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Retrieved title: Casco Art Institute, 50 item(s)

de Appel: Housewarming – Activations for a new location

Partner institution de Appel in Amsterdam recently relocated from creative grounds Lely in Nieuw-West to Tempel in Diamantbuurt due to renovation and gentrification plans in Nieuw-West. de Appel’s forthcoming emphasis centers on housing, grassroot (art) economy, and governance, with a focus on collectivization and land struggle. Land plays a critical role in confronting environmental crises, land grabbing, and affordable housing, especially within the framework of late capitalism that transforms land into a commodity. Across the globe, movements fight for free and fair access to land and its resources. Embracing like-minded practices to ours, de Appel invites artists whose work concerns this struggle and experiment with shared ownership and commons.

In the coming weeks, starting for the public on 7 March, their Housewarming program spanning the month will feature performances, screenings, and conversations, with artworks and traces remaining in the exhibition space. Artists and speakers include Alina Lupu, Francisca Khamis Giacoman, Jumana Emil Abboud, Marina Christodoulidou, and many others. Visit their website for the full schedule.

Open call: Reclaiming Our Commons – A Proposal for Cultural Collaboration Across the Arab Region

Culture Resource, in collaboration with partner organizations, including Ettijahat – Independent Culture, Aflamuna, and L’art Rue, is launching an open call aimed to support commons-oriented artistic and cultural projects and initiatives from the Arab region and diaspora. Grants ranging from €8,000 to €30,000 will be provided to fund approximately 12 projects, which will be implemented and showcased in various cities across the Arab region in 2024 and 2025. Subsequently, specific projects will be selected to participate in central events in Beirut and Ramallah, the details of which will be determined later. The deadline is 12 April. Visit their website for more information.

Open call: MA program Lumbung Practice at Sandberg Instituut

A partnership between Sandberg Instituut, de Appel (Curatorial Programme), Gudskul (Collective Study Program), and tutors from the lumbung ecosystem.

We want to amplify the open call for the new temporary Sandberg MA program Lumbung Practice. It is developed and hosted by Lara Khaldi and Gertrude Flentge (both members of artistic team documenta 15), in close collaboration with Gudskul and lumbung artists and collectives. Most tutors will come from the lumbung ecosystem, including Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons.

The master program will build on the gained knowledge and experimentations in lumbung-documenta 15. Participating collectives will practice and learn about the concept and practice of lumbung, self-organization, and sociopolitical artistic and curatorial practices, as well as producing alternative art institutions and economies for the future. Together, they will experiment with a commons-based arts discourse and economy, connecting and adding to the cosmology of lumbungs and existing working groups (interlocal, Indonesia, Kassel, and others).

It is open to artistic, curatorial, and interdisciplinary collectives and can be applied to with a minimum of two members. The deadline for applications is 1 April 2024.

Lecture at KASK School of Arts, Ghent

Our artistic director, Aline Hernández, will present a lecture in the Curatorial Lectures series, jointly organized by the postgraduate program in Curatorial Studies at KASK School of Arts Ghent and S.M.A.K. in Ghent. The series explores communal living through artistic practice under the theme ‘Working with Communities’, focusing on the role of curating in community formation and fostering trust in relationships.

Open call: Onassis AiR residencies and fellowships

Onassis AiR currently has an open call for its 2024–25 residencies and fellowships spanning artistic research, dramaturgy, and technological development. Open to artists, curators, and practitioners from any discipline, the program encourages cross-disciplinary exchange, addressing urgent themes in dialogue with local and global contexts. Held in Athens, Greece, from September 2024 to July 2025, the deadline for applications is 4 March 2024.

Hawai‘i Triennial 2025

A moment to celebrate! Hawai‘i Triennial 2025 has now been fully announced, for which our dear former director and cooperative team member Binna Choi is one of the three curators. Together with Wassan Al-Khudhairi and Noelle M.K.Y. Kahanu, they form the first non-hierarchical trio of curators for the Triennial composed of women of color. Read the full curatorial statement on the website linked above.

