consideration of the forms and conditions of video, language, and performance. Her work has recently focused on video installation but also includes photography, live actions, and audio. Radul’s critical writing has been widely published. In 2009 her large-scale installation, World Rehearsal Court, using live and prerecorded video, will be presented as a solo exhibition at the Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Recent solo exhibitions (selection): Judy Radul, Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver, 2007; Judy Radul: Proposal for Ghost Pass Rehearsal Park, OBORO, Montréal, 2006; Room 302, Artspeak Gallery, Vancouver, 2005; Downes Point And So Departed (Again), Presentation House Gallery, North Vancouver, 2005. Recent group exhibitions include: e-flux video rental, Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris, 2007; Projections, Blackwood Gallery, Mississauga, 2007; and Intertidal: Vancouver Art and Artists, MuHKA, Antwerp, 2005. Radul lives and works in Vancouver.During her residency Radul carried out research for the World Rehearsal Court project, which brings together her interest in performance, media, behavior, and social space with an aesthetic investigation of the history and contemporary realities of the trial and the court of law. She traveled to The Hague regularly to observe trials at the Special Court for Sierra Leone and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Of particular interest to Radul is the way the theater of the court is being altered by the increasing use of media not only as evidence, but in many aspects of the staging of the trial, including its live recording and closed circuit as well as Internet broadcast. Her preliminary research into these aesthetic dimensions of the trial and their relation to contemporary art is available online.

Johannes Paul Raether artist, Berlin

Hesam Rahmanian works in collage and painting. His work was featured in Rock, Paper, Scissors: Positions in Play, National Pavilion of United Arab Emirates, 57th Venice Biennale, 2017. Solo exhibitions have been at Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde, Dubai, 2013; Paradise Row, London, 2011; and Traffic, Dubai, 2010. Rahmanian lives and works in Dubai.

Laura Raicovich Laura Raicovich is a curator and writer. She is the recipient of the inaugural Emily H. Tremaine Journalism Fellowship for Curators at Hyperallergic, and is currently working on a book about museums, cultural institutions, and the myth of neutrality (forthcoming 2020). Her interest lies in artistic

Rachael Rakes Rachael Rakes is the curator of public practice at BAK basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht. She is also a programmer at large for the Film Society of Lincoln Center, New York, where she co-curates the festival Art of the Real and is on the advisory team for the New York Film Festival. She is a contrib

pantxo ramas (aka Francesco Salvini) is an activist and researcher. They are based in Barcelona, where they participate in Barcelona en Comú and collaborate with Radio Nikosia. In Italy, pantxo ramas also collaborates with Conferenza Permanente per la Salute Mentale nel Mondo in Trieste, and with the blog euronomade.info. pantxo ramas’s research and activism deal with issue of precarity and public policies in the fields of culture, health, and urban rights. [Last updated 2015]

Hafiz Rancajale Hafiz Rancajale is an artist, curator, and filmmaker. Rancajale is founder of Forum Lenteng, an egalitarian non-profit organization as a means of social and cultural studies development based in Indonesia, and artistic director of ARKIPEL: Jakarta International Documentary and Experimental Film Fest

Steven Rand is founder and director of apexart, a non-profit organization for the development of contemporary art in New York City with an emphasis on the promotion of the public dialogue about contemporary art. Recent exhibitions of Steven Rand include (selection): conFLUXaction, Gallerie Shüppenhauer, Cologne, 2006; Pablo and Friends, short videos, Elizabeth Foundation NYC, New York, 2006; Erweiterung Europäisches Patentamt, European Patent Office, 2005; Our House is a House That Moves, Gallery Skuc, Ljubljana, 2004; Ready-made Color, Centre d’Art Passerelle, Brest, 2003; ddm warehouse Gallery (solo show) Shanghai, 2002; and Ex Machina, NGBK, Berlin, 2002. Rand lives and works in New York City.Apexart is a non-profit contemporary visual arts organization based in New York City with an exhibition space, an international residency, various ongoing public programs, and a conference series. It is one of the interesting focal meeting points for international art and cultural practitioners. Steven Rand, who founded the organization in 1994, visits various art institutions and exhibitions in the Netherlands, and meets other art professionals in order to gain new perspectives and ideas about the future development of Apexart.

Li Ran (born 1986) is a performance and video artist whose work straddles the line between fact and fiction in playful explorations of issues pertaining to institutionality and colonialism, among others. Recent exhibitions include: ON/OFF, UCCA Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, 2013; I Want to Talk to You, But not to All of You, Goethe-Institut Shanghai, Shanghai, 2012; and ROUNDTABLE, 9th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, 2012. Ran lives and works in Beijing. [Last updated 2013]

Gerald Raunig is a philosopher and theoretician on art theory, political aesthetics, cultural politics, and politics of difference. He works at the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste, Zurich, at the European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies (eipcp), and holds the titles of habilitation and venia docendi at the Institute for Philosophy, University of Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt. He is a member of the editorial boards of the multilingual web journal transversal and the journal Kamion. Selected books of Raunig include: upcoming: DIVIDUUM. Machinic Capitalism and Molecular Revolution (2016); Factories of Knowledge, Industries of Creativity (2013); Critique of Creativity (2011); A Thousand Machines (2010); Art and Contemporary Critical Practice. Reinventing Institutional Critique (2009); and Art and Revolution. Transversal Activism in the Long Twentieth Century (2007). Raunig lives and works in Zurich. [Last updated 2016]

Shay Raviv Shay Raviv is a social designer, design researcher, and project initiator. Raviv works on different projects in which culture, design, and creativity are seen as a means to bridge societal gaps. As a design researcher, she brings stories from different perspectives to the center of a creation proces

Chris Rawlence Chris Rawlence is a director, writer, and producer of dozens of feature films, documentaries, and television series, among them the BBC series About Time, which he created with Mike Dibb.
 

Irit Rogoff is a writer, teacher, curator, and organizer working at the intersection of contemporary art, critical theory, and emergent political manifestations. She is a professor of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, London, where she heads the PhD in the Curatorial/Knowledge program and the MA in the Global Arts program. Her practice deals with geography, globalization, and contemporary participatory practices in the expanded field of art. Her current work focuses on new practices of knowledge production and their impacts on modes of research, under the title The Way We Work Now. As part of the collective freethought, Rogoff was one of the artistic directors of the Bergen Assembly, Bergen, 2016. In addition to contributing to numerous anthologies and catalogs, her publications include: Looking Away—Participating Singularities, Ontological Communities (2013); Visual Cultures as Seriousness (with Gavin Butt, 2013); Unbounded—Limits’ Possibilities (2012); and Terra Infirma: Geography’s Visual Culture (2000). She has also published in periodicals such as Art Journal, Open, e-flux journal, and Third Text. Rogoff lives and works in London.

Irit Rogoff is a writer, teacher, curator, and organizer working at the intersection of contemporary art, critical theory, and emergent political manifestations. She is a professor of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, London, where she heads the PhD in the Curatorial/Knowledge program and the MA in the Global Arts program. Her practice deals with geography, globalization, and contemporary participatory practices in the expanded field of art. Her current work focuses on new practices of knowledge production and their impacts on modes of research, under the title The Way We Work Now. As part of the collective freethought, Rogoff was one of the artistic directors of the Bergen Assembly, Bergen, 2016. In addition to contributing to numerous anthologies and catalogs, her publications include: Looking Away—Participating Singularities, Ontological Communities (2013); Visual Cultures as Seriousness (with Gavin Butt, 2013); Unbounded—Limits’ Possibilities (2012); and Terra Infirma: Geography’s Visual Culture (2000). She has also published in periodicals such as Art Journal, Open, e-flux journal, and Third Text. Rogoff lives and works in London.

The freethought collective came together in 2012 amid growing crises in the education sector, specifically the need for new knowledges to flow in and out of academia unhampered by strict protocols of evaluation, examination, and classroom outcomes. The “free” in freethought’s chosen name signals this need to detach knowledges from disciplines, institutional settings, and predictable outcomes, and to define new modes for circulation. In this way, freethought argues against differentiating academic and artistic practices, insisting instead that they together can expand and challenge through diverse materials and conceptual questions. Moving toward this, freethought is dedicated to public study and public research. To them, this means exploring thematics though numerous points and modes of collective research, including establishing what a subject might even be and which materials can illuminate it. Given that knowledge operates as a political force, collective knowledge based in experience can allow for an expanded field of what it means “to know” and what the stakes are in “knowing.”

freethought was first part of “Truth is Concrete,” steirischer herbst, Graz, 2012, exploring conceptions of “Education Crisis,” “Labour Crisis,” and “Creative Strikes”; they collaborated with BAK, Utrecht and Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin to curate a strand of the final event of Former West, Berlin, 2013, on infrastructure; and co-curated the 2016 Bergen Assembly, Bergen focusing on how infrastructure is not a neutral mechanism of goods, services, and electronic supports, but the predominant condition of people’s lives, indoctrinating subjects in ways of thinking and acting—making “infrastructural beings.”

As BAK 2020 Fellows, freethought expands their infrastructure project to explore affective dimensions. They are calling this “Spectral Infrastructure,” the hidden and invisible textures that sustain undefinable and disruptive qualities in otherwise efficient seeming organisms or structures.

freethought-collective.net

Société Réaliste (Paris) is an artists’ cooperative founded in 2004 by Ferenc Gróf and Jean-Baptiste Naudy. Their work subverts and distorts the tools of communication of conventional power structures, such as maps, emblems, signs, and architecture. Selected exhibitions include: ‘amal ‘ al-gam’, Acb Gallery, Budapest, 2014; Universal Anthem, Tranzit.ro, Cluj, 2014; A rough guide to Hell, P!, New York, 2013; and Empire, State, Building, Ludwig Muzeum, Budapest, 2012. Selected group exhibitions include: Too much money, Museum Quartier, Vienne, 2014; Rendez-vous, Galerie Jérôme Poggi, Paris, 2013; and Kritik une Krise, Situation Room / CHB, Berlin, 2012.

Vivian Sky Rehberg is an art critic, researcher, and educator who publishes widely on contemporary art. She holds a PhD in Art History from Northwestern University, Evanston, and an MA in Art History and Criticism from Stony Brook University, Stony Brook. She is currently the course director of the Master of Fine Art program at the Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam, after a position as the head of the Critical Studies department at Parsons Paris School of Art & Design, Paris. She is also a contributing editor of frieze. Rehberg lives and works in Rotterdam.

Paul Rekret Paul Rekret is a researcher and teacher in political and cultural theory.  He is associate professor of politics at Richmond American International University, London, part of Le Mardi Gras Listening Collective (with Fred Moten, Dhanveer Brar Singh, Fumi Okiji, Ronald Rose-Antoinette, Louis Moreno,

DAAR (Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency) is an architectural studio and art residency program based in Beit Sahour, Palestine, and co-directed by Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti. DAAR aims to use spatial practice as a form of political intervention. DAAR’s program has gathered together architects, artists, activists, urbanists, film-makers, and curators— to work collectively on the subjects of politics and architecture. DAAR projects have been shown showed in various biennales and museums, among them Venice Biennale, Home Works in Beirut, the Istanbul Biennial, the Bozar in Brussels, NGBK in Berlin, the Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, Architekturforum Tirol in Innsbruk, the Tate in London, the Oslo Triennial, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and many other places. DAAR’s members have taught lectured and published internationally. DAAR was awarded with the Price Claus Prize for Architecture, nominated for the Curry Stone Design Price, the Anni and Heinrich Sussmann Artist Award, the New School’s Vera List Center Prize for Art and Politics, the Chernikhov Prize.

Pedro Reyes is an artist who, through sculpture, performance, video, and activism, explores the power of individual and collective organization to incite change. Recent projects include Doomocracy, Creative Time, Brooklyn Army Terminal, New York, 2016. Reyes lives and works in Mexico City.

