BAK, basis voor actuele kunst

Based in Utrecht, BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, functions as a base—a platform for thinking about, with, and through art in order to examine urgent social issues critically. BAK combines public programming and exhibition-making with research and learning. Working with communities involved in arts, academia, and social action—and bringing artists, scholars, and collaborating with artists, scholars, and manifold publics—BAK cultivates art as a sphere through which to imagine and enact transformative ways of being together otherwise.

Along with its public programs, BAK convenes two fellowship programs (BAK Fellowship for Situated Practice and BAK Young Fellows); a community portal (Civic Praxis); an educational program for youth (Education); a public studies program (BAK Studies); and multifarious publishing outputs as part of a living archive of publishing projects, including a digital forum Prospections and a series called Basics (co-published with MIT Press) as well as “grey-literature” publications generated with interlocal communities, collectives, and organizations.

Jeanne van Heeswijk, Maria Hlavajova, and Rachael Rakes, eds., Toward the Not-Yet: Art as Public Practice, BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, 2021 © BAK and authors

Maria Hlavajova and Wietske Maas, eds., Propositions for Non-Fascist Living: Tentative and Urgent, BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, 2019 © BAK and authors

Community Portal events and publications, BAK, basis voor actuele kunst in collaboration with other publishing platforms/communities, 2023

Images from projects by the Community Portal, BAK's Civic Practice program, include:

Community Portal Shadow Reader, designed by Jeanine van Berkel.

Ultrastudio: Viewing Copy, a manual of manuals for building your own publishing tools by Ultrastudio: BB Studio at Gerrit Rietveld Academie/Sandberg Instituut (Miquel Hervas Gómez and Ott Metusala) and Lila Athanasiadou.

Critical Circulation Mi, a radio station and research project by Ultracirculation study group: Wan Ing Que and Elaine W. Ho.

Both Ultrastudio and Ultracirculation study groups were part of Ultradependent Public School, a curriculum on publishing as an artistic and community practice co-convened by over 140 collaborators in 2023.

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