Since 2017, BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht conducts a post-academic Fellowship Program with, at its center, research on reframing and rethinking conditions of the contemporary through politicized art-making and inquiry. The 10-month Fellowship Program offers ten research positions per year (September–June) to Dutch and international practitioners involved in contemporary arts, theory, and activisms. The Fellowship Program develops talent and critical practice in concert with the public experimental projects of BAK, advancing the notion of art as a public sphere and a political space.

The Fellowship is predicated on regular, active development of an individual research trajectory, as well as participation in collective research and exchange with other Fellows. Fellowship research proposals should speak to and with BAK’s core research, experimental methodology development, and program itinerary Propositions for Non-Fascist Living (2017–2020). Successful fellowship proposals correspond to this program’s three foci: conditions, politics, and genealogies of contemporary global migration; ecologies, ecological crisis, and naturecultures; and the potentials and dangers of technology in struggles for justice and transformative politics.

The Fellows gather at BAK every six weeks (seven times a year in total) for intensive, collective seminars and workshops with visiting artists, scholars, activists, and other cultural practitioners. At least twice yearly, the Fellows participate in and/or organize a public component engaging a wider audience beyond specifically academic and cultural fields, which is realized as BAK public programming. Intermittently, the Fellows present to and/or facilitate workshops with the student community in Utrecht. The BAK Fellowship Program involves collaborative partnerships with HKU University of the Arts and Utrecht University, allowing Fellows to connect their research practices to an artistic and academic institutional field through tutoring, leading workshops, and exchange with students.

Five Fellowships are awarded to Netherlands-based practitioners. The international Fellows’ preferences to be residential or low-residential can be negotiated individually on the basis of their respective research proposals and distance to BAK (low-residential positions are available only for those based within or near Europe). Residency-accommodation is provided free of charge for one international Fellow (based inside or outside of Europe) who would otherwise be unable to travel back and forth for meetings due to political conditions and/or incommensurable economic circumstances.

The Fellowship Program is dedicated to facilitating collective, intergenerational practice, and is committed to engaging a critical group coming from, with, and for the otherwise. We therefore encourage people with practices not often canonized, of marginalized identities and experiences, and of a variety of ages to apply. The Fellowship Program is conducted in English and is a paid position.

The current (2017/2018) Fellows are: Sepake Angiama; Isshaq Al-Barbary and Diego Segatto (Campus in Camps); Matthijs de Bruijne; Luigi Coppola; Quinsy Gario; Ola Hassanain; Otobong Nkanga; Wendelien van Oldenborgh; and Pelin Tan.

Application Procedure
–February 28, 2018: Opening of the call for Fellowship applications
–April 6, 2018: Final deadline for Fellowship applications
–End June 2018: Public announcement of selected Fellows
–Fellowship terms between September 1, 2018 and June 30, 2019

To read the full call for proposals and details about the BAK Fellowship 2018/2019, please click here. For the application form, please click here.

Questions about the application
Wietske Maas, BAK Fellowship Program: wietske@bakonline.org