Kathrin Rhomberg (born 1963) is a curator. She is also an advisor and corresponding member of Secession, Vienna. From 2002 to 2007, she was director of the Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, and from 1994 to 2001, she was curator and exhibition organizer at Secession, Vienna. In 2002, Rhomberg and Maria Hlavajova founded the tranzit network, which supports exchange and contemporary art practices in Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia. Recent curatorial projects include: the 6th Berlin Biennale, Berlin, 2010; Roman Ondák: Loop, Czech and Slovak Republic Pavilion, 53rd Venice Biennale, Venice, 2009; and Ion Grigorescu: In the Body of the Victim 1969-2008, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Warsaw, 2009. Her co-curated projects include: Sanja Iveković. General Alert. Works 1974–2007, Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, 2007; Projekt Migration, Cologne, 2002–2006;; and Manifesta 3, Ljubljana, 2000. Rhomberg lives and works in Vienna.During her stay at BAK, Rhomberg works with Maria Hlavajova on the international long-term, multifaceted, and transdisciplinary project FORMER WEST, initiated by BAKunder the artistic directorship of Hlavajova. Her residency stay focuses on the development of the 3rd FORMER WEST Research Congress in Vienna, 2012, and the conception of a transdisciplinary project in Berlin, which addresses the new idea of art under the condition of the “former West.”

David Riff (born 1975) is an art critic and artist. He is a member of the work group Chto delat and was co-editor of the newspaper of the same name from 2003 to 2008. Riff currently works as contributing editor of the arts section of the online portal openspace.ru and teaches art history at the Rodchenko School of Photography in Moscow. He has published two monographs on late Soviet artists Vadim Sidur (2000) and Vladimir Yankilevsky (2002). More recently, he has written on post-Soviet contemporary art in publications such as documenta 12 magazines, Flash Art, Moscow Art Magazine, Rethinking Marxism, Springerin, and Third Text. In addition Riff has worked extensively as a translator in the field of contemporary art and is active in artistic collaborations. Together with Dmitry Gutov he contributed to the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007 with the long-term project The Karl Marx School of the English Language. In November 2009 Riff contributed to the 1st Former West Congress, organized by BAK in Utrecht. Riff lives and works in Moscow.During his stay at BAK, David Riff continues his ongoing research into the so-called original accumulation of capital (Marx) or “accumulation by dispossession” (David Harvey), and how its different phases relate to the production of the images, spaces, and contexts of art, especially in the situation of post-socialist privatizations taking place since 1989 in Russia. This research is related to Riff’s function as a curatorial correspondent and participating artist in the project Principio Potosi at the Reina Sofía (Former West institutional partner) in Madrid (May 2010), and ultimately generates a new issue of the newspaper Chto delat, in which the artist group discusses how image production can be instrumentalized to universalize the value of a new elite, how it is a mimetic reaction to a violence impossible to represent, and how it tries, nevertheless, to represent the garbled totality of social relations becoming the source for an “aesthetics of resistance.”

Ilse van Rijn Ilse van Rijn is a researcher, writer and art historian. At present, Van Rijn is affiliated as a researcher to Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam, she teaches at the University of Amsterdam and is a tutor at THIRD/ DAS Graduate School, AHK, Amsterdam. She also led the theory programme at the Gerrit Rietv

Miguel Robles-Durán Miguel Robles-Durán is Associate Professor of Urbanism at The New School / Parsons School of Design in New York and co-founder of Cohabitation Strategies, a non-profit cooperative for socio-spatial development. He is a proponent of the idea of the right to the city. Robles-Durán is a Senior Fellow a

Jara Rocha Jara Rocha are an interdependent researcher-artist. They are currently involved in several disobedient action research projects, such as Volumetric Regimes (with Femke Snelting), The Underground Division (with Helen Pritchard and Femke Snelting), and Vibes & Leaks (with Kym Ward and Xavier Gorgo

Irit Rogoff is one of the initiators of the transdisciplinary field of Visual Culture and founder of the department at Goldsmiths. Her initiatives to establish this new field are led by a belief that we must work beyond bodies of inherited disciplinary knowledge and find motivation for knowledge production in the current conditions we are living out.

Her 1997 essay “Studying Visual Culture” (The Visual Culture Reader, ed. N. Mirzoeff, 1998, 2nd ed. 2002) articulated some of the substantive and methodological strands of this new field as a meeting ground between the philosophical, the political and contemporary creative practices.

In a series of ensuing texts Rogoff further expanded concerns in the field into participatory practices (“Looking Away – Participations in Visual Culture” in Art After Criticism, 2004 ) and the emergence of the curatorial as events of knowledge in the so called “Educational Turn” (‘Turning” e-flux Journal 2008 and ‘Education Actualised’ special issue of e-flux journal no.14, 2010, “Smuggling – An Embodied Criticality” 2008 , 2013 and “The Expanding Field” in The Curatorial, 2013).

Another strand of Rogoff’s work concerns geography, counter cartography and questions of Globalization. In publications such as “Terra Infirma – Geography’s Visual Culture” 2000, “Engendering Terror” (Geography and the Politics of Mobility 2002) , ‘The Where of Now’ (Time Zones, Tate Modern 2004), ‘GeoCultures – Circuits of Art and Globalization” (Open, no 16 , 2009) ‘Oblique Points of Entry” (Contemporary Art from the Middle East 2015) – Rogoff has explored how critical perspectives and emergent subjectivities form the basis for alternative understandings of the relations between subjects, places and spaces.

Rogoff works between academic teaching, theoretical writing, curatorial projects and organizing public study. Together with colleagues she formed the freethought collective in 2011 and they are co-curating The Bergen Assembly in 2016.

Suely Rolnik Suely Rolnik is a psychoanalyst, writer, art and cultural critic and founder of the Subjectivity Studies Centre  at the Clinical Psychology PhD Program at The Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP). Her research focuses on the politics of subjectivation. Rolnik is author of many articl

Aimee Carrillo Rowe Aimee Carrillo Rowe is an educator, cultural critic, and writer. She is professor of communication studies at California State University, Northridge. Carrillo Rowe teaches and writes in the areas of rhetoric, feminist theory, and cultural studies. Her research focuses on human and nonhuman processe

Yallah Sabaya Yallah Sabaya (“Come, ladies! Enjoy yourselves!” in Arabic) is a special evening just for women, an evening where dance and music connect women from around the world. All women, from every country or culture, are welcome to meet, chat, and dance. Yallah Sabaya is initiated in 2018 by De Voorkamer, U

Renata Salecl is a researcher, writer, and professor. Currently she is Centennial Professor in the Law Faculty at the London School of Economics, London and a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Criminology at the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana. Salecl has held numerous Visiting Professorships at Cardoza School of Law, New York, Humboldt University, Berlin, and Duke University, Durham, among other institutions. Her work focuses on bringing together law, criminology, and psychoanalysis. Salecl is currently working on a book entitled Tyranny of Choice, which analyzes why the late-capitalist insistence on choice increases feelings of anxiety and guilt. In addition to regularly contributing to a number of scholarly journals, her recent publications include: Sobre a felicidade: ansiedade e consumo na era do hipercapitalismo (2005); The Anxiety of Love Letters in Lacan and Contemporary Film (2004); and On Anxiety (2004). Salecl lives and works in London and Ljubljana. [Last updated 2009]

Jun Saturay is an artist who used to work as a dentist and community health worker in the Philippines. There, he used community theater as a tool to educate about health, and was actively involved in human rights work and environmental advocacy. In 2003, he came to the Netherlands on a speaking tour about the link between human rights and the extractive industries. Due to political persecution, he was forced to seek political asylum. The main subject of his artistic, creative, and political work is the struggle for national and social liberation in the Philippines. He is currently part of a collective working with the Basic Activist Kitchen, part of Trainings for the Not-Yet. Aside from his work at BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, Saturay is also working on a production about the rising fascist dictatorship in the Philippines together with his life-partner, theater artist Mitchy Mallorca Saturay, and others. Saturay lives and works in Utrecht.

Mitchy Mallorca Saturay Mitchy Mallorca Saturay is a theater artist, activist, cultural worker/organizer, and political refugee from the Philippines. As a teenager at the height of the Marcos dictatorship in the 1970s, she joined a progressive theater company that opened her eyes to the plight of the poor and oppressed. Sh

Susan Schuppli Susan Schuppli is an artist-researcher whose work examines material evidence from war and conflict to environmental disasters and climate change. Her current work is focused on the politics of cold and is organized around the provocation of “Learning from ice.” Creative projects have been exhibited

Aaron Schuster (born 1974) is a writer and philosopher, currently completing his PhD at the Catholic University of Louvain on the concept of pleasure in philosophy and psychoanalysis. He is a Visiting Lecturer at HISK (Higher Institute for Fine Arts), Ghent and Theory Instructor at P.A.R.T.S. (Performing Arts Research and Training Studios), Brussels. In 2005–2006 Schuster was a researcher in the Theory Department of the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht. He has lectured and published widely on psychoanalysis and contemporary philosophy and his writings on art have appeared in Cabinet, Frieze, Frog, Metropolis M, and De Witte Raaf. He also co-authored the libretto for Cellar Door: An Opera in Almost One Act (Zürich: JRP|Ringier, 2008). Schuster lives and works in Brussels.During his residency, Schuster continues his work on a book titled The Cosmonaut of the Erotic Future: A Brief History of Levitation from St Joseph to Yuri Gagarin. The book is a cultural-historical exploration of levitation, bringing together visual art, philosophy, religion, literature, science, anthropology, psychoanalysis, and popular culture. In addition, he is working on a study of the thought of Gilles Deleuze in relation to psychoanalysis (particularly Lacan), with the tentative title The Beyonds of the Pleasure Principle: Deleuze and Psychoanalysis. Part of this project, focusing on Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus–often considered the ultimate “delirious” expression of sixties radicalism–is slated for completion during the course of the residency.

Eran Schaerf Eran Schaerf is an artist and writer with an academic background in architecture, urban planning, and photography. His practice focuses on architectures of discourse at the intersection of fashion, mass media, language, and the built environment and interweaves historical and contemporary political

Andrea Schneemeier (born 1969) is an artist who studied at the Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow, the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts, Budapest, and at the Higher Institute for Fine Arts(HISK), Antwerp. Schneemeier’s work, often in the form of videos and interactive installations, raises critical social-political questions and investigates the place of individuals in the complex social strata. Recent exhibitions include: Prague Biennale, Prague, 2007; e-flux video rental, Arthouse at the Jones Center – Contemporary Art for Texas, Austin and Extra City – Center for Contemporary Art, Antwerp, 2006; Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, roARaTorio, Paris, 2005; Active Image – Media Art in Hungary, C³ Center for Culture & Communication, Budapest, 2005; Andrea Schneemeier – Stillife, C³ Center for Culture & Communication, Budapest, 2004; Andrea Schneemeier – Centrelyuropdriims, Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern, 2004; and Aura – After the Age of Technical Reproduction, C³ Center for Culture & Communication, Budapest, 2003. Schneemeier lives and works in Berlin and Budapest.National Identity and ViolenceAndrea Schneemeier’s work stages performance or (interactive) exchange, which intervenes in the public sphere in order to address and counter the consensus on normalcy and violence, including the idea of national identity. By using the “color code” for national identity in the Netherlands—orange—Schneemeier attempts to generate conversation with passer-bys in the market or a square in Utrecht about their ideas of national and Dutch identity, and furthermore, their experience of being a “victim” of that idea.

