Navigating Insecure Futures

In this course, we will use the process of engaging in artistic practices to navigate the topics of injustice and the (im)possibility of making change. The goal is to use the creative, collaborative, and embodied process of making performance art as a method to investigate and navigate the complexity of unjust systems.

The first part of the course will be about exploring how we can use artistic practices such as poetry, drama, movement, and art-making for research into our emotions, responses, interpretations, perspectives, and systems. This exploration will be done in part by familiarizing students with the academic literature on the role of the (performing) arts as potential spaces and tools for inquiry and resistance in unjust systems.

Additionally, the students will be attending (in-class) workshops exploring the actual practice of different artistic qualities such as poetry, movement, music, and art-making. These explorations and workshops will be used as a basis to guide the students towards making a communal performance art work. The focus in this course is on how the unfolding and collaborative process of making an performance art work can bring forward new experiences and insights. This course requires no previous theatre or drama experience.

Time investment: 

• Classes are held on Thursday evenings between 18:00 and 20:00 (September - December)
• Two Saturday afternoons in preparation for the final performance, the dates of which will be determined at the beginning of the course.

Teacher: Annick van Rinsum is a political journalist and theater maker who explores questions about injustice and politics through personal in-depth interviews as well as theater. Her master's thesis in international relations was performed as a play at Theater Ins Blau in Leiden.

What makes a city resilient and able to provide for its human and non-human inhabitants in insecure times? This course will explore these questions through three areas of activity: walking, self-reflection, and mapping. Students will walk in the city of Utrecht and document their embodied experiences in relation to a collectively chosen theme. Examples of themes might include safety, art, class, ethnicity, tourism or accessibility. Students will be invited to use open and creative forms of media to create a collective map of the city according to their walking experiences. Using this map, students will reflect on how they would reimagine Utrecht. 

Dates: Classes will be held on Tuesday evenings throughout the September-December period (exact start dates and times to be decided).

Teacher: Anastasia Hacopian is an urban geographer of Armenian-Japanese descent with a deep interest in ‘otherness’ and transformation. Her work involves interdisciplinary, creative explorations of urban subscenes and the development of identity and agency in cities.

Hope can be hard to find these days. How do we stay hopeful when global CO2 emissions are still on the rise, when ecocide and genocide seem to go hand in hand, when hatred rises? Where do we begin when it is easier to envision the end of the world than the end of capitalism?

This course will start from Greta Thunberg’s assertion that hope is what we do. Rather than staring into the future and hoping things to end well, hope is how we step into that future. It is not the denial of fear, or even despair; hope is what we do despite and beyond those emotions. 

This course will explore– by going out in the communities around us- fears, hopes, scenarios, and perspectives, and investigate the underlying values, worldviews, and needs. 

We will combine inspirational readings, dialogue, community-engaged practices, and art as ways of developing our own way of ‘building hope’. At the end of the course, we will share our learnings with the world around us through a public exhibition. 

Dates: Wednesdays 18:00-20:00, between 28 February 2025 and 29 May 2025

Teacher: Dr. Gerard van der Ree (they/them) 

Humans are not isolated beings, separate from the passive backdrop of 'nature'—yet for centuries, much of humanity has lived as though we are. As the climate crisis and Anthropocene deepen, the consequences of this divide grow clearer. How can we navigate our future on this planet when our entanglement with “nature” is so often overlooked?

This course (dis)covers the human/nature binary and explores their interconnection through embodied, experiential learning. Challenging Descartes’ notion that knowledge and identity exist only in the mind, we emphasize that our bodies and experiences are interwoven with the world around us.

Beginning with an introduction to community-building and the Anthropocene, the course offers eight unique workshops and site visits designed to reimagine our relationships with the environment. Activities span eco-themed LARP for alternate non-human representation, photogrammetry and sewing for planetary sensing, and a ‘Parliament of Things’ to foster more-than-human dialogue.

Throughout, we will reflect on and experiment with ways to shape the entanglements we encounter. The course finishes with students developing creative interventions that express their insights into human/nature relationality, showcased in a final public exhibition.

Teacher: Celandine Fleur Seuren

Dates: Tuesdays 18:00-21:00, between 18 February 2025 and 27 May 2025

Tuesday evening sessions will be supplemented by a Saturday afternoon excursion/workshop on two or three occasions.