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

 Discursive, Conversation

7 October 2017, 16.45-17.15

BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht  

Werk Woorden – Words of Labour

Schiphol airport cleaners prepare their banners and placards during the cleaners’ strike January 2014. Photo: Matthijs de Bruijne

In April 2017, the booklet Words of Labour was presented to the Social and Economic Council of the Netherlands. This publication, by the Netherlands Trade Union Confederation (FNV), is a collection of some essential terms from International Labour Organization Convention 189, accompanied by stories from domestic workers in the Netherlands that shed light on the often invisible realities of the facts and figures for this field of labor.

During the talk, BAK 2017–2018 Fellow Matthijs de Bruijne—who has been involved as an artist in the domestic workers union organization—and Migrant Domestic Workers network FNV representative Charisma Adams discuss the context of the booklet and ways to claim rights to self-determining gestures.

Part of Propositions #1: What We Mean.

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.