Fellows

Whitney Stark

Announcing the Post-Academic BAK 2020 Fellows

Above: BAK 2019/2020 Fellows Mijke van der Drift and Joy Mariama Smith convene a semi-public program as part of their research,
12 February 2020, BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, photo: Tom Janssen


BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht is proud to announce our BAK 2020 Fellows. The following fifteen outstanding practitioners in arts, theory, and social action from the Netherlands and abroad have been invited for their advanced artistic, organizing, and other expressive practices, interdisciplinary excellence, critical insight, and collaborative strategies: Yasmin Ahmed (organizer and facilitator; Amsterdam), Selçuk Balamir (postcapitalist designer, commoning researcher, and climate justice organizer; Amsterdam), Colored Qollective (organizers and platform; Utrecht), Triwish Hanoeman (rapper and producer; Utrecht), Stefano Harney (educator and writer; Brasília), Adrian Heathfield (curator and writer; London); Aylin Kuryel (academic and documentary maker; Amsterdam and Istanbul), Grace Lostia (food and community activist; Utrecht), Mitchy Mallorca Saturay (theater artist and writer; Utrecht), Massimiliano Mollona (writer, filmmaker, and anthropologist; London), Louis Moreno (urbanist and theorist; London), Mutual Support Platform (artists, organizers and platform, Utrecht), Shay Raviv (social designer, researcher, and project initiator; Utrecht and Amsterdam), Irit Rogoff (writer, teacher, curator, and organizer; London), and Nora Sternfeld (educator and curator; Bergen).

The BAK 2020 Fellowship program is a three-month program, taking place in autumn 2020, organized in two parallel strands. Within the first strand, nine Fellowships are awarded to practitioners engaged with local communities and struggles for developing a focus on long lasting, mutual support with and through BAK as a public art institution. Former BAK Fellow and artist Jeanne van Heeswijk joins this strand as BAK Associate to conceptually guide the research and work on forms of proximity and building connections. Within the second strand, six Fellowships are awarded to researchers within the network freethought for developing their research on “spectral infrastructures.”

Since 2017, BAK conducts a post-academic Fellowship Program with, at its center, research on reframing and rethinking conditions of the contemporary through politically driven art-making and inquiry. The Fellowship Program offers research positions to Netherlands- and internationally-based practitioners at the intersection of art, theory, and social action. With each iteration of the Fellowship, BAK Associates help guide the foci of the collaborative research and study practices. BAK Fellows’ research speak to collective processes, artistic research, infrastructural transformation, and have specific affinity to BAK’s current trajectory Propositions for Non-Fascist Living (2017–ongoing), which engages aesthetico-political experimentation with and around the urgencies of the present. The Fellowship Program develops talent and critical practice, and fosters artistic and theoretical inquiry in concert with the public projects of BAK, advancing the notion of art as a public sphere and a political space.

Exploring the possibilities of art as a public good and a site of public pedagogies, the 2020 Fellowship experiments with and develops formats, practices, collaborative processes, social imagination, theory, and anticipatory learning methods so as to shape the program in the forthcoming funding period 2021–2024 with BAK. A driving force of this edition is to strengthen the invited Fellows’ research, practice, ability to sustainably work for causes and struggles they are politically and personally aligned with, as well as to nourish connection and collaboration, and further build their long term involvement with BAK.

BAK Fellowships are low-residential. BAK Fellows regularly gather at BAK and other physical and virtual spaces for Fellows Intensives with visiting artists, scholars, and other cultural practitioners, as well as public programming, visits, and collaborations with various organizations in the Netherlands and beyond. Thanks to collaborations with HKU University of the Arts, in particular, the Fellows broaden their research practices through exchanges with students and other cultural practitioners in their respective fields.

Curator of the BAK 2020 Fellowship Program is Whitney Stark.

more from Whitney Stark

  • First Strand of the Fellows Have a Hybrid Intensive

    The first strand of the BAK 2020 Fellows meet in a hybrid on/offline second Intensive. The Fellows work on timelines that explore political and personal histories, ways of working together, imaginings and practices for shared leadership, collaboration, and developing strategies and tactics for building lasting, genuine relations with BAK as a public institution and a […]

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  • First Fellows Intensive of the BAK 2020 Fellowship Program

    In September the Netherlands-based stream of the BAK 2020 Fellows gather at BAK, with social distance, to begin their work together. Through mapping exercises, establishing collective protocols (or something close to it), spending time with the BAK team, and sharing well-ventilated space, a sense of what is to come in the Fellowship has emerged. This […]

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  • Propositions #12: Waves Breaking Walls, Futures in Movement

    BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, proudly invites you to Propositions #12: Waves Breaking Walls, Futures in Movement, a culmination of the BAK 2019/2020 Fellowship Program. In the course of the past year, the Fellows individually and collectively developed their research engaging with the pressing issues of the contemporary in concert with BAK’s research focus, Propositions for Non-Fascist […]

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  • Gathering in these Times: Extension, Intensives, Culmination in September

    Due to the many effects of the pandemic, the Fellowship Program has shifted significantly. With fatigue, urgencies, the traps of digitalization, travel restrictions, expanding global inequalities, calls for actions, the massive changes generally and looming dangers, the Fellowship Program cannot continue in the form it once was. In addition to meeting online and searching for […]

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  • Fellows Intensive Joins Propositions #9: Deserting from the Culture Wars

    The BAK 2019/2020 Fellows gathered in Utrecht for the second time in November. Along with mapping ideas and sharing research, they joining programming and trainings for BAK’s Propositions #9: Deserting from the Culture Wars, co-convened with writer and curator Sven Lütticken as a temporary spin-off from Trainings for the Not-Yet and the ninth iteration of BAK’s long-term […]

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  • BAK 2019/2020 Fellows Gather for the First Fellows Intensive!

    The BAK 2019/2020 Fellows gathered at BAK in Utrecht for their first of seven Fellows Intensives together. Throughout the week, the Fellows presented their work, motivations, and research; learned about BAK, Utrecht, and each other; ate meals together; planned activities; found unlikely and motivating places of connection; imagined possibilities; shared references, pieces, and publications; met […]

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  • Announcing the Post-Academic BAK 2019/2020 Fellows

    BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht is proud to announce its BAK 2019/2020 Fellows, ten outstanding practitioners in the arts, theory, and social action from the Netherlands and abroad. These fellows have been selected for their advanced artistic and other expressive practices, interdisciplinary excellence, critical insight, and collaborative strategies from approximately 200 applicants. The BAK […]

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  • Ending the Post-Academic BAK 2018/2019 Fellowship

    In June 2019, the post-academic BAK 2018/2019 Fellowship comes to a close. After ten months of intensive thinking, imagining, enacting, practicing, troubling, discussing, laughing, sometimes even crying, the Fellows continue on their work in differing forms. Throughout our time together, the Fellows and their research have influenced and transformed each other’s as well as BAK. […]

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