Fellowship

BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht welcomes proposals from Netherlands-based practitioners for the 2023/2024 BAK Fellowship for Situated Practice. Requested are proposals located at the intersections of art, theory, and social action that enquire into the renewed possibilities of alignment and nonalignment, understood as imagination and practice of solidarity that connects beyond the traditional formations of identity, nation-state, and ideology. The deadline for the reception of the applications is 4 June 2023, 24:00 hrs CEST.  

Since 2017, BAK has been conducting a post-academic fellowship program focused on facilitating research that reframes and rethinks conditions of the contemporary through theoretically informed and sociopolitically driven art and inquiry. The program offers positions to practitioners working at the intersections of art, theory, and social action, providing them with opportunity and resources to develop their practice, research, and talent.   

In 2021 the program developed into the BAK Fellowship for Situated Practice (BFSP) to foreground situatedness of both research and practice—artistic, intellectual, political, as well as institutional—as a guiding conceptual and operative principle. In collaboration with cultural institutions outside of the Netherlands—that share with BAK a commitment to cultivate a sustainable critical study culture around present urgencies and to support the development of practices and debates in the context where they are grounded—the program organizes into a federated constellation of research cells.   

The 2023/2024 edition of the BFSP is envisioned as a collaboration between BAK in Utrecht and the Istanbul Biennial Production and Research Program (ÇAP) at the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV) in Istanbul. The upcoming edition opens 10 to 16 positions (5 to 8 positions in each cell, the total number depending on the cell composition and based on the affinities within proposed research trajectories) for Fellows to be distributed amongst the two cells—BAK and ÇAP—for the duration of 8 months between October 2023 and June 2024.   

A Satellite Fellowship program (by invitation and geared toward artists’ writing practices) as well as a program of Young Fellows take place in parallel.    

Each cell is coordinated by a convener who situates the conceptual lines and program structure within their context, accompanies the development of the Fellows’ research, facilitates the discussions and organization of their respective cells, and liaises with the other cells. The BAK cell in Utrecht is convened by Irene Calabuch Mirón, and the ÇAP cell in Istanbul is convened by Zeyno Pekünlü. 

Click here for further information and to apply