We commend BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, for its brilliant selection of 2023/2024 Fellows as we are excited to know that Teresa Borasino (DAI, 2005), Iliada Charalambous (DAI, 2023) and Maoyi Qiu (DAI, 2022) will be working alongside other, equally purposeful artists~activists within the BAK Fellowship for Situated Practice post-academic program, taking place in a federated constellation of two research cells in Istanbul and Utrecht. The Fellows have been selected on the basis of their proposals to develop experimental research within the expanded field of contemporary art and in connection with the overarching research trajectory “Alignment/Nonalignment”—a layered and urgent geopolitical proposition pertaining to the questions of organization, positionality, and solidarity. This research focus emerged in the context of the 2021/2022 edition of the BAK Fellowship for Situated Practice and was specifically prompted by the unjustifiable military invasion of Ukraine: a chain of events that strengthened the refusal of all forms of imperialism and amplified the need for practices of sharing and reconnection with collectivist initiatives, non-official histories, and subterranean legacies that have enacted and cultivated solidarities against the grain of imposed archives, identities, and structures. October 9, 2023–June 17, 2024.
Hosted by The Istanbul Biennial Production and Research Programme (ÇAP) at Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV), the Istanbul cell is composed of artist collective adaptör projekt; artist Betül Aksu; journalist and documentary filmmaker Varduhi Balyan; artist, writer, and translator Alev Ersan; artist, researcher, and architect Hanieh Fatouraee; filmmaking duo Enis Köstepen and Irmak Karasu; artist and academic Esra Oskay; artist collective SB Arch Lab; artist and researcher Seher Uysal; and activist and researcher Ayça Yüksel.
The BAK cell in Utrecht is composed of artist Teresa Borasino; artist Iliada Charalambous; artist and activist Yuliia Elyas; filmmaker, researcher, and educator Astrid Feringa; collective The Garage School; curator, dramaturge, and researcher Marta Keil; conceptual visual artist and researcher Andrea Knezovic; designer and artist Siwar Krai(y)tem; choreographer, sound artist, and researcher Paula Montecinos Oliva; artist and activist Maoyi Qiu; collective Radical Data; and documentary maker and editor Firat Yücel.
BAK has been developing its post-academic fellowship program since 2017. The program focuses on facilitating research that reframes and rethinks conditions of the contemporary through theoretically informed and sociopolitically driven art and inquiry. It offers positions to practitioners working across art, theory, and social action, providing the opportunity and resources to develop their respective practice, research, and talent.
The BAK Fellowship for Situated Practice is coordinated by Irene Calabuch Mirón and convened by Zeyno Pekünlü and Dina Mohamed (DAI, 2019).
The 2023/2024 BAK Fellowship for Situated Practice is realized by BAK in collaboration with The Istanbul Biennial Production and Research Programme, Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV), Istanbul.
Read more about the Fellows’ projects here.
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