Participants

(she/her/elle, 1988, KR), I am an independent curator, writer, and educator based in Marseille, France. My curatorial practice focuses on collaborative partnerships with artist(s), particularly for site-specific exhibitions. By integrating research, production support, and writing, I weave poetic narratives that link artistic positions, sites, and architecture, considering their past, present, future, and (in)tangible sentiments. Since 2018, I have co-founded and directed Belsunce Projects in Marseille. Initially an independent exhibition space, it transitioned into a nomadic curatorial platform in 2021. Belsunce Projects has realized exhibitions and public programs independently and in collaboration with institutions like Triangle France, La Synagogue de Delme, and venues such as Friche la Belle de Mai, FRAC PACA, Pina, and HAUS Wien.

(she/they) has a mediating practice focused on the proximities and sensing produced between bodies in space, advocating for more multi-sensory registries and presentations of knowledge. Whether gallery-based, or within the soils of a museum garden, I examine the ritual of an invitation, aiming to blur typical markers and performative gestures of exhibition-making to engage with eco-critical and craft contexts. Projects often centre on finding alternative forms of exhibition-making and wayfinding through gathering, inviting, making, [re][f]using, visiting, and sharing. As current Frame Contemporary Research Fellow for Soil’s Project with Van Abbemuseum, I am developing an installation of publicly gathered Dutch soil texture tests to examine collective material narratives in relation to soil health in the Netherlands. Over the duration of the exhibit [opening June 2024], workshops during Dutch Design Week will re-shape these soils as a degrading sculpture, in collaboration with artist Gabriella Rhodes [October 2024]. [Raised on the Wirral, UK, currently living in Amsterdam, NL.]

I am an artist and researcher from Viçosa/Chicago, living in Berlin. Last year, I planted a potato crop on vacant speculation property in my poor neighborhood. We made a Pommes stand and a film considering this place from the language of value: the land is worth 628 years of potatoes, by current real estate prices converted in current organic potato earnings. I was, at first unknowingly, energized by the idea of social value implied in usucapião–the legal principle of prescriptive acquisition–which in Brazil guarantees ownership to users who plant and live on idle rural land for five years. In other work, I have situated the boundaries of ecocapitalism, questioning the farcical disproportionality of the carbon economy (tendergarden.io) and the recycling market (stoff♲wert). My project for the Kunstenfestival Watou, Vergeet-mij-nietjes, considers the end of the world in old Europe and the difference between conserving and sowing as forms of memory. I am committed to non-institutional public space practice and to marginal viable collectivity – as in my project space Make-up e.V. on the edge of Wedding-Reinickendorf in Berlin. Considering ruderal ecologies in relation to our marginal practice, we organized the art and discourse programme Ruderal Practices (2022-23) at our space.

born and raised in the Sabana de Bogotá, Colombia. Queer and migrant, I am an artist, potter, facilitator, and community organizer. I work with earth, water, food, and fire, investigating the notion of intimate geologies through touch and poetic language. I question and criticize our links with the territories we inhabit, dream of, and/or are part of. I have lived in Colombia, Mexico, Catalunya, and The Netherlands. Formed in social anthropology, critical pedagogies, and creative conflict transformation in Colombia and Mexico. Having worked in popular education projects and learned about the defense of territory through the lineages of communitarian feminism and indigenous autonomy from rural areas of Colombia, I am now learning about generative somatics and healing for social justice through activist lineages from Western Europe and the USA. I am eager to continue diving into the problem of land from anticolonial perspectives. As an artist, I create spaces of nourishment, mourning, knowledge creation, cooperation, and collective rest with a decolonial, feminist, and intersectional approach. I work with material narratives, creating installations, lecture-performances, videos, and workshops/laboratories for diverse communities.

Independent curator and writer Giulia Menegale (1995, Venice) is pursuing a PhD in Analysis and Management of Cultural Heritage at IMT in Lucca. She holds an MA in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths, University of London. In the academic year 2022–23, she completed her curatorial training at CuratorLab in Stockholm. Her research focuses on how art practices can reimagine and change institutions during economic and social crises. She has curated independent projects and talks, and was curator-in-residency for various institutions, including Platea (Lodi, Italy), KORA Contemporary Arts Center (Lecce, Italy), Remont Gallery (Belgrade, Serbia), Skuć Gallery (Ljubljana). She has collaborated as an assistant curator for Castello di Rivoli, Museum of Contemporary Art (Rivoli-Turin, Italy) and Autostrada Biennale (Prizren, Kosovo). Recently , she has concluded a research visiting period at the Museum Tentacolar, the Museum Reina Sofia's department of public activities, where she also supported the coordination of projects and public programmin. She has written papers for academic journals and art magazines such as Flash Art Italia, Nero Magazine, Blok Magazine, ConetmporaryAnd.

