Wdka Research Center

Wdka Research Center WdKA Research Center focuses on ongoing transformations and shifts in arts and design practices in th

WdKA Research Center focuses on ongoing transformations and shifts in arts and design practices in their relations to societal change. We observe, analyze, follow, and immerse ourselves, as practitioners, in these transformations. Through practice-based, artistic research with teachers, students and external partners, we translate our findings into renewed, timely art school curricula.

BOOK LAUNCH |Wor(l)ding: A Harvested Glossary for Social Justice in Arts Education and BeyondWor(l)ding: A Harvested Glo...
11/10/2024

BOOK LAUNCH |Wor(l)ding: A Harvested Glossary for Social Justice in Arts Education and Beyond

Wor(l)ding: A Harvested Glossary for Social Justice in Arts Education and Beyond ( & ) is glossary of references harvested from discourses of equity, diversity, inclusivity, social justice, and social practices, not only in an arts education context, but also as part of broader, systemic urgencies.

The ‘conveners’ of the publication – , and from the Social Practices Research Group, together with n from the .o4i – welcome you to the official launch of the publication at WdKA. Everyone is welcome!

Wednesday 23 October | 10:00h | Research Station

An update on public events around the publications Promiscuous Infrastructures: Practicing Care and Utterances: Composin...
04/10/2024

An update on public events around the publications Promiscuous Infrastructures: Practicing Care and Utterances: Composing a Care-Informed Research Practice in the Cracks (Research Center WdKA, and ).

Upcoming
Berlin, 10 October, 16:00, at .initiative
Promiscuous Infrastructures: Practicing Care and Whispering in the Cracks workshop.
Speakers: , , Skye Maule-O'Brien, , Julia Wilhelm) together with publishers Journal for Aesthetics & Protest, HumdrumPress and Meteoro Editions.

Berlin, 10 October, 19:00, .initiative
Double launch of publications Promiscuous Infrastructures: Practicing Care and Utterances: Composing a Care-Informed Research Practice in the Cracks together with HumdrumPress and Meteoro Editions.

Berlin, 11-13 October, Miss Read: The Berlin Art Book Festival

Berlin, 13 October, 16:00, Miss Read: The Berlin Art Book Festival
A double book launch with Utterances: Composing a Care-Informed Research Practice in the Cracks and Promiscuous Infrastructures: Practicing Care in a panel talk headlined “Reading Methodologies for/of Care” and moderated by Amy Gowen, Marc Herbst and Michelle Teran.

Zurich, 5-7 November, Critical Infrastructures – Enabling Constraints Symposium
Editors Michelle Teran and Renée Turner will facilitate a workshop, participate in focused discussions and host a public launch.

Recent events
-Ghent, 11-12 May, Ghent Art Book Fair
- Montreal, 16 May, articule artist-run centre
- Promiscuous Infrastructures Practicing Care book launch, reading, public discussion, and dinner, facilitated by researchers Skye Maule-O’Brien and Yusser al Obaidi.
- Geneva, 20-23 June, Photobooks Switzerland
- BASIS Vinschgau-Venosta, 10-14 July, By Design and By Disaster Conference. Public talk and workshop by editor Michelle Teran.
- Amsterdam, 19-22 September, Unseen Amsterdam
- Düsseldorf, 20-22 September, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf Art Book Fair
- Amsterdam, 3 October, My Evidence: Creating LGBTQI+ Art and Archives Conference. Pablo Lerma is part of a round table discussion Ar(t)chives and the Politics of Visualisation, Aestheticization, and Curation.

A sneak peak at the beautiful manual, Promiscuous Infrastructures Practicing Care!DON’T FORGET! the launch at on Friday...
16/05/2024

A sneak peak at the beautiful manual, Promiscuous Infrastructures Practicing Care!
DON’T FORGET! the launch at on Friday, May 17th, 2024 @ 19.00. Kiosk is proud to host the launch of ‘Promiscuous Infrastructures: Practicing Care’ and ‘Utterances: Composing a Care-Informed Research Practice in the Cracks’.

