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Otherwise_Possible_Connections

Otherwise Possible Connections:

A conversation with IPOP (Elioa Steffens and Szymon Adamczak)

**### Tuesday, 17 December 2024 **

At the GRA/SI, material-based research and learning about and through making takes place across departments, workshops, and facilities, and thus plays a crucial—though often under-articulated—role in art and design education. One focus of this conversation is on understanding how embodied knowledge is transferred in educational settings and how collective material engagement shapes learning processes.

Through support of the CoECI grant, it was possible to invite collaborators to join the project, such as IPOP (In Pursuit of Otherwise Possibilities), an educational artistic research platform exploring how educational institutions can better foster queer artists and their practices. By involving IPOP, we aimed to bring together the different registers and vocabularies of embodied knowledge-sharing, while also catering to the interests and sensitivities of a diverse student body that does not adhere to educational structures rooted in heteronormative and colonial art and design histories.

The collaboration aimed to connect existing efforts at the academy around material-based research, giving special attention to developing a collective and inclusive approach to making those resources and practices accessible to the community—with additional support from IPOP.

A key consideration was the role of workshop-based education within institutional structures. Despite its significance, the workshops often occupy a subordinate position in relation to curricular education, both in terms of decision-making power and resource allocation. We were interested in the potential of IPOP’s work on queering feedback to challenge these structures.

The BB (Bookbinding Workshop) team was invited to join this collaboration due to their collaborative and interdisciplinary approach as well as the toolkits they developed to put anti-disciplinary practice in motion. By offering students the chance to take the tools and materials into spaces other than the workshop itself, they challenge the idea of a workshop as an exclusive and expert-driven space for material production. We wanted to use the collaboration to expand the mobility and spontaneity of workshops and labs, including their equipment.

Both BB and IPOP’s practices are built upon collaboration and offer a unique perspective on the intersection of embodied practice, needs-based pedagogy, and vulnerability in artistic production. Their methodologies embrace open-ended, often uncertain creative processes.

This conversation delves into these questions, examining the ways in which teaching methodologies through embodied practices can reshape pedagogical frameworks and intervene in existing hierarchies. It is a collective reflection on different moments of the collaborative process and not always in chronological order. It was held a month after the workshop took place. What preceded the workshop were several online and offline work sessions during which BB, IPOP and ourselves (Anja Groten and Márk Redele), got to know each other and each other’s ways of working, and developed a conceptual framework that took GLUE as a starting point. GLUE allowed us to explore the relational aspects of material-based research through the lens of situated and collective learning and transfer of embodied forms of knowledge. In IPOP’s publication Queering Artistic Feedback, Antje Nestel asked, “What if there is no work/object [yet] to give feedback on?” In our sessions, we developed this thought further in light of emergent hands-on learning and collective forms of knowledge production.
BB offered a material framework and guidance to produce various types of GLUEs from scratch while IPOP guided us in evoking GLUE’s performative potential.

Participants were first year students of the Design department at Sandberg Instituut as well as two additional participants from the network of IPOP.

A day prior to the workshop, IPOP gave the artist talk “Otherwise Possible Connections: Queering Artistic Feedback,” as part of the Unsettling Bar moderated by Emirhakin. The talk was open to everyone.

As part of their contribution to the workshop, BB invited Vic Hoogstoel from the silkscreen workshop who introduced us to the legacy of the GRA billboard, a 430 cm x 122 cm panel installed in front of the academy, which is a place for students and staff to announce, exhibit, and publish. It was initiated by Kees Maas, the previous workshop manager of the screen printing workshop. For the GLUE workshop we decided to utilize the billboard as a performative space, and rather than focussing on what we pasted on it we focussed on how we paste on it, thus the glue became the focal point.

Aside from experimenting with glue-making and learning about its material properties and performative potential, we did movement and mapping exercises. The following exercises are mentioned in the conversation:

Lila proposed the meal as an extension of the workshop’s themes of material-based engagement, exploring the stickiness of social gatherings over food and drawing a connection to the GLUE. The dinner featured a recipe-writing exercise, where the participants wrote and exchanged recipes as a form of “feedback,” aligning the act of sharing food with the workshop’s process. These contributions were gathered and are compiled into a small cookbook here.

