BAK programming combines the artistic, experiential, theoretical, and political so as to imagine and enact transformative ways, with and through art, of being together otherwise. BAK’s current research trajectory Propositions for Non-Fascist Living (2017–2020) is prompted by the dramatic resurfacing and normalization of fascisms, historical and contemporary. BAK organizes exhibitions, lectures, publications, workshops, and composite performative conferences with exhibitionary, discursive, and performative elements.
The premises of BAK, basis voor actuele kunst are currently not accessible due to renovations. For information about intermittent public programs and off-site projects, please see below.
Education Program
11 March–15 April 2019
The basic course of the BAK School for Art and Politics is organized from 11 March until 15 April 2019. In six weekly sessions, the participants learn about how contemporary art relates to the political in an accessible way. The course is taught by Maria Hlavajova, BAK’s general and artistic director.
Summer School
22-26 July 2019
BAK Summer School: Art as Politics brings together those involved in arts, academia, and social action to collectively think through, learn about, and imagine critical, politically-informed artistic practices that grasp and influence our dramatically changing times. Deadline for applications: 1 May 2019.
Lecture
9 December 2006
Lectures by Sven Lütticken, Eva Meyer & Eran Schaerf and artworks by Claire Harvey and Ivana Müller.
Lecture
23 September 2014
Lecture by Maria Hlavajova at the symposium The Museum as a Workshop. The lecture is a part of a series of public and internal exchanges between the two key Utrecht-based art institutions, BAK and Centraal Museum, who, in the course of 2014–2016, explore various collaborative possibilities and contribute to rethinking the mission of the art institution in today’s rapidly changing global condition.
Educational platform
29 November–08 December 2013
Educational platform realized with the collective of refugees We Are Here. The participants deliberate on an alternative model for cohabitation between the refugees and artists as a proposal for an instance of “co-citizenship.”
Performance
4-5 November 2017
On Saturday 4 November and Sunday 5 November, Frascati hosts performances of the play Faust 3, written by Bread and Puppet Theater founder Peter Schumann, and produced and performed by Bread and Puppet Theater and local artists with migrant backgrounds. The event is a Frascati Session at Frascati and part of BAK’s long-term research project Propositions for Non-Fascist Living.
Lecture
10 March 2015
In the lecture series Curating… Lectures from the exhibition maker’s practice, organized by the Museum for Contemporary Art, Basel and the Academy of Art and Design, Basel, BAK artistic director Maria Hlavajova discusses Art in the Face of Class Recompositions.
Education Program, Exhibition
24 June–09 July 2017
From 24 June to 9 July 2017, BAK hosts the MaHKU graduation exhibition ABiotic Factors. Departing from nature-culture, this year’s MaHKU graduation project takes the urban environment as a site of mutual interactions between both living and non-living agents.
Lecture
23 November 2007
Lecture by Tariq Ramadan.
Discursive
15 November 2018, 19.30-21.30
Third gathering of Propositions #7: Evidentiary Methods—the public program in the context of the exhibition Forensic Justice and part of the BAK series Propositions for Non-Fascist Living (2017–2020).
Education Program
17-19 October 2014
Educational platform realized with the National Liberation Movement of Azawad (MNLA). This fourth session of New World Academy centers on the role of art in representing new, unacknowledged “stateless states.”
Education Program
9 September 2014, 19.00
Inauguration of New World Embassy: Azawad, which explores the intersection of art, theory, and activism through the proposition of temporarily instituting an operational Azawadian embassy as an extraterritorial space of representation, negotiation, and international exchange.
Education Program
5 December, 20.00–6 December, 22.00 2013
Presentation on a future cooperation of 200 refugees and 200 artists in Amsterdam.
Lecture
28-29 May 2015
Second gathering in the Posthuman Glossary series. What could be the implications of the acceptance of a nature-culture continuum, and how could we theoretically and artistically re-define the relationship between human and non-human factors and agents?
Lecture
8 November 2007
Lecture by Paul Schnabel.
Lecture
26 November 2005
Lectures by and discussion with Henk Oosterling, Kendell Geers, and Pavel Büchler.
Workshop
17 May 2018, 14.00-16.30
As part of the weeklong program Moving Together: Activism, Art and Education – A Week with Angela Davis, 2017/2018 BAK Fellows Isshaq Al-Barbary and Diego Segatto (Campus in Camps) lead a workshop at BAK.
Lecture, Conversation
29 May 2007
RIR-presentation by artist Sopawan Boonnimitra in conversation with art theorist Sarat Maharaj.
Exhibition
18 October 2018–27 January 2019
Forensic Justice is an exhibition and a series of public programs with Forensic Architecture, a London-based independent and interdisciplinary research agency comprised of, among others, artists, scientists, lawyers, filmmakers, and architects.
BAK Summer School 2017
17-21 July 2017
The BAK Summer School: Art in a Time of Interregnum brings together artists, curators, art theorists, and academics to collectively think through, learn about, and imagine critical, politically-informed artistic practices that work to grasp and influence our dramatically changing times.
Congress
19-20 April 2012
The 3rd FORMER WEST Research Congress, Part One: Beyond What Was Contemporary Art is developed by BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht and co-curated by Marion von Osten, FORMER WEST research advisor and Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.
