Curatorial Programme Open Call 2024
Applications are now open for the 30th special edition of de Appel's Curatorial Programme, scheduled to run from September 2024 to June 2025, followed by a fellowship spanning from September 2025 to June 2026.
De Appel’s Curatorial Programme 30th Edition runs parallel and in collaboration with Sandberg Instituut's temporary Programme: Lumbung Practice (Amsterdam), and Gudskul’s Collective Study Programme (Jakarta). Participating collectives in the three programmes will practise and learn about lumbung, self-organised, and sociopolitical artistic and curatorial practice, and producing alternative institutions for the future.
Application deadline: January 15th, 2024
De Appel’s Curatorial Programme is thrilled to open the application process to local and international curatorial and artistic collectives who are interested in learning and practising lumbung as a model and method for collective organisation. This edition of the programme is dedicated to collectives whose practice is embedded in sociopolitical movements, and whose art is an extension of their communal lives. The programme will be geared towards taking the lumbung practices of documenta fifteen as a case study.
Participating collectives join majelises (assemblies), and exchange knowledge with lumbung members on various issues such as: forms of self-organisation, economic sustainability, and transvestment; cosmologies of local commoning and other collective traditions; and the application of these in contemporary artistic practice. The collectives will be able to expand their skills through experimenting with collective artistic economies. The participants will share resources and form various working groups, working closely with artist collectives from Sandberg Instituut and Gudskul programmes, organising public learning sessions, and practising collective curating.
Lumbung is a rural pre-colonial practice where the village stores the surplus of the harvest for the future wellbeing of the community. It is where the surplus is collectively governed and celebrated. Art and life are not separated in the lumbung. Lumbung was the starting point for curatorial and artistic practice during documenta fifteen, where the practice was built from the experiences with lumbung in Indonesia, and later on from other collective practices around the world. These included Maaya (Mali), Agraw (Morocco), Buen Vivir (Latin America), Kalaka (Hungary) and De Meent (The Netherlands). Through the collective practices enacted during documenta fifteen by ruangrupa and others, ‘lumbung’ has come to mean a collective of collectives, a set of self-organised practices, a discourse about art, and an aesthetic language.
De Appel’s Curatorial Programme is a life-changing experience consisting of an intensive 10-month period spent together in Amsterdam, fully immersed in the city’s local scene, with de Appel as an institutional base. The rich curriculum is intended to provide direct insight into the work of artists as well as the building of institutions, collectives, and communities.
This special edition broadens the scope through collaboration with Sandberg Instituut and Gudskul. A rich curriculum will be followed, intended to provide direct insight into cosmologies of collective practices, the shaping of lumbung in documenta fifteen, and the work of artists, as well as the building of locally anchored institutions, collectives, and communities. It will give the participating collectives tools for collaborative curating and building alternative institutions together with their ecosystems and communities.
The 2024 CP will unfold through a series of workshops, sessions, and collective work, which are punctuated by intensive site visits and research. While de Appel’s CP is known for formative international travel, we are compelled to rethink this model post the COVID-19 pandemic, in light of the environmental crisis, and amid concerns about cultural extractionism. The participants will instead travel to each other’s localities, that of the participants of the Sandberg Instituut programme and to Gudskul in Jakarta. They will spend longer periods of time learning about each other’s practices and concerns and forming lasting relationships.
Throughout the 2024–2025 period, participants will gain full access to de Appel’s distinctive three-part institutional structure comprised of our open, lively Archive; our free-thinking, hands-on Curatorial Programme; and our community-oriented Education Initiatives—all of which contribute to the learning ethos in our programming. Through collective study and shared responsibility they will shape the very DNA of our experimental institution. They will also join seminars and gatherings at Sandberg Instituut and online with Gudskul, Jakarta. They will form working groups together and develop long term projects. At the end of the first year, they will collectively curate a project that furthers their research and practice. In 2025 and 2026 the collectives will meet more sporadically, online from their own localities, where they focus on realising their planned projects. In June 2026, they will collectively organise a harvest festival: a summation of their learning processes and provisions for the future, which could take the shape of exhibitions, public programmes, or performances to which their ecosystems are invited.
The participants, chosen by a jury of practitioners, will join a network of alumni and advisors who continue to transform the social life of art. Many of the tutors in the programme will be members of the lumbung, such as Question of Funding, Off Biennial, ruangrupa, The Black Archives, and many others, as well as Netherlands-based commons initiatives such as Voedselpark Amsterdam, Amsterdam Alternative, and more. The collectives will also learn together and from each other: they will be invited to form working groups on different subjects with Sandberg Instituut and the Gudskul participating collectives.
Over the last 29 years, CP alumni have gone on to lead and to found locally grounded and world-renowned initiatives; many have made important contributions to the curatorial field. De Appel’s CP continues to nurture a new generation of cultural practitioners who organise with artists and communities, who pay attention to process as much as outcome, and who can collaboratively build interconnected, sustainable infrastructures based on shared values.
De Appel’s Curatorial Programme is supported by the Stichting Hartwig Foundation and Ammodo.
More information on de Appel’s Curatorial Programme (curriculum, current and previous participants and advisors, and application procedures, including fees and forms of financial assistance) may be found here.
Based on the submitted documents, approximately 12 candidates will be short-listed. Interviews with the jury will take place in January 2024, after which the final participants will be selected.
How can collectives apply?
Applications are open to either an entire collective, or several members of a collective (in agreement with the full collective) if not all collective members are able to be present for the full programme cycle.
Application requirements
Your application should consist of one single PDF document, in English, including these items:
Cover page including the following information:
Name, nationality, date of birth, country of birth, current address, email, and telephone number.Motivation letter, stating why your collective would like to participate in the programme. State clearly which aspects of your collective’s future plan you would like to develop, and from this which questions and resources you plan to bring to the lumbung of collectives-participants (max. 500 words).
Responses to the following questions (max. 300 words each):
– What is the social role of an exhibition or art institution in your personal experience and how do you want to shape that role in the future? Include a description of a formative experience with an exhibition or institution.
– What ways of collective living and/or organising do you practise and why do you choose to do so?CVs of the persons in your applying collective, as well as of the collective as a group (max. 2 pages)
Two written references of (former) tutors, colleagues, or community members, in English.
This PDF should be emailed by January 15th 2024 to the Curatorial Programme Coordinator Maria Nolla (maria [at] deappel.nl). Any questions can also be emailed to Maria Nolla.