Beyond the recipes, the dinner itself was designed as a participatory experience, drawing attention to the textures, flavors, and labor of cooking as sites of material exploration. We had bread and butter, artichoke with preserved lemon, mayonnaise, onion galette, salt-baked beetroot with whipped ricotta, apple and hazelnuts, salt-baked carrots with orange-butter and sage, drunken prunes, and rice pudding. We drank blackberry and fennel soda, and strawberry and verbena soda on the side.

Anja Groten and Márk Redele

Hi, and welcome Elioa and Szymon. Could you introduce yourselves once more and tell us about your backgrounds, and also the background of IPOP?

**Elioa Steffens **

I’m Elioa Steffens. I’m from the U.S., which I think has a significant impact on how I engage with art, education, and particularly with IPOP.

My mother worked at a theater, and I started participating when I was eight. I continued consistently throughout high school, where I also became involved in youth organizing, primarily focused on addressing harassment targeting LGBTQ students in my community. This work was a kind of return to community for me. I grew up on an island and left for high school due to the harassment I experienced at 13 or 14. When I found activism, I felt that if I was going to critique my community, I also needed to support efforts to change it.

The organization I joined was entirely youth-run. We had one adult employee, but the board consisted entirely of young people under 22. There was a strong emphasis on empowerment, facilitation, and learning how to hold space and lead meetings. It was highly educational, though at the time, we rarely used terms like “education” or “pedagogy.” This has been important in shaping my approach to IPOP. I’ve always approached education somewhat sideways to the institution, in that I’m deeply aware of politics, systemic structures, and their impact on people, but never seen education as a rigid, nine-to-five system with structured classes and curricula.

In college, I studied theater and explored ideas of community, which has always been a central interest of mine. Afterward, I joined an organization that used the arts to provide life skills and empowerment for teenagers. During this period, my artistic engagement shifted from focusing on production, product, and craft to centering on affect and the craft of facilitation, with art serving as a tool rather than an aesthetic goal.

I was trained in a facilitation approach called the Creative Communities modality, which placed a strong emphasis on mastery, developing high-level skill in facilitation. This has been a key influence on my work with IPOP. From the beginning, we were clear that we wouldn’t hire artists who didn’t know how to give workshops. We don’t assume that being an artist automatically means knowing how to educate. Many artists are also skilled educators, but these are distinct skill sets. I wasn’t interested in the model where an artist simply presents their work to students and calls it education—especially when they’re not good at it, and plenty aren’t.

Another important aspect of IPOP’s development, and something we’ve been reflecting on recently, is how idiosyncratic our methodology is. It’s shaped by who we are as people, and that’s significant. This extends to the people we co-research with, the participants we engage with, and those we’ve brought in through various collaborations. It’s a deeply personal approach—whether that’s beautiful or not is up for debate, but it’s worth acknowledging.

Shall I introduce IPOP?

AG

Yes, that would be great.

ES

We are an educational artistic research project, posing two key questions: How do we support queer people in the academy to advance? And how do we support the education of queer artists? While much of our focus has been on students, we have also been deeply interested in supporting staff and teachers, aiming for a more holistic understanding of what it means to create, to think of an audience within the educational frame, a queer audience.

And then the other part of it was the question how this work of supporting queer individuals within the academy and arts education contributes to the broader landscape of arts education itself. While we initially worked within academic institutions for structural and funding reasons, we have always been interested in breaking down the division between the academy and the larger ecosystem that supports artists beyond it. Over time, we have expanded our work into residency spaces, festivals, and collaborations with individual artists, often acting as dramaturgs and facilitators.

In our first year, we ran several programs, including workshops, a reading group, and what became known as the queer feedback sessions. These sessions evolved into a seven-week program (spread over non-consecutive weeks) in which a cohort of queer artists came together to share their work and provide feedback. We developed an experimental approach to feedback—creating individualized, need-based protocols tailored to each artist and session.

