23 September 2014–01 May 2016

 

Future Collections

Two key Utrecht-based art institutions, BAK and Centraal Museum explore in the course of 2014–2016 various collaborative possibilities and contribute to rethinking the mission of the art institution in today’s rapidly changing global condition.

The collaboration comprises a parallel and mutually entwined series titled Future Vocabularies—Future Collections. While Future Vocabularies (2014–2016) is a discourse-driven research, learning, exhibition, and publication series aimed at rethinking our conceptual vernaculars in face of changing social, economic, and political contexts today, Future Collections examines various modes of embedding such present-day, future-oriented discourse into the key activity of the museum: that of art collecting.

Future Vocabularies—Future Collections departs from an acknowledgment of the present-day global condition, undergirded by the culture of networks (social, digital, religious, and other) and the proliferation of resistance forms and collective initiatives. Observing new politics and alliances in the streets and collective mobilizations across the world, the program asks how artistic, intellectual, and activist practices might help to build an understanding of the changes this new reality brings for the notions of “audience” and the “public.” Future Vocabularies—Future Collections reflects on the consequences these changes bear on the work of a middle-sized discursive art institution and the museum. Rather than taking the research of “future vocabularies” as a thematic exercise on issues of “survival,” “the posthuman,” or “degrowth,” the program mobilizes it as a method of acting in the world today. Accordingly, the two institutions seek ways of mutualizing their respective resources of space, time, competencies, knowledges, finances, and other in order to establish a model of sustainable cooperation with these newly evolving “future publics.”

The collaboration between BAK and Centraal Museum has been made possible by the DOEN Foundation, Amsterdam.

Exhibitions

07.02.–26.04.2015
Anthropocene Observatory

11.04.–21.06.2015
New World Academy Exhibition

30.01.–01.05.2016
Unstated (or, Living Without Approval)

Program

Lecture
23.09.2014
And So We Participate

Performance
01.05.2016
Universal Anthem performed by Zuilens Fanfarecorps

In collaboration with

Made possible by

Suggestions from the archive

Exhibitionary

8 March, 19.00–7 March, 22.00 2024

Yallah Sabaya

Community Portal Hosts… Yallah Sabaya Join us on 8 March 2024 at BAK, Yallah Sabaya is happening again! “Come on ladies, let’s have fun together,” would be a good translation of yallah sabaya. All women of different cultural backgrounds are welcome to dance, chat, and connect with others also through movement and celebration. 8 March 2024, […]

Reading Group