Announcing the BAK Post-Academic Program 2018/2019 Fellows

BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht is proud to announce its BAK 2018/2019 Fellows, ten outstanding practitioners in the arts, theory, and activisms from the Netherlands and abroad. These fellows have been chosen for their advanced artistic and other expressive practices, interdisciplinary excellence, critical insight, and collective strategies from more than 200 applicants. The BAK 2018/2019 Fellows have the opportunity to work on their own research trajectories as well as engage in collective learning and exchange in the coming year.

BAK 2018/2019 Fellows include Netherlands-based writer, researcher, and curator Katayoun Arian; anthropologist, curator, and activist Jessica de Abreu; artist, activist, and womanist Patricia Kaersenhout; artist, writer, and curator Charl Landvreugd; and artist Jeanne van Heeswijk; as well as internationally-based artist and educator Haseeb Ahmed; curator and educator Thiago de Paula Souza; artist Yasmine Eid-Sabbagh; researcher and theorist Lukáš Likavčan; and artist, educator, and researcher Mick Wilson.

Since 2017, BAK conducts a post-academic program in the form of the BAK Fellowship Program, which offers ten research positions per year (September–June) to Dutch and international artists, curators, scholars, and other cultural practitioners with advanced practices in the arts, theory, and activisms. BAK Fellow research trajectories speak to: conditions, politics, and genealogies of contemporary global migration; ecologies, ecological crisis, and naturecultures; and the potentials and dangers of technology in struggles for justice and transformative politics. They also have specific affinity to BAK’s current research trajectory Propositions for Non-Fascist Living (2017–20), which engages aesthetico-political experimentation to address the urgencies of the present. The Fellowship Program fosters artistic and theoretical inquiry in a collaborative environment, developing talent and critical practice in concert with the projects of BAK, advancing the notion of art as a public sphere and a political space.

BAK Fellowships are low-residential. BAK Fellows regularly gather at BAK for intensive seminars and workshops with visiting artists, scholars, and other cultural practitioners, as well as public programming, visits, and collaborations with various organizations in the Netherlands and beyond. Thanks to collaborations with HKU University of the Arts and Utrecht University, both in Utrecht, in particular, the Fellows broaden their research practices through leading workshops and exchanges with students and other cultural practitioners in their respective fields. 

Read more about the BAK Fellows and their projects at bakonline.org.