Christoph Schlingensief (born 1960, died 2010) was a filmmaker, stage director and artist whose controversial work took a critical approach to taboo political topics primarily in German cultural history and society. Recent exhibitions include: Christoph Schlingensief, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, 2013; Christoph Schlingensief: Fear at the Core of Things, Gallery Nova, Zagreb, 2012 and BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, 2012; and Christoph Schlingensief, German Pavilion, 54th Venice Biennale, Venice, 2011. In 2010, Schlingensief founded the Opera Village in Burkina Faso. [Last updated 2013]

Georg Schöllhammer is an editor, writer, and curator based in Vienna. He is founding editor of Springerin and the head of tranzit.at. Schöllhammer has worked internationally on cultural projects including: Documenta, Manifesta, L’internationale, FORMER WEST, Sweet Sixties, and the Vienna Festival, and he is chairman of The Július Koller Society in Bratislava. From 2004 to 2007 Schöllhammer was editor-in-chief of Documenta 12, where he conceived and directed Documenta 12 magazines. He was artistic director of VIENNAFAIR 2011 with Hedwig Saxenhuber. Schöllhammer has curated a number of exhibitions including: Report on the Construction of a Spaceship Model, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, 2014; Changing the Image, Mumok, Vienna 2013; Trespassing Modernities, SALT, Istanbul 2013; and Sweet Sixties, Galeria Nova, Zagreb 2013. Selected publications include: KwieKlik (2013); Moments – A history of performance in 10 acts (2013); and Sweet Sixties – Avant-Gardes in the Shadows of the Cold War (2013). Schöllhammer lives and works in Vienna. [Last updated 2016]

Caitlin Schaap Caitlin Schaap is a singer and one of the core members of Kick Out Zwarte Piet (KOZP). She is engages in projects and actions around (inter)national social change. Together with KOZP she has organized (amongst others) Black Lives Matter demonstrations, anti-blackface campaigning, and conversations a

Jorinde Seijdel (born 1961) is an art historian and critic. She is chair at Fonds BVBK (since March 2006) and editor-in-chief of OPEN, Cahier on Art & the Public Domain, published by SKOR (Foundation Art and Public Space), Amsterdam. In 2008 she was co-curator of Studium Generale at Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam. Seijdel has contributed articles to magazines such as Flash Art, Metropolis M, and De Witte Raaf, mostly on subjects that are concerned with the topic of art and media in the developing society and its public sphere. Seijdel lives and works in Amsterdam. [Last updated 2009]

Marinella Senatore is an artist whose practice consists of creating in situ, collaborative performances merging dance, music, theater, and protest. Recent projects include the solo show Piazza Universale / Social Stages, Queens Museum, New York, 2017. Senatore lives and works in Dresden and Paris.

Promona Sengupta Promona Sengupta is an artist, academic, activist, and curator. She is a doctoral associate at the International Research Center: Interweaving Performance Cultures at the Freie Universität Berlin. Her creative practice engages with decolonial speculative imagination as a means for radical politics.

Shuddhabrata Sengupta is an artist and writer, and member of Raqs Media Collective, a group that combines research, historical and philosophical inquiry, and contemporary art. In 2002 Sengupta co-initiated Sarai, a platform for discursive partnerships between theorists, researchers, practitioners, and artists engaged in reflecting on contemporary urban spaces and cultures in South Asia at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi. Sengupta also co-edits the Sarai Reader Series. Raqs Media Collective’s work has been shown internationally at exhibitions such as: Documenta 11, Kassel, 2009; 10th International Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, 2007; 51st Venice Biennale, Venice, 2005; and 2nd Guangzhou Triennial, Guangzhou, 2005. Raqs Media Collective was co-curator of Manifesta 7, Bolzano, 2008. Raqs Media Collective’s recent exhibitions include: The Capital Of Accumulation, Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin and Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, 2010; Things that Happen While Falling in Love, Baltic, Gateshead, 2010; The Surface of Each Day is a Different Planet, Tate Britain, London, 2009; Escapement, Frith Street Gallery, London, 2009; and When the Scales fall From Your Eyes, Ikon, Birmingham, 2009. Sengupta lives and works in Delhi. [Last updated 2010]

Yara Sharif Yara Sharif is a practicing architect and an academic with an interest in design as a means to facilitate and empower “forgotten” communities, while also interrogating the relationship between politics and architecture. Combining research with design her work runs parallel between the architecture p

Marianne Shaneen Marianne Shaneen writes fiction, essays, and poetry, who also works in documentary video. She has been awarded fellowships at Yaddo, MacDowell, Djerassi, and Tusen Takk Foundation, and is the recipient of a New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) Individual Artist Grant. She received her MFA in w

Fazle Shairmahomed Fazle Shairmahomed is a performance maker, dancer/performer, and improviser. He studied cultural and social anthropology at University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, and Middle Eastern Studies/ Arabic at University of Leiden, Leiden. Shairmahomed creates rituals of decolonization, in which he transforms h

She is co-editor with Ros Gray, of a special issue of Third Text entitled “The Wretched Earth: Botanical Conflicts and Artistic Interventions” (Spring 2018). Sheikh is currently working on a monograph, Rehearsing Environmental Justice. Here the crime of ecocide, as a violation of both human and nonhuman rights, is examined in relation to a variety of forums for testimony. Addressing global people’s tribunals alongside staged trials and hearings, she asks what environmental justice might look like within and beyond the framework of international law and how experimental, speculative forums can enact a decolonial imaginary of environmental justice.

Simon Sheikh (born 1965) is a curator and writer who researches practices of exhibition-making and political imaginaries. He is Reader in Art and Programme Director of the MFA in Curating at Goldsmiths, University of London, London. Sheikh was coordinator of the Critical Studies Program at Malmö Art Academy, Malmö from 2002 to 2009. He was also curator at NIFCA, Helsinki, 2003–2004 and, prior to that, director of Overgaden – Institute for Contemporary Art, Copenhagen from 1999–2002. Between 1996 and 2000, he was editor of the magazine Øjeblikket and a member of the project group GLOBE from 1993–2000. His recent curatorial work includes: Reading / Capital (for Althusser), DEPO, Istanbul, 2014; Unauthorized, Inter Arts Lab, Malmö, 2012; All That Fits: The Aesthetics of Journalism, QUAD, Derby, 2011 (with Alfredo Cramerotti); Do You Remember the Future?, TOK / Project Loft Etagi, Saint Petersburg, 2011; Vectors of the Possible, BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, 2010; and Capital (It Fails Us Now), UKS, Oslo, 2005 and Kunstihoone, Tallinn, 2006. Sheikh’s writings can also be found in such periodicals as Afterall, an architecture, Open, Springerin, and Texte zur Kunst. He has edited and authored several publications, including: On Horizons: A Critical Reader on Contemporary Art (with Maria Hlavajova and Jill Winder) (2011); Capital (it fails us now) (2006); In the Place of the Public Sphere? (2005); Knut Åsdam. Speech. Living. Sexualities. Struggle. (2004); and We Are All Normal (And We Want Our Freedom): A Collection of Contemporary Nordic Artists Writings (with Katya Sander) (2001). Sheikh lives and works in Berlin and London.

Staci Bu Shea Staci Bu Shea is a curator, writer, and lecturer. With a focus on how we relate with one another, Bu Shea is concerned with practices and representations of social life across art, institutions, activism, and the everyday. Bu Shea has been curator at Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons, Utr

Reem Shilleh Researcher, curator, editor, and artist Reem Shilleh’s practice is informed by a long research project on militant and revolutionary image practices in Palestine, its diaspora, and solidarity network. Some of her recent projects are the curated film program The Space Between: The Invocation, MMAG Fo

Urok Shirhan Working at the intersection of performance, visual arts, and critical theory, artist Urok Shirhan’s work explores the politics of sound, image, and speech in relation to power and affect. Her projects are often entangled with found materials and autobiographic narratives. Her latest body of research

Timur Si-Qin Artist Timur Si-Qin’s interests in the evolution of culture, the dynamics of cognition, and contemporary philosophy weave together to create alternate kinds of environmental art. His work often challenges common notions of the organic versus the synthetic, the natural versus the cultural, the human

Tiffany Sia Tiffany Sia, born in Hong Kong, is an artist, filmmaker, and writer. She is the founder of Speculative Place, an experimental, independent project space in Hong Kong that hosts residents working in film, writing, and art. The recipient of the George C. Lin Emerging Filmmaker Award (2021), Sia is cur

Anitha Silvia Anitha Silvia is a cultural activist. She works as research assistant for Marco Kusumawijaya’s book “Cities in Indonesia: Introduction for Common People”, is a member of Indonesia Netaudio Forum and Kwangsan Kunstkring, and Silampukau’s band manager. She is interested in walking to learn about urban

Her publications include the monograph Toward a Global Idea of Race (2007), and the edited volume Law, Race, and the Postcolonial – A Handbook (2015). Her artistic work includes collaborations such as the films Serpent Rain (with Arjuna Neuman, 2016) and From Left to Night (with Wendelien van Oldenborgh, 2014), as well as events and texts which are part of her Poethical Readings practice (with Valentina Desideri). Ferreira da Silva lives and works in Vancouver.

Martin M. Šimečka Martin M. Šimečka is a journalist, writer and lector at Socrates institute, where he leads a workshop After-november history of Slovakia. He grew up in a family of a philosopher and a significant dissident during the comunist regime. Therefore he was banned from his studies, so he attended apprentic

Gesyada Siregar is a curator, writer, and art organizer. She is subject coordinator for articulation and curation at GUDSKUL: Contemporary Art Collectives and Ecosystem Studies, Jakarta, Indonesia. She is interested in supporting young artists, the rereading of Indonesia art writings from the period of the 1940 to the 1990s, and how she can intertwine them. She likes to explore archives, astrology, experiential storytelling, games, media, and public programming as an art pedagogical module. Selected exhibitions, publications, and projects include: GUDSKUL’s Articulating FIXER 2021: An Appraisal of Indonesian Art Collectives in the Last Decade (2021); Within Square, Ruang Dini, Bandung, 2021; The Array of Clichéd Types, RURU Gallery, Jakarta, 2020; Projected Local Image, Selasar Sunaryo, Bandung, 2020; GUDSKUL’s Collective as School Workbookfor Art Gallery of York University, Toronto (2020); Instrumenta – International Media Arts Festival: Machine/Magic & Sandbox, National Gallery of Indonesia, Jakarta, 2018–2019; Jakarta Arts Council’s Paintings Collection: Theoryless Paintings, Galeri Cipta III, Jakarta, 2017; Indonesian Visual Art Heritage Book: Cap Go Meh – S. Sudjojono for Ministry of Education & Culture Republic of Indonesia (2017); and Mode of Liaisons – Japan Foundation’s Condition Report ‘What is Southeast Asia?’, Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, Bangkok, 2017. She also co-organizes Kelas Bareng, a monthly online joint class program between Gudskul; Städelschule, Frankfurt; blaxTARLINES KUMASI, Kumasi; and Nordland kunst- og filmhøgskole, Norway. She lives and works in Depok and Jakarta, and is the co-coordinator of the GUDsel at Gudskul, Jakarta in the Fellowship for Situated Practice.

Bev Skeggs is a sociologist whose work intersects with the areas of women’s studies and cultural studies. Since 2004, she is Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths College, University of London, London, having previously taught at the University of Worcester; Keele University; the University of York; and the University of Manchester. Since 2013, Skeggs has been an Economic and Social Research Council Professorial Fellow, for which she is carrying out research on “A Sociology of Values and Value.” Her research interests consolidate around the issues of value and values and focus on class, media and cultural formations, violence and sexuality, feminist and poststructuralist theory, Pierre Bourdieu and Karl Marx, and spatial formations. In addition to publishing widely in journals such as the British Journal of Sociology, Media, Culture and Society, and The Sociological Review—the latter of which she is joint managing editor—her recent books include: Reacting to Reality Television: Performance, Audience and Value (2012) (with Helen Wood); Class, Self, Culture (2004); Feminism After Bourdieu (2004) (with Lisa Adkins); Sexuality and the Politics of Violence and Safety (2004) (with Leslie Moran); Formations of Class and Gender: Becoming Respectable (1997); Feminist Cultural Theory: Production and Process (1995); and Issues in Sociology: The Media (1992) (with John Mundy). Skeggs lives and works in London. [Last updated 2015]

Henk Slager focust zich op onderzoek en beeldende kunst. Hij is hoofd van MaHKU Utrecht Graduate School of Visual Art and Design, Utrecht en was in 2006 mede-initiatiefnemer van het European Artistic Research Network (EARN), een netwerk dat de gevolgen van artistiek onderzoek op kunsteducatie onderzoekt door middel van symposia, expertmeetings en presentaties. Vanuit dezelfde focus op artistiek onderzoek publiceerde hij in 2015 The Pleasure of Research dat een overzicht is van onderwijs- en tentoonstellingsprojecten tussen 2007 en 2014. Tevens ontwikkelt hij zelf verschillende tentoonstellingsprojecten, zoals The Utopia of Access, 2de Onderzoekspaviljoen, 57ste Biënnale van Venetië, Venetië, 2017; Timely Meditations, 5de Guangzhou Triënnale, Guangzhou, 2016; Experimentality, 1ste Onderzoekspaviljoen, 56ste Biënnale van Venetië, Venetië, 2015; Aesthetic Jam, Project Taipei Biënnale, Taipei, 2014; Offside Effect, 1ste Tbilisi Triënnale, Tbilisi, 2012; Doing Research, uitgave voor dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, 2012; As the Academy Turns, Manifesta 8 Collaborative, meerdere locaties, 2010; Translocalmotion, 7de Shanghai Biënnale, Shanghai, 2008 en Nameless Science, Apex Art, New York, 2009. Slager woont en werkt in Amsterdam en Utrecht.