Promiscuous Infrastructures brings together more than twenty contributors—art and social practitioners, researchers, and educators—including the twelve core members of the Promiscuous Care Study Group, who have been researching and writing about caring infrastructures and promiscuous care for several years. This project takes seriously the urgent need to imagine diverse infrastructures of care at every scale of planetary existence. The resulting interdisciplinary publication comprises essays, visual schematics and scores, personal letters, recipes, and conversations, which emerge from the work of the study group, situated around the in Rotterdam.

“Promiscuous Infrastructures is an impressive and significant intervention into that key political struggle that has come to define our age – the struggle for care.”—The Care Collective, author of The Care Manifesto.

TITLE INFO
Promiscuous Infrastructures: Practicing Care (2024), First Edition. Published by: Journal for Aesthetics & Protest, Leipzig and WdKA Research Center, Rotterdam.

280 pages with 82 color pages. Exposed spine binding. Language: English.
Contributors: , Jacquill Basdew, Selma Bellal, , Cooking Something Up, , Marc Herbst, Czar Kristoff P., , , , , Skye Maule-O’Brien, Lola Olufemi, Laurence Rassel, Vivian Sky Rehberg, , , , , & Julia Wilhelm.

Edited by Michelle Teran, Marc Herbst, Vivian Sky Rehberg, Renée Turner and The Promiscuous Care Study Group. Book Design by Yusser al Obaidi and Julia Wilhelm. Poster & Map Illustrations by Carla Arcos.

Practicing Promiscuous CareAn afternoon of drawing, reading and weaving threads of thought and action surrounding care p...
14/05/2024

Practicing Promiscuous Care

An afternoon of drawing, reading and weaving threads of thought and action surrounding care practices

Join us on Sunday May 19th from 14.00-17.00 for a collective drawing, weaving and reading of texts and other visual contributions found within the publications ‘Promiscuous Infrastructures Practicing Care’ and ‘Utterances: Composing a Care-informed Research Practice’.

This workshop invites people interested in critical drawing practices, institutional critique, collectiveness and self-organization, radical pedagogies, and embodied, interdisciplinary theorizing, who value the marginalia of research in side notes, gossip, and whispers. Starting from written and visual quotes and questions collected from both publications, we will read, draw, and map to activate, expand, deepen, and generate a web of care practices. There will be reading and drawing exercises, a snakes and ladders board game, collective weaving of textual and visual quotes, homemade carrot cake sweetness, and fresh tea brewing. The Practicing Promiscuous Care workshop will be facilitated by Carmen José (https://www.instagram.com/carmenjose_work/) and Reading Rhythms Club (https://www.instagram.com/readingrhythmsclub/).

The event will take place at Kiosk Bookstore, Pieter de Raadtstraat 35A, Rotterdam. SPOTS ARE LIMITED! RSVP THROUGH DM TO KIOSK BOOKSTORE or to Michelle Teran:[email protected]

Announcing the launch of two books at on Friday, May 17th, 2024 @ 19.00.Join us for an evening of collective reading, a...
13/05/2024

Announcing the launch of two books at on Friday, May 17th, 2024 @ 19.00.

Join us for an evening of collective reading, an open conversation on care infrastructures, and publishing as community building.

Kiosk Rotterdam is proud to host the launch of ‘Promiscuous Infrastructures: Practicing Care’ and ‘Utterances: Composing a Care-Informed Research Practice in the Cracks’.

How do we care for each other in our living, learning and working lives? Published by Journal for Aesthetics & Protest, the manual ‘Promiscuous Infrastructures: Practicing Care’ calls for an ethics of care and attentiveness to one another, re-imagines the making and the use of infrastructures, and situates care within a genealogy of artistic and social practice.

Co-published with and , ‘Utterances: Composing a Care-Informed. Research Practice in the Cracks’ is a humble offering towards an alternative artistic research practice that is guided by an ethics of care.