Organized by Hawai‘i Contemporary, the Hawai‘i Triennial 2025 (HT25) is a multi-site exhibition of contemporary art from Hawai‘i, the Pacific, and beyond. The forthcoming exhibition, titled ALOHA NŌ, highlights aloha as more than a ubiquitous Hawaiian greeting, but a profound philosophy and way of life, exploring its connection to the land, environment, and community. ALOHA NŌ aims to reclaim aloha from colonial-capitalist historicity and present it as a transformative power enacted through contemporary art. By collapsing two seemingly opposite meanings—”no” in English with “nō,” an intensifier, in ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian language)—the exhibition underscores aloha’s depth and collective enactment.

Read-in: Haunted Bookshelves_8M edition

Happening this Saturday, 18 February, 15:00–17:00 at Moira Exporiment; online participation is possible as well, email info@read-in.info for the Zoom link.

Organized with artist Dung Nguyen, this Read-in continues its Haunted Bookshelves practice, a choreography for memorizing, through assessing the absence or (re)contexualization of what is written. The session will be in light of the upcoming International Women’s Day or International Women Workers Day. This memorial day began because feminists wanted to honor the women who went on strike, the women who fought for suffrage and the end of war. IWD exists because we remember women, both cis- and trans, who started revolutions. It is a day to rise, resist, revolt, unite and disrupt business as usual, to celebrate and stand in solidarity with women and girls all over the world. As we are getting ready to heed the many calls to action and take the streets on 8 March, the event asks what we should memorize to prepare for this day.

Podcast: Creative Resistance in Agri(culture)

In this episode of The Late Mode Podcast, host Giulia meets with Travelling Farm Museum of Forgotten Skills’s Merel Zwarts to discuss how creative practices can be applied to rethink our relationship with food, agriculture, and history. Following the thread of resistance, Merel takes us on a journey of Leidsche Rijn, sharing stories about challenges, adaptability, and the future of a sustainable urban-rural relationship.

GROND crowdfunding campaign

GROND, a cultural space and community center in Amsterdam East, seeks €15,000 through a crowdfunding campaign to prepare its new facilities. Emphasizing collectivity, sustainability, and creativity, GROND aims to combat alienation by experimenting with and assembling new recipes for life and work with residents and users – including We Sell Reality – as well as with the public. You can help support their mission by donating to their crowdfunding campaign, here.

Reflecting & transforming: Casco on 2023

This year marked significant changes for Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons.

Arts Collaboratory became more embedded in the organization through the ecosystemic shift we underwent. As a result of this shift, in September 2023, we welcomed Aline Hernández, a member of Arts Collaboratory through Mexico-base cooperative Cráter Invertido, and Marianna Takou, long-time worker of Casco Art Institute, in their new roles of Artistic Director and Executive Director, respectively, reshaping the leadership over the daily maintenance of Casco’s team. A newly formed cooperative team composed of ecosystem members also joined us, with whom we remain grateful for their trust and generous support during the process. A newly formed cooperative team composed of ecosystem members also joined us, with whom we remain grateful for their trust and generous support during the process. This formation includes our former director Binna Choi, who paved the way for us with her energy and dedication during her fifteen-years lead of Casco.

This shift is part of a larger constellation of similar ecosystem-driven transformations catalyzed through membership to Arts Collaboratory. As former Casco curator Jason Waite notes in a recently published article in ArtReview, we have seen how “the effects of the experience in Arts Collaboratory reach beyond its member institutions” over the last years. Ashkal Alwan’s director Christine Tohmé, for example, conceived of a decentralized Sharjah Biennial 13 that included Dakar, Ramallah, and Beirut, as well as several AC members, gesturing towards the translocal collaboration practice that lies at the heart of the network. In a similar vein, ruangrupa was appointed as curator of the 15th edition of documenta, which included the participation of several Arts Collaboratory organizations such as Centre D’Art Waza and Más Arte Más Acción and even Arts Collaboratory itself as an entity, bringing along other members including Cráter Invertido, Lugar a Dudas, and KUNCI Study Forum & Collective. For their part, curator Koyo Kouoh, who was the director of Raw Material Company, became the founding director of Zeitz MOCAA, the first museum of contemporary art in Southern Africa, and, Marie Hélène Pereira, who followed her as director of Raw, is now senior curator of performance practice at HKW.

