• Summer Camp for Radical Hope: Resting, Resisting, Re-building 

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    Posted: 31 March 2023


    SAVE THE DATE | 3-14 July | Asten-Heusden, Noord-Brabant, the Netherlands

    Organised by Open Set and Baltan Laboratories


    The Summer Camp for Radical Hope, launched by Open Set and Baltan Laboratories, is a call for designers, artists, cultural and social practitioners, and educators to enrich their creative practices and ongoing research in a collaborative, transdisciplinary manner. The 12-day research camp will take place on a farm – a site where theory and practice align – to allow participants to move through their own practices and rehearse new forms of relating, co-operating, working and living together within an ecological, political and sociological context.

    The project offers a support structure for thinkers and makers, who strive for meaningful and just practices that are adequate in responding to local and global crises. Regardless of whether they have art or design degrees, we connect participants to mentors, discourses and professional networks. The selected participants will have the opportunity to engage with theory but most importantly, embody language through practice in the act of living and working together as a collective towards an open form project that will be incorporated in 2023’s Dutch Design Week (DDW).

    A regular summer camp day includes: workshops with participants and external guests, reading circle, discussion time, farm work, being time (rest), rituals / practices / time to work on a collective project.

    The Summer Camp is hosted on the agricultural space (2.5 hectares) of Sengersbroek, a small-scale ecological pig farm in Asten-Heusden, the Netherlands. The farm, which contains a landscape of vegetable produce, animals and uncultivated land (0.5 hectares), is a residence for both humans and more-than-humans where rest and activity are in communion.

    Download the PDF with the full Call for participants

    Guests to connect
    During the summer camp, several guests are invited to spend some time at the farm and share their perspectives on ecology, embodiment and economy. They will give lectures, host workshops and join the participants in their activities at the farm. This will give participants the opportunity to engage in more informal conversations and talk with them about their practice and projects.

    First confirmed guests
    Susan Shuppli is an artist-researcher based in London whose work examines material evidence from war and conflict to environmental disasters and climate change. She is Director of the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths as well as affiliate artist-researcher and Board Chair of Forensic Architecture.

    Sandi Hilal is an artist, architect and researcher. She is currently Co-Director of DAAR, Decolonizing Architecture Art Research in Beit Sahour, Palestine. In 2012, she co-founded Campus in Camps: an experimental educational program hosted in the Dheisheh Refugee Camp in Bethlehem.

    Amenti is a community-based organization which focuses on building self-awareness through movement, dance, and knowledge. Ran and founded by artistic leader Gil Gomes Leal and creative producer Elia Vitadamo, Amenti strives to embody the spirit instead of spiritualizing the body.

    Klaas Kuitenbrouwer is senior researcher at Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam and teaches theory at the Gerrit Rietveld and other academies. A consistent element in his work is the intersection of different knowledge practices: technological, artistic, legal, organisational, scientific, and more-than-human. In 2019, he initiated the Zoöp project - developing and implementing an organisation model for collaboration between human and other-than-human life.

    Salomé Voegelin is a writer, researcher, and practitioner who works from the relational logic of sound to focus on the in-between and the liminal, where different disciplines meet in the contemporary crises of climate and public health, and where feminist, decolonial, and post-anthropocentric demands can engender different and plural knowledge possibilities. She is the author of Listening to Noise and Silence (2010), Sonic Possible Worlds (2014/21), and The Political Possibility of Sound (2018). Voegelin is a Professor of Sound at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London.

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    Why Radical Hope?
    In the Summer camp for Radical Hope, we will inhabit and challenge these three facets of ecology, economy and embodiment as materials for making and designing a socially just future asking the questions: how does listening to the earth connect to the acts of listening to the body? What are the mirroring aspects or, perhaps, the bio-mimicking aspects of a decentralised organisation in ecology, and the potential for decentralised institutions within humanity? How do we come to re-evaluate value, where capitalism is constantly assigning values to things irrespective of how the things themselves work? How do ‘rest’ and restoration in the body resonate to the ‘rest’ and restoration of our soils? Together, we will rest, activate, language and move in embodied ways that connect us to the Earth, and new forms of arts practice and design. New worlds won’t come from exhaustion but they will come from imagination, rest, and hope.

    Fees
    The fee for the program is €1,800, which includes registration, accommodation on the farm and Dutch Design Week participation. Travel and food are not included. One full stipend is available and should be communicated in the application if needed. We are happy to support applicants in applying for funding or support to finance their fees.

    Who and how to apply?
    Approximately 20 participants will be selected based on their motivation, as well as their profiles and practices. The selection will be based on experience and intent within the themes of the program. The group diversity and coherence will be attempted in this process. It is advisable to have a medium level of English, oral and written.

    Download the PDF of the Call for Participants to know how to apply

    Submissions will be accepted until May 8th, and selection will be announced on a rolling basis within five days of the deadline.


    Organizers
    Baltan Laboratories is a cultural indisciplinary lab based in Eindhoven (NL). They focus on societal issues through a relational approach, creating spaces to rehearse living otherwise.

    Open Set, initiated in 2012, is situated in Rotterdam (NL), but acts nomadically. Open Set is an alternative platform for art/design research & development outside and in-between institutional frameworks and disciplines, as well as in a dialogue with local communities and individuals. Open Set bridges with other traditions and disciplines to open up the framework of seeing and thinking. As a space for knowledge exchange, Open Set connects artists, designers and scholars in a temporary learning assembly, reducing the isolation within the creative process, and offers a non-competitive and peer-led environment.

    Credits
    Concept & Hosting:
    Marlou van der Cruijsen (co-director at Baltan Laboratories), Lorenzo Gerbi (designer, art director, curator and co-director at Baltan Laboratories), Victoria McKenzie (architectural researcher at RRA, educator, artist, co-curator of Open Set 2023), Irina Shapiro (designer, educator, programme director Open Set, researcher at RASL).
    Production: Sarie Hermens, Julia Kassyk
    Design: Gabriela Baka, Aneta Sieniawska

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