Both publications are research outcomes of the Promiscuous Care Study Group . The Promiscuous Care Study Group have been researching and writing about caring infrastructures and promiscuous care for several years. The group gathers under the aegis of study, using their individual and collective care practices as sites of inquiry.

Kiosk will also host the workshop ‘Practicing Promiscuous Care’ connected to both publications on Sunday, May 19th, 14.00-17.00. SPOTS ARE LIMITED! RSVP THROUGH DM TO KIOSK BOOKSTORE or to Michelle Teran: [email protected]

Introducing the manual: Promiscuous Infrastructures Practicing Care: #5 Autoarachnology - Julia Wilhelm“Can art, at lea...
10/05/2024

Introducing the manual: Promiscuous Infrastructures Practicing Care: #5 Autoarachnology - Julia Wilhelm

“Can art, at least to some extent, resist its commodification?” “Can it be a tool for political change?” “How flexible is the concept of art, and how much sense does it make to stretch it?”

Through carefully interlacing threads, the spider asks: “Can art, at least to some extent, the spider asks: “Can art, at least to some extent, resist its commodification?” “Can it be a tool for political change?”
Starting from the context of the art academy, where students with difficult backgrounds and urgencies are supposed with different backgrounds and urgencies are supposed to be prepared to navigate the art world(s), I am wondering if it is possible to build otherwise art infrastructures based on collectivity and solidarity? How flexible is the concept of art, and how much sense does it make to stretch it? Can activist strategies like unionising, protesting, and organising alternative education form part of artistic practices?

Images show a series of posters:
1. Design by Runs Còdol for the archive of student initiatives Within, For, & Against, March 2023.
2. Design by as part of SPIN collective (.collectiveee), with illustrations by November 2022.
3.Design by with illustrations by Carla Arcos as part of SPIN collective, November 2022.
4. Design by Carla Arcos as part of SPIN collective, March 2022.
5. Design and illustrated by Carla Arcos as part of SPIN collective, March 2022.

Julia’s & the postermakers’ work contributed to the manual Promiscuous Infrastructures Practicing Care. The manual calls for an ethics of care and attentiveness to one another, re-imagines the making and the use of infrastructures, and situates care within a genealogy of artistic and social practice.

Title launch , Friday May 17, 2024, Pieter de Raadtstraat 35A.

BIO:
Julia Wilhelm is a cultural worker based in Rotterdam. She is interested in building otherwise infrastructures for coming together, critical pedagogy, and rethinking processes of knowledge creation and circulation.

Introducing the manual: Promiscuous Infrastructures Practicing Care: #4 It Doesn’t Stop at Images - Pablo Lerma“Between...
06/05/2024

Introducing the manual: Promiscuous Infrastructures Practicing Care: #4 It Doesn’t Stop at Images - Pablo Lerma

“Between 2020 and 2023, I tried to reposition my experience as a gay man within these publications and the imaginary reproduced in them throughout three decades—the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s—that coincided with my childhood and adolescent years, which overlapped with the rise of the global AIDS pandemic.”

“It Doesn’t Stop at Images” is articulated around three chapters based on visual conversations between the materials of three chosen publications—Homologies (NL), The San Francisco Sentinel (US), and Lambda (ES)—and their consequent periodical issues expanding over three decades in relation to reflections on my experience of growing up gay.

All images used in this visual essay are from Pablo Lerma ()’s research project It Doesn’t Stop at Images. It Doesn’t Stop at Images is a research-based project using printed matter—magazines and daily publications—archived at the (International Homo/Lesbisch Informatiecentrum en Archief) Heritage depot in Amsterdam. Pablo Lerma, 2021.

Pablo’s work contributed to the manual Promiscuous Infrastructures Practicing Care. The manual calls for an ethics of care and attentiveness to one another, re-imagines the making and the use of infrastructures, and situates care within a genealogy of artistic and social practice.

Title launch , Friday May 17, 2024, Pieter de Raadtstraat 35A.