More recently, our membership to Arts Collaboratory also sparked a series of other translocal collaborations now in the context of the Netherlands, with Casco co-hosting Arts Collaboratory Annual Assembly (13–23 November) together with fellow member DOEN Foundation. For the occasion, we were joined by lumbung and L’Internationale members, as well as by MAFA HKU in Utrecht, Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, and de Appel, Framer Framed, and Rijksakademie in Amsterdam.

The Assembly was pivotal to rethinking Casco as deeply interwoven and interlinked with the network, and reconsidering our role and responsibility as one of the few members in the global north. Deeply saddened by the absence of our Arts Collaboratory members RIWAQ and Al Ma’mal due to the ongoing escalation of violence in Gaza and the West Bank, it was also an urgent reminder of what art can offer for walking towards radical alternative presents and how we can best embody our ethical practices of solidarity as an arts organization. We remain grateful for everyone who has been part of these processes of dreaming, plotting, and organizing with us.

We look forward to being in touch with you in the new year and continuing to practice arts together!

In hope,
Aline, Erik, Jip, Leana, Luke, and Marianna

Among a large array of public activities this year, Casco Art Institute featured two notable exhibitions. Nina bell F. House Museum exhibition, launched in May, reflected on the importance of archives for feminist institutional change. First initiated at Singapore Biennale 2022, it unfolded with various events throughout the year, highlighting our ecosystem and artists and scholars such as Annette Krauss, Christian Nyampeta, and Donghwan Kam amongst others. Read about it on the Metropolis M website. In Autumn, we presented the exhibition If we remain silent, by artist Ana Bravo Pérez and curator Joram Kraaijeveld. It featured tactile and political artworks resulting from a long-term project by the artist researching the possibility of developing a feminist, decolonial anti-monument to commemorate women social leaders on the frontlines of the climate crisis in Abya Yala. Read about it as well on the Metropolis M website.

AC Assembly: looking back on day 7–9

For the seventh day of Arts Collaboratory Assembly, we returned to Amsterdam, starting from Midwest, and moving further west to Voedselpark Amsterdam. During the visits, the collective discussions with Stichting DOEN critically examined the relationship dynamics between art organizations and funders, reflecting on the funding paradigm shift we have mutually committed as members of AC. Afterwards, while witnessing a community-ran local sustainability initiative fighting the local enclosures of the once common lands destined to become box-like distribution warehouses catering to the urban pressure with our own eyes, we had a necessary breath of fresh air!

Returning to Casco the day after, the penultimate AC School session focused on refining its core activities, followed by a walk in Utrecht led by Nancy Jouwe on the cities’ colonial history with a focus on the recent route CAPE X exhibition curated by the Black Archives. The session continued on the following (and final) day of the Assembly; the assembly group returned to Amsterdam after living in Utrecht for eight days to conclude with the last session at Framer Framed. We reflected on all the ideas and strategies harvested during the collective sessions and how we would take this with us in the coming years. Thus, the theme of harvesting and futurecasting came full circle.

The conclusive evening marked a festive farewell, where we carried forward the principles of collectivity, solidarity, care, resistance, and radical imagination. We were warmly welcomed to Rijksakademie where we had the opportunity to reflect on the beginnings of AC, through a memory throwback of RAIN Network by Gertrude Flentge, Hama Goro from Centre Solei d’Afrique, Elke Uitentuis and Emily Pethick. We finalized with a beautiful dinner hosted by We Sell Reality, who shared classic injera with various collard and stewed vegetables with us. With our tummies full and revolting spirits alike, we shared warm conversations with Rijksakademie residents and the many friends who joined us.

