Instituting Otherwise

In 2016–2017, BAK dedicates a series of discursive, educational, and exhibitionary projects to the notion of the institution and how to, amidst contemporary challenges, “institute otherwise.” Within the long-term trajectory Future Vocabularies (2014–2017), the series Instituting Otherwise probes ways of imagining—as well as embodying and inhabiting—alternative institutional practices in myriad arenas: from the state, law, and democracy to infrastructures of education, health, care, intimacy, and art, to discursive formations and imaginary spaces.

Aware that institutions simultaneously support and oppress, the project engages the seeming paradox of a practice that both questions and defends (public) institutions. What are ways of instituting that are informed by, and shaped through, the practice of institutional critique? How can these help set infrastructures that engage institutions but escape “institutionalization”? How to (re)think and (re)claim public spaces, public homes, public schools, public hospitals, public libraries, and public art institutions as interlocutors between care and power?

Exhibitions

30.01.–01.05.2016
Unstated (or, Living Without Approval)

24.09.–20.11.2016
Englishes

02.12.2016–05.02.2017
Learning Laboratories

11.03.–21.05.2017
To Seminar

Public program

Learning place
08.09.2015–28.04.2016
Learning Place: Refugee Crisis, or How to Change Things with Art

Congress
29.–31.01.2016
New World Summit: Stateless Democracy

Symposium
24.06.2017 10.30 hrs
Once We Were Artists