2025 - 2026 FACTORY student led: ECHO - Each Creator Has Obstacles

2025 - 2026 FACTORY student led: ECHO led by BiBi. Nida, January 2026.
The process of creation is rarely smooth and that is also part of its power. It asks you to turn yourself inside out, to absorb and transform different perspectives. How do you reveal the way you process the world? How do you translate? What language do you choose, and do you understand why? Are you able to speak about this process, or would you like to try?
If the vastness will not name itself, then we name it together. We become each other’s echo. And perhaps, in this shared resonance, the fear of silence softens, giving way to the strength of a collective voice.

APRIL 20, 2026

Led by Asmaa Barakat, Ella Tegenbos, Ginevra Collini, Javier Rodriguez PerezCuriel

When: 15:30 - 17:00

Starting location: House 287

For this edition of ECHO, we invite you on a peripatetic walk, a practice rooted in ancient Greece, where philosophers discussed their ideas through movement. As we walk, we will engage with the forest and the urban landscape, paying attention to the emotions and associations that emerge. We’ll reflect on how these experiences connect to our kitchens/aeroponics or any artistic-practice inquiries you wish to explore.

Drawing inspiration from psychogeography, this walk will drift away: being fully present with the environment without goals, destinations, or maps.

We will begin with 10 minutes of silent walking to fully attune to our inner and outer worlds. During this time, you could write, draw, record, or document anything that comes up. Afterwards, we’ll share and discuss these impressions as our moving conversation unfolds.

JANUARY 20, 2026

Led by BiBi, Asmaa Barakat, Ella Tegenbos, Fagner Lima, Javier Rodriguez PerezCuriel

When: 15:30 - 17:00

Location: Saltanes

Having a creative practice is rarely a smooth or linear experience. Doubt, uncertainty, exhaustion, hesitation, emotional weight, and practical limitations often accompany the act of making, the act of hurling a stone into a pit of darkness we called  ' ___ '. We hurl and we wait for its echo. We want to know its name. But more often than not, it barely breathes a whisper in return. Repetition of attempts, in this sense, feels pathetic.

Yet, we persist. If the abyss will not utter its name itself, we name it together, we become the echo for each other. And perhaps in this shared resonance, the fear of silence yields to the power of a collective voice, an ECHO:

Each Creator Has Obstacles

Format

ECHO is a format of peer-to-peer feedback with a focus on care. The input will center around the questions we have and want to discuss.

This space is fundamentally a form of mutual support, co-reflection, and peer companionship during the process of our practice. It is not primarily a critique session, nor a forum for corrective advice. Instead, ECHO aims to create a sustainable platform for in and between the confluences, and continue between your Kitchen and other unpresented work.

Methodology

Our conversation will grow from the questions and uncertainties that we encounter during the Kitchen presentations, artistic practices, and research.

Before each meeting, we invite participants to take some time and write down thoughts and concerns they want to talk about regarding their kitchen/practice. This includes: feelings, struggles, goals, limits, or boundaries they are encountering.

From these collective inputs, we will shape a few “topic clusters” and proceed the meeting based on these shared themes. This allows those who have similar questions during their presented work, or work in progress, to share. Likewise, those who have experienced it and would like to share the journey can contribute.

Practical Scope

Topic Limit:

We choose the first 5 topics/clusters. We might include more people’s similar questions in one cluster. If there is an urgency, we could make an exception.

How to sustain:

Students who are not presenting their work are encouraged to organize the Kitchen session.

Documentation: Presenters define what they want to be documented and where they want the accent to be on regarding their practice.

How to sign up:

Please send your answer to these questions at least 1 day before the Factory, to any facilitator for this space.

  1. What is your recent practice? If we haven't seen it in your kitchen, could you please briefly describe it? 
  2. During this process of making, how do you feel about it? This could be your doubt, concern, struggle, uncertainty, hesitation, feelings, and practical limitations that you would like to have a conversation about.

Please note that you are also welcome if you only want to be present but not sharing. In this case, just send a sign-up text. 

Also, if due to the time limitation, your question is not (fully) answered/discussed, we can still extend our conversation outside of this space, or even, after roaming. 

 

This student initiative is facilitated by DAI by making it part of the syllabus 2025-2026 and by providing space and time for gathering. It is embedded in the curriculum component WEAVER and participation is credited with ECTS.