Margo Slomp is an art historian and lecturer of art theory at Frank Mohr Institute, Hanze University of Applied Sciences, Groningen. Currently, she is conducting PhD research on intercultural dialogue within higher art education at Hanze University of Applied Sciences, Groningen and Maastricht University. She has taught modern and contemporary art at the University of Groningen, and has worked as an independent advisor, researcher, and author for municipalities and organizations such as SKOR (Stichting Kunst en Openbare Ruimte [Art and Public Space Foundation]). Slomp lives and works in Groningen.

Dr. Marquard Smith is an academic, curator, programmer, founder and editor in chief of Journal of Visual Culture, and a program leader for the MA Museums & Galleries in Education at UCL Institute of Education, London. As a curator, Smith’s exhibitions include, amongst others: How to Construct a Time Machine, MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, 2015; Jordan McKenzie: An Englishman Abroad, Sabanci University Kasa Gallery, Istanbul, 2014; and The Global Archive, Hanmi Gallery, London, 2012. Smith writes on artistic research, practice-based research, archives, arts education, and recently on experimentality in MaHKUscript: Journal of Fine Art Research. He is the author, editor, and co-editor of over twenty books and themed issues of journals, including: What is Research in the Visual Arts? Obsession, Archive, Encounter (with Michael Ann Holly, 2009); Visual Culture Studies: Interviews with Key Thinkers (2008); The Erotic Doll: A Modern Fetish (2014); The Prosthetic Impulse: From a Posthuman Present to a Biocultural Future (with Joanne Morra, 2007); and Stelarc: The Monograph (2005). Smith lives and works in London.

Joy Mariama Smith Performance, installation, and movement artist and educator Joy Mariama Smith’s work focuses on issues related to visibility, projected identities, and self-representation in different contexts, and investigates the interplay between the body and its cultural, social, and physical environment. In th

Ruth Sonderegger (born 1967) is Professor of Philosophy and Aesthetic Theory at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. From 2001 to 2009 she worked as Associate and Full Professor in the Philosophy Department of the University of Amsterdam. In 1998 she completed her PhD in Philosophy at the Free University Berlin. Since 2004 she has been a member of the editorial staff of Krisis: Tijdschrift voor actuele filosofie [Crisis: Journal for Contemporary Philosophy]. Her research centers on the history and systematics of the concept of critique in philosophy and other disciplines, and examines art as a possible form of critique. She is the co-editor of, amongst others, Conceptions of Critique in Modern and Contemporary Philosophy (2012) and Golden Years: Queere Subkultur zwischen 1959 und 1974 (2006). She is also the author of Für eine Ästhetik des Spiels: Hermeneutik, Dekonstruktion und der Eigensinn der Kunst (2000). She lives and works in Vienna. [Last updated 2012]

Ana Naomi de Sousa Ana Naomi de Sousa is an independent
documentary filmmaker and journalist. She is the director of The Architecture of Violence; Hacking Madrid;
Angola, Birth of a Movement; and Guerrilla Architect. As an in-house
producer for Al Jazeera English, she
worked in the Americas, the Middle East and Africa

Allan deSouza (born 1958) is a multimedia artist whose work often interpolates canonical aspects of history examining both real and imaginary effects. Recent exhibitions include: Painting Redux, Talwar Gallery, New Delhi, 2012; The World Series, SF Camera Work, San Francisco, 2012; and His Masters’ Tools, Fowler Museum, Los Angeles, 2011. deSouza lives and works in San Francisco. [Last updated 2013]

Thiago de Paula Souza Thiago de Paula Souza lives and works in Taboão da Serra district of São Paulo as a curator and educator with a background in the social sciences. In 2018/2019 he was one of the fellows in BAK’s post-academic Fellowship Program, and he is curator of the exhibition Tony Cokes: To Live as Equals, 28 F

Camila Sposati is an artist who works in several mediums, including sculpture, installation, photography, and projections. Combining elements of geology, archeology, and chemistry, her work examines processes on microscopic as well as global scales, such as the growth of crystals in laboratories or the geological changes of the Earth’s crust. She obtained her MA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths, University of London, London and was artist-in-residence at M4gastatelier, Amsterdam. Recent exhibitions and biennials include: 10th Mercosul Biennale, Porto Alegre, 2015; Se Liga – Arte, Ciência e Imaginação, Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, 2015; 3th Bahia Biennale, Salvador, 2014; Tomie Ohtake–Correspondências, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo, 2013; and Earth’s Earth, Eleven Rivington Gallery, New York, 2013. Sposati lives and works in São Paulo.

Whitney Stark is a theorist and facilitator who works with alternative pedagogies and organizational practices, theory, and the space of art to embellish relevant models for being together in less oppressive ways.  Stark is curator of the Fellowship Program at BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht also working on BAK’s current trajectory Propositions for Non-Fascist Living (2017–ongoing), and is a gender studies researcher with the Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Utrecht University, Utrecht. Stark guides various workshops and trainings on issues related to gender and racial oppressions, anti-oppressive facilitation and organizing practices, collective authoring, feminist new materialisms, safer spaces, critical media production, and working with survivors of sexual assault at places such as the BAK Summer School, BAK, Bratislava and Utrecht, 2017–2019; Santa Monica, Barcelona, 2017; Tate Modern, London, 2016; as well as with activist collectives, groups of young people, NGOs, and international conferences. Stark’s curricula and other forms of writing and video have been published in academic journals, textbooks, and news media sites. Stark lives in Amsterdam and works in Utrecht.

Kerstin Stakemeier (born 1975) is a writer and organizer. She currently works in a Berlin-based gallery and is a researcher in Theory at the Jan van Eyck Academy, Maastricht. Stakemeier is also completing her PhD in the History of Art at University College, London. Most of her practice is realized in collaboration with others, often with Christiane Ketteler and Johannes Paul Raether. From 2007 to 2008 she ran the Space for Actualization, Hamburg together with Nina Köller, working together with artists, musicians, and writers to actualize fragments of the past. Stakemeier’s writings are published in magazines such as Afterall, Jungle World, Phase 2, and Texte zur Kunst. She is currently working on reformulations of realism as a take on artistic production. Stakemeier lives and works in Berlin and Maastricht. [Last updated 2009]

Hito Steyerl (Berlin) is an artist and writer whose work, through documentary photography and video, focuses on feminism and militarization, as well as the mass proliferation and dissemination of images and knowledge brought on by digital technologies. Her work comprises film, essays, and installations. She has lectured at Goldsmiths College, London and the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, among other institutions. A collection of her essays is published in The Wretched of the Screen (2012). Selected solo exhibitions include Hito Steyerl, ICA, London, 2013; focus: Hito Steyerl, The Art Institute Chicago, 2012−2013, and Hito Steyerl, e-flux, New York, 2011.

Nora Sternfeld Nora Sternfeld is an educator and curator. Since October 2020, she is a professor of art education at the University of Fine Arts Hamburg, Hamburg. From 2018–2020, she was documenta Professor at  Kunsthochschule Kassel, Kassel, and from 2012–2018 Professor of Curating and Mediating Art at Aalto Univ

Emerging from her research trajectory, BAK 2019/2020 Fellow Katia Krupennikova convenes a series of online sessions and independent screenings for the Fellows Intensive. Joined by Jungian Analyst Faranak Mirjalili, and artists Omar Mismar and Imogen Stidworthy, the Fellows discussed Jungian concepts of the Shadow and Personal Unconsciousness, forms of voicing and communicating across difference, and […]

Mladen Stilinović (born 1947) is a multimedia artist who frequently employs everyday materials in his work, bringing into focus the interconnection of politics, language, artistic production, and daily life. Recent exhibitions include: Dear Art, Moderna Galerija Ljubljana, Ljubljana, 2012; How Much Fascism?, BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, 2012; Zero for Conduct, Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, 2012; and Sing!, Ludwig Museum, Budapest, 2011. Stilinović lives and works in Zagreb. [Last updated 2013]

Igor Stokfiszewski is a researcher, activist, journalist, and artist. He is a member of the Political Critique (Krytyka Polityczna) team and DiEM25, author of Zwrot Polityczny (Political Turn) (2009), editor of Culture and Development: Beyond Neoliberal Reason (2017), and co-editor of among other books— Build the City: Perspectives on Commons and Culture (2015)

Amsterdam University College Rent Strike Amsterdam University College (AUC) Rent Strike is a student group formed at Amsterdam University College that aims to mobilize students into a mass rent strike. The group was born as a response to the lack of effective measures to protect the living conditions of the student population during the Co

Superuse Studios Superuse Studios Rotterdam is an architectural firm that bases itself on a philosophy of circular design. The existing context is taken as the starting point and the development of a building is seen as one of the valuable results of a circular process. In the work of Superuse Studios, reuse is view

Alex Supartono (born 1972) is a writer and art critic who studied at the Driyarkara School of Philosophy in Jakarta, Indonesia and is currently a lecturer at the Department of Photography at the Jakarta Art Institute. He has curated several exhibitions including: Another Asia: Photography from South and South East Asia, Noorderlicht Photofestival, Groningen, 2006; Raut Pusaran, Raut Hayat (Faces of Survivors: Portraits from Aceh), GoetheHaus, Jakarta, 2005; Neo-Documentary Recovering Identity, Japan Foundation, Jakarta, 2003; and published various articles including: “Original Photocopy: The History of Indonesian Photography,” Another Asia: Photography from South and South East Asia (exhibition catalog, 2006) and “The Challenge of Elaborating Ideas: Advances in Current Indonesian Photography,” Art & Thought Journal, vol. 3 (2004). Supartono lives and works in Jakarta.Photo Documentation of the Sugar Industry in the Dutch East Indies in the Nineteenth CenturyOne of the main export materials of the Dutch East Indies in the nineteenth century was sugar. The flourishing sugar industry at that time—in what is now Indonesia—was documented extensively in photographs, which picture everything from the industrial environment to intimate scenes of the private lives of Dutch families and workers. This documentation is stored in the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT), but has been untouched by either scholarly or artistic eyes. Supartono is engaged in observing and charting those images from a postcolonial perspective. The power relations between the indigenous employees and the Dutch employers and their families, the response and attitude on both sides to ideas of development and progress, and the meaning of private and personal space in the colonial era are reflected through those images.Supartono, a former activist, has curated various research projects, focusing on the photographic gaze and its political potential vis-à-vis socio-political and historical upheavals and disasters. The ongoing project Mohammed and Me, for instance, investigates photographic works on Islamic political dominance and its infiltration into everyday life, as well as reflects upon the prejudice and misunderstanding around it. His current research culminates in a project, which extends beyond the photographic medium to also show the potential of artistic intelligence.