At the heart of this work is the belief that feedback should be fundamentally and necessarily for the artist. Within the IPOP model, feedback time is structured to serve the artist’s needs first, allowing them to shape the process in ways that truly support their creative practice.

We have also used this work to critique and reflect on how the academy functions, as well as the broader ecosystem that supports artists, including the ways in which it doesn’t work. So, I wonder about what minor interventions we can make.

Márk Redele

Szymon, do you want to introduce yourself as well?

**Szymon Adamczak **

I’m Szymon Adamczak, my work exists at a crossroads—blending and engaging with resources and knowledge from the U.S., Poland, and the Netherlands, where our project is based. This transnational exchange of queer thought and artistic practice has been central to IPOP, shaping our approach and expanding the project’s intellectual and creative foundations.

I did not initially train as an artist. I entered the theater world as a self-taught practitioner, which was a formative experience—observing both sides of the stage, analyzing audience reactions, and understanding the dynamic feedback loop between performance and spectatorship. My early work was shaped by a liberal arts education, community organizing, and involvement in civic movements in Poland before I eventually professionalized within theater and performance-making. My first formal art school experience was at DAS Theatre in Amsterdam.

This period coincided with a time of intense political conservatism in Poland, marked by openly anti-LGBTQ+ policies. Living abroad, I felt a strong personal and collective need to understand queer identity and the social and political repercussions that came with it. These experiences deeply influenced the ideas I have brought into IPOP—particularly the urgency of community survival and the belief that rather than waiting for institutional support, we must create our own networks of care.

Another key influence on my work has been HIV activism, which intersects with education in meaningful ways. While studying I was diagnosed and I became engaged with learning about the history of HIV/AIDS activism. However, I quickly realized that much of this knowledge was absent from art schools and had to be sought outside academic institutions. This gap underscored the necessity of IPOP for me—the dream of a space where queer pedagogies and embodied knowledge could have a presence within the academy. Knowing that LGBTQ+ students exist within these spaces, it felt essential to cultivate an environment that acknowledges and addresses their specific needs.

My practice now revolves around dramaturgy and artistic research, and IPOP serves as a way to bridge artistic research and pedagogy, in which I treat education as an extension of artistic practice.

I see IPOP not just as an educational research project; it is an evolving practice that critically examines and intervenes in institutional structures. A significant part of our work involves tracing the lasting effects of different feedback modalities—understanding how they live in artists’ bodies and how they shape artistic development over time.

Through IPOP, we make space for these embodied experiences, incorporating a somatic awareness in our approach. We frequently collaborate with choreographers who help us explore these dynamics through movement and bodily engagement. A core aspect of our methodology is co-designing individualized feedback protocols with artists, ensuring they have agency in shaping their learning experiences. Through this, we hope to empower artists and help them reflect on past experiences, build nuance in their practice, and develop the confidence to effectively articulate and advocate for what they need.

Ultimately, IPOP is about more than just feedback. It is about creating a sustainable framework for queer artistic education, fostering self-determined learning, and ensuring that queer voices are heard and supported within and beyond the academy.

AG

A key point that resonates with me is the blurred line between artist and educator. For a long time, it was simply taken for granted that artists could also be educators. But we’ve had to come to terms—sometimes painfully—with the reality that teaching is a skill in its own right, and artistic ability alone does not automatically translate into effective pedagogy.

Recently, however, more artists view facilitation and education as integral to their practice rather than a separate role. While financial necessity once pushed artists towards teaching, many now embrace pedagogy not just for income but as a meaningful extension of their art and design practices.

ES

I think I both agree and disagree. I’m not entirely convinced by the economic argument. In fact, I’d say the financial situation for artists has become even more precarious, pushing more of us into education out of necessity. Many artists I know who teach do so not because they see it as an extension of their practice, but simply because it’s one of the few ways to earn a stable income. As a result, teaching has become a much larger part of what we actually do on a daily basis.

