Struggles with housing, self-employment, residency permits, bureaucracy and funding, among other issues, affect the majority of artists in the Netherlands. Precarity, even though ever present, has risen over the past years. With the isolation of many during the pandemic and now shifts in the political climate, the Netherlands is becoming increasingly inhospitable for artists, even more so for international artists. 

To navigate these precarities, various self-initiated networks have been acting as platforms of shared knowledge and solidarity. From toolkits, hearsay documents, networks of shared information and moments to gather about common struggles, these initiatives aim to support and emancipate Dutch, EU and Non-EU artists studying, living and working in the Netherlands 

With Tactics for Togetherness , Platform BK and POST will bring together these networks and initiatives to discuss their experiences running such support systems. This event will consist in a talk, panel discussion and workshop. During the event, the focus will be on how to sustain and connect these networks of support, strengthen the knowledge of those who need it most, address gaps within current resources, and gather tools and resources already made. 

With contributions by:

– Margarita Osipian, Co-initiator of (DIWAN Arts and Dialogue, and an independent curator, researcher, and cultural organizer based in Amsterdam)
– Mutual Support Platform (Represented by MC Julie Yu, Nguyễn Ngọc Tú Dung)
– Solidarity Platform (Lila Bullen -Smith and Francisca Khamis Giacoman) – Not Just a Collective 

The panel talk will be moderated by Lena Longefay. Please feel welcome to join us in this conversation and workshop.

Workshop Information:
This co-learning workshop, hosted by Not Just a Collective, aims to utilize collective mapping to foster knowledge sharing and envision cohabitation through self-publishing and self-organization. Derived from the zine ‘Survival Manual for Self-Publishers in NL,’ which compiles scattered resources and explores the possibilities of collective self-publishing, the workshop will reflect on our experiences with self-organization and address a few questions related to autonomy within the art realm as international artists.

Tactics for Togetherness 
Saturday 1st of June 2024
1:00 PM – 5:00 PM

Language: English

To join, please RSVP via the Eventbrite .
This event is FREE and will be held in English

POST
Driekoningenstraat 16
6828 EN Arnhem

About Invited Speakers and Panel discussion Participants:

DIWAN for Arts and Dialogue  DIWAN for Arts and Dialogue is a platform co-initiated by Fadwa Naamna, Hilda Moucharrafieh, Ehsan Fardjadniya, Margarita Osipian, and Emirhakin. DIWAN aims at supporting art and design practitioners, especially those in the diaspora, in the development of their projects and artistic practice. The platform’s foundational focus is to facilitate navigating the Dutch art scene for post-graduate artists and curators, and to tackle and make transparent the collective struggles of residency permits, housing, and project funding, among others. DIWAN departs from the common experiences of its founders and seeks to stimulate public discursive events and knowledge exchanges that relate to these issues.

– Margarita Osipian (She/Her) Margarita Osipian is an independent curator, researcher, and cultural organizer based in Amsterdam. Engaging with the intersections and socio-political frictions within art, design, and technology, she organizes workshops, exhibitions, and collaborative projects both in formal institutions and in more precarious and ephemeral spaces. Margarita is part of The Hmm, a platform for internet cultures, is on the curatorial team of Sonic Acts, and is part of the artistic team of W139.

Mutual Support Platform (MSP) The Mutual Support Platform (MSP) is a space for conversations and actions by/between/for students, alumni, and teachers of the MAFA HKU, Utrecht. It emerged as a collective effort in response to the crisis of COVID-19, which we experienced with differing levels of privilege. The platform continues to exist as an internal (and at times external) online resource, as an expanded network, and as a hub for the following conversations: Instead of surrendering to systemic attempts of the academy to discipline, MSP challenges the so-called neutrality of prevalent discourses in (art) education, and addresses support by the art institution that is missing on different levels. MSP is dedicated to working on how to deal with conditions collectively, to intervene, to document these processes and trajectories, to imagine and act, to unlearn, and to support one another.

– M.C Julie Yu (She/Her) M.C. Julie Yu is an interdisciplinary art worker, freelance masseur, and novice activist who is currently based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Her works include a wide variety of media, such as video, music, print, exercise, performance, workshops, and installation. Julie’s artistic practices revolve around the senses of othering under the postcolonial and capitalist cultural phenomena, specifically based on the experience as a migrant and interdisciplinary worker. She reflects on these experiences through various sub-culture inspirations and addresses the reflection with a good dose of humour.

– Dung (She/Her) Nguyễn Ngọc Tú Dung (b. a while ago, Hồ Chí Minh city, Việt Nam). As a multidisciplinary practitioner with way too many curiosities, Dung likes to question, unlearn, and play around with established norms and thought patterns, including her own. Witnessing the world’s downfall of solidarity and affection, Dung developed an ambition to bring them back. Hence, she focuses on using a range of practices from visual art to pedagogical pursuits, engaging in spontaneous collaborations, organising, public interventions, and participatory performances to explore the potential of unconventional encounters. Dung considers (un)learning as the central of her practice and contributing to bringing beings closer, again, as her life goal. Dung is currently the artist-in-library resident at Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons, Utrecht in collaboration with the Read-in Collective.

Solidarity Platform The solidarity platform, organised by Francisca Khamis Giacoman and Lila Bullen-Smith, is an ongoing resource hub and support network for non-Dutch students, particularly non-EU students, coming to study at Dutch art higher education institutions. This platform is sourced from collaborative, shared documents initiated by non-EU students who identified the dire need for centralised information resources to help them navigate life in the Netherlands.

– Lila Bullen-Smith (She/Her) (Johannesburg, 1995) Is an art worker living in Amsterdam. She holds a BFA and a PgDip in Film Studies from the University of Auckland, and an MFA from the Sandberg Institute. Her research practice focuses on the collaborative creation and maintenance of infrastructures and settings that enable the material conditions for commoning, collaborative knowledge-production and participatory archival practices, constellating around hyper-local, micro-histories.

– Francisca Khamis Giacoman Francisca Khamis Giacoman (Chile, 1988) is an artist based in Amsterdam. Coming from the Palestinian diaspora in Chile, her recent works deal with fragmented diasporic memories. In performances and installations, she recollects stories of migration and unfolds them at the boundaries of fiction and materiality. Her video and sound works use family archives to focus on the solidification of in-between identities.

Not Just a Collective  Not Just a Collective is a group of multidisciplinary artists, researchers and designers from Italy, China, Argentina, South Korea, Türkiye and The Netherlands who live(d)/work(ed)/ stud(ied) in Arnhem. Our team members are Lu Lin, Alessandra Varisco, Santiago Candelo, Jiahui Feng, Heike Renée de Wit, Femke Kersten, Han Gyeol Kim, Doğa Gönüllü, Sem Bartels and Euna Lee. We work as a collective in the field of self-publishing, with the common aim to foster self-organization, knowledge accessibility and cultural participation in Arnhem (NL).

Moderator Lena Longefay Always inspired by Robert Filiou’s quote « art is what makes life more interesting than art », Lena Longefay (1996, FR) develops a research-based work questioning the politics and economies of commonness through traditions and beliefs. She creates multi-media installations that she calls compositions. They are often animated by lecture performances. She is part of Fabas, a cooking duo with artist Alejandra Lopez, experimenting with slow food processes. Alongside her practice she is gathering work experiences in winemaking and sommellerie.