Hidden Arts – Study Program

13 & 27 September and 4 & 8 October 2024
/ Multiple locations, including Casco HQ


You are invited to join us for a study program running alongside Hidden Arts: What do we make when no one sees us, organized by the team at Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons in collaboration with exhibition participants and members of the ecosystem with whom we are thinking and practicing!

“I’m with Fred Moten when he talks about refusing the “academy of misery,” when he talks about the importance of focusing on what we already have that we want to keep, rather than only on what “this evil thing that we kiss the ass of every hour” keeps us, or keeps from being—or even setting—possible.”

Maggie Nelson, Like Love (2024)

Study, as a practice, has been central to the ongoing experimentations at Casco Art Institute, playing an even more significant role as we embraced commoning as a guiding principle for arts organization and the processes that followed.

Our understanding and appreciation of study is indebted to Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, who see it as a way of thinking with others, engaging in conversation, and working collectively and collaboratively. In the context of our recent ecosystemic shift where collaborators from Casco, in connection with the Arts Collaboratory and lumbung networks, have taken responsibility for steering Casco’s continuity and re-composition in an ecosystem-centered way, study remains of great importance.

As our first large curatorial project, Hidden Arts: What do we make when no one sees us marks a significant moment in our commitment to ecosystem-centered, collectively-oriented approaches to arts organization through the practice of the commons. The more we share with and open this experience with others, the richer it becomes. As Harney and Moten explain, study “doesn’t have to be about authority or ongoing leadership or anything like that”; instead, it can be “a kind of invitation for other people to pick up stuff” (The Undercommons, p. 116). To foster this exchange, we propose an extended Study Program to cultivate conversations around alternative economies of collectivity, shared resource building, and arts organizing, as well as to explore questions surrounding sustainability in the arts.

What, How & When

There will be five reading sessions hosted by the Casco team, each held in different locations based on the session’s topic and, in some cases, online. These sessions are designed to create time and space for collective exploration of various exhibition themes through reading, discussion, listening, and contextualizing with storytelling. Each session will also feature the author or someone connected to the topic of the text.

The sessions will take place weekly and will be hosted by Casco team members. Participation in any aspect of the program is free. While the main language is English, contributions in other languages are welcome. The outcome of the sessions will be a collection of ‘harvests’ that will remain in the exhibition (or at partner locations). Harvesting, in the context of Arts Collaboratory and lumbung practice, can be understood as a form of collective writing that enables continuous learning, drawn from different sensory experiences.

You are welcome to join us on 13 & 27 September and 4 & 8 October 2024 in the afternoons. We have limited spots available, please RSVP via jip@casco.art. Once you sign up, you will receive the reading materials. The program is designed to allow time and space for collective study through reading together. The session will be in English.

Hidden Arts Study Program and Timetable

What about self-publishing?
Garage Rotterdam x Casco Art Institute study session, organized with Reza Afisina and reinaart vanhoe

Friday, 13 September, 17:00–19:00 / Goudsewagenstraat 27, 3011 RH Rotterdam
RSVP via jip@casco.art


You are invited to explore the multidisciplinary editorial projects of Reading Sideways Press (RSP) and Taller XD – Cooperativa Cráter Invertido, both featured in the exhibition Underdeveloped at Garage Rotterdam. This session will serve to engage with collective study, self-organization, and self-publishing, and to delve into the possibilities of independent editorial production and distribution. What can the editorial projects of RSP and Taller XD teach us about economies that operate on principles of generosity, friendship, trust, and time? What can we learn from the conditions that inform these projects’ practices and interests? And how can we build on the knowledge, imaginations, and experimentations of RSP and Taller XD locally?


Rural Undercurrents?
Myvillages x Casco Art Institute study session, organized with Wapke Feenstra

Friday, 27 September, 16:00–18:00 / Casco HQ
RSVP via jip@casco.art


Wapke Feenstra joins us at Casco to explore the production of rural realities and imaginaries in contrast to urban cultural hegemony, using the artistic trajectories of Myvillages as a starting point. The focus is on the collective’s concept of “rural undercurrents” and reflecting on the various activation strategies they have developed over time. As Wapke explains, “Activating rural undercurrents involves a learning-by-doing process that raises awareness of the cultural layers on which we live our lives.” This practice of learning by doing, as a way to rethink rural-urban binaries, forms the core of our discussion. Additionally, we explore what “de-urbanizing” art institutions means in practice.