SUPERFLEX (established 1993) is an artists’ group founded by Bjørnstjerne Christiansen, Jakob Fenger, and Rasmus Nielsen. They describe their projects as tools. A tool is a model or proposal that can actively be used and further utilized and modified by the user. Recent exhibitions include: Bankrupt Banks, Peter Blum Gallery Chelsea, New York, 2012; and Modern Times Forever, IHME Festival, Helsinki, 2011. SUPERFLEX is based in Copenhagen. [Last updated 2012]

Here to Support Here to Support is an organization that provides practical, political, and social resources for undocumented refugees in limbo in Amsterdam. Here to Support organizes local and international meetings and events, and engages in various creative and advocacy projects aimed at growing and strenghtening

Kuba Szreder is a graduate of sociology at Jagiellonian University Krakow. He works as an “independent” curator, and his interdisciplinary curatorial projects combine artistic practices with critical examination of society. In 2009, together with Bęc Zmiana Foundation and other colleagues, he initiated Free/Slow University of Warsaw. His theoretical research reflects upon the apparatuses of contemporary artistic production and their socio-economic context. In the Summer of 2015, he was awarded a practice-based PhD from Loughborough University School of the Arts. His thesis scrutinizes economic and governmental aspects of project-making and their impact on an “independent” curatorial practice. Kuba Szreder is based in London and Warsaw. [Last updated 2015]

G.M. Tamás is a philosopher and writer. He was elected Director of the Institute of Philosophy of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences 1991–1995, and taught for two years at the University of Budapest. He has held visiting appointments at various institutions, including Columbia University, New York; Oxford; École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales; Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin; Georgetown; Yale; and the New School, New York. His work focuses on political philosophy and political theory, and he is known as a radical Left-wing figure and activist. He has published widely, his work has been translated into fourteen languages. Selected publications include: Kommunismus nach 1989 (2015); Postfascism şi anticomunism (2014); Innocent Power (2012); Telling the Truth about Class (2006); Les Idoles de la tribu (1989); and L’Oeil et la main (1985). Tamás lives and works in Budapest. [Last updated 2016]

Koki Tanaka is an artist whose works comprises installations, interventions, photography, and video, intended to prompt changes of perspective about everyday situations. Recent projects include Provisional Studies: Workshop #7 How to Live Together and Sharing the Unknown, Skulptur Projekte, Münster, 2017. Tanaka lives and work in Kyoto.

Althea Thauberger (born 1970) is an artist who studied photography at the Concordia University, Montréal, and visual arts at the University of Victoria, Victoria. Thauberger’s photographs, films, videos, and performances invite reflection on self-definition, alienation, community, and coercion within “natural” worlds, and real or fictionalized social/political structures. Recent exhibitions include: Exponential Future, Belkin Gallery, UBC, Vancouver, 2008; John Connelly Presents, New York, 2007; Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, 2006; Kunstverein Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg, 2006; Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax, 2006; The Peninsula, Singapore History Museum, Singapore, 2006; Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerp, 2005; and Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, 2005. Thauberger lives and works in Berlin and Vancouver.Alone Again (In the Likeness of Life)Althea Thauberger’s practice often involves an intensive collaborative working process with a specific local group or community—very often youth or adolescents—that usually results in a musical or choreographic performance and its video, photographic, and/or audio presentation. The outcomes can be seen as social and political allegories with an almost purist and vivid visuality that also provide a puzzling experience of two contradictory natures of human beings and their collective forms—their vulnerability as well as their potentials for self-empowerment.In addition to realizing a survey-type solo exhibition of her previous works at BAK, Thauberger set out to explore the possibility of creating a new performative project on the meaning of “birth” and “entering into social structure.” Doing research on population growth and related statistical analysis (such as studies by ethnic group, and of the rise and decrease of newcomers) with the cooperation of the municipal birth registry of Utrecht, Thauberger conceived of a performance with a number of new mothers and their babies, who were all born on the same date. In the piece, the mothers sit in a circle, passing the babies from one mother to the next until her own baby eventually comes back to her. The actual performance evokes a sense of tension and insecurity between the participants, creating all kinds of unpredictable worries, and provoking concern in the minds of both participants and observers. The performance takes place in the beginning of 2008.

Founded in 1963, Bread and Puppet Theater is one of the oldest nonprofit, independent theater companies in the US. They perform all over the world, particularly in the open air—in public parks and on the streets— under the slogan “Cheap Art and Political Theater”

Ovidiu Ţichindeleanu (born 1976) is a philosopher and cultural theorist. After studying philosophy in Cluj, Strasbourg, and Binghamton, he obtained his Ph.D. in Philosophy in 2008 with the dissertation The Graphic Sound. An Archeology of Sound, Technology and Knowledge at 1900, currently in preparation for publication in English. He is editor of the magazine Idea Arts + Society and coordinator of the Panopticon Collection of IDEA publishing house. In addition, he is a member of the Decolonial Thinking research group at Binghamton University, New York and co-founder of the Romanian Indymedia platform. Recent publications include: Romanian Revolution Televised. Contributions to the Cultural History of Media (ed., with Konrad Petrovszky, 2009) and The Anticommunist Illusion (ed., with Vasile Ernu, Costi Rogozanu, and Ciprian Şiulea, 2008). Ţichindeleanu lives and works in Cluj.During his stay at BAK Ţichindeleanu is working to finalize his book The Postcommunist Colonization. A Critical History of the Culture of Transition, which is an attempt to theorize the cultural history and history of concepts relevant to the profound socio-cultural transformations of the post-communist transition (1989–2009). In the book, written from the perspective of an exile-immigrant, he relates the post-communist condition with the coloniality of power in a theoretical approach that combines ideology critique with archeological analysis. While the main focus of the work and most archival sources are Romanian, Ţichindeleanu hopes that this project has a larger reach as it brings into visibility a problematic field related to the wider experience of “post-communism” in the lives of independent authors in the “former East”-European bloc and beyond. The opened debate on West/East relations shares a number of theoretical and intellectual concerns with BAK’s long-term project Former West, which allows for the potential of dialogue and exchange about Ţichindeleanu’s work as it might relate to the conditions found in the “former West” as well.

Sissel Tolaas Sissel Tolaas is a smell designer, artist, chemist, researcher, and odor theorist. With a multidisciplinary background in chemistry, linguistics, and the visual arts, Tolaas practices on the diverse aspects of the topic of scents. Here, she composes provocative smells to stimulate memory, recreate p

Milica Tomić (born 1960) is an artist who in her work researches, unearths, and makes public issues of political violence, memory, and trauma, attending particularly to tensions between personal experience and media-constructed images. She is a co-founder of the Yugoslav art/theory group Grupa Spomenik [Monument Group] and of the international platform Yugoslav Studies and Working Group Four Faces of Omarska. Recent exhibitions include: 10th Sharjah Biennial, Sharjah, 2011; and Milica Tomić, Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade, 2010. Tomić lives and works in Belgrade. [Last updated 2012]

Jalal Toufic (born 1962) is a thinker and a mortal to death. Since 2007 he is Professor at the Department of Communication Design at Kadir Has University, Istanbul. Previously he has taught at the University of California at Berkley, Berkeley, the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), Valencia, the University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, and in Amsterdam at Das Arts and at the Rijksakademie. He is the author of The Withdrawal of Tradition Past a Surpassing Disaster (2009); Undeserving Lebanon (2007); ‘Ashura’: This Blood Spilled in My Veins (2005); Two or Three Things I’m Dying to Tell You (2005); Undying Love, or Love Dies (2002); Forthcoming (2000); Over-Sensitivity (1996; 2nd ed., 2009); : An Uneasy Essay on the Undead in Film (1993; 2nd ed., 2003); and Distracted (1991; 2nd ed., 2003). He also co-edited special Discourse issues. Toufic lives and works in Istanbul. [Last updated 2009]

Airi Triisberg is an art worker based in Tallinn. Her activities include writing, curating, and organizing. She is interested in the overlapping fields between political activism and contemporary art practices; issues related to gender and sexualities; collective working methods; self-organization; and struggles against precarious working conditions in the field of art and beyond. Between 2010–2012, she was member of an art workers’ network in Estonia that initiated public debates around working conditions in the local art field. Her recent projects include Get Well Soon!, 2015, an exhibition about illness and society, and Art Workers – Material Conditions and Labour Struggles in Contemporary Art Practice (2015), a publication co-edited with Minna Henriksson and Erik Krikortz. [Last updated 2015]

Stefanos Tsivopoulos (Athens) is an artist who studied fine arts at the Superior Academy in Athens, the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam. His work refers to collective and individual memory and notions of public discourse. Selected solo exhibitions include: History Zero, MuCEM, Marseille 2014; History Zero, Pavilion of Greece, 55th la Biennale di Venezia, International Art Exhibition, Venice 2013; The Future Starts Here, Eleourgio Oil Factory, Elefsina, 2012; Borrowed Knowledge, ISCP, New York 2011. Selected group exhibitions include: Amnesialand, Kalfayan Galleries Cologne Art Fair, Cologne 2014; The Invisible Hand: Curating as Gesture, 2nd CAFAM Biennale, Beijing 2014; Rencontres Internationales, Haus Der Culturen Der Welt, Berlin 2013; Invisible Monuments, La Galerie, Contemporary Art Centre, Paris 2012.

Mona Vâtâmanu (born 1968) and Florin Tudor (born 1974) are artists, working together since 2000. Their artistic practice consists of film, photography, painting, performance, and site-specific projects. On the occasion of their exhibition Surplus Value at BAK, basis voor actuele kunst (06.09–09.11.2009), Vâtâmanu and Tudor took part in BAK’s Research-in-Residence program in 2009. Previous residencies include: FRAC|Nord – Pas de Calais, Dunkerque (2008); Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw (2008); Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Berlin (2006); and Project Room, Ludwig Museum, Budapest (2003). Recent solo exhibitions include: Graphisches Kabinett, Secession, Vienna (upcoming, fall 2009); Appointment with History, Lombard-Freid Projects, New York, 2008; August, Andreiana Mihail Gallery, Bucharest, 2008; Living Units, Mercer Union, Toronto, 2008; and Re-animating the city, Cooper Gallery, Dundee, 2006. Recent group exhibitions include: Liquid times, Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster (upcoming, fall 2009); Pièces de résistance: Forms of Resistance in Contemporary Art, Kunstmuseum Thun, Thun (upcoming, fall 2009); Nothing is worth more than this day, Andreiana Mihail Gallery, Bucharest, 2009; Blind Spots, Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien, Vienna, 2009; Sounds and Visions, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, 2009; 5th Berlin Biennial, Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, 2008; Art as Gift, Periferic Biennial 8, Iaşi, 2008; Like an Attali Report, but different. On fiction and political imagination, Kadist Art Foundation, Paris, 2008; Since we last spoke about monuments, Stroom Den Haag, The Hague, 2008; Dada East? Romanian Context of Dadaism, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 2008; Atomized, De Veemvloer, Amsterdam, 2008; Low-Budget Monuments, 52nd Venice Biennale, Romanian Pavilion, Venice, 2007; The Building Show, Exit Art Gallery, New York, 2007; Der Prozess, Collective memory and social history, Prague Biennale 3, Prague, 2007; and How to Do Things? In the Middle of (No)where…, Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Berlin, 2006. In addition the artists regularly participate in numerous festivals, screening programs, and curatorial projects. Vâtâmanu and Tudor live and work in Bucharest.During their residency, the artists worked on the preparations and new productions for the exhibition Surplus Value, the most extensive overview on their work to this date, and the first research exhibition within BAK’s long-term project Former West. For Surplus Value Vâtâmanu and Tudor produced a number of major new works, such as the installation Lingouri de rugina[Rust Ingots], the installation Calea [The Path], the film Plus valoarea [Surplus Value], and new paintings in the series Intalnire cu Istoria Appointment with History. On the occasion of the exhibition the artists also collaborated with BAK on their first monograph, Mona Vâtâmanu and Florin Tudor, published by BAK and post editions, Rotterdam. Additional film material for new productions, to be included in upcoming solo exhibitions, was also shot in Utrecht during the artists’ residency.

Dovile Tumpyte (born 1978) is a curator who studied art history at the Vilnius Art Academy, Lithuania, where she received her Master’s degree in Art Theory and Criticism in 2005. She is currently curator of the Contemporary Art Information Center of the Lithuanian Art Museum. Recent curatorial projects (selection): iMagine, 2nd event of Preparation Programme for Young Artists Biennale in Tallinn and Vilnius, 2007; Selfobjects, Radvila Palace, Vilnius, 2006; The Shifts of Cultural Landscapes. Cities after the break: Klaipeda, Kaliningrad, Gdansk, Xth Thomas Mann festival, Nida, 2006; and Vanishing Point, ARTima gallery, Vilnius, 2006. Tumpyte lives and works in Vilnius.Self-organized Art Space in the NetherlandsIn the Lithuanian contemporary art scene, an institution such as the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius has played a dominant and exclusive role in producing and presenting contemporary art projects since 1989. However, recently young theoreticians, curators, and artists have begun to organize (temporary) collectives and actively participate in the local art scene with their projects, employing different strategies of production and distribution in their objectives than the main art institutions. Against this background, Tumpyte conducted a research project entitled Bridge the Balkans to the Baltics (BBB). The project aimed to examine the self-organized art spaces in the former Yugoslav republics and initiate a collaborative project between two East European regions based on self-organized activities.Tumpyte extends this exploration into the Dutch art context, which is dominated by a well-established institutional and governmental infrastructure for art and culture. She seeks to find various examples of self-organized art initiatives in the Netherlands and reflects on their relational positions with regard to art institutions such as the Rijksakademie, de Ateliers, de Appel, and Van Abbemuseum, focusing on different strategies of art production and its specific critical role in the local art scene and beyond. The position of BAK is also an object of investigation from this perspective.