That said, I’ve noticed a shift in how artists approach education. In the past, some would lead workshops focused mainly on their own work, and only occasionally engaged with students—essentially just sharing their practice without much consideration for pedagogy. I see less of that now. That’s less common. Cultural expectations have also changed—there’s less tolerance for the “grand artist” persona, where someone teaches without any real responsibility to students. I’ve even seen artists show up intoxicated, but such behavior once excused by status or reputation is far less acceptable today.

SA

Yes, exactly. One of the core aspects of IPOP is the development of custom-made feedback methodologies, tailored to the needs of each artist. Rather than applying a one-size-fits-all approach, we work closely with artists to understand what they are actually seeking in their practice and what kind of feedback would be most useful to them.

An example that comes to mind is when we collaborated with an artist whose work was deeply rooted in somatic experience. Traditional critique sessions, where discussion is primarily verbal and analytical, weren’t particularly helpful for them. Instead, we designed a feedback structure that prioritized embodied responses—where participants engaged physically with aspects of the work before reflecting on it in words. This shift allowed the artist to gain insights that resonated more with their process, rather than being forced into an external framework of evaluation.

In this way, facilitation and artistic practice merge, as the learning space itself becomes an extension of the artist’s creative inquiry. By embedding feedback methodologies within artistic practice rather than imposing them from the outside, we try to create a space where artists can refine their work on their own terms while still benefiting from collective reflection.

A key part of our approach is questioning the supposed universality of feedback and facilitation methods. There isn’t a single recipe that works for everyone, and we’ve consciously chosen to diverge from established models—such as the DAS Theatre feedback system, which has certainly influenced us, but which we also felt the need to move beyond. Our focus is on following the needs of artists as they arise, embracing experimentation, and seeing each feedback session as an opportunity to learn rather than a rigid structure to be applied universally.

One of the crucial aspects of this process is recognizing how power dynamics operate within a learning space. Facilitation, even when thoughtfully executed, can still reinforce hierarchies or allow certain voices to dominate. That’s why we place such emphasis on fostering an environment where feedback is reciprocal, where authorship and authority can be questioned, and where learning happens collectively rather than being centered solely on the advancement of individual artists. We aim to create a space where contributions can be picked up, reshaped, and expanded by others—where knowledge circulates rather than being owned.

This becomes especially significant in a performance context, where embodiment plays a crucial role. A strong example of this came from our work at SNDO over the past two years. One artist we worked with was exploring grief in their choreography, and instead of offering verbal critique, the group engaged in an embodied response. Participants shared the ways they personally grieve—through movement, through specific gestures, through bodily expressions of loss. This process allowed the artist to learn not just through discussion but through direct experience, by witnessing and engaging with the many ways grief manifests physically. In moments like this, feedback goes beyond analysis; it becomes a form of shared expression, a deeply generative and transformative exchange.

AG

It seems so obvious now that how we share feedback is just as important as what we share—the information itself. For example, the idea of whispering feedback is really interesting. In this case, the artist is working with whispering as a research subject and is able to turn it into a feedback methodology. The feedback methodology and the moment of sharing then become an extension of the work, while offering new insights.

I find this example inspiring, not because I’m specifically working on this topic, but because it serves as a reminder for me as an educator that we can’t just settle for our methods. It’s not about standardizing a best practice. I think with IPOP, there’s been a resistance to creating set “recipes” for feedback that others can just adopt. However, I also find it really helpful to hear concrete examples. In our process I particularly enjoyed going through some exercises with you, writing them down, and thinking about how they can be adapted or used in different contexts.

I’d be curious to hear more about your thoughts on feedback methods—how they can be disseminated and moved between different contexts, how they might be shared across various environments.

