Arts Collaboratory Assembly 2023: Harvesting and Futurecasting

13–23 November 2023 / the Netherlands

Seventh Arts Collaboratory Assembly. This edition is co-hosted and co-organized by Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons and DOEN Foundation.

Assembly locations and partners include Stichting DOEN (Amsterdam), Voedselbos Haarzuilens (Utrecht), de Appel (Amsterdam), Framer Framed (Amsterdam), Rijksakademie (Amsterdam), Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven), HKU MAFA (Utrecht), Myvillages (Rotterdam), Travelling Farm Museum of Forgotten Skills depot (Utrecht), and more to be announced.

Full agenda below.

After more than a decade of experimenting, studying, and working together as a translocal art network, Arts Collaboratory (AC) organizations come together to reflect on the practices of collaboration, cooperation, shared resource building, and mutual support we have created. As it is our practice, during the Assembly, member organizations will also consider AC’s future—imagining and thinking about scenarios for what will come next. 

The annual Assembly is integral to how AC operates in line with our ethical principles. It is the moment when member organizations physically come together to share time and knowledge, address issues and challenges through collective study, and engage in tooling and decision-making processes. Similarly, the Assembly is also an opportunity to build relations with the local contexts of the hosting members. By visiting initiatives, sites, and institutions at the host location, AC members engage and connect with local ecosystems.

The theme and title of this seventh Assembly is Harvesting and Futurecasting and takes place 13–23 November. This edition follows Arts Collaboratory’s previously enriching Assemblies in Indonesia (2014); Senegal (2015); Kyrgyzstan (2016); Costa Rica (2017); Palestine, Lebanon, and Jordan (2018); and Uganda (2019), and after a hiatus during the last few years due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

During this special week of encounters, several public events will take place, too. We invite organizations, institutions, artists, cultural workers, and collectives in and around the Netherlands to become acquainted with the network and join us in imagining what a translocal culture of collaboration for social change could look like in the field of expanded artistic practice. For the occasion, we’re happy to announce partnerships with Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven), de Appel (Amsterdam), Framer Framed (Amsterdam), HKU MAFA (Utrecht), and Rijksakademie (Amsterdam).

Agenda

Networking, collaboration, and cooperation in and through the arts: Arts Collaboratory, lumbung, and L’internationale in conversation

Wednesday 15 November 2023, 13:30–17:00 / Van Abbemuseum (Stratumsedijk 2, 5611 ND Eindhoven)

RSVP required. Please email info@casco.art. 

This session brings members of Arts Collaboratory, lumbung, and L’internationale to exchange views around translocal and transnational models of cooperation, collaboration, and redistribution in the arts. The aim is to explore some of the motivations, strategies, and urgencies that drive each of these networks while also tapping into the importance of methods for organizing and working together for the wider artistic and cultural field and their broader implication for social change. 

lumbung kios—Arts Collaboratory: a(n) (af)fair

Thursday 16 November 2023, 18:00–21:30 / de Appel (Schipluidenlaan 12, 1062 HE Amsterdam)

Event organized in the context of de Appel Curatorial Programme Hope is a discipline (through 23 November).
Open to the public. No reservation is required

An open-to-the-public gathering or, as we call it, “a(n) (af)fair” that brings together lumbung members, including the AC School. Happening in the context of de Appel Curatorial Programme Hope is a discipline, the gathering picks up on the Feral Trade Model developed by Kate Rich as a mechanism for distributing the products and goods using the mobility networks—in this case, the AC Netherlands Assembly and, previously, documenta15. In this process, goods pass from hand to hand, determined by the individuals’ travel routes. 

Commoning and unlearning art organization: stories of transformation and relationality

Saturday 18 November 2023, 16:00–21:00 / Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons (Lange Nieuwstraat 7, 3512 PA Utrecht)

Event organized in the context of Casco’s recently announced “ecosystemic shift” and Nina bell F. House Museum.
RSVP required. Please email info@casco.art with the indication of the time you would like to join: 16:00-18:30, 18:30-21:00, or both.

A long, comforting—or at times exhilarating, if not provoking—Saturday convening centered around the transformative moments and their effects during the Arts Collaboratory as a living, relational, translocal un/learning process of practising the commons. The first part of the event will bring together different AC members to share stories about their organizations and communities, while adding to AC’s common archive. The second part will include art, music, poetry, lino-carving, printmaking, snacks and drinks, and tasting of soya made from beans fermented as part of Nina bell F. House Museum.

Out of the classroom! Pedagogies for collectivity and justice in the arts

Sunday 19 November 2023, 14:00–18:30 / Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons (Lange Nieuwstraat 7, 3512 PA Utrecht)

Event conceived in collaboration with Framer Framed, Amsterdam and HKU MAFA, Utrecht.
Closed session. Attendance by invitation. 

This session brings together artists, art students, cultural workers, and educators to share and discuss the making and re-making of pedagogies for collectivity and social justice in the arts. We aim to map out and harvest the pedagogical methods and experiments devised and practiced by each participant, as seen in connection with artistic processes for social change, social movements, and collective organizing. Similarly, by commoning these knowledge practices, we seek to prepare the ground for translocal affinities and connections to develop. 

Imagining (our) future horizon(s) 

Wednesday 22 November 2023, 10:00–15:00 / Framer Framed (Oranje-Vrijstaatkade 71, 1093 KS Amsterdam)

Closed session. Attendance by invitation. 

A session dedicated for Arts Collaboratory (AC) member organizations to revisit collectively the experiences, feelings, and knowledges emerging from the Assembly while expanding collaboration by considering AC’s future—conjuring, imagining, and thinking about scenarios for what will come next.