Under Production/Construction

On 21 December, 16:00–20:00, and 22 December, 11:00–14:00, HKU MAFA organizes a collective preview exhibition, where year 2 students showcase their art practices and processes in light of the upcoming graduation show. Held at HKU Loods, the participating students are Athina Koutsiou, Cornalijn Overweg-Ramaker, Nguyen Ngoc Tu Dung, Fatemeh Asiri, Habiba Afifi, Hohn Guan, Naomi de Bruin, Natsumi Sakai, Oyku Ozogul, Pan Vanitcharoenthum, Parel Strik, Sean Ali Wang, and Savvas Gerolemidis.

Open call Gemene Grond

Gemene Grond is looking for a co-producer to collaborate closely on commons-oriented art projects with Merve Bedir, engaging with various stakeholders, including inhabitants, collectives, institutions, Utrecht Municipality, and developers in the Merwede area.

Travelling Farm Museum article in Stedelijk Studies

Stedelijk Studies published a journal article on Travelling Farm Museum of Forgotten Skills. Colin Sterling, an expert in linking museum studies and climate issues, discusses how the museum challenges traditional museum ideas and stands out for its role in the Anthropocene, emphasizing collaborative learning processes and connecting art with the rural.

Living Stipends for Palestine

Mophradat launched a program called Living Stipends for Palestine to provide six-month grants (seeking $3,000 for each grant) to Palestinian professional artists directly affected by the current crisis. The need is immense and the scale of the support they are able to provide is contingent on raising more funds. We call upon our network to consider donating to the initiative.

AC Assembly: looking back on day 4–6

After spending the first days in Amsterdam and Eindhoven, the programme of the following days shifted to Utrecht. The fourth day began with intimate conversations, continuing with reconnection sessions with more presentations by Arts Collaboratory members and discussions around the purpose of AC to reflect on why we come together, how we work together, and what we stand for. In the early evening, we moved to de Appel, Amsterdam, for an enriching collective reading of the book Abolitionist Geography: Essays towards Liberation with activist and scholar Ruth Wilson Gilmore, organized as part of de Appel’s curatorial fellows’ public offering.


The rest of the weekend was spent at Casco with an entire program dedicated to internal sessions around purpose-setting and action planning for the future of AC, continued by a public event elaborating on Casco Art Institute’s recent ecosystemic shift and processes of un/learning and institutional transformation. Several AC members presented their organizations’ practices and challenges throughout the day, followed by worthwhile exchanges on art’s cohesive and imaginative function in our work. The weekend closed with the public session Out Of The Classroom! Co-organized with MAFA HKU and Framer Framed, a diversity of ecosystem members–from art students and cultural workers to educators– joined us to map and share about alternative pedagogies and radical art education practices.

The sessions also included wonderful food provided by Selarasa in Jakarta, Indonesia, and the Travelling Farm Museum of Forgotten Skills in Utrecht, The Netherlands, as part of the Food & Climate Justice project that has been happening since 2020. They prepared a 500-year-old Dutch stew recipe and Indonesian dishes. During the two-day program, a workstation was set up in the space. AC members, friends, and family creatively experimented by making linocut prints.

AC Assembly: looking back on day 1–3

In the first three days of the Arts Collaboratory Assembly, 24 arts organizations from Africa, Asia, Latin America, The Middle East and Europe, reunited after a hiatus during the last few years. Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons and Stichting DOEN had the honor to host the Assembly together in the Netherlands.

Generously hosted by Framed Framed (FF), the first evening was dedicated to landing and catching up with each other through sharing food. The assembly participants were welcomed by Aline Hernández and Marianna Takou from Casco team and by Josien Pieterse and Emily Lee from FF whom spoke about the various ways they collaborated with Arts Collaboratory members over the past decade. As the assembly took place at a moment when our Palestinian members were (and still are) under military attack by the Israeli military, it served as a painful reminder that some of us could not be present. In solidarity, Aline read a statement from our fellow members addressing those present.