Ultra-red (established 1994) is an international sound-art collective consisting of various members who are involved in activist movements. Protocols for collective listening guide the group’s exchanges between art and political organizing. Recent exhibitions include: Research Under Construction: What Are the Sights and Sounds of Crisis?, Errant Bodies Gallery, Berlin, 2012; What is the Sound of Freedom?, Whitney Museum of American Art, Whitney Biennial, New York, 2012. Ultra-red originated in Los Angeles. [Last updated 2013]

New Unions is an artistic campaign that organizes gatherings throughout the European continent to confront its current political, economic, and humanitarian crises. Through the imaginary of art, New Unions aims to bring together emancipatory forces from the domains of art, politics, and activisms in order to establish a new transdemocratic union. Propositions #2: Assemblism is the culmination of the 2016 collaboration between BAK and New Unions.

URBED (Urban, Environment and Design) Ltd URBED (Urbanism, Environment and Design) Ltd is an award-winning design and research consultancy based in Manchester. The company practices environmentally and socially sustainable urban design, and develops tools and methods to enrich their proposals through meaningful community engagement. For the

Extinction Rebellion Utrecht Extinction Rebellion (XR) is an international movement that uses nonviolent civil disobedience as a resistance model in an attempt to halt mass extinction. Founded in the United Kingdom in 2018, it has become internationally known and its ideas have reached tens of thousands of people worldwide. XR

Michael Uwemedimo (born 1972) is a writer and curator, and a founding member of the filmmaking collaboration, Vision Machine. Currently he is a lecturer in film at Roehampton University, London, where he also leads a film distribution initiative, unReal. Uwemedimo’s latest writings appear in (selection): Fluid Screens/Expanded Cinema (2007); Building Bridges: The Cinema of Jean Rouch (2007); Jean-Luc Godard: Documents (2006); and the forthcoming monograph, The Interview. Recent curatorial projects include: After the Fact, BFI Southbank, London, 2007; Jean-Luc Godard: A Retrospective, NFT/Tate Modern, London, 2001; and Possessing Vision: The Cinema of Jean Rouch, ICA, London,During his Research-in-Residence, Uwemedimo worked on a small book about cinema’s ability to pose questions and to call into question. The writing is an exploration of the forms and objects of a particular cinema’s social curiosity and its encounter with novel modes of social research in France after World War II—with the instruments of sociological inquiry, with forms of industrial investigation into behavior and desire, and with the apparatus of political interest in opinion. It is a book concerned with the image and the poetics of interrogation, of asking questions; it is a history of curiosity.For a public seminar at BAK in November (with Rod Dickinson and Steve Rushton), Uwemedimo also explored some of the responses of contemporary artists to now largely abandoned dramaturgical methods of social research. From the fifties through to the eighties a controversial form of experimental theatrics marked the research methods of social psychology. The social psychology approach of performance-as-experiment has now re-emerged in the experimental performance methods of many contemporary artists—sometimes as meticulous re-enactments of the experiments themselves, but also more broadly in performative explorations of institutional structure, disciplinary authority, and the spectacle of knowledge, as well as through events that “subject” and surveil the spectator in often traumatic ways, and subsequently staging the event’s “data” or “findings.”

Denise Valentine Denise Valentine is a master storyteller, historical performer, consultant, and founder of The Philadelphia Middle Passage Ceremony & Port Marker Project. Her storytelling performance illustrates the power of story to transcend differences between people, transform negativity, and inspire hope.

Cecilia Vallejos is an artist and researcher, and worked as a theater director and dramaturge scripting performances based on testimonial narratives (2003–2014). Since 2011, she collaborates with domestic workers of the Union of Cleaners of the Netherlands Trade Union Confederation (FNV) and visual artist Matthijs de Bruijne to produce videos and publications for the group’s ongoing struggle to legalize their labor.

Sarah Vanhee is an artist, performer, and author who works within the realms of public space and the institutional art field. Interested in the aspects of society that are kept hidden from the public, or the voices that are made unheard, her works illustrate the importance of these voices and how they can speak to the cores of societies. Vanhee’s work challenges mainstream media’s predetermined views on marginalized peoples, such as prisoners, and exposes how these depictions do not correspond with the realities of these people. Vanhee has worked in a wide range of places, from theaters to corporate meetings, and uses different formats within her works. In 2007, Vanhee was nominated for the Ton Lutz Prize and received honorable mention. Her work has been presented at: Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels, 2018, 2016, 2014, 2013; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 2011; Centre Pompidou-Metz, Metz, 2010; and iDans, Istanbul, 2010.

Tom Vandeputte is a writer and theorist. He is course director of the Critical Studies program at the Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam and worked as a visiting lecturer at King’s College, London, where he taught a course on new institutional models in collaboration with Tate Modern, London. His recent publications include: Politics of Study (co-edited with Sidsel Meineche Hansen, 2015) and Contestations: Learning from Critical Experiments in Education (co-edited with Tim Ivison, 2013). He is also co-founder of The New Reader, a journal for theory at the intersection of art, philosophy and politics. Vandeputte is currently completing his PhD at the Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London, London. Vandeputte lives and works in Berlin and Amsterdam.

Raoul Vaneigem (born 1934) is a writer, philosopher, and one of the key theorists of the Situationist movement who proponed a more poetic approach, ultimately pursuing his interest in self-regulating social order. His books include: Lettre à mes enfants et aux enfants du monde à venir (2012); Das Buch der Lüste (1979); and The Revolution of Everyday Life (1967). [Last updated 2013]

Christina Varvia Christina Varvia is an architect, researcher,
and the Deputy Director of the London-based research agency Forensic
Architecture. Her previous research includes studies on digital media and
memory, as well as the perception of the physical environment through scanning
and imaging technologies. Varvia

Mona Vâtâmanu (born 1968) and Florin Tudor (born 1974) are artists, working together since 2000. Their artistic practice consists of film, photography, painting, performance, and site-specific projects. On the occasion of their exhibition Surplus Value at BAK, basis voor actuele kunst (06.09–09.11.2009), Vâtâmanu and Tudor took part in BAK’s Research-in-Residence program in 2009. Previous residencies include: FRAC|Nord – Pas de Calais, Dunkerque (2008); Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw (2008); Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Berlin (2006); and Project Room, Ludwig Museum, Budapest (2003). Recent solo exhibitions include: Graphisches Kabinett, Secession, Vienna (upcoming, fall 2009); Appointment with History, Lombard-Freid Projects, New York, 2008; August, Andreiana Mihail Gallery, Bucharest, 2008; Living Units, Mercer Union, Toronto, 2008; and Re-animating the city, Cooper Gallery, Dundee, 2006. Recent group exhibitions include: Liquid times, Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster (upcoming, fall 2009); Pièces de résistance: Forms of Resistance in Contemporary Art, Kunstmuseum Thun, Thun (upcoming, fall 2009); Nothing is worth more than this day, Andreiana Mihail Gallery, Bucharest, 2009; Blind Spots, Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien, Vienna, 2009; Sounds and Visions, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, 2009; 5th Berlin Biennial, Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, 2008; Art as Gift, Periferic Biennial 8, Iaşi, 2008; Like an Attali Report, but different. On fiction and political imagination, Kadist Art Foundation, Paris, 2008; Since we last spoke about monuments, Stroom Den Haag, The Hague, 2008; Dada East? Romanian Context of Dadaism, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 2008; Atomized, De Veemvloer, Amsterdam, 2008; Low-Budget Monuments, 52nd Venice Biennale, Romanian Pavilion, Venice, 2007; The Building Show, Exit Art Gallery, New York, 2007; Der Prozess, Collective memory and social history, Prague Biennale 3, Prague, 2007; and How to Do Things? In the Middle of (No)where…, Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Berlin, 2006. In addition the artists regularly participate in numerous festivals, screening programs, and curatorial projects. Vâtâmanu and Tudor live and work in Bucharest.During their residency, the artists worked on the preparations and new productions for the exhibition Surplus Value, the most extensive overview on their work to this date, and the first research exhibition within BAK’s long-term project Former West. For Surplus Value Vâtâmanu and Tudor produced a number of major new works, such as the installation Lingouri de rugina[Rust Ingots], the installation Calea [The Path], the film Plus valoarea [Surplus Value], and new paintings in the series Intalnire cu Istoria Appointment with History. On the occasion of the exhibition the artists also collaborated with BAK on their first monograph, Mona Vâtâmanu and Florin Tudor, published by BAK and post editions, Rotterdam. Additional film material for new productions, to be included in upcoming solo exhibitions, was also shot in Utrecht during the artists’ residency.

Rolando Vázquez Rolando Vázquez is a teacher and decolonial thinker. He is regularly invited to deliver keynotes on decoloniality at academic and cultural institutions. Vázquez is currently associate professor of sociology at University College Roosevelt, Middelburg, and cluster chair at the University College Utre

Lidwien van de Ven (born 1963) works with photography and video. While her images that attend to primarily political and religious subjects have a photojournalistic quality, they question the unseen in events covered by the media. Recent exhibitions include: Busan Biennale 2012, Busan, 2012; Freedom, Netwerk, Aalst/Belgium, 2011–2012; and Documenta 12, Kassel, 2007. Van de Ven lives and works in Berlin and Rotterdam. [Last updated 2012]

Françoise Vergès Françoise Vergès is a political theorist, feminist, independent curator, and decolonial activist. Vergès received her degree in Political Science and Women’s Studies at University of California, San Diego, and finished her PhD in Political Science at University of California, Berkeley. She has taugh

Jan Verwoert is a writer and critic who focuses on contemporary art and cultural theory. He is a visiting professor at University of the Arts, Berlin and a contributing editor of frieze. His writing has appeared in various journals, anthologies, and monographs. He was a professor at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Oslo, taught at the Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam, and was a visiting professor at the Royal Academy of Art, London. Verwoert is the editor of No New Kind of Duck: Would I know How to Say What I Do? (2016) and author of Cookie! (2014), Animal Spirits: Fables in the Parlance of Our Times (together with Michael Stevenson, 2013), Tell Me What You Want, What You Really, Really Want (2010), and Bas Jan Ader: In Search of the Miraculous (2006). Verwoert lives and works in Berlin, Oslo, and Rotterdam.