 I am a cultural worker based in Rotterdam, I moved to the Netherlands from Lithuania almost 4 years ago. I am particularly interested in exploring how public programming, gatherings and exhibitions can facilitate alternative ways for knowledge accumulation and production, as well as to create possible threshold spaces for radical education and care. Moreso, coming from a post-socialist country, I have been wanting to unpack and research the contexts and histories I am coming from in a dialogue with the political, cultural, activist and decolonial practices here. I graduated from Vilnius Academy of Arts in Art History and Theory and received my master's in Arts and Society at Utrecht University. Since then, I worked with multiple cultural initiatives and organisations, including internships at Rupert Art Residency in Vilnius, Lithuania and A Tale of A Tub in Rotterdam. Currently, I am working with the Asian Movie Night roaming film initiative and Thami Mnyele Foundation residency in Amsterdam. I have worked with projects such as ‘Spinning the Spindle Towards Pluritopia’ by Aldo Ramos, and ‘Where Shall we Plant the Placenta’ group exhibition at A Tale of A Tub.

My first attempts into the curatorial were through collective fanzines and digital publishing. After studying Media and Culture and doing an internship at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona, I became interested in institutional critique and public programming as forms (re)mediation. Long involved in self-determination and class struggles, I became a community organiser during COVID-19, running FUTCH club*, a project-space for artists and activists to share strategies and learn from each other, later participating in ‘CAMP notes on education’ at documenta fifteen. Independently, I am a current fellow at the Transcultural Academy ‘Unfinished Publics: Art and Democracy’ at the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen in Dresden and have recently curated the group show ‘Deep Objects’ at De Fabriek as well as the discursive program for the exhibition ‘Sade: Freedom or Evil’ at CCCB.

(1988, NL) her practice revolves around resistance, (re)claiming space, and collective direct action. Throughout her development as an interdisciplinary practitioner and activist, her focus has always been on developing modes of solidarity and self-organisation at the margins. Her experience includes several years at Het Actiefonds, where a self-governing team worked with grassroots activist groups and artistic activist collectives, addressing colonial and extractivist power structures and domestic loss of space. Over the years, she has experimented with alternative economies, such as trust-based funding and reciprocal relationships, both at Het Actiefonds and later at DOEN Foundation. She also conducted research and worked on community-making and the right to self-determination for people who use drugs and live in the margins of society, through her master’s research in Cultural Anthropology and recent work at the Mainline Foundation. In addition to her “professional” experience, she is active in various activist movements, practising autonomous collectivity and solidarity infrastructures. Alternative ways of organising and economising are a leitmotif in her practice.

(1989, IT) studied fine arts at the G.R. Akademie in Amsterdam (2012-16) and in Rotterdam at the Piet Zwart Institute (2018-20) where he co-founded digestivo, an itinerant exhibition project. He primarily works with sculpture and photography, drawing and text as mediums, but also spends much time facilitating other people’s practices through various forms of collaboration. The past years he has been invested in working with an around forms of demarcation, and the ways in which historical models of ownership extend into the present and the everyday under the guise of continuous improvement. E.g. the use of cadaster as a tool of imperial expansion or the early scientific structuring of taxonomies. Part of the practice too is a continuous investment in the distribution and politics of food, which sometimes manifests in collaborative projects, often under the umbrella of digestivo which is a project co-initiated together with Lucía Bayón in 2019. They host artist’s work in various formats, what connects the single editions are the conversation about habits, gathering and preserving techniques and the common work around the kitchen.

I was born in Madrid (1991) and raised in Havana. I come from a background in Political Science. In 2013 I moved to Madrid where I started working at different intersections of artistic and curatorial practices. The projects I (co)develop focus on the performativities of specific contexts and communities in the framework of artistic practices and the different formats they can mobilise. In 2021 I moved to the Netherlands to study a masters program at Sandberg Institute that I finished in 2023. Some recent projects I have done here include the co-research and public program at Perdu with Alec Mateo called Borrowing a Distant Hill (2024) and I was resident in a research node at basis voor actuele kunst with Carla Arcos for the project Ultradependent Public School (2023) in which I participated giving a workshop, the exhibition and programming. I am one-third of Pleasure Ground, a collective of gardening and art I share with Lente Oosterhuis and Amalie Jensen. Prior to moving to the Netherlands I was working autonomously in Madrid as curator, cultural producer and artist in institutional contexts such as museums CA2M, cultural centers like La Casa Encendida, Conde Duque and Matadero Madrid, in public space through Bosque Real and Veranos de la Villa, within communities through gardening (e.g Miel al diablo) or in artist-run spaces such as Nadie Nunca Nada No. I enjoy pedagogical environments and have given workshops/talks in Sandberg Institute, basis voor actuele kunst, Madrid School of Architecture (ETSAM), Azkuna Zentroa, Universidad Carlos III. I generally work in collaborative structures.