The next day, the assembly bus headed to de Appel, one of the main locations of our assembly process, as AC was one of the partners de Appel’s curatorial fellows’ final program Hope is a discipline. The first internal working session occurred, starting with a tea ceremony by members of Centre du Soleil from Mali, followed by reflections and discussions on transnational networks of solidarity from Mali to Palestine. For the second half, we welcomed Yazan Khalili for a Learning Palestine Group session followed by a hybrid conversation with AC members from Palestine, during which they shared how their organizations operate and their programs under the prism of the colonial occupation. 

On the second day, we traveled to Eindhoven. We landed at the Van Abbemuseum, starting with an inquiry into its exhibited works in the permanent collection presentation Delinking and Relinking and the role a museum plays in de-modernizing art, guided by director Charles Esche. Following this, a long and worthwhile afternoon of discussions occurred between Arts Collaboratory, Lumbung and L’Internationale. 

Here, we delved into the intricacies and challenges of critical alternative networking, collaboration, and cooperative efforts within the arts. It was symbolically held in the Museum as Parliament Room, a replica artwork of where the stateless democracy of the Rojava Revolution in Northern-Syria is conducted.

The emphasis on the third day at de Appel shifted towards building connections and embodying the lumbung ethos—an ethos characterized by communal sharing of resources through friendship and joy. The assembly participants were joined by fellow lumbung members based in the Netherlands. They closed with an evening program, a(n) (af) fair, where lumbung kios and AC members merged their publications, prints and merchandise to create an economy for further exchanges and collaborations.

Names of Water by Donghwan Kam

A beautiful example where Nina bell F. lives on: Donghwan Kam’s project Names of Water crystallized into a vinyl album. Read the artist text provided by the artist and publishing label Het Generiek below:

DK (Donghwan Kam) has been collecting names of water since 2019. He first started collecting water names because of his experience of not knowing which bottled water to buy when visiting different supermarkets. The flavors of different names of water were subtly different, and at the same time not so much different. Ansuya Blom, DK’s advisor during his time at Rijksakademie, encouraged and supported him in exploring these sensory experiences of the Same and Different. In 2022, during his residency at Ujazdowski Castle Center for Contemporary Art in Warsaw, he gave the names of water to Seokyung Kim and asked her to visualize them. She created a poster with the names of the water, using the monochrome offset printing method at Drukkerij Raddraaier SSP in Amsterdam.

DK was subsequently invited to participate in our Nina bell F. House Museum at the 2022 Singapore Biennale, Natasha, co-curated by Binna Choi, director of Casco Art Institute. For the exhibition, DK handed the names of the water to Lang Lee and asked her to sing the fragmented names of the water as if they were flowing together. Lang Lee recorded the names of the waters in chanting and chirping, then layered the different tracks together into a single track to create an 11-minute, 47-second sound piece. The poster and sound piece were installed next to a pair of water dispensers throughout the exhibition period. Visitors were able to drink the water with two different names. This record was made possible with the generous support of Arts Council Korea and published in collaboration with Derek Hartfield and Het Generiek. Sound mastering was done by De Bong and Bert Scholten. The typeface used in this album cover is sorela which is created by tracing artist Marian Zazeela’s handwriting. It was made by Seokyung Kim in 2019.

Rietveld Sandberg Library event on Palestine

On 6 December, the Rietveld Sandberg Library and Art & Spatial Praxis research group will host a dialogue open to staff and students, forming part of the Program in Solidarity: Learning through the Context of Palestine by Unsettling Rietveld/Sandberg. Led by speakers Jeff Handmaker and Isabel Awad and moderated by Ali T. As’ad, the event aims to better understand polarization, power imbalances in media, and apartheid systems.

IASPIS residency program in Stockholm

The IASPIS artist in residence program has an open call and invites peers, including fellow artists, curators, critics, and other professionals in visual arts and design, to apply. Proposals for the period between November 2024 and November 2025 are welcome until December 5, 2023. Lasting three months, the opportunity consists of accommodation, a studio, and a stipend, providing a supportive environment for focused artistic work.

