Basecamp for Tactical Imaginaries: Building Cultural Infrastructure Anew

Marking the beginning of a new phase, BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht embarks upon a six-month period of thinking and planning. Artist Jeanne van Heeswijk, a long-time collaborator of BAK, who has recently joined the organization as artistic director, convenes a series of meetings and conversations between January and June 2025 to consider directions for the organization amidst overlapping political, social, economic, and climate crises. These conversations are organized to address the kinds of infrastructure most necessary and useful for sustaining artistic and cultural practices that are driven by current urgencies. The terrifying undoing of the promise of democracy in the rise of anti-democratic, authoritarian, right-wing politics in the Netherlands and worldwide necessitates cultural formations that cultivate thinking, imagining, and acting; these approaches must prioritize equity and repair to counteract and reinvent the status quo. Recognizing the need for cultural space to function as a location of intimacy, critique, exploration, and possibility, the convenings focus on tactical imagination and collective practices that provide both respite and a place from which to act.  

The work ahead to confront democracy’s failures can be modeled hyper-locally, within cultural infrastructures. Among these, BAK’s history of political and social practice provides a ready base for what must come next. Basecamp for Tactical Imaginaries proposes a reenvisioning of this cultural infrastructure so as to confront the orchestrated ruination of critical organizations by those in power, including numerous progressive artistic and learning institutions, of which BAK’s defunding from Dutch public budgets is but one, very modest, example. It is urgent to come together and remake these public institutions for the common good.  

To these ends, Basecamp for Tactical Imaginaries invites trusted communities consisting of cultural and knowledge workers, students, grassroots organizations, activists, and other social actors from BAK’s former and current collaborations and beyond—to debate and model an art institution capable of meeting the political challenges of today and tomorrow.  

Working from van Heeswijk’s long-time collective practice of learning by radically imagining and embodying a more just future, the series is co-convened with college student and bak Young Fellow 2023/2024 Raidan Abdul Baqi Shamsan; architect and researcher Merve Bedir; community organizer and housing activist Mustapha Eaisaouiyen; artist, filmmaker, and activist Ehsan Fardjadniya; musician and producer Triwish Hanoeman; performance designer and researcher Sandra Lange; activist, vegan chef, fermentation enthusiast, and music programmer Grace Lostia; art historian, artist, and co-learner Sophie Mak-Schram; installation and movement artist, activist, educator, and architectural designer Joy Mariama Smith; artist and researcher Dina Mohamed; artist and community organizer Molemo Moiloa; cultural worker and community organizer Alejandro Navarrete Cortés; writer and curator Laura Raicovich; artist and propaganda researcher Jonas Staal; and artist, educator, and researcher Mick Wilson, among others.