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

 Learning

13 February–05 June 2014

BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht  

Learning Place: Curating the Political

educational platform with MaHKU, Utrecht and MAR, KABK, The Hague

Learning Place (LP) is BAK’s key educational platform and a site of talent development. It is conceived as a series of learning, interactions, and gatherings parallel to the main research and program trajectory of BAK, so that the participants fully benefit from, and contribute to, primary research into the conceptual urgencies that drive BAK’s work; exchange directly with artists, scholars, and activists contributing to BAK projects; and gain hands-on experience in the day-to-day life of a theoretically-driven and politically motivated art organization. It is developed in dialogue with BAK’s fellows and with a variety of MA programs at art academies and universities in Utrecht, the Netherlands, and abroad.

Folded into the multifaceted series Future Vocabularies and its inaugural, yearlong vocabulary entry on survival, a 16-week comprehensive curriculum is realized under the title Survival: Curating the Political. The triad of survival—the political—curating forms the guiding thread of LP and structures the program into three clusters. Daylong weekly sessions in this semester explore artistic and philosophical approaches to the politics of life and negotiations around the conception of survival at the intersections of biology and biography. Morning sessions on art and theory are taught by Maria Hlavajova with various guests; afternoon practicum sessions (each time in clusters of three) are hosted by artists Aernout Mik and Manuel Beltrán, as well Elke Uitentuis and Savannah Koolen together with members of the refugee collective We Are Here Yoonis Osman Nuur and Thomas Philip Guya, among others. Participants engage with the concerns of Future Vocabularies by carrying out collaborative research into new gestures of both power and resistance and organizing a series of changing, makeshift archive-exhibitions at BAK.

The LP Survival: Curating the Political is realized as part of the MA research curriculum at MaHKU, Utrecht and MAR, Royal Academy of Art (KABK), The Hague with the following participants: Sharelly Emanuelson, Pierfrancesco Gava, Anna Ioannidi, Annabel Kanaar, Yumemi Kobayashi, Quenton Miller, Sara Pape, Minsun Park, Uzine Park, Ika Putranto, Heekyung Ryu, Sissel Marie Tonn, Clara Turchi, Anne-Marie Twigge, Alejandro Vasquez, Audrey Wang, Yinan Wang, You-Na Wang, and Gayane Yerkanyan.

Suggestions from the archive

Learning

10 May, 12.00–12 May, 18.00 2023

Complaint Making: Setting Up Conflict-Positive Spaces for Community Building Praxis

Vishnu would like to share feminist governance tools (FGT) focused on three of many tiers in community building praxis. FGT is based on the values of equity with an emphasis on creating psychologically safe environments, drawing on the use of consent. Decision-making processes, setting up conflict-positive spaces, and complaint-making as diversity work will form the body of this three-day training. Rooted in Vishnu’s autho-ethnographic practice, this work will explore the power dynamics that impact decision-making processes.

Performative

10 May, 12.00–12 May, 18.00 2023

The Diamond Mind II

In this dance training, the people will use a one-minute film of their own movement as material for a booklet—a sixteen page signature—that distributes their presence, their gesture, as an act of EQ. 

Learning

3 May, 12.00–4 May, 18.00 2023

Too Late To Say Sorry? 

A bad apology can ruin a friendship, destroy a community, or end a career. In this workshop, we will investigate the impact of apologies on our relationships and our worlds. Why and how do we make apologies? What can giving and receiving apologies teach us about values and integrity? Should you apologize for something you don’t really feel sorry for? We will explore conflict and how we like to be in conflict with others. We will dive into our own boundaries. We will seek to understand how honoring limits becomes an act of building (or freeing) better worlds capable of holding so many, many more of us.

Learning

28 April, 12.00–29 April, 18.00 2023

Huisje, Boompje, Beestje (D.A.F.O.N.T.)

In this rare masterclass, retired teacher and artist Glenda Martinus teaches participants a thing or two about painting with Microsoft Word. Martinus shares tips, tricks, and secrets on how to use this software to its unexpected potential as a drawing tool. Participants learn how to draw three basic objects—a house, a tree, and an animal—in a seemingly innocent exercise that perhaps contains more layered social commentary. Drawing the worlds we desire does not require expensive tools or education, simply a curiosity to understand how the monster’s tools can topple the house of the master.