Jelena Vesić is an independent curator, writer, editor, and lecturer. She was co-editor of Prelom – Journal of Images and Politics (2001–2009) and co-founder of independent organization Prelom Collective (2005–2010). She is active in the field of publishing, research, and exhibition practice that intertwines political theory and contemporary art. She is also co-editor of Red Thread – Journal for social theory, contemporary art and activism and member of editorial board of Art Margins. In her writing, Vesić explores the relations between art and ideology in the field of geopolitical art history writing, focusing on experimental art and exhibition practices of the 1960s and 1970s in former Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe. She also writes on artistic labour and practices of self-organization in the age of cognitive capitalism. Her latest curatorial projects are based on experiments with the form of lecture-performance, immaterial quality of the exhibits and story telling, and include: Oktobar XXX: Exposition–Symposim–Performance (2012–2013); On Undercurrents of Negotiating Artistic Jobs – Between Love and Money, Between Money and Love (2013–2014); and Exhibition on Work and Laziness (2012–2015). Vesić lives and works in Belgrade. [Last updated 2015]

Cecilia Vicuña Cecilia Vicuña is a poet, artist, activist, and filmmaker whose work addresses pressing concerns of the modern world, including ecological destruction, human rights, and cultural homogenization. Born and raised in Santiago de Chile, she has been in exile since the early 1970s, after the military cou

Dmitry Vilensky is an artist, writer, and founding member of Chto Delat?/What is to be done?, a platform initiated in 2003 by a collective of artists, critics, philosophers, and writers with the goal of merging political theory, art, and activism. Vilensky is also an editor of the Chto Delat? newspaper. Chto Delat?’s recent exhibitions include: solo projects under the title What is to be done?…The urgent need to struggle, Galerie Nova, Zagreb and Institute of Contemporary Art, London, 2010; FORMER WEST Research Exhibitions Vectors of the Possible, BAK, Utrecht, 2010 and Principio Potosí, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 2010; 17th Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, 2010; and the 11th Istanbul Biennale, Istanbul, 2009. Vilensky lives and works in St. Petersburg. [Last updated 2010]

Marina Vishmidt (born 1976) is a writer, editor, and critic occupied mainly with questions around art, labor, and value. In 2013, she completed a PhD at Queen Mary University of London, London, titled “Speculation as a Mode of Production in Art and Capital.” She widely lectures and offers workshops on these topics in academic institutions, art institutions, and activist spaces and frequently works with artists, having collaborated with Ruth Buchanan, Chris Evans, Grace Schwindt, W.A.G.E., and Haegue Yang. Vishmidt is also a participant in the group projects Full Unemployment Cinema and Cinenova. She has authored chapters in The Routledge Companion to Art and Politics and in The ECONOMY Reader (both forthcoming), and her work on debt, social reproduction, and artistic enterpreneurialism can be found on e-flux journal and libcom.org. She has also written for Afterall, Ephemera, Kaleidoscope, Mute, Parkett, and Texte zur Kunst, among other international periodicals, collections, and catalogues and is currently writing a book with Kerstin Stakemeier on the politics of autonomy and reproduction in art. Vishmidt lives and works in London. [Last updated 2014]

De Voorkamer In 2016, De Voorkamer opened its doors in Utrecht as an inclusive meeting space in which the talents of status holders, people living in asylum seekers’ centers, and the local community are encouraged. Since its beginnings, De Voorkamer has striven to turn the initiative into a space created by and

Samuel Vriezen is an Amsterdam-based composer and writer. Recently, he completed Schade (Damage), a play for VPRO radio on the hidden politics of oil pollution in the Niger Delta and the temporalities of irreversibility and survival. In 2016, he published Netwerk in Eclips, as well as essays and poems focusing on change in a networked world. He teaches artistic research to composers at the Royal Conservatoire, The Hague.

Evelyn Wan Evelyn Wan is assistant professor in media, arts, and society at the Department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University, Utrecht. Her work on the temporalities and politics of digital culture and algorithmic governance is interdisciplinary in nature, and straddles media and performance st

Joanna Warsza (born 1976) is a curator in the fields of visual and performing arts and architecture. She is curator of the Georgian Pavilion, 55th Venice Biennale, Venice, 2013. Warsza works mostly in the public realm examining social and political agendas such as, from 2009 to 2010, the legacy of post-Soviet architecture in Caucasus, and with Public Movement in 2009, the phenomenon of the Israeli youth delegations in Poland. From 2006–2008 she explored the invisibility of the Vietnamese community in Warsaw with the project Finissage of Stadium X. Her other curatorial projects include the Göteborg Biennal, Göteborg, 2013 and, as associate curator, the 7th Berlin Biennale, Berlin, 2012. In 2006, she founded the Laura Palmer Foundation that she ran through 2011. She is editor of books including: Ministry of Highways: A Guide to the Performative Architecture of Tbilisi (2013); Forget Fear (2012); and Stadium X-A Place That Never Was (2009). Warsza lives and works in Berlin and Warsaw. [Last updated 2013]

Grant Watson Curator, artist, and writer Grant Watson’s interview project How We Behave (2012–ongoing) explores queer ascesis as a personal and a collective politics. His work has been shown at Extra City, Antwerp, 2017; Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2017; State of Concept, Athens, 2016; Nottingham Contemporary,

Harry Weeks is an art historian and researcher. Currently, he is Teaching Fellow in History of Art at The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh. His research interests include participation and collaboration in art, the politics of contemporary art, theories of community, and Eastern European art history. He completed his doctoral thesis “‘A Unique Epochal Knot’: Negotiations of Community in Contemporary Art” in 2014, examining the ways in which contemporary art has contributed to a rethinking of the concept of community since 1989. His writings can be found in CITSEE, E-International Relations, and Studies in Eastern European Cinema, as well as the publications Interactive Contemporary Art: Participation in Practice (2014), To The Reader (2013), Kernel Panic Control (2012), and Generation of the Place: Image, Memory and Fiction in the Baltics (2011). Weeks is a co-editor of the Spring 2016 special issue of Tate Papers entitled “Mediating Collaboration.” Weeks lives and works in Edinburgh.

Lawrence Weiner (born 1942) is an artist and a key figure of Conceptual art active since the 1960s. He is best known for his text pieces and wall installations, but works across a variety of media, which include drawings, books, films, videos, posters, and editions. Recent solo exhibitions include: FORMER WEST Research Exhibition Lawrence Weiner: Dicht Bij, BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, 2010; Under The Sun, Espai d’art contemporani de Castelló (EACC), Castellón, 2009–2010; Placed On The Tip Of A Wave, Regen Projects II, Los Angeles, 2009; With Whatever Was Left, Galerie Micheline Szwajcer, Antwerp, 2009; The Other Side Of A Cul-De-Sac, The Power Plant, Toronto, 2009; 1/2 Empty–1/2 Full, Yvon Lambert, Paris, 2009; At The Level Of The Sea, Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, 2009; and As Far As The Eye Can See, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and K21, Düsseldorf, 2007–2009. Recent group exhibitions include: In & Out of Amsterdam: Travels in Conceptual Art, 1960–1976, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, 2009; Collecting History, Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles, 2009; Colour Chart: Reinventing Colour, 1950 to Today, Tate Liverpool, Liverpool, 2009; FEEDBACKSTAGE, kunsthaus muerz, Mürzzuschlag, 2009; Time as Matter. MACBA Collection. New acquisitions (XXII), MACBA, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Barcelona, 2009; and Sharjah Biennial 9, Sharjah, 2009. Weiner lives and works in New York and Amsterdam. [Last updated 2010]

Gloria Wekker is a social and cultural anthropologist and Professor Emeritus of Gender Studies at Utrecht University, Utrecht. She recently wrote about (the denial of) racism in the Netherlands in White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race (2016). Wekker lives and works in Amsterdam.

Stefano Harney is author with Fred Moten of The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study (2013) and All Incomplete (2020), both published by Minor Compositions/Autonomedia. He is currently a Hayden Fellow at Yale School of Art, New Haven, and Honorary Professor at the Institute of Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. He has taught widely in Southeast Asia, North America, and Europe. He works in a number of collectives including freethought, Le Mardi Gras Listening Collective, School for Study, Ground Provisions, and Anti-Colonial Machine. Harney lives and works in Brasília.

Stefano Harney is author with Fred Moten of The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study (2013) and All Incomplete (2020), both published by Minor Compositions/Autonomedia. He is currently a Hayden Fellow at Yale School of Art, New Haven, and Honorary Professor at the Institute of Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. He has taught widely in Southeast Asia, North America, and Europe. He works in a number of collectives including freethought, Le Mardi Gras Listening Collective, School for Study, Ground Provisions, and Anti-Colonial Machine. Harney lives and works in Brasília.

The freethought collective came together in 2012 amid growing crises in the education sector, specifically the need for new knowledges to flow in and out of academia unhampered by strict protocols of evaluation, examination, and classroom outcomes. The “free” in freethought’s chosen name signals this need to detach knowledges from disciplines, institutional settings, and predictable outcomes, and to define new modes for circulation. In this way, freethought argues against differentiating academic and artistic practices, insisting instead that they together can expand and challenge through diverse materials and conceptual questions. Moving toward this, freethought is dedicated to public study and public research. To them, this means exploring thematics though numerous points and modes of collective research, including establishing what a subject might even be and which materials can illuminate it. Given that knowledge operates as a political force, collective knowledge based in experience can allow for an expanded field of what it means “to know” and what the stakes are in “knowing.”

freethought was first part of “Truth is Concrete,” steirischer herbst, Graz, 2012, exploring conceptions of “Education Crisis,” “Labour Crisis,” and “Creative Strikes”; they collaborated with BAK, Utrecht and Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin to curate a strand of the final event of Former West, Berlin, 2013, on infrastructure; and co-curated the 2016 Bergen Assembly, Bergen focusing on how infrastructure is not a neutral mechanism of goods, services, and electronic supports, but the predominant condition of people’s lives, indoctrinating subjects in ways of thinking and acting—making “infrastructural beings.”

As BAK 2020 Fellows, freethought expands their infrastructure project to explore affective dimensions. They are calling this “Spectral Infrastructure,” the hidden and invisible textures that sustain undefinable and disruptive qualities in otherwise efficient seeming organisms or structures.

freethought-collective.net

Anna Wessely is an art historian and sociologist. She is editor-in-chief of BUKSZ (The Budapest Review of Books), and teaches at the Sociology Institute of Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest and the Hungarian Fine Arts University, Budapest. She was previously Rudolf Arnheim Professor in Art History at the Humboldt University, Berlin, 2006; Research Fellow at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, 1999–2000; Research Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg, Berlin, 2000; member and later President of the international advisory board of the International Research Centre for Cultural Studies, Vienna, 1998–2005; Research Associate at the University of California, Berkeley, 1992–1993; and Research Associate at Boston University, Boston, 1987–1988. Alongside art history, her research extends to intellectual history and the sociology of art and culture. Her publications include studies on visual argumentation in the eighteenth century as well as criticism of contemporary art. Wessely lives and works in Budapest. [Last updated 2015]

What, How & for Whom/WHW (established 1999) is a curatorial collective whose members are Ivet Ćurlin, Ana Dević, Nataša Ilić, and Sabina Sabolović, along with designer and publicist Dejan Kršić. WHW organizes production, exhibition, and publishing projects and directs city-owned Gallery Nova in Zagreb. “What?” “How?” and “For whom?” are the three basic questions of every economic organization, and are fundamental to the planning, conception, and realization of exhibitions, the production and distribution of artworks, and the artist’s position in the labor market. Currently, WHW is curating the international multidisciplinary event Meeting Points 7, taking place in the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe, in 2013. WHW’s recently curated exhibitions include: Details, Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, 2011; Second World, steirischer herbst, Graz, 2011; One Needs to Live Self-Confidently…Watching, Croatian Pavilion, 52nd Venice Biennale, Venice, 2011; and What Keeps Mankind Alive, 11th Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, 2009. [Last updated 2013]

Le Guess Who? Le Guess Who? is an annual four-day festival for musical and cultural boundary-crossing in Utrecht. Over the years, Le Guess Who? has become a leading music festival with an innovative, international program. Music performances take place at various venues throughout Utrecht, such as Tivoli Vredenbu

Angga Wijaya Angga Wijaya is a curator and educator, who works collectively with Serrum, art and pedagogy study group. At Gudskul, Angga teaches the subject Collective Arts Review, mapping the development of collective art practices. He also teaches History of Art at Erudio Indonesia, a democratic and project-ba

Mick Wilson Professor Mick Wilson is an artist, educator, and researcher. He has been Head of Valand Academy, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg (2012–2018); Co-Editor-in-Chief of PARSE Journal (2015–2017); and Dean of the Graduate School of Creative Arts & Media, Dublin (2008–2012). He is a visiting facu

Bond Precaire Woonvormen Bond Precaire Woonvormen (BPW) is a social movement that protects housing rights in the Netherlands, supporting tenants through legal and social means.

BAK 2019/2020 Fellow Mijke van der Drift presents her research The Logic of Loss in Bonding in the talk “Realisitcally Impossible: The Magic of Social Change” at the virtual conference Love Spells & Rituals for Another World. As Love Spells explains:  Engaging with queer, feminist and decolonial approaches and drawing on developments in cultural studies […]

Stephen Wright is a theorist, art writer and curator who teaches the practice of theory at the European School of Visual Arts, Angoulème/Poitiers. His writing has focused primarily on the politics of usership, particularly in contexts of collaborative, extradisciplinary practices with variable coefficients of art. His current research examines the ongoing usological turn in art and society in terms of contemporary escapological theory and practice. His curated projects include Situation Z, Art-cade, Marseille, 2012; Recomposing Desire, Masrah al-Madina, Beirut, 2008 (with Natasa Ilic); and Dataesthetics, Gallery Nova, Zagreb, 2008. Wright is currently preparing Unsupported Documents, to be held in Marseille in 2015, as part of a series of exhibitions examining art practices with deliberately impaired coefficients of artistic visibility, which raise the prospect of art without artworks, authorship, or spectatorship. His publications include Toward a Lexicon of Usership (2013)_, _which repurposes the contemporary wordscape and the conceptual vocabulary inherited from modernity. Wright lives and works in Paris.

xin xin is an artist, writer, and musician. Their debut LP, MELTS INTO LOVE, was released by Subtext in 2019.

