A new performance taking place by the 200-year-old platanus tree in Casco’s shared courtyard in the heart of Utrecht’s museum quarter premieres on Friday, 5 June at 17:00 via a livestream on Casco’s Youtube account and on a small-scale visit. This event marks the beginning of Chapter three, How Heavy is Time? This chapter engages more actively in tools and resources for considering the future use of our building as a site for commoning. As many ask what the structures of art institutions can provide during the pandemic, we take Casco as a case study to focus on the kinds of stories, tools, and proposals that can help us imagine the future of this place of cohabitation and co-management. We’ve asked different groups from our ecosystem to contribute ideas and will add them to the ever-evolving are.na platform.

Gentle reopening of Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons & FOTODOK with care and concern for your safety and ours

Period: 6 June – 26 July
Opening hours
Saturday 13:00 - 14:00
Sunday 13:00 - 14:00

Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons and FOTODOK will slowly reopen the doors of their building on Lange Nieuwstraat 7 from Saturday, 6 June onwards. We are looking forward to receiving you again from that date – with an account of the appropriate safety measures and only with a pre-reserved ticket.

We are happy to cooperate with Frame Contemporary Art Finland on its new initiative, the Frame Curatorial Research Fellowship. The program supports the development of new curatorial research practices and the cultivation of active practices embedded in an organizational context. Casco is one of Frame’s initial partners for this fellowship – along with EVA International (Ireland’s Biennial of Contemporary Art) – that will operate within the framework of our Unmapping Eurasia studyline. The fellowship is financially supported by Kone Foundation.

Read more here about the fellowship and the application procedure here. The deadline for applications is Sunday, 7 June 2020.

We share our warmest congratulations to Ansuya Blom for being awarded the prestigious Dr. A.H. Heinekenprijs voor de Kunst 2020. 

We had the joy of working with Ansuya in Autumn 2019 as part of the exhibition program Het is of de stenen spreken (silence is a commons), where a solo presentation of her work was shown in two of our four exhibition spaces. Her work, which asks for encounters of deep listening and understanding, offer us the occasion to re-account oneself in terms of modes of living, making and sharing. Important, especially in this time when humans - with their advanced skills and technologies - have not quite managed to be in peace with the earth and in the world. Ansuya’s works softly push forward modes in which we can care for ourselves and others in the forms of ongoing creating. 


In Het is of de stenen spreken (silence is a commons), artists Babi Badalov, Ansuya Blom, Ama Josephine Budge and Mire Lee each shared in a solo presentation different forms of communication that transgress the norms and habits shaped by power and capital-driven media. In this context, Ansuya invited us to sense a dreamworld or a dark corner of our mind, revealing the consequences of putting words to what we cannot describe yet, those things irresistibly happening on our “insides.” 


The Dr. A.H. Heinekenprijs voor de Kunst is the largest visual art prize in the Netherlands, awarded biannually since 1988, bestowed by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). In 2014 the Casco board member Wendelien van Oldenborgh received the award. 


Read more about the nomination and the award here.

And about Het is of de stenen spreken (silence is a commons) here.

The last of three images by Taeyoon Choi, with a message from the team on our adapted program in light of the Covid-19 pandemic. Visit the program section of our website to find out more about upcoming activities.

Now on view on are.na, Chapter 1: This Creaking Floor and All the Ceilings Below with Bart Lunenburg, David Bennewith, Lieke Hettinga, Kooperative für Darstellungspolitik, Christian Nyampeta, Falke Pisano & Riet Wijnen, Deborah Sielert, Siobhan Wall, and Merel Zwarts.

Chapter 2: The irresistible shade of the vine with Jumana Emil Abboud, De Draaihals, Karen Ebert, Lisa Eksteen, Rien Goené, Yvette Goené, Clair Griffioen, Ienke Kastelein, Hans van Lunteren, & Lisanne Ruim.

The audio performance and workshop The irresistible shade of the vine by Jumana Emil Abboud premiered on 30 April at Stranded FM, you can now listen to the performance via our soundcloud.

The second chapter of Common Grounds: Story / Heritage explores storytelling as a way to develop a connection to a place. There are memories that are not legible in the architecture or archive but can be remembered, shared, and imagined together in the present. Folklore, mythology, and gossip shape the identity of Abraham Dolehof too. The city archives document a detailed history of the site as a convent from 1412 and a school until the 1970s, but what has happened since then? Artist Jumana Emil Abboud presents an audio performance and remedy-making workshop in her work The irresistible shade of the vine, which draws upon the connection between the protection of land with the preservation of folktales and communal bonds. On are.na, we’re creating our own kind of “oral history” in which previous and current inhabitants and past visitors to Casco’s building at Lange Nieuwstraat 7 and the Abraham Dolehof share memories about their experiences.

To read these stories, visit the are.na platform here.

