Lecture-Performance, Performative

7 October 2017, 20.00-20.30

Whatever Floats Our Boats, 2017

Photo: Tom Janssen

Whatever Floats Our Boats sketches a decolonial positioning of Curaçao on the world stage in the twentieth century. Artist and BAK 2017–2018 Fellow Quinsy Gario presents three instances of resistance to colonial and dictatorial practices on and via the Dutch Caribbean island that had international consequences.

Through archival photos, videos, and family stories Gario presents actions of Venezuelan revolutionaries, exiled Portuguese soldiers, and black Curaçao dockworkers that impacted militarization in the Caribbean, the decolonization of Lusophone Africa, and the independence of Surinam. Through images from the archive of the Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam, found archival footage on YouTube, and oral histories, another lens is proposed for looking at the political significance of the island.

Part of Propositions #1: What We Mean.

Suggestions from the archive

Sint Maarten Parade

22 October–10 November 2023

BAK at the Sint Maarten Parade 2023

For Sint Maarten Parade 2023, Tools for Action—a non-profit organization that develops artistic interventions for political actions—collaborates with Utrecht-based members of Filipino, Caribbean, and other communities to collectively dream a parade compartment.

Crowdfunding Campaign

09 September–08 December 2023

Join Our Crowdfunding Campaign: Support Freefilmers!

The project To Watch the War: The Moving Image Amidst the Invasion of Ukraine (2014–2023) and the project To Watch the War, In Solidarity are accompanied by a crowdfunding campaign in support of Freefilmers—some of its members are artists and activist filmmakers included in the exhibition and public program.

Panel Discussion

30 September 2023, 16.30-18.30

To the Other Side of the Concrete Wall

A book launch and panel discussion reflecting on the Jina Uprising, one year after its beginning.

Saturday, 30 September, 2023, 16:30–18:30 hrs at BAK, basis actuele kunst, Utrecht Organized by Jina Collective, a Netherlands-based feminist, leftist, anti-capitalist, anti-sexist, and pro-LQBTQIA+ action group that emerged from the Jina Uprising. This event launches a book of translated essays, co-published with BAK, which include some of the first English translations of texts by journalists […]

Public Program

09 September–29 October 2023

To Watch the War: The Moving Image Amidst the Invasion of Ukraine (2014–2023)/Public Program

To Watch the War: The Moving Image Amidst the Invasion of Ukraine (2014–2023) involves a hybrid off- and online sequence of conversations and screenings around discursive and artistic interventions that reimagine the social implications of watching the war through ways that disrupt, subvert, resist the media’s incessant spectacularization of war.