Haegue Yang (born 1971) is an artist whose artistic practice involves highly conceptual, slightly odd, or disquieting rearrangements of ready-made objects or space, and raw photographic representation of the “uneven” and unstable condition of contemporary society. Recent exhibitions (selection): Cork Caucus, Cork, 2005; Gallery Barbara Wien, Berlin, 2004; Kasse, Shop, Kino und Weiteres, Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt, 2004; Unfolding, Dépendence, Brussels, 2004; Space and Alterity, Lawrence O’Hana Gallery, London, 2004; Busan Biennale, Busan, 2004; This is not a love letter, Marronier Art Center, Seoul, 2004; Mix Max, Art Sonje Center, Seoul, 2004; Unrealistic to Generalize, Public>, Paris, 2003; Demirrorized Zone, De Appel, Amsterdam, 2003; Manifesta 4, Frankfurt am Main, 2002; and Tirana Biennale 1, Tirana, 2001. For more information see heikejung.deYang lives and works in Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, and Seoul.Community of AbsenceOver the past eight years, Haegue Yang’s artistic practice has involved highly conceptual, slightly odd, or disquieting rearrangements of ready-made objects or spaces, and raw photographic representations of the “uneven” and unstable condition of contemporary society. Behind this conceptual and subtle approach, the artist’s poignant social critique unravels the often-invisible matrix where power structures, individual desire, and the longing for engagement with a community collide.In this line of ongoing examination, Yang researches the various concepts of community which are illuminated by different artistic projects over the past few decades, and seeks to examine the meaning of the idea of a “community of absence,” a notion suggested by French writer Georges Bataille. Whereas the genre of so-called “community-based art” positions itself in the context of communities based on shared geography or ethical, economic, and political interests, Yang conceives of the possibility of a “community of those who do not have a community.” Thus imagined, such a community, characterized by ongoing self-examination and optimism, would have a heterogeneous composition whose members recognize the transitory and even vulnerable nature of their union. This research resulted in a solo exhibition, performance, publication, and presentation at BAK.(Haegue Yang’s solo exhibition, entitled Unevenly, was on view from 23 April 2006 till 18 June 2006 at BAK. The opening is accompanied by a joint-music performance by (currently) Amsterdam-based artist and musician David Michael DiGregorio (with Sung Hwan Kim) and Den Haag-based musician Byungjun Kwon (with Yamila Rios). A conversation between Haegue Yang, curator and art critic Nina Möntmann, artist Jeremiah Day, and art historian and art critic Marcus Verhagen took place on 23 May 2006. The publication Community of Absence: Haegue Yang, featuring contributions by Binna Choi, Lars Bang Larsen, and Nina Möntmann and edited by Binna Choi, was published by BAK and Revolver in 2007.

Seçil Yersel (born 1973) is an artist and the co-founder of the artist collaborative Oda Projesi (together with Özge Açıkkol and Güneş Savaş). Oda Projesi is based in Istanbul and its main objective is to multiply the possibilities for making art by drawing attention to the issue of community in the urban condition. The project invites artists and other people with different backgrounds to realize their projects in Galata, Istanbul. A selection of these projects includes: NowHere Europe – Trans:it. Moving Culture Through Europe, National Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC), Bucharest, 2006; 9th Istanbul Biennale, Istanbul, 2005; and EindhovenIstanbul, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 2005. Recent exhibitions by Seçil Yersel include: STADTanSICHTen: Istanbul, ifa-Galerie Berlin, Berlin, 2004 and Mediterranean: Between Reality and Utopia, Photographers’ Gallery, London, 2004. Yersel lives and works in Istanbul.Oda ProjesiOda Projesi, whose members are Istanbul-based artists Özge Acikkol, Günes Savas, and Seçil Yersel, emerged out of the social context characterized by three main issues: class segregation after the military coup and the rise of neoliberalism, urban development including “gentrification,” and the lack of cultural and art infrastructure (according to critic Erden Kosova). These three women artists in their twenties and thirties, all of whom come from (upper) middle-class backgrounds, established their studios in an area called Galata in 2000. Galata, located in the heart of Istanbul, has undergone the transition from a “modern” place for the upper secular class of the Ottoman Empire to a site of urban gentrification as a result of migrant workers from rural eras settling in the area, and is now a well-known tourist destination. For Oda Projesi, locating the studios in Galata meant engaging in social and artistic practices that encounter class and cultural differences and imagine the possibility of community without “unity” and consensus by organizing various art and non-art activities with the neighbors and encouraging artists of different backgrounds to face the difficulty and value of addressing and “relating” to them. After collaborating for seven years, the founding members of Oda Projesi took a hiatus from collective activities to reflect upon their previous activities and future projects.

Poka-Yio (born 1970) is a visual artist and curator. He is cofounder and codirector of the Athens Biennale and member, with Xenia Kalpaktsoglou, of the curatorial duo X&Y. His work revolves around the bipole of attraction and repulsion. From painting to gastronomy and from coaching to curating, Poka-Yio uses narration as his main tool. His recent curatorial projects with X&Y include: Destroy Athens, the 1st Athens Biennale, Athens, 2007 (with Augustine Zenakos) and Monodrome, the 3rd Athens Biennale, Athens, 2011 (with Nicolas Bourriaud). Poka-Yio lives and works in Athens. [Last updated 2014]

Giovanna Zapperi is an art historian, critic, and Professor of History of Modern and Contemporary Art at Université François-Rabelais, Tours. Her scholarly work examines the interrelation of art criticism, visual culture, and, feminism. She has published several studies in anthologies, exhibition catalogues, and reviews, as well as critical articles. Her latest book, Carla Lonzi: Un’arte della vita, was published in 2017. Zapperi lives and works in Paris.

Ollie Zhang Ollie Zhang is an occasional writer, editor, curator, and musician. They are one of the discourse curators and magazine editors at Berlin's CTM Festival, where they focus on the Rethinking Music Ecosystems program. Zhang lives and works in London.

Vivian Ziherl is a researcher, writer, and curator. She is Artistic Director of Frontier Imaginaries. Recent curatorial projects include BELL Invites (with Aruna Vermeulen), Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 2016. Ziherl lives and works in Amsterdam.

Kitty Zijlmans is an art historian and lecturer who is interested in contemporary art and art theory, with a focus on methodologies of interculturalization in visual arts and artistic research. Since 2000, she has been Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory/World Art Studies at Leiden University. Since 2010, she has been a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and currently she chairs the jury of the Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for Art. Previously, she was director of LUCAS (Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society). She was co-curator of Global Imaginations, Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden and De Meelfabriek, Leiden, 2015 and contributed to The Unwanted Land, Museum Beelden aan Zee, The Hague, 2010–2011. Publications include: Contemporary Culture: New Directions in Art and Humanities Research (co-edited with Judith Thissen and Rob Zwijnenberg, 2013); World Art Studies: Exploring Concepts and Approaches (co-edited with Wilfried van Damme, 2008); and The Return of the Shreds (in collaboration with Ni Haifeng, 2008). Zijlmans lives and works in Leiden.

Özlem Zingil Hafıza Merkezi (Truth Justice Memory Center) is an independent human rights organization founded in Istanbul in 2011 by a group of lawyers, journalists, and human rights activists. Hafıza Merkezi’s aim is to uncover the truth concerning human rights violations in Turkey; to strengthen the collective

Carol Zou Carol Zou is an artist, writer, educator, and an organizer who facilitates creative social change projects with a focus on racial justice, informal labor, and public space. Her work focuses on the relationship between art, culture, community, and activism. Current and past affiliations include Yarn

She worked at Darat al Funun from 2019-2021, where she directed The Lab program and curated the trilogy: Internet of Things: Another World is Possible, Measuring Life: Notes Toward an Impossible Exchange and Postcolonial Ecologies. More recently, she founded Asphalt, a platform for self-organized study, research and artistic production. Currently, she is completing a fellowship at the Universität der Künste Berlin.

Arsanios’s recent solo and group exhibitions include Micro Resistances, Kunsthalle Bratislava, 2023–2024; Matter of Alliances, Heidelberger Kunstverein, Heidelberg, 2023; Reverse Shot, The Mosaic Room, London, 2022; A Letter Inside a Letter, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, 2021; Who is Afraid of Ideology?, Škuc Gallery, Ljubljana, 2018; Falling is not Collapsing, Falling is Extending, Beirut Art Center, Beirut, 2017; and Hammer Projects: Marwa Arsanios, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, 2016. Arsanios lives and works in Berlin and Beirut.  

She has a PhD in Social Science, is a researcher at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, and member of the feminist collective Ni Una Menos (Not One More!). Her research focuses on debt and gender. She teaches in the Gender Studies Master’s Program at the Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero. She is also the co author in Spanish of ¿Quién Le Debe A Quién? Ensayos Transnacionales De Desobediencia Financiera, with Silvia Federici and Verónica Gago (Tinta Limón-F. Rosa Luxemburgo, 2021)

During the Fellowship of Situated Practices she intends to examine the democratic potential and limitations of assembly as a field of inquiry when looking toward potential social change. How can assembly be conceptualized as a tool toward social mobilization that strives for a different future? Her research will focus on assembly as a form of gathering, collective deliberation, and engagement in prefigurative politics, which may contain within itself the possibility to affect the way micro politics are practiced and how alignments, non-alignments, comradeships, and radical friendships can unfold when one is constituting the multitude.

Charalambous is currently co-organizing with Serda Demir the series Ware Tegenmacht, at Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 2023–24. She has recently exhibited as part of Positions: Elsewheres, Stroom Den Haag, The Hague, 2023; Mingling with Againness, Halle 14, Leipzig, 2023; Traveling Farm Museum of Forgotten Skills, Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons, Utrecht, 2022; and 8th International Degrowth Conference, Nest ruimte voor kunst, The Hague, 2021. She lives and works in Rotterdam and is part of the BAK Cell, Utrecht, in the Fellowship for Situated Practice.

Layal Ftouni is an Assistant Professor of Gender Studies and Critical Theory at the Graduate Gender Programme. Her teaching is transdisciplinary crossing fields of gender and sexuality studies, cultural studies, political theory, visual studies and critical race studies.

She is also part of #NiUnaMenos movement (Not One More!), as both a theoretician and an activist. She is a Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires, Professor of Gender Studies and Critical Theory at the Instituto de Altos Estudios, Universidad Nacional de San Martín, and Independent Researcher at the National Council of Research (CONICET). She is a founding member of the independent radical press Tinta Limón.

He is currently a Hayden Fellow at Yale School of Art, New Haven, and Honorary Professor at the Institute of Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. He has taught widely in Southeast Asia, North America, and Europe. He works in a number of collectives including freethought, Le Mardi Gras Listening Collective, School for Study, Ground Provisions, and Anti-Colonial Machine. Harney lives and works in Brasília.

She is currently pursuing an MA in philosophy at the Freie Universität Berlin. Her research and practice focus on questions and histories of labor and property, relations of debt and inheritance, and on the intellectual and political legacies of abolition. Since 2018, she has worked at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin ass a curatorial researcher, coordinator, and producer.

Prior to joining The Forge, Yvonne worked as a Lecturer at The University Currently Known as Rhodes teaching Comparative Politics and International Relations at the Department of Political and International Studies. Yvonne’s research interests include farm workers/dwellers’ lived experiences and struggles, the struggles of black first-generation graduates, equality, land reform and redistribution in South Africa. She is the author of the dossier titled "This Land Is the Land of Our Ancestors". She is also the co-producer and director of The Forge's "Nyarha Farmworkers Documentary".

Grupo Semillas carries out joint actions with environmental organizations, academics, and different sectors of society through training, dissemination, articulation, and advocacy on environmental and rural public policies.