Rethinking Shop Structures?
Kate Rich x Casco Art Institute study session

Friday, 4 October, 14:30–16:30 / Casco HQ
RSVP via jip@casco.art


Kate Rich joins us in person to rethink shop structures. Kate’s ongoing focus is to embed her art practice more deeply into the infrastructure of trade, administration, organization, and economy. Excerpts from her Radmin Reader, a short collection of tricks, loops, swerves, and contemplations on administration co-edited with Angela Piccini, are currently displayed in the second room of the Hidden Arts exhibition, with copies available for visitors. The session explores strategies for alternative, non-capitalist administrative practices for artists and considers shop-like structures as spaces for the circulation and exchange of goods, the sharing of knowledge, resources, and tools, and the fostering of relationships.



On the contributors

Reza Afisina (also known as Asung) is a new media artist from Jakarta, Indonesia. Reza is part of the artist collective ruangrupa and GudSkul contemporary art ecosystem, as well as the music group bequiet. Together with Iswanto Hartono, they formed the artist duo RA.IH and worked on programs at ruruHaus in Kassel, Germany (2020-2022) for documenta fifteen, where ruangrupa served as the Artistic Director.

reinaart vanhoe is an artist, author, and teacher. Making space and meeting people are central to vanhoe’s art. Everyday activities connect vision and plans for how a space is inhabited and activated in practice. In Rotterdam, the Netherlands, reinaart and his partner, mariëlle verdijk, opened their house and turned it into ook_huis — a free space for neighbors and friends. To refer to himself, reinaart goes by ook_.

Crater Invertido is a Mexico City-based collective born in 2011. Composed of members educated in visual arts and free media, they run a space that functions as a workshop for multidisciplinary projects, a forum for various events, and an exhibition space. These activities converge in a common printing machine from which they share tools and knowledge and participate in creating an independent editorial network in Mexico.

Founded in 2018, Reading Sideways Press (RSP) is an independent publisher dedicated to exploring the intersections of art, literature, and sport. Established by researchers and writers Nuraini Juliastuti and Andy Fuller, RSP aims to unify diverse research practices and explorations under a single banner. RSP’s publications reflect Juliastuti’s passion for contemporary art and alternative cultural production, alongside Fuller’s interest in sports and urban cultures. As RSP evolves, it incorporates the contributions of others who share their vision. Fiky Daulay enriches their work with insights into sonic entanglement, intervention, and jamming cultures, while Cahaya Fuller integrates drawing as a tool for social connection.

Myvillages is an international collective founded in 2003 by artists Kathrin Böhm (UK/DE), Wapke Feenstra (NL), and Antje Schiffers (DE). Myvillages’ work addresses the relationship between the rural and the urban, examining different forms of production, preconceptions, and power relationships. The collective is involved in cooperative projects in various villages and landscapes around the world, aiming to bring new dynamism to established notions of local resources and production, agriculture and culture, and internal and external perceptions.

Kate Rich is a trade artist and feral economist, born in Australia and living in Bristol, UK. Since 2003, she has run Feral Trade, a long-range economic experiment using the spare carrying capacity of the art world to transport coffee, olive oil, and other goods internationally. Kate is a volunteer finance manager at Bristol’s artist-run Cube Microplex, system administrator for the Irational.org art server collective, a member of the Community Economies Institute, and feral economist in residence with the Sail Cargo Alliance, an assembly of traders, brokers, and ship owners looking to revive the ancient art of running cargo on wind-propelled ships. Her work within FoAM is concentrated in the emergent research entity of the Institute of Experiments with Business (Ibex). As part of that research, she is currently establishing the programme of the Feral MBA, a radically different kind of training course in business for artists and others. Her ongoing focus is to move deeper into the infrastructure of trade, administration, organization, and economy.


Image description: someone pointing at Arts Collaboratory publications in the Casco Art Institute library. Photo by Chun Yao Lin during the opening of the Hidden Arts exhibition, 31 August, 2024.

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