32° East Teach-In on Palestine 

Today 30 November marked the second teach-in by 32° East, featuring educator and activist Baha Hilo from To Be There. Baha’s initiatives on Palestinian history and culture include the Olive Harvest and Palestinian Land Day. This session assesses the colonization process in Palestine, exploring political, social, and economic apartheid. Stay tuned with their channels for the archival recording, which also includes the first session led by Ora Wise and Amanny Ahmad.

20 years of Myvillages

On 17 November, we will celebrate 20 years of Myvillages, a close cultural initiative dedicated to reimagining rural spaces as artistic working environments. Organized via The Rural School of Economics in Rotterdam, the event features a Rural Rotterdam Trip, a gathering at TENT, a panel discussion, and more.

Open letter from Arts Collaboratory ecosystem in Support of Palestinians

The artistic practices of Arts Collaboratory are questioning colonial legacies, calling for active liberation/decolonization, and providing other horizons for such worlds to exist. Several AC member organizations have written a statement of support for Palestine. Casco Art Institute has signed it. You are welcome to read, sign and reshare—either as an individual or as an institution. The letter also includes a list of organizations for donations.

DSP’s Palestina resources

As the brutal military attacks against Palestinians by the Israel military continue, we share a list of resources on Palestine, including books, articles, and films that Dutch Scholars for Palestine (DSP) has created. As the network emphasizes, especially at this time, it is crucial to educate ourselves on the context and root causes of the recent events in Palestine. Visit the DSP website for the full list that is located on the ‘resources’ page.

The erased history of slavery in the Cape and the need for reparations

Op 25 oktober zal dit online event de onderdrukte koloniale geschiedenis van Nederland in Zuid-Afrika onderzoeken, de hedendaagse impact ervan, en manieren van herstel. Deelnemers zijn onder andere Nancy Jouwe, Mitchell Esajas, Diane Ferrus, Panashe Chigumadzi en Calvyn Gilfellan. Het wordt georganiseerd in de context van de tentoonstellingen Cape X Utrecht en No Healing, Without Repair, te zien in respectievelijk Akademiegalerie en The Black Archives.

DAI Friends & Alumni Grant

On 28 October, Party Party will take place at Paviljoen aan het Water in Rotterdam. The festive event is aimed at raising funds for the DAI Friends & Alumni Grant, supporting non-EU students facing financial difficulties in their final year of study at the DAI.

In Solidarity with Palestine

Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons stands in solidarity with Palestinian people. We endorse the recently published statement ‘Palestine. A letter of solidarity; a call for action’ published by the Dutch Scholars for Palestine (DSP) and demand that Israel is held accountable for its international crimes, including genocide, and lastly, call for the end of Israel’s settler colonial regime. We also urge other cultural organizations and workers to speak out and take position. 

You are able to read and sign on the behalf of your institution or as an individual here.

Gaza relief funds

If you are able to donate, please consider the following relief funds to medically support victims in Gaza: AneraMECAMedical Aid for Palestinians, and Taawon.

Unprovoked Narratives

Unprovoked Narratives is a series of films published via The Palestine Film Institute that celebrate the beauty and struggle of Gaza and its people. It aims to empower its survival and resist the demonization of the area. 

Departing Professor Rosemarie Buikema

Casco Art Institute thanks Rosemarie Buikema as she steps down from her role as leader of the Graduate Gender Programme and the Gender, Diversity, and Global Justice platform. Find her extensive farewell note via the Utrecht University website. We would like to share her quote from it, which resonates close to our heart, on the role of arts in political change: “Political change requires more than knowledge, lobbying, and activism alone”, she says. “For structural transformation of cultural and social systems that breed inequality and exclusion, the arts have an important role to play”.

The Mixed Classroom

Shared via our AndersUtrecht network: The Mixed Classroom is an award-winning form of education by the Urban Futures Studio at Utrecht University. It brings together policymakers, students, and other agents of change together to learn with and from each other about a current issue sustainability theme: this time on socially fair transitions. Apply until 11 October.