I am a writer, researcher and a curatorial fellow based in London. My background in human rights has nurtured my interest in the role of art and creative practices in revealing the nature of oppression and routes to liberation. My engagement in land issues began while working at NETRIGHT- a women’s rights organisation in Ghana campaigning on land rights for women and socially vulnerable groups. I became curious about the gulf between NGOs and artists, who were exploring similar themes, but never interacted. My involvement in both cultural and policy-orientated spaces inspired a creative project called, “Come Home and Sleep”, which investigated unpaid care work through the lens of female informal workers known as “kayeyei”.  Since then, I have worked on advocacy and policy regarding the crisis in the UK housing system and its particular e ect on migrants, disabled and racialised tenants. Additionally, I have also worked on policy issues such as the loss of industrial land in London, its impact on industries vital to the functioning of the city, and ways of involving communities in what gets built.  My creative writing continues this research into spatial politics.  For example, my essay “Three Deaths and A Resurrection”, explores my relationship with redevelopment in a former local area. Additionally, my most recent piece “World-building in a time of constant heartbreak”, engages with cultural workers creating community spaces that use imagination as a critical tool for collective liberation.  I care deeply about breaking silos between di erent fields and facilitating environments for knowledge to be exchanged. As such, I am interested in facilitating programmes such as the online event I curated through Autograph ABP, a gallery in London. It brought together practitioners based in Kenya, India and the UK to explore the possibility of creating transnational solidarity between socially engaged artists. 

Suzie van Staaveren is an artist, graduated from the KABK in The Hague in 2016. In her work she tries to create compromises between her artistic vision and her environment. Van Staaveren sees compromise not as failing but as a quality that acknowledges the agency of (more than human) others. She plays, tricks, stretches opposites and shakes up a worldview based on dualism, competition, opposition, demarcation and appropriation. She wants to let go of pretensions to mastery over her decisions and the materials she ‘uses’. She rather mediates between the material, the audience, the real, and the imaginary. With her sculptural works, often containing interactive elements, Suzie explores possibilities to make art an integral and undeniable part of public space and consciousness. Robbie Schweiger is an art historian, slavist and curator. He contributes to exhibitions, acquisitions, publications and public programmes for (amongst others) Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Eye Film Museum, Van Abbemuseum, If I Can’t Dance, SKD Dresden (DE) and Almaty Museum of Arts (KZ). He writes for several art magazines (Metropolis M, Mister Motley, Kunstlicht, Stedelijk Studies), is a guestlecturer at art academies (Sandberg, Minerva) and universities (UvA, UU, Leiden University), and works as an advisor for the Mondriaan Fund. In 2023 he founded gelijk is ongelijk, a project space for local heritage, ecology and visual arts on the former island of Marken. His projects focus on dissecting grand narratives of cultural imperialism, spaces between fact and (science)fiction, and alternative physical and ethical connections to more than human life. Since 2022 Schweiger and Van Staaveren are working on Life Compensation Lottery (LCL), a project revolving around the organisation of a postcode lottery amongst people living around the Volgermeerpolder, a former peatswamp that over the course of the 20th century was turned from ‘waste’ into productive land resulting in a heavily polluted area bordering Amsterdam-Noord and the municipality of Waterland. All residents living in this area participate automatically and for free and have a chance to win a unique prize: carbon compensation for their entire life. After the draw, the winner’s carbon emissions will be estimated as accurately as possible by a climate scientist and compensated by restoring peatland on top of the contamination at the Volgermeerpolder. In cooperation with various local interest groups, a performative public programme will be organised in the Volgermeerpolder in the form of an award ceremony of the lottery and the unveiling of a monument by Suzie van Staaveren. This permanent artwork will have multiple functions: it will be the connection between the life of the winner and the growing peatland at the Volgermeerpolder, it will be a memorial to the environmental damage caused in the area, and it will function as a basis for community-based activism and the creation of rituals that connect and exchange with this land. Although LCL takes carbon offsetting as its starting point, it simultaneously criticises this phenomenon. It addresses and makes visible the shortcomings and complexities of carbon offsetting and compensation while also engaging in community-based activism and ecological regeneration. Compensation is bureaucratically complicated and involves the commodification of nature. By highlighting the limitations and ethical issues surrounding carbon offsetting, it challenges the capitalist and colonial logic of buying compensation for environmental damage.  More information about the project can be found in the call for papers ‘The Swamp Potential’ for the Fall  issue of art magazine Kunstlicht, for which Schweiger and Van Staaveren are the guest-editors. 

