Don’t Say You Didn’t Know

Roee Rosen

― Speaker

Roee Rosen—painter, novelist, and filmmaker—is an astute critical voice in Israel. While his work deals primarily with the representation of desire and structural violence, Rosen, born in 1963, has created an artistic universe that treacherously undermines the normative implications of identities and identifications through fictionalization, irony, and revision. In untold variations, he typically links current Israeli and world politics with mythical and political references to European and Jewish history. Using a vast array of fictional characters and iconographic motifs and codes, Rosen frequently refers to, and transforms, not only the canon of the historical avant-garde and transgressive traditions from the Marquis de Sade to Georges Bataille, but also popular media, political propaganda, and classic children’s fairy tales. This November a retrospective of Rosen’s work will open at Kunstverein Hannover under the title The Kafka Companion to Wellness.

Umayya Abu-Hanna (أمية أبو حنا)

― Speaker

Umayya Abu-Hanna (أمية أبو حنا), born in 1961, is a writer, journalist, and former member of the Helsinki City Council. She is a Palestinian born in Haifa, Israel. She moved to Finland in 1981 and then to Amsterdam in 2011, where she resides now. In the 1990s, she was a journalist, documentarian, and columnist, and in the 2000s a member of the Arts Council Finland as well as the cultural diversity advisor of the Finnish National Gallery. Since moving to Amsterdam, she has been a member of the Centre for International Heritage Activities and the board of Aralez, and in 2022 co-founded The Hummus Academy for creating spaces for authentic, ethical narratives.

Pascal Gielen

― Speaker

Pascal Gielen is a writer and professor of Cultural Sociology associated with the Antwerp Research Institute for the Arts (ARIA) from the University of Antwerp. His work explores the institutional context of art and he fulfils several functions in both the policy-making and organisational sides of art education. Gielen is editor-in-chief of the international book series Antennae - Arts and Society and has written a number of books on culture, politics, commons, and civil action. Read "Neutrality: a knife we cut ourselves with"

MARIA HLAVAJOVA

― Moderator

Maria Hlavajova is an organizer, researcher, educator, curator, and founding artistic director of BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht (since 2000). Between 2008 and 2016, she was research and artistic director of the collaborative research, exhibition, and education project FORMER WEST, which culminated in the publication Former West: Art and the Contemporary After 1989 (which she co-edited with Simon Sheikh, 2016). Hlavajova has instigated and (co-)organized numerous projects at BAK and beyond, including the series Propositions for Non-Fascist Living (2017–2024), Future Vocabularies (2014–2017), New World Academy (with Jonas Staal, 2013–2016), among many other international research, education, exhibition, and publication projects. Her curatorial work includes Call the Witness, Roma Pavilion, 54th Venice Biennale, Venice, 2011; Citizens and Subjects, Dutch Pavilion, 52nd Venice Biennale, Venice, 2007; and Borderline Syndrome: Energies of Defense, Manifesta 3, Ljubljana, 2000. Publications she has (co-)edited include: Fragments of Repair (with Kader Attia and Wietske Maas, forthcoming 2024); Toward the Not-Yet: Art as Public Practice (with Jeanne van Heeswijk and Rachael Rakes, 2021); Deserting from the Culture Wars (with Sven Lütticken, 2020); Propositions for Non-Fascist Living: Tentative and Urgent (with Wietske Maas, 2019); Posthuman Glossary (with Rosi Braidotti, 2018); and Marion von Osten: Once We Were Artists (with Tom Holert, 2017), among others. She is a lecturer at HKU University of the Arts Utrecht, Utrecht and Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Bratislava. In addition, Hlavajova is co-founder (with Kathrin Rhomberg) of the tranzit network. Hlavajova is a member of the supervisory board of the Academy of Visual Arts, Prague and of the advisory boards of Center for Art and the Political ImaginaryHDK-Valand, Gothenburg and Kungl. Konsthögskolan, Stockholm; Bergen Assembly, Bergen; Art and Culture Program at Free University, Amsterdam; and IMAGINART, Imagining Institutions Otherwise: Art, Politics, and State Transformation, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam. In the recent past, Hlavajova served on the supervisory boards of European Cultural Foundation, Amsterdam and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

Archive

Festival 2024