ES

We’re working on a book, and in it we make a distinction between techniques and methods. Loosely, techniques are activities, while methods are more about structure and philosophies. I mention this because I find myself curious about the extent to which methods can be shared. There are definitely aspects of methods that can be shared, like the questions we ask and the value system we engage with. No skill is uniquely ours—neither of us hold any skills that others can’t learn. But I do think that much of how we share methods is through a description of context, who we are, our skills, the questions we ask, the values we hold, and the outcomes we’ve had. It’s kind of a real desire to ask: hey, what is actually true for you, and where do you know?
As for techniques, I think they’re actually quite shareable. In the book, we’re writing out a lot of techniques in a “how-to” format. What’s interesting is how the techniques and methods can meld. I’m curious about how this will work in the book and maybe something we should revisit. In some of the ways we encourage people to play with the techniques, we’re also sharing the method. We’re saying, “This is how we do it,” but pointing out the places where there’s flexibility. Of course, people can adapt them as they wish, but we’re trying to show that a technique can take 20 minutes or two hours, and it can work with one person or a group of 50, and here’s how it might look in each case.

SA

In terms of sharing methods, prompts, and community knowledge, we’re also guided by feminist principles and lineages, right? We strive to uncover where we learned from, who taught us something, and what we do with that knowledge. We aim to show that our practices are not about inventing the wheel but rather building on a continuity of ideas and teachings. However, we also challenge the notion of authorship and the idea of “trademarking” knowledge. Instead, we seek ways for these practices to circulate, be picked up, and adapted by others.

There’s also a tension I feel, especially coming from Eastern Europe, regarding the use of terms like “feedback” and “performance.” These words are often tied to business, capitalism, and productivity, which can complicate their usage, especially in contexts outside of the West or Global North. For instance, when translating or exporting ideas from the Global North into other contexts with different historical developments or cultural traditions, there’s a risk of positioning these ideas as superior. I’ve noticed this, especially when teaching in Poland, where the theater culture differs significantly. The discourse around feedback, for example, can take on a different agenda for younger artists. For them, feedback can become a system that protects students from violence or top-down authority, acting as a mediator between students and professors.

Additionally, we’re listening and learning from global movements, like Black Lives Matter and Palestinian solidarity movements. These movements, along with the broader calls for body autonomy, influence our thinking. We’re aware of how the external world is reflected in the classroom, and how facilitation plays a role in addressing these issues in our teaching and practices.

AG

We invited you to work with us, to engage in conversations and develop workshop situations together. Our starting point was material-based research and education, embodied forms of knowledge production, and learning. One key element of our research trajectory was to really focus on the workshops as sites of material inquiry but also as social environments in which knowledge is shared. We felt that this aspect of art and design education is sometimes neglected. It’s crucial to students’ development, yet there can be a lack of appreciation for what happens in these spaces.

We proposed collaborating with IPOP and developing a workshop together with the Bookbinding Workshop (BB) at GerritRietveld Academie. Márk, can you recall why we chose this particular workshop? It may not seem like the most obvious choice at first glance. For someone unfamiliar with our bookbinding workshop, it might seem surprising.

MR

We were interested in BB because of its focus on producing personal toolsets, which are primarily designed as educational tools but also serve specific purposes for bookbinding techniques and other publication-making practices. The BB team develops DIY methods for creating solutions that can be shared openly, allowing students to create their own tools. This enables them to set up their own emerging studios or workshops, where they can produce books or publications at very low cost and in an accessible manner.

We were intrigued by how the methodology of creating these toolsets facilitates communal, material-based knowledge sharing. It’s collaborative in nature, focused on openness and making things open-source. Additionally, it relies heavily on iterative learning, where students test tools, learn from the outcomes, and refine their methods.

Another reason we were drawn to BB was its ability to simultaneously engage with both the materiality of a book and the content it holds. This intersection of material and text is exciting, as it allows for the exploration of both physical craft and conceptual content in one practice.

AG

BB, in many ways, challenges the boundaries typically established by institutions. They push and question assumptions about where the workshop production should take place. BB have expanded beyond these infrastructural confines of their space—they work across different spaces, other workshops, classrooms, intervene with students in the library, and they even travel internationally to share their practice in other art academies abroad, i.e. recently Yale in New Haven and Tufts University in Boston. Through these activities, they’ve developed a unique collective practice that goes far beyond just being a service provider sitting in a workshop, waiting for students to come by with their questions.

