A Slow Conversation on Sustainable Practice

How can artists and designers make their own practice more sustainable for themselves? The current political and ecological climate requires urgent action. We need to move fast, before we run out of resources. But how do we navigate this landscape without burning ourselves down first? Let’s slow down for a moment, get personal, get engaged together, and move from there.    

This workshop is for students and beginning artists, designers and artistic researchers to exchange gained knowledge and ideas about what a sustainable art practice could look like – especially while taking your own needs and resources into account.

For this occasion, Urgent Ecologies (Gerrit Rietveld Academie) also invited several artists, designers, and artistic researchers to join the conversations in small groups. In between the conversations we will do body-awareness exercises by Rosalie Bak (affective, artistic researcher and haptonomic professional). 

During the workshop we will move between an individual and collective perspective by means of connecting to ourselves, the space we are holding together, and our shared responsibility for the world – we are also part of. We will highlight the importance of the moment itself and create a physical, collective output made of clay that will be part of the exhibition PPP by collective Sunflower Soup at W139.

Walk-in — 13:30
Start workshop— 14:00

Do you want to participate? Reserve your spot on the Eventbrite-page of the event.
Participation is free, but donations are very welcome. There are limited spots available.

Urgent Ecologies is an initiative of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie that focuses on fostering a fundamental ecological and sustainable approach throughout all levels of the academy—within (art) education, institutional activities, and policy. It aims to integrate sustainability as both a topic of discussion and a practice embedded in the day-to-day functioning of the academy.
 Urgent Ecologies provides policy advice and initiates, supports, and highlights various projects, events, and collaborations. Some initiatives have been a pilot project to create a vegan canteen, a community garden on campus (the Garden Department), a fund to encourage the use of sustainable production methods, and a materials library.

Rosalie Bak works at the intersection of affective research, embodiment, and spatial practices, with a strong focus on ecology, art, and somatic care. As an artist and haptonomic professional she is interested in the ambiguous relationship between people and their non/living environments and explores how to make complex predicaments experiential through the body. Her multidisciplinary practice spans from the development of new methodologies and pedagogies to storytelling, writing and the design of workshops, walks and experiences, often working with communities, scientists, (artistic) research groups and the more-than-human world.

Mariana Jurado Rico is an artist and curator working with printing, installation, publishing, radio, and video performance to facilitate points of merger between people. Her works build situations with elements of humor, failure, impatience, and contradiction as tools of resistance. Currently she is working on different collaborative projects that tackle her interest in independent initiatives and self-initiated processes.

Together with Francisca Khamis Giacoman, she founded Espacio Estamos Bien (EEB),  an autonomous non-autonomous space for contradictory things to happen based in Amsterdam that organizes gatherings, publications, exhibitions, and other formats. EEB started plotting the idea of a new space in Amsterdam—not necessarily a physical one—that could provide an affective and supportive context. A space for those who do not belong in the institutional circuit. A space that is always changing, always moving, but always available. EEB is an initiator of conversations and a facilitator of situations. 

Nina van Hartkamp is a multidisciplinary artist, botanical dyer, and story weaver. She graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in 2020. Her research-based practice unfolds through socially engaged projects that explore the interconnections between humans, non-humans, and the environment.

Working with materials such as plants, microbes, second-hand textiles, audio, video, and performance, Nina’s projects grow out of intimate exchanges with people and places. Her work is guided by questions of belonging, co-existence, and planetary interdependence.

Through site-specific, immersive experiences—including public installations, collective rituals, and community workshops—she invites participants and audiences to reflect on their relationships with each other and the more-than-human world. Her work offers poetic resistance to extractive systems, individualism, capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy. 

Harriet Rose Morley is a UK-born artist, researcher, and initiator based in the Netherlands since 2018. Her practice explores the gender and labour politics of technical skill within art, design, and architecture, focusing on the working conditions of cultural and technical practitioners. Through her ongoing research Hard Work, Soft Work, she investigates both visible technical skills and undervalued soft skills essential to collective work. A graduate of the Glasgow School of Art and a Dutch MA program, she has led material- and collaboration-based projects, taught across UK and Dutch institutions, and worked with diverse disciplines from architecture to blacksmithing. From 2023–2025, she was Co-Director of Platform BK. In 2025, she will be a Tech Fellow at the Rijksakademie and a resident at Kunsthal Gent.

Amalie ‘Sveske’ Ourø  is a Danish artist who has been living, studying and working in the Netherlands since 2018. Her work, mostly performative and site-specific, can be best described as art-anthropology and is inspired by her curiosity about humanity and reflections of the inner workings of our society. Through her work she actively engages with the audience through acts of play and subversion, inviting them to think critically about diverse societal urgencies within the field of sociology, urbanism, and ecology — encouraging meaningful and sustainable change along the way. Amalie Sveske Ourø is part of the art and garden collectives; The Garden Department (Gerrit Rietveld Academie) and Pleasure Ground.

Joakim Derlow is an artist who specialises in fragmented narratives and spatial comics. His practice brings together objects, found items, drawings and his own performative presence to tell stories of a fragmented nature. These elements thrive on their own, but are meant to be seen in a site specific arrangement which provokes the associations and perspectives of an audience. It is their mending eyes that read out trails or a sequence – inso forming the notion of a narrative.

Unpotato – Edible manifesto making workshop

The potato is usually seen as a trivial and ubiquitous source of food; it’s just there. We don’t think too much of it, which is surprising given that there are more than 4500 varieties of potatoes known worldwide and that almost every food culture in the world uses potatoes. This ubiquity obscures how the lives of humans and potatoes have been entangled throughout history. In the kitchen of the panic factory, we’ll follow the potato on its journey through continents, soil, food, metabolism and starch by collectively preparing an edible manifesto. During this workshop we’ll write, draw, and stamp on edible paper made from potato starch. Using pigments from sweet potatoes, juices, and potato stamps, we’ll visualise