Wednesday 22 November 2023, 16:00–19:00 / Rijksakademie (Sarphatistraat 470, 1018 GW Amsterdam)

Closed session. Attendance by invitation. 

For this last activity, Arts Collaboratory member organizations join Rijksacademie residents to reflect together on tools for self-organization, care, and support, as well as the social lives of institutions. 

The final part of the AC Assembly closing event has been made possible through the two-year project “Artistic Ecologies: New Compasses, Tools and Alliances,” a collaboration between Rijksakademie, What, How & for Whom/WHW, and Neue Nachbarschaft/Moabit. The project consists of a series of artistic and educational activities that examine art’s social placement in relation to what art can do to address the devastating effects of the eco-social crisis.

The accompanying dinner is organized by We Sell Reality, a social rebellion label set up as a collective consisting of around 15 social designers. We Sell Reality produces products, installations, and creates performative interventions in public space. Most members of the collective were on the run when they came to the Netherlands and experienced legal limbo. They reflect on the paradox of closed borders for some and open borders for others. For immigrants without assets and without the correct passport, crossing these borders proves almost impossible.

Cancelled – Esperanza (cumbia solitaria): Arts Collaboratory screening night

Tuesday 14 November 2023, 17:00–21:30 / de Appel (Schipluidenlaan 12, 1062 HE Amsterdam)

Event organized in the context of de Appel Curatorial Programme Hope is a discipline (through 23 November).
Open to the public. No reservation is required.

We regret to inform that this event has been cancelled. Instead, the Arts Collaboratory ecosystem will gather internally to reflect and discuss transnational networks of solidarity in crisis.

Arts Collaboratory 

Founded in 2007 and existing in its current form since 2015, Arts Collaboratory is an ecosystem of 24 diverse art organizations from Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and Europe, all focused on the collective governance of the network. The organizations engage in expanded artistic and curatorial experiments for social change and sustainability practices in their respective contexts, while experimenting with new geographies of relations and webs of solidarities.

Arts Collaboratory has a self-governing structure organized through assemblies, meetings called banga (meaning “time and space” in the Ugandan language Luganda), working groups, and collaborative projects. They connect different communities of artists, collectives, activists, curators, researchers, organizations, and platforms with different languages, interests, and diverse cultural backgrounds. The aim of unlearning capital—and productivity—driven working methods and practicing anti/decolonization is central to how the network thinks and lives. 

Member organizations include: 32° East | Ugandan Arts Trust (Kampala, Uganda); Al-Ma’mal (Jerusalem, Palestine); Ashkal Alwan (Beirut, Lebanon); Casa Tres Patios (Medellín, Colombia); Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons (Utrecht, The Netherlands); Centre Soleil d’Afrique (Bamako, Mali); Cooperativa Cráter Invertido (CDMX, México); Darb 1718 (Cairo, Egypt); DOEN Foundation (Amsterdam, The Netherlands); Doual’Art (Douala, Cameroon); Kër Thiossane (Dakar, Senegal); Kiosko Galería (Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia); KUNCI Study Forum & Collective (Yogyakarta, Indonesia); Lugar a Dudas (Cali, Colombia); Más Arte Más Acción (Chocó, Colombia); Nubuke Foundation (Accra, Ghana); Platohedro (Medellín, Colombia); RAW Material Company (Dakar, Senegal); Riwaq (Al-Bireh, Palestine); ruangrupa (Jakarta, Indonesia); TEOR/éTica (San José, Costa Rica); Theertha (Colombo, Sri Lanka); Visual Arts Network South Africa VANSA (Jonnesburg, South Africa); and Centre d’art Waza (Lubumbashi, Congo).

Colophon:

Concept and program:
Arts Collaboratory

Organization:
Aline Hernández and Marianna Takou in collaboration with Olga Alexeeva, Binna Choi, Gertrude Flentge, Geerte Wachter, and Yu-Lan van Alphen.

Arts Collaboratrory working groups: Abundance, AC School, Assembly, Care, Governance, TAM-TAM working groups, and Yalla Yalla team.

In exchange with the Curatorial Programme participants 2023: Marina Christodoulidou, Billy Fowo, Meghana Karnik, Jean-Michel Mabruki Mussa, and Eugene Hannah Park.

Partners: Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven), de Appel (Amsterdam), Framer Framed (Amsterdam), HKU MAFA (Utrecht), and Rijksakademie (Amsterdam).

Production team:
Alexandra Martens Serrano, coordination
Luke Cohlen, communication
Jip van Klaveren, production and locations
Lexington Davis, editing
Sari Dennise, Daria Chernysheva, and Rogelio Vazquez, graphic design
Chun Yao Lin and the AC Assembly harvesting group, documentation
Athina Koutsiou, Yuen Ming Lo, Meshkat Talebi (more to be added), volunteers

Casco Art Institute

Daily Care & Maintenance team:
Aline Hernández, artistic director
Marianna Takou, executive director
Erik Uitenbogaard, head of diverse economies
Leana Boven, curator & cultural programmer
Luke Cohlen, communication & campaign
Jip van Klaveren, curatorial intern

The Casco Art Institute program 2023 is supported by the City Council of Utrecht and DOEN Foundation via Arts Collaboratory.

Harvesting and Futurecasting builds on the previously enriching Assemblies in Indonesia (2014); Senegal (2015); Kyrgyzstan (2016); Costa Rica (2017); Palestine, Lebanon, and Jordan (2018); and Uganda (2019). Read more about Arts Collaboratory and the previous Assemblies on artscollaboratory.org

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