A key focus of both BB and IPOP seems to be on empowerment and it was really rewarding to see how that took place in the workshop we facilitated together. It felt like a mutually empowering experience for both students and facilitators. I am curious about your experience working with the BB workshop. I’m sure there were surprises or unexpected moments in the process. I’m just really eager to hear about what it was like for you, both in terms of the preparation and how the sessions unfolded.

ES

In my experience working with BB, I found them to be deeply conceptual and it made me confront my assumptions about craft-based work and conceptual work. Maybe that distinction is artificial. My experience working with them was really interesting and quite different from how I usually work. There were definitely moments of faith—just going with it and seeing how things unfolded.

I also find it fascinating to think about education in terms of outcomes. How do we define the value of education? Is it tied to a specific result or effect? Looking back, what really stood out to me was how enjoyable and abundant the process felt. That abundance is something worth highlighting. In many of our teaching experiences, we work in pairs, which is relatively unique. But even then, it can feel like you have to be “on” the entire time, fully engaged. Working solo can heighten that feeling.

In contrast, having seven leaders in this context created moments of ease. There were times when I could just play with glue and chat with people, which felt different from the usual structure. It also influenced our values around non-hierarchical structures in an interesting way. Not only did we talk about being equal, but we were actually engaging in the same activities—experimenting together, side by side. That shift created more space for true non-hierarchy than I’ve experienced in many other programs.

In most teaching moments, even when I’m actively participating, I always have one eye on the bigger picture—making sure everything is running smoothly. But in this setting, I could let go of that for a while and then step back into it. There was also something inherently generous about the materials and equipment. BB, in particular, had tools they could share freely, which was beautiful. There’s something special about cutting paper, seeing the physicality of it, and working with those tangible materials.

SA

First of all, it was a really great experience collaborating with the BB team. The vibe they bring, their groove, I really love their way of working. When they shared their projects and interventions, I found that really inspiring. For example, the way they responded to the COVID-19 situation with a WhatsApp phone hotline or the mobile bookbindings toolkits in bags they created for people to take. Those were really thoughtful gestures.

It was also important to witness different approaches to workshop preparation. We tend to be more conceptual, working with scores and duration, focusing on the experiential aspect. In contrast, with bookbinding, the material itself seemed to dictate what was being experienced, which was an interesting shift. What I really enjoyed was how we all allowed the process to take the lead in our exchange. There was this tension between the process and working with a specific, historically significant site—the mural, the billboard—that had been chosen by the BB team as the format we work towards.

I also found it exciting how multilayered the inputs were. We had a historical presentation on the billboard, our own presentations, discussions, and the team’s contributions. It created this multi-directional flow of information. I hope it didn’t overwhelm the students, but rather encouraged them to follow what interested them most.

Later in the process, even though we were working professionally, things started to materialize organically. There were moments of uncertainty, like, how do we step back? Who is doing what? But that openness and trust in the process were really valuable. There wasn’t a strict division of labor; instead, things happened voluntarily and spontaneously. I really enjoyed observing these micro-interactions, whether it was people meeting over the glue, the mapping sheet, the billboard, or even by the microwave. There were so many of these small but meaningful exchanges.

One of the most powerful parts for me was the body voting. As IPOP, we had never used it so extensively before. It was fun, exciting, and sometimes exhausting seeing how decisions played out, how aesthetic choices were debated. That whole process, the complexity of it, was really revealing. It became an interesting act in itself, regardless of the final outcome.

Lastly, from the perspective of IPOP, I really appreciated the status of the BB workshop within the institution. It’s a team that is rooted in the building, and serves students, alumni, and others. There’s something about that kind of space-making that we don’t necessarily have in the same way, since our activities are structured differently and more spread out. It was nice to tap into that.

MR

I’d like to add something about disciplinarity and anti-disciplinarity and how, to me, there seems to be a connection between facilitation and feedback methodologies that can guide us from one to the other—or rather, from one territory to another. This became particularly clear to me throughout this workshop.