Suzie van Staaveren is an artist, graduated from the KABK in The Hague in 2016. In her work she tries to create compromises between her artistic vision and her environment. Van Staaveren sees compromise not as failing but as a quality that acknowledges the agency of (more than human) others. She plays, tricks, stretches opposites and shakes up a worldview based on dualism, competition, opposition, demarcation and appropriation. She wants to let go of pretensions to mastery over her decisions and the materials she ‘uses’. She rather mediates between the material, the audience, the real, and the imaginary. With her sculptural works, often containing interactive elements, Suzie explores possibilities to make art an integral and undeniable part of public space and consciousness. Robbie Schweiger is an art historian, slavist and curator. He contributes to exhibitions, acquisitions, publications and public programmes for (amongst others) Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Eye Film Museum, Van Abbemuseum, If I Can’t Dance, SKD Dresden (DE) and Almaty Museum of Arts (KZ). He writes for several art magazines (Metropolis M, Mister Motley, Kunstlicht, Stedelijk Studies), is a guestlecturer at art academies (Sandberg, Minerva) and universities (UvA, UU, Leiden University), and works as an advisor for the Mondriaan Fund. In 2023 he founded gelijk is ongelijk, a project space for local heritage, ecology and visual arts on the former island of Marken. His projects focus on dissecting grand narratives of cultural imperialism, spaces between fact and (science)fiction, and alternative physical and ethical connections to more than human life.  Since 2022 Schweiger and Van Staaveren are working on Life Compensation Lottery (LCL), a project revolving around the organisation of a postcode lottery amongst people living around the Volgermeerpolder, a former peatswamp that over the course of the 20th century was turned from ‘waste’ into productive land resulting in a heavily polluted area bordering Amsterdam-Noord and the municipality of Waterland. All residents living in this area participate automatically and for free and have a chance to win a unique prize: carbon compensation for their entire life. After the draw, the winner’s carbon emissions will be estimated as accurately as possible by a climate scientist and compensated by restoring peatland on top of the contamination at the Volgermeerpolder. In cooperation with various local interest groups, a performative public programme will be organised in the Volgermeerpolder in the form of an award ceremony of the lottery and the unveiling of a monument by Suzie van Staaveren. This permanent artwork will have multiple functions: it will be the connection between the life of the winner and the growing peatland at the Volgermeerpolder, it will be a memorial to the environmental damage caused in the area, and it will function as a basis for community-based activism and the creation of rituals that connect and exchange with this land. Although LCL takes carbon offsetting as its starting point, it simultaneously criticises this phenomenon. It addresses and makes visible the shortcomings and complexities of carbon offsetting and compensation while also engaging in community-based activism and ecological regeneration. Compensation is bureaucratically complicated and involves the commodification of nature. By highlighting the limitations and ethical issues surrounding carbon offsetting, it challenges the capitalist and colonial logic of buying compensation for environmental damage.  More information about the project can be found in the call for papers ‘The Swamp Potential’ for the Fall  issue of art magazine Kunstlicht, for which Schweiger and Van Staaveren are the guest-editors. 

(1994, NL) I work as a dramaturg and am a graduate from  BA Theatre Studies and MA International Dramaturgy at the University of Amsterdam. Over the past few years I have worked intensively with theatre maker Agat Sharma during and after his graduation from the DAS Theater program. This longterm project is called Birth of Cotton which focuses on the relationship between land and body in the (historical) context of cotton cultivation in India and European colonial imaginations of 'nature'. For example, the interspecies performance Moths Must Be Moaning made with and about the moth as global pests. Our written reflection on this work is part of the recently published book Interspecies Performance from Performance Research Books. The nerve wracking concert performance Come sit on my Face one last Time, that affectively deals with the statistical fact that a farmer in India has killed themselves every 30 minutes since the 1990s. New Nature Documentary, is an audio installation with the AI-generated voice that sounds strikingly similar to the voice of David Attenborough. In which a British TV presenter goes into the forests of Central India and gets lost. 

Currently my main focus is on the development of Zeelanding: an interdisciplinary situated theaterfestival in Zeeuws-Vlaanderen. I am developing this festival together with my sibling Sophia van der Putten. From this (hyper)local and specifically rural context we initiate artistic thinking about worldly themes and imagination of a possible future.Yearly we choose a different location from which we formulate situated questions in dialogue with the local community and selected artists. Zeeuws-Vlaanderen is me and Sophia's birthplace from which we both left. The idea for this festival arose partly from our desire to return to this place. Not from nostalgia, preservation or picturesque fetish, but rather curiosity about a place that is part of us and at the same time has become foreign to us. We see this shared personal relationship to this borderland region and its community as essential in shaping the curatorial vision and overall mission of this festival.