Usufructuaries of earth
Chapter three: convention
Design: Sean van den Steenhoven
Usufructuaries of earth
Chapter three, convention
BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht
24–25 May 2024
The convention in the context of the project Usufructuaries of earth is a two-day gathering at BAK that summons different practices of non-expropriative userships in relation to land, housing, social reproduction, agriculture, and knowledge. The convention at BAK follows the Convention of Women Farmers and Ecological Feminists that took place in the context of the Warsaw Biennial (June 2019). Through semi-public workshops and a public program of conversations, it gathers together artists, farmers, women’s and indigenous rights activists, ecologists, legal scholars, political economists, geographers, and community organizers—to share, narrate, and learn tools, concepts, methods, and imaginaries that center regeneration over ecological destruction, and collective usership over individuated profit. In bringing together diverse situated practices, reflections, and struggles, the convention aims to forge transversal solidarity that generates interventions into the ideology of private property—the seeming ideological foundation of global financial power.
Confirmed contributors include: Joud Al-Tamimi (artist and curator, Berlin), Samanta Arango Orozco (Indigenous and peasant community activist, Tolima), Marwa Arsanios (researcher, educator, and artist, Berlin and Beirut), Asia Bazdyrieva (art historian, Berlin), Brenna Bhandar (critical legal theorist and scholar, Vancouver and London), Aya Bseiso (architect and curator, Amman), Lucí Cavallero (feminist activist and researcher, Buenos Aires), Iliada Charalambous (artist, Rotterdam), Arella Collazos (educator and food sovereignty activist, Cauca, Colombia), Luigi Coppola (artist, Brussels and Lecce), Philippa Driest (artist, Rotterdam), Denise Ferreira da Silva (artist and critical theorist, Vancouver), Ola Hassanain (artist, Amsterdam), Veronica Gago (activist and theorist, Buenos Aires), Ruth Wilson Gilmore (abolitionist scholar and activist, Lisbon and New York), Maria Hlavajova (BAK general director, Amsterdam/Utrecht), Lama El Khatib (writer and cultural worker, Berlin), Grace Lostia (comrade b.ASIC a.CTIVIST k.ITCHEN and co-convenor Community Portal, Utrecht), Wietske Maas (BAK curator of research and publications, Amsterdam/Berlin), MADEYOULOOK (artist collaborative, Johannesburg), Massimiliano Mollona (filmmaker, anthropologist, and researcher, Bologna), Yvonne Phyllis (agrarian, land, and labor researcher, organizer, and educator, Johannesburg), Sahar Qawsami (architect and co-founder Sakiya, Ramallah), Grupo Semillas (environmental nongovernmental organization, Bogotá and Tolima), Philip Rizk (writer and filmmaker, Berlin), and Shela Sheikh (researcher and educator, Paris).
The structure follows semi-open working sessions for the participants as well as a public program of conversations and performance available through registration (registration is made available soon).
For an overview of the project click here.
Chapter one: exhibition.
Chapter two: reading groups and online publication.