When I think about conventional disciplines—architecture, for example, which is my background, but also performance or graphic design—the typical modes of interrogation, often referred to as feedback in education, tend to focus on identifying what aspects of a student’s or participant’s work don’t belong to the discipline. There’s a lot of negation involved, a process of filtering out elements deemed unnecessary in order to maintain a narrowly defined tradition at the core of that field.

What I experienced in this workshop, however, through the feedback methods you introduced, was a completely different approach—one that felt incredibly generous and inclusive, considering every contribution without exclusion. And because of that, by the end, it almost became impossible to define exactly what discipline we were left with.

Even though we started with a clear framework—a bookbinding workshop, working with the glue and publications—once we engaged with these feedback methodologies, the boundaries of that discipline began to dissolve. Not in the sense that the foundation disappeared, but rather that a transformation took place.

This process clarified for me what we mean when we talk about anti-disciplinarity as something desirable or valuable. There’s a clear dynamic between disciplinarity and anti-disciplinarity, as well as between conventional interrogation techniques and alternative feedback methodologies. I sense a meaningful relationship here, one that shifts how we understand and navigate disciplines.

AG

I think it might also be related to the fact that we didn’t work on a book in the traditional sense. The book wasn’t the central focus; instead, it was the glue that was the focus and held everything together, metaphorically and literally. This shift opens up all sorts of other possibilities. Usually, glue is a material that isn’t meant to be noticeable—it’s there to serve a specific function, but you don’t spend much time thinking about what type of glue you’re using. When that becomes the main focus, it helps break down some of these disciplinary assumptions.

MR

At the same time, I’m really curious about how this workshop would have looked if we had considered a book as the goal.

ES

I know a lot of folks often feel the need to defend their placement within a discipline. This seems to be especially important in the Netherlands. Coming from the U.S., it feels wild to me because we don’t have the same kind of funding, so it doesn’t matter as much whether you call yourself a visual artist or a performance artist. Here, however, it’s a more defensible position—if you want funding from the Dutch government, for example, you really need to prove that you are a visual artist.

I think this also applies, though to a lesser extent, to the performing arts. This idea connects to the concept of queering. For us, it’s not that discipline isn’t important, but we want to be really clear about why and how we choose that identity. It’s not that we don’t care about discipline, but we don’t let it limit us. We come from the performing arts, but we’ve had visual artists and filmmakers participate as well. Discipline isn’t a barrier for participation, but it does matter in some ways—we consider it when thinking about how we show up in relation to the work and what it means. We think about the histories of those modalities, but we don’t want to say that discipline is never important. In some contexts, it actually is incredibly important, especially in terms of career advancement.

What you’re saying about finding ways to lessen the importance of strict discipline boundaries is really beautiful, because it allows for more choice and a recognition of how limiting it can be. It also opens up a space where we can point out the absurdity of certain moments when discipline becomes important for reasons that don’t really make sense. Personally, I think I’ve been fairly clear about wanting to think in a multidisciplinary way, but I know classmates and peers in other institutions where this issue is a key factor in evaluation. It’s not uncommon to hear, “We don’t know how to evaluate you because you don’t fit within a clear discipline.”

To push back against that, on both a political and values level, it feels important to ask, “Why is this the case?” It’s messed up, unless you’re really trying to teach something about how you engage with a system that upholds such boundaries. I think that’s something I appreciated about this workshop. I’m also curious what it would have been like if we had actually set out to make a book and what kind of book we would have made. For me, there’s also this interesting tension that emerged in the group about whether or not we were making a coherent product. Many participants struggled with the idea that the outcome was so amorphous and were uncertain whether it would be valuable to an audience. It made me think about how, sometimes, we might not even know the value of something until later.

**Who? **

What you said earlier about abundance really resonates with me. Normally, as an educator, I’m in charge and feel responsible for running the show, making sure everything’s in motion. But this time, I felt very grateful to be with my students in a different way. A lot of the people joining were students I work with every week, and I could engage with them without having to be the one in charge. It allowed me to encounter their way of working and thinking in a completely different way.