Your Gold is not Our Glory

Also on 6 October: the exhibition Your Gold is not Our Glory opens at Hotel Maria Kapel in Hoorn. Mira Asriningtyas and Dito Yuwono present a critical decolonial Indonesian perspective on Hoorn’s history, featuring works about and delving into key moments regarding Indonesian history, from the Banda massacre to Dutch colonial rule’s end.

Cape X Utrecht

On 6 October, the collaborative exhibition of HKU fellow Nancy Jouwe and The Black Archives, CAPE X UTRECHT opens at Akademiegalerie. The project dives into the relationship between the Cape colony and Utrecht. Despite recent Dutch apologies for slavery, its role in the colonization of South Africa remains unaddressed. Taking this as a starting point, the exhibition asks: Who remembers the history of Indian Ocean slavery? How does this history affect people in current-day South Africa? And why is this history largely forgotten?

If we remain silent, reviewed in Metropolis M

On 21 September, Metropolis M published a review of our current exhibition If we remain silent. In the extensive article, editor Laura van den Bergh elaborates on the decolonial anti-monument and the processes and stories behind them, following her conversation with artist Ana Bravo Pérez.

You can visit the exhibition Thursday–Sunday, 12:00–18:00, or by appointment via info@casco.art until 22 October.

Hope is a discipline at de Appel

5 October launches the final public offering of de Appel’s Curatorial Program: Hope is a discipline. The project constellates people who research the politics of friendship and creates time for questions such as: how do we make spaces? How do we attend solidarities? It inhabits activist, grassroots organizer, and educator Mariame Kaba’s idea of “hope is a discipline” – a hope that is neither just a feeling nor a horizon but a daily practice that we undertake together where we use the resources we already have. Casco Art Institute joins them as a participant through the Arts Collaboratory Network, with ecosystem members Ola Hassanain and Tropical Tap Water and others. We hope to see you around!

Müge Yilmaz lecture at Rietveld Academie

On 5 October, Müge Yilmaz, Casco’s board member, researcher, and artist, delivers a lecture at Rietveld Academie on salt and the affects of the salinization of earth, on invitation by the Research Group Art & Spatial Praxis (LASP) headed by Dr. Patricia de Vries. The group investigates salt as a potential architectural and artistic material. There will be an experimental food workshop in the Sandberg Kitchen earlier that day, creating bites from salt-resistant plants.

Radical Guidebooks to Our Futures

We are happy to share our contribution to the publication show Radical Guidebooks to our Futures co-organized by Dig a Hole Zines, Leggy_, Kaho Ikeda, and Casco’s former curator Jason Waite! The exhibition brings artists, activists, collectives, cultural workers, and dreamers sketching out different visions, what our worlds could be like, and how we can realize them. The Tokyo-based event runs until 1 October.

SpaceX in Amsterdam

On September 21 and 22, our research partner SpaceX holds a two-day symposium at the UvA, titled Values And (E)Valuations Of Or As Cultural Practices? Entering A Time Of Pragmatic Experimentation. Aimed at exploring the future of cultural policy evaluation, it is part of a multi-day event with visits to de Appel, Oude Kerk, The Black Archives, and more.

Changing Landscapes: New Residency Opportunities in Spain

On 29 September, DutchCulture, Instituto Cervantes Utrecht, and the Netherlands Embassy in Madrid are hosting an event that aims to understand climatic challenges in Spain and presents a mapping of artist residencies with an emphasis on rural areas.

The Land in the Landscape

On 16 September, 17:00–18:30 de Appel organizes a conversation between collective MADEYOULOOK and Palestinian artist Yazan Khalili which has started during documenta fifteen’s various working groups about imagination and landscapes. Read more here.

Metropolis M tips

If we remain silent by Ana Bravo Pérez is tipped by Metropolis M as one of the fifteen exhibitions to visit this cultural season (of which fourteen are by women artists). Note: the article is in Dutch.