BIO /INFO
All images are sourced at the archives of from the publications The San Francisco Sentinel and Homologie.

Pablo Lerma is a q***r visual artist, publisher and education in the Social Practices Department at . His artistic research is developed at the intersection of image and text with a focus on visual archives and vernacular materials dealing with notions of collective memory, care, parenthood, visibility, representation and q***rness.

Introducing the manual: Promiscuous Infrastructures Practicing Care: #3 Cooking with Microbes: Changing the Microbiome ...
29/04/2024

Introducing the manual: Promiscuous Infrastructures Practicing Care: #3 Cooking with Microbes: Changing the Microbiome of Extractive Capitalism - Yoeri Guépin

What does regeneration mean if we apply the principle of soil to ourselves? How can we regenerate the soil and equally create healthy environments for ourselves and our environment?

The following pages are a contribution from Yoeri Guépin (), a visual artist and gardener based in the Netherlands. He has developed two audio-visual works made respectively with his father and grandmother; two generations of biodynamic farmers. Although different in approach and scope, each work orbits around the subjects of gardening and growing, health, temporality, ecology, knowledge transfer and intergenerational care.

The following pages gather together ephemera from Guépin’s recent body of work; stills and ‘recipes’; that resist forgetting: There is a text for a workshop to change the microbiome of capitalist, images of Michelle Teran following one of Yoeri’s biodynamic (nettle) ‘preparation’ recipes on the cusp of winter, a recipe for another preparation (yarrow) from the artist’s grandmother, and stills from the recent film in which Yoeri’s grandmother discusses biodynamic principles as she makes another biodynamic ‘preparation’.

This gathering contributed to the manual Promiscuous Infrastructures Practicing Care. The manual calls for an ethics of care and attentiveness to one another, re-imagines the making and the use of infrastructures, and situates care within a genealogy of artistic and social practice.

Title launch , Friday May 17, 2024, Pieter de Raadtstraat 35A.

INFO
Documentation of Michelle Teran () performing preparation recipe from Wilfriede Driehuyzen Guépin’s notebook in her garden, South Rotterdam, October 2023. All photographs by Eli Hooper (.hoopr).
Stills excerpted from As Above So Below video artwork by Yoeri Guépin. The artist's grandmother Wilfriede Driehuyzen Guépin discusses the principles of biodynamic farming practices, and shares pages from her notebook, 2023.

Introducing the manual: Promiscuous Infrastructures Practicing Care: #2 Praxis: Ethics of Collaboration - Edwin Mingard...
22/04/2024

Introducing the manual: Promiscuous Infrastructures Practicing Care: #2 Praxis: Ethics of Collaboration - Edwin Mingard

How do you make space for everyone to make mistakes? How might participants be true collaborators in the making process?

Edwin Mingard () is a social filmmaker whose cinematic platform places support and collaboration at the heart of its praxis. His films are a network of stories told from the margins of society where collaborators (undocumented, or otherwise), are invited to create rich cinematic translations of their daily lives and experiences. His practice uniquely provides long-term committed support, equipment, training and guidance, to generate spaces for people to share their stories through the lens of their own uniquely authored films.

Edwin’s continuous energy in co-creating projects with people presents him as one of the very few standalone artists whose work ethically works to nurture the visibility of a wide spectrum of groups. His practice of ethical consideration and co-creation becomes a form which informs his practice in compassionately generative and unique ways.

A workshop was developed and delivered to WdKA students where they learned about an effective range of his ethical and technical processes, and how these processes influence and shape the genre-breaking and collaborative nature of Mingard’s work.

This gathering contributed to the manual Promiscuous Infrastructures Practicing Care. The manual calls for an ethics of care and attentiveness to one another, re-imagines the making and the use of infrastructures, and situates care within a genealogy of artistic and social practice.

Title launch , Friday May 17, 2024, Pieter de Raadtstraat 35A.

INFO
Colour stills from An Intermission (2020), moving image, 22 mins, dir. Edwin Mingard.
Black and white images from the workshop Praxis: Ethics of Collaboration with artist-filmmaker Edwin Mingard. The photos are taken by workshop participants, Bachelor students at the .

