UPDATE 13 JANUARY 2021: the BAK building is temporarily closed, due to the prolonged Covid-19 lockdown. In the meantime, BAK offers an online program, including the digital forum Prospections.
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.
Exhibition and public program
16 October 2020–31 January 2021
Currently (16 October 2020–31 January 2021) on view at BAK, basis voor actuele kunst: Tony Cokes: To Live as Equals, an exhibition and public program with and around the work of multimedia artist Tony Cokes.
Collaboration and Open call
03 December 2020–30 January 2021
A collaborative open call by Stichting Nederland Wordt Beter, The Black Archives/New Urban Collective, Black Queer & Trans Resistance NL, Kick Out Zwarte Piet (KOZP) and BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, for artists and writers to manifest the Manifesting Systemic Change Through Creative Waves manifesto.
Congress
27-30 January 2021
EARN/Smart Culture Conference organized in collaboration with HKU University of the Arts Utrecht, NWO (Dutch Research Council), and BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht.
13 March, 19.30–14 March, 22.00 2020
[WILL NOT TAKE PLACE | Update 12/3: unfortunately these EFAP presentations will not take place.]
Come to BAK on Friday 13 and Saturday 14 March for two public programs as part of the European Forum for Advanced Practices (EFAP), a self-organized, international gathering of practitioners, scholars, and organizers from transdisciplinary realms of art and education. With, on the Friday, a conversation between Paul Goodwin, Ima-Abasi Okon, and Abbas Zahedi; and on the Saturday a screening and a lecture by Jihan El-Tahri. With introductions by Irit Rogoff, Florian Schneider, and Maria Hlavajova.
1-30 November 2018
For the month of November 2018, Museumkaart holders can bring a guest without a Museumkaart free of charge to Forensic Justice.
Training & Public Program
16 November 2019, 13.30-22.00
This fourth day of the week of Propositions #9 Deserting from the Culture Wars consists of a training with Terra Critica, and a public program including a panel Collaborations, Coalitions, In- and Exclusions with Jonas Staal, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, and Bini Adamczak, moderated by Sven Lütticken.
Book Launch, Conversation
31 May 2017, 18.30
On Wednesday 31 May 2017 is the London launch of Former West: Art and the Contemporary After 1989. Former West: Art and the Contemporary After 1989 has been published in the context of the curatorial and artistic research experiment FORMER WEST (2008–2016), developed by BAK and realized through manifold partnerships with artists, theorists, activists, as well as art and educational institutions transnationally.
