14 June — 2 July, 2023
Wed — Sun, 12.00—18.00
BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Pauwstraat 13A, NL-3512 TG Utrecht
Opening 14 June, 18:00—21:00
Events program and performance details: https://www.instagram.com/hkumafa/
The MA Fine Art program of HKU University of the Arts Utrecht brings together artists from different contexts and backgrounds working across a range of media and interests. Diverse life experiences and multiple viewpoints converge to allow new knowledge, awareness and understanding to emerge by sharing time, stories, concerns and fears. In this setting, care for each other's emotional and artistic lives allows space for solidarity and mutual support to evolve, to strive for everyone's words to be heard and valued.
Refractions applies the metaphor of the distortion of light as it passes through different materials to explore the ways different cultural and social perspectives shape one’s understanding of reality. The artists featured in Refractions share the drive to investigate and dissect the layers of the social, cultural and political issues affecting their lives and informing their work. Their practices seek to expose injustices and inequalities and to reveal the power dynamics and structures that shape their personal experiences. Mourning loss and processing trauma that may have shaped one’s life and work can be healing and build resilience. Together, they aim to create a powerful and transformative space for artistic and social awareness that echoes their attempts to bend the horizon toward more hopeful and collective speculative futures. Doing so together allows them to face uncomfortable truths, pursue forgotten or hidden narratives and minority experiences together. This resonance has fostered new understandings, empathy and growth so that they are more willing, more brave to venture beyond the visible, known or familiar.
Schedule of performances
Saturday 17 June
15:30—15:45 Meshkat Talebi and Olivier Terpstra, Borders Are an Imaginary Line, live performance, 15 min.
16:00—16:15 Minsun Kim, (Im-)possibility of listening and speaking at the same time, performance, 15 min.
17:00—17:20 Eunho Yoo, A Space for Mourning, performance, 20 min.
Saturday 24 June
13:15—13:45 Eunho Yoo, A Space for Mourning, performance, 30 min.
14:00—14:20 Jeehae Kim, Freeze and Melt: Tactile Activity with Ice Eggs, participatory performance, 20 min.
15:00—15:15 Minsun Kim, (Im-)possibility of listening and speaking at the same time, performance, 15 min.
16:00—16:30 Yuxuan Cui, Shape of (relation-)ship, participatory performance, 30 min.
17:00—17.30 Vlada Predelina, Activation 1: Taking from the table, participatory lecture performance, 30 min.
HKU MAFA PROFILE
The MAFA is particularly suitable to cultural practitioners who are interested in experimenting with artistic approaches that are sensitive to difference and have an anchor in social-political contextualizations.
Cultural expressions - including art, institutions, everyday practices - are never neutral. They are shared, learned and therefore negotiable. Artistic practices do not only participate in sharing and learning, but also have an important say in the negotiation processes. They can intervene, and even more so, they have the power to make the impossible tangible. Their role is to formulate and reformulate descriptions of objects, to initiate and form relations and undo others, to work from encounters in a world that we will never fully grasp.
Having an anchor in social-political contextualization means:
Unpacking Attention: How do we focus on what is important and connect to current social political struggles? What attracts us to particular social-political-aesthetic formations? How can we unpack this attraction as something that is shared, learned, but also negotiable.
Unlearning to relate in order to relate anew: Our minds and bodies are woven into a (historically grown) web of relationships that has an impact on our cultural expressions. In the MA we are dedicated to exploring these relationalities. We are on one hand fostering sensitivities towards these relationalities, also those that are beyond a grasp of consciousness. On the other hand, we explore how to bring these sensitivities into methods, methodologies, artistic expressions, and language that can be shared, made public and learned.
Acknowledging difference: What does it mean to shape one’s artistic practice with a distinct attention to difference and social political context? What can we learn from feminist, queer, decolonial and post-colonial, Black and indigenous and disability studies and practices, while acknowledging their specific cultural expressions and struggles? What are the conditions for imagining a different order of things while practising a rigorous engagement with (artistic) communities in place.
The programme consists of seminars, long and short-terms workshops, collaborations with other institutions and within the HKU, collectives and (art) communities, excursions, studio visits and tutorials. Moreover, the MA programme is in vivid exchange with its sister programme MA Scenography. Various artists, cultural practitioners, activists, curators, designers and theorists share their ways of knowing, sensing and working along with professional insights with Master of Fine Art students.
In order to get an idea of the context of the MA, collaborations and artistic expressions that co-emerged from the MAFA, please have a look at the following:
https://hku.nl/en/study-at-hku/fine-art/master-of-fine-art
https://www.instagram.com/hkumafa/
https://www.instagram.com/toolsforthetimes/
https://www.instagram.com/no.more.later/
Lecturers: Tiong Ang, Christina Della Giustina, Ola Hassanain, Maria Hlavajova, Nancy Jouwe, Annette Krauss, Katia Krupennikova, Falke Pisano, Domeniek Ruyters, Henk Slager
Recent guest lecturers: Daniel Aguilar Ruvalcaba, Lara Almarcegui, Maja Bekan, Alexis Blake, Staci Bu Shea, Binna Choi (Casco), Valentina Desideri, Kris Dittel, Nikos Doulos (Expodium), Denise Ferreira da Silva, Silvia Gardini, Julia Geerlings, Ola Hassanain, Anette Hofman, Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, Max Jorge Hinderer Cruz, Maria Hlavajova (BAK), Philippine Hoegen, Syafiatiduna (Kunci), Christina Li, Heidi Linck, Mascha Madörin, Àngels Miralda, Nat Muller, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Emily Pethick, Rory Pilgrim, Laure Prouvost, Rachael Rakes, Ilse van Rijn, Timur Si-Qin, Sakiko Sugawa, Ferdi Thajib (Kunci), Elke Uitentuis, Rolando Vazquez, Reinaart Vanhoe, Rieke Vos, Friso Wiersum (Expodium), Riet Wijnen, Bart Witte (Expodium), Danielle van Zuijlen
Art Institutions and close collaborators in Utrecht:
BAK Utrecht (including fellowship programme): https://www.bakonline.org/
Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons: https://casco.art/
Expodium: https://expodium.nl/
Impakt festival: https://impakt.nl/
M.C. Julie Yu, Travelogues with Prompts, 2020
Parvaneh Karimi & ( k a - a re - n), nomadic installation and performance, 2021
Gerardo Gomez Tonda, Origin Stories, 2020