Introducing the manual: Promiscuous Infrastructures Practicing Care: #1 The Meal is Language and This is a Dinner Party...
15/04/2024

Introducing the manual: Promiscuous Infrastructures Practicing Care: #1 The Meal is Language and This is a Dinner Party - Lola Olufemi and Yusser al Obaidi

What else is possible when we start to imagine another world?

A gathering for the delusional, for the imaginative, the ones in this world but not of this world. Taking inspiration from Lola Olufemi’s work, we opened up a space for thinking otherwise: as in the firm embrace of the unknowable, as in refusing the structures that confine while thinking of other ways of existing. We met each other at the Sofreh Daimah, a spatial poem by Yusser al Obaidi; a metaphorical yet real space of hosting otherwise. Here, surrounding the plastic sofreh, we hosted a collective conversation—a metaphorical meal of words, if you will. We opened with a dialogue between sections from Lola Olufemi’s Experiments in Imagining Otherwise, and from notes from Yusser al Obaidi’s unpublished Dear Barzakhiya (excerpts of which are published as the text Let us Meet in the Margins [Barzakh] also contained within this publication). After the conversation between Lola Olufemi and Yusser al Obaidi, the space opened up for attendees to join as guests at the sofreh, hungry with questions.

Lola Olufemi is a black feminist writer and Stuart Hall Foundation researcher from London. She is author of Experiments in Imagining Otherwise, and Feminism Interrupted, Disrupting Power.

Yusser al Obaidi is an artist, designer and writer who seeks to acknowledge and enable the radical potential of intimate relational spaces. Her central concern is how can we affirm other ways of being/knowing.

Images: Lola Olufemi and Yusser al Obaidi, The Meal is Language and This is a Dinner Party. At in collaboration with , 2023. Photography by Steven Maybury.

A heads up for "Traces Of Power"Thursday March 7 16:00-18:00At "de Willem" (Wijnhaven 61, 1st floor)LINK IN BIO!“Hello, ...
01/03/2024

A heads up for "Traces Of Power"
Thursday March 7 16:00-18:00
At "de Willem" (Wijnhaven 61, 1st floor)
LINK IN BIO!

“Hello, how can I help you?”

Nested deep inside your favourite connected service, is a hidden architectural circuitry of traces and components carrying and manipulating electrical signals at will, and in apparent infinite capacity. In fact, this concealed medium is part of an increasingly complex global and networked assemblage of computational power which depends on vast and harmful extractive supply chains, energy grids, network infrastructure and politics that seem to favour the proliferation of the data centre industrial complex at any cost.

At times where it is becoming urgent to understand at long last the materiality and energy usage of the digital, we've asked Benjamin Czaja, Vesna Manojlovic, and Marloes de Valk to help us follow these traces of power, and share with us some of the insights needed if we really want to rethink the role and environmental impact of computation in tomorrow's (dis-)connected worlds.

Join us for an afternoon of insights and discussion.

Traces of Power is organised by the permacomputing evenings, with support from SURF, RIPE NCC, KC WdKA, an unsustainable research group, and Regieorgaan SIA.

The Autonomy Research Program is delighted to announce the second edition of the Counter-Mapping Autonomy workshop guide...
05/02/2024

The Autonomy Research Program is delighted to announce the second edition of the Counter-Mapping Autonomy workshop guided by Argentinian collective, Iconoclasistas. During the workshop, we will make posters in which the participants reflect on the concept of autonomy through the lens of self-organized initiatives in Rotterdam. The results from this workshop will be exhibited in this coming April, during the seminar, 'Collective Communities: The Autonomous Fabric of Rotterdam'.

The Counter-Mapping Autonomy workshop takes place on the 29th of February, from 14h-18hrs, at WH.03.306, WdKA. Students from all years, majors and practices are welcome to participate. Please sign up and receive a design brief by sending an email to [email protected]

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