Conference: The future of our money system

This week sees a multiple day conference on the future of our money system in The Hague, critically analyzing its digitization processes and assessing paths towards equality. It is co-organized by our interim-chair and professor in new finance Martijn van der Linden.

Gaudeamus Saturday Night

On Saturday evening, local contemporary music festival Gaudeamus organizes their annual night program in TivoliVredenburg. Nour Sokhon, the Lebanese sound artist who performed during the Salwa event at Casco Art Institute last year, will perform together with Palestinian soprano singer Nour Darwish. Moreover, Utrecht’s community radio station Stranded FM hosts a stage with experimental live acts.

Announcing a change in our organization

Ecosystemic shift at Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons
Everything falls into place

28 August 2023

Prompted by a transition in directorship, and a desire to care for the institutions that nurture life, since the beginning of this year, collaborators from Casco Art Institute, in connection with Arts Collaboratory network and beyond, have taken responsibility for steering Casco’s continuity and re-composition in an ecosystem-centered way. This translates into a compact team dedicated to the daily care and maintenance of the organization in close dialogue with a newly formed cooperative committee of advisors and partners who connect with the broader ecosystem. Their programming will bring a trans-disciplinary collective curatorial practice based on decolonial, feminist, and queer approaches to commoning.

In this light, we bid farewell to Binna Choi as director for the last fifteen years, while welcoming her into her new role as a curatorial advisor. Succeeding Binna, Aline Hernández, an exhibition curator, a long-time collaborator of Casco, and a member of Arts Collaboratory through the Mexico-based cooperative Cráter Invertido, and Marianna Takou from the current Casco team will collaboratively lead the organization in their roles of Artistic Director and Executive Director, respectively. The committee includes artist and educator Annette Krauss and cultural worker Wan Ing Que from the Utrecht community, alongside researcher and writer Nuraini Juliastuti from Kunci Study Forum & Collective and artist Reza Afisina from ruangrupa, both members of Arts Collaboratory and respectively based in Leiden and Amsterdam. As mentioned, Binna also joins the committee, and more members will be announced in due course.

“Everything falls into place” is the phrase that has followed us through our current transition at Casco Art Institute. It’s our joy to share it as a powerful reminder to trust processes of change from within and take steps toward commoning in and from art institutions.

For the full announcement click here.

Image description: A group of ecosystem members gathered in front of the building during the opening of the Nina bell F. House Museum at Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons on Saturday, 27 May 2023. Photo: Chun Yao Lin. Design: Seo Kyung Kim.

Uitfeest

On 9 & 10 September, Uitfeest takes place – the annual opening of the cultural season in the city of Utrecht. Casco Art Institute opens her exhibitions on both days and hosts a curated program by HKU MAFA alumni MSP (Mutual Support Platform). More information on the latter follows soon on our website.

Metropolis M review: Nina bell F. House Museum

On 20 July a review on Nina bell F. House Museum by Charli Herrington was published in Metropolis M, elaborating on her experience accessing the open archive and how ‘Nina’ connects and reimagines the institution. Read it via the Metropolis M website.

Summer break (17 July–14 August)

We will close our office 17 July—14 August for our summer break.

Dóra Maurer–SUMUS–We Are Together at De Appel

Last weekend saw the opening of Dóra Maurer–SUMUS–We Are Together, curated by Eszter Szakács. Following De Appel’s interest in collaborating and self-organizing under political restrictions, the exhibition presents archival materials and experimental film works by Hungarian artist Dóra Maurer.

Rijksakademie: call for applications

The Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten welcomes artists to develop their work in their residency program, possible for one or two-year periods, starting from September 2024.⁣ Applications are possible between 1 September and 1 October.

Stadscamping

This summer, the Stadscamping by RAUM will open at Berlijnplein. Our collaborative project with The Outsiders, Travelling Farm Museum of Forgotten Skills, will provide insights into the local nature, ecology, and heritage of Leidsche Rijn.

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