The Travelling Farm Museum of Forgotten Skills is a Travelling participatory museum in the making. The museum listens to the history, (im)material heritage, and present-day inhabitants – human and non-human – of Leidsche Rijn, Utrecht, to develop skills and stories for fair and sustainable world-building.

In March 2020 we began an open, collective, and public process of developing the Travelling Farm Museum through, what was supposed to be, a series of public gatherings, workshops, and tours through Leidsche Rijn. After a sunny walk marking our first gathering, the process unfortunately had to change course in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A call to action and support for our communities, and spread the message "care with distance" the second image made in collaboration with artist and friend Taeyoon, download the image here.

Words from the team at Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons, a call to action and support for Indonesian Migrant Workers Union and spread the message: "Giving space to save lives" made in collaboration with artist and friend Taeyoon, download the image here.

Urgently donate and connect: Indonesian Migrant Workers’ Union

Most of the members of Indonesian Migrant Workers’ Union, one of our long-term and close-collaborating communities, are in a dire situation. They have lost their jobs as domestic workers and consequently their means to buy food and, likely soon, to keep their homes.

Donate: Once again the community shows how powerful they are in organizing to support each other by arranging and distributing weekly emergency food packages. Yet this cannot be done without donations from anyone who has the room to do so. Please donate to:

NL27 RABO 0137 4510 91
R. Saptari Soetikno Slamet
IMWU NL

Connect: The community hopes for a collective shelter possibly with sustainable public support. If you have knowledge and experience in helping with this or have any tips, please write to us. 

The Arts Collaboratory Covid-19 Solidarity Fund

Since 2014, Casco Art Institute is an active member of Arts Collaboratory, a translocal network/ecosystem of 25 art organisations across the world. In response to the Covid-19 crisis the network decided to make an emergency fund drawn from the collective resource pot it has been co-managing. Each organisation will distribute 5000 euros to their communities according to the principles of trust, care and solidarity which guides the network’s management of the collective pot. 

Casco Art Institute chose to share the amount of 5000 euros with four different organisations, initiatives and individuals in our ecosystem; Indonesian Migrant Workers Union, Vluchtmaat, Platform BK and Olave Nduwanje, without application-selection procedure. We have known each of them through various forms of working and relating to one another, and share 1000 euros with each in support of their long-term practice of self-organising and advocacy for those - especially under the direct impact of the current global crisis - who are without access to institutional care. 

We hope that this fund, however small, is helpful to cover urgent needs, provide some breathing room or can be used as seed money for organizing. By connecting the different parties with one another we would like to start a conversation on how we can support each other, mobilise for further solidarity and imagine different worlds and lives together, as Olave called for with urgency in her statement in One World here (in Dutch). 

Think with us: Together with the above four bodies, we would collectively decide on how to distribute the rest of the available fund, 1000 euros. If you want to contribute with any ideas, please email us at info@casco.art by next Wednesday 22 April, 17:00

Please download the new drawing here to print, distribute and/or display. 

In case you don’t have access to a printer, please email Rosa Paardenkooper at rosa@casco.art so that we can mail or deliver to your home.

Share the documentation of your action via email (info@casco.art) and/or link us on social media (@whereiscasco on Instagram, @cascoutrecht on Facebook).

Learn more about Taeyoon’s beautiful and informative practices such as School for Poetic Computation, Distributed Web of Care, and his Instagram. 

Donate/Receive: The three original drawings including, “Care with Distance," “Giving space to save lives” and the upcoming drawing, can be obtained by making a donation (starting from 1000 euros each). The donation will be shared with the artist and the Arts Collaboratory Covid-19 Solidarity Fund. Please contact us via info@casco.art if you are interested. 

Note: Casco Art Institute is a cultural ANBI, for donations to a cultural ANBI by those who are taxable in the Netherlands, you may deduct 1.25 times the amount of the donation in the income tax return. Companies that are subject to corporate income tax may deduct 1.5 times the amount of the gift in the corporate income tax return. The tax benefits are limited to donations of up to 5000 euros.

To slow down the spread of COVID-19 with care for all of us – our visitors, team and community, and in particular those who are vulnerable – and in response to official statements, we, the teams of Casco Art Institute and FOTODOK, are closing our space until further notice.

Common Grounds: Story / Heritage

Chapter one: This Creaking Floor and All the Ceilings Below by artist Bart Lunenburg, with contributions in the forms of characters, scenes, and conversations by David Bennewith, Lieke Hettinga, Kooperative für Darstellungspolitik, Christian Nyampeta, Falke Pisano & Riet Wijnen, Bart Seidel (Gilde Utrecht), Deborah Sielert, Siobhan Wall, Merel Zwarts

co-presented with FOTODOK

Read more about our adaptations to the program in light of the Covid-19 crisis here.