INVITATION 3+4 October 2026
If Not Here, Then Where? Making Our Home in Shared Struggle
On the occasion of Gabriëlle Schleijpen’s completion of her tenure as artistic director
and head of program(2002-2026) of the Dutch Art Institute (DAI), and celebrating her legacy, the second edition of APRiCot Garden 2026 will revisit the enduring questions posed
by one of DAI’s founding projects. Here as the Centre of the World sought to
locate the pulse of global power and resistance; its afterlife has shaped the
school’s trajectory.
That trajectory has brought us precisely here, to this point, to this gathering, at
this moment. It is from this vantage—shaped by years of collective practice and
shared questioning—that we now come together to insist that belonging is
forged through shared production, struggle, and infrastructure.
We come together to refuse the neoliberal logic that thrives on shifting systemic
problems onto individual shoulders. To reject frameworks that treat the
psychological endurance of the oppressed as beautiful, redemptive, or a spiritual
currency; to refuse narratives that alchemize trauma into strength or offer
hollow uplift.
We come together to reject blind, dogmatic class-reductionism. To refuse the
argument that treats race and gender as mere "distractions" or simple
byproducts of capitalism. To instead insist they are material forces—forces that
dictate whose labor is stolen or devalued before they even walk through the door
of a workplace.
Where we belong is not determined by blood/soil or territorial borders; it is
seized at the point of production, where material life is made, moved, or
maintained. We reject the lure of the anachronistic as a site of resistance, and
refuse to ground community on identity. Instead, we forge a "composition"—a
strategic alignment of inhabitants bound by co-dependence in a material
ecosystem, united by practical interrelation and mutual necessity.
If Not Here, Then Where? extends the legacy of Here as the Centre of the
World, cultivating forms of collectivity and intimacy that break with
parochial notions of community.
Our two-day public symposium will carry forward the
1906 General Jewish Labour Bund's insight that arguing and leafleting are not
merely tools for spreading pre-existing knowledge but the actual sites where
revolutionary knowledge is forged. We hold that these buried futures are
precisely what must be reactivated—not as nostalgia, but as a critical
inheritance, the very ground on which a politics worthy of our genocidal times
must be built.
Together with Gabriëlle Schleijpen we maintain our shared commitment to
building a home in the friction of shared struggle, and to the work that continues
to define our path.
APRiCot Garden is envisioned as a bi-annual event bringing together research trajectories by alumni and practitioners from the wider DAI community.
If Not Here, Then Where? Making Our Home in Shared Struggle
Conveners: Ana Teixeira Pinto & Gabriëlle Schleijpen.
October 3 from 15:00 -23:00
October 4 from 16:30 -24:00
Contributors to the symposium:
Afrang Nordlöf Malekian, Angela Harutyunyan, Aziza Harmel & Bassam El Baroni, Edwin Nasr, Iliada Charalambous & Jeanne van Heeswijk, Leire Vergara, Marwa Arsanios, Noah Brehmer & Monika Janulevičiūtė, Pary El-Qalqili, Quinsy Gario, Rana Hamadeh, Sami Khatib, Teresa Koloma Beck, Tirdad Zolghadr.
Talks, conversations, lecture-performances, and agitational workshop, the launch of the publication A Cut Through the Screen: Struggles' Reverberations in Cinema and towards the end of the second day an experiment with the dance floor as curatorial space and place of study. DAI Friends & Alumni Grant collective and Kiosk Rotterdam are present throughout.
October 3 till October 18
Contributors to the exhibition:
Afrang Nordlöf Malekian, Alaa Abu Asad, Alexandra Martens Serrano, Baha Görkem Yalim, Derek di Fabio & Dalia Maini, Duruo Wang, Foundland Collective (Lauren Alexander & Ghalia Elsrakbi), Giulia Crispiani & Golrokh Nafisi, Hasan Özgur Top, Ioli Kavakou, Leon Filter & Ian Clewe, Livio Casanova & Clara Saito, marce norbert hörler & Kari Leigh Rosenfeld, Sepideh Behrouzian.
With spatial dramaturgy by Elisa Giuliano, the exhibition features an array of film screenings, textile works, a mural, performance props and an archival installation.
EXHIBITION CATALOGUE
coming soon
PROGRAM & TIMELINE SYMPOSIUM
coming soon
PRACTICALITIES
If Not Here, Then Where? is hosted by BAK basecamp
Pauwstraat 13A, 3512 TG Utrecht