It’s always my goal when I teach to create a space without hierarchies, where we all share the responsibility of holding that space. But still, there’s a difference between joining in as a participant and encountering the students during an exercise like the one you led. Walking around the room and sharing intimate stories with each other was a unique experience. The body voting exercise was also incredible. It gave me important insights and material to think about and continue working with, especially regarding how we make choices.

A lot of the time, we make choices based on past education, but putting it on the spot like that was something different. Usually, we talk about work after there’s something to discuss, but here, we were all trying to figure out what we were going to create and how to articulate our intentions for creation, what is important to us. The role of the billboard was crucial in this process because it was public, which made it feel like a responsibility. It wasn’t something you could just throw together. I had imagined people might just work with it without much discussion, but there was a clear sense of needing to be sure about our choices since it was going to be public.

SA

I’m also curious, as educators running a multi-workshop program, what you sensed from your students. What do you think happened for them? What did they say about the experience?

AG

It seemed to me that the students felt like they were part of something really special, and it seemed very precious to them—not just in terms of the experience itself, but also in the content of what they were exploring.

They had the opportunity to zoom in on how they learn, to ask themselves, “What do I need?” They had a chance to figure that out for themselves and to develop the language to express it. That preparation will be valuable as they enter their upcoming classes and meetings with tutors, giving them more agency in their own learning. I can still feel the impact of that session with the first-years, and I think they did too. Having that space to talk amongst themselves was important.

It was also a rare opportunity for them to meet the workshop facilitators in such an in-depth way. Normally, they just get a tour of the workshops and are left to find their way. But having [forgotten name] from the silk-screen workshop present the billboard and its history was really special. And beyond that, simply getting to work with people for a longer period made a huge difference.

Speaking about abundance, it felt like such a special moment to have several interesting educators and facilitators around, who were truly present for and with the students. That’s not something we usually do, and I think a lot of that has to do with the scarcity of resources. But it really stood out. I think this was true for the other workshops as well. Bringing people together from different departments and disciplines is so rare, yet it was clear how much everyone appreciated learning from each other, not just as students but as facilitators and educators too. That kind of cross-learning is something we don’t often make space for, but when we do, it’s incredibly valuable.

MR

One thing that really stood out to me, and touched me deeply, was how, in most individual projects, a person’s executive functioning often determines how successfully they can take on a challenge. But in this workshop, from the very beginning, I saw a different dynamic emerge. There was such a generous, communal aspect—not just in terms of sharing resources, but also in the kind of attentiveness and gentleness required to navigate these feedback methods. This created an environment where people became increasingly comfortable throughout the day, feeling empowered to take initiative and make decisions on their own. That was incredibly special to witness, and I think it’s extremely valuable, especially in a setting where improving that kind of confidence and agency can be quite difficult.

And on another note, though we joked about the dinner, I overheard a first-year student say, “This is the first proper meal I’ve had since arriving in Amsterdam.” That really stuck with me because, for many people, that’s a reality. Creating these generous spaces, where care and nourishment extend beyond just the learning process, has a real impact—not just in the moment, but in a broader, developmental sense as well.

SA

Wow, that dinner was amazing!

AG

It was really delicious. I’m still thinking about it!

ES

I’m really grateful for the experience, it was great to be a part of it. The people who came from outside were really valuable to the dynamic. There were only a couple, but they made a big impact

The dinner was really beautiful, and it made me think about something we try to focus on—something that Szymon, you often bring up better than I do—the importance of addressing basic needs, like food, water, and breaks. It’s easy to overlook these things, especially when we’re creating a space that feels caring. But having snacks and a meal like that is such a huge part of creating that atmosphere. For me, sometimes I forget, in the hustle of my own material and social life, that not everyone has access to what I might take for granted. For some people, this could have been their only or most significant meal of the day, and I’m reminded of that.

AG

Thank you for this reminder.

MR

This feels like a natural moment to wrap up. Thank you so much for both of you.