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BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht
BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Pauwstraat, Utrecht, Netherlands

 

08 September 2015–24 June 2017

BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht  

Instituting Otherwise

  • Individuele lesprogramma’s op bandrecorder met hoofdtelefoons, open lesruimte, Granada Community School, Belvedere-Tiburon, Californië, foto: Rondal Partridge. Bron: Robert Propst, High School: The Process and the Place, red. Ruth Weinstock (New York: Educational Facilities Laboratories, 1972)

  • Marion von Osten: Once We Were Artists (A BAK Critical Reader in Artists’ Practice), published by BAK, Utrecht and Valiz, Amsterdam. Edited by Maria Hlavajova and Tom Holert

  • Englishes, a solo exhibition by Nicoline van Harskamp

  • Stefanos Tsivopoulos, Geometry of Fear, 2012. Film still, courtesy of Stefanos Tsivopoulos and Kalfayan Galleries Athene & Thessaloniki

In 2016–2017, BAK dedicates a series of discursive, educational, and exhibitionary projects to the notion of the institution and how to, amidst contemporary challenges, “institute otherwise.” Within the long-term trajectory Future Vocabularies (2014–2017), the series Instituting Otherwise probes ways of imagining—as well as embodying and inhabiting—alternative institutional practices in myriad arenas: from the state, law, and democracy to infrastructures of education, health, care, intimacy, and art, to discursive formations and imaginary spaces.

Aware that institutions simultaneously support and oppress, the project engages the seeming paradox of a practice that both questions and defends (public) institutions. What are ways of instituting that are informed by, and shaped through, the practice of institutional critique? How can these help set infrastructures that engage institutions but escape “institutionalization”? How to (re)think and (re)claim public spaces, public homes, public schools, public hospitals, public libraries, and public art institutions as interlocutors between care and power?

 

 

 

Exhibitions

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

24.09.–20.11.2016
Englishes

02.12.2016–05.02.2017
Learning Laboratories

11.03.–21.05.2017
To Seminar

Public program

Learning place
08.09.2015–28.04.2016
Learning Place: Refugee Crisis, or How to Change Things with Art

Congress
29.–31.01.2016
New World Summit: Stateless Democracy

Symposium
24.06.2017 10.30 hrs
Once We Were Artists

 

In collaboration with

Suggestions from the archive

School

10 March, 12.00–11 March, 19.00 2023

Sancochotopia: A Winter Ultrahospitality Mini Garage School

Community Portal presents...

A temporary cultural platform for diasporic affects and practice exchanges around the kitchen as a site of study. A two-day program for those interested in working with food activists and agri-cultural workers, preparing and serving food as a way to gather community and enact communal forms of study. Sign up required. 

Radio Stream

19 February 2023, 14.00

ULTRACIRCULATORY RADIO STREAM: Critical Circulation Mi

Community Portal presents...

Mi or Mie in Bahasa Indonesia means “noodles,” while mi in Chinese can mean “rice.” These over-indulgences of critical carbs are the workout diet for the Ultracirculation study group. Now in Yogyakarta, Critical Circulation Mi invites listeners into a guided soundscape with aurations by KUNCI Study Forum and Collective, School for Improper Education, Elaine W. Ho, and Wan Ing Que. While eating, listening, and reading, fieldwork-in-progress looking into the so-called “undocumented period” of the New Order Regime will be broadcast and unfolded in collaboration with participants in SOIE.

Field Work

15 February 2023, 10.00-18.00

ULTRASTUDIO THIRD SESSION 

A series of practical publishing workshops hosted by an active squat and anarchist social center in Amsterdam and organized by the Bookbinding Studio of Sandberg Instituut/Rietveld Academy and Lila Athanasiadou. 

Field Meal

4 February 2023, 13.00-18.00

ULTRAHOSPITALITY FIELD MEAL 1: SANCOCHO FLORAL

Community Portal presents...

Using the sancocho (a pan-Latin American soup with no fixed recipe) as a tool for research and encounter, Mercado Lourdes (Bogotá, Colombia) will host and organize a series of field meals. These events activate and connect the multiple affects that have resulted from ongoing research with local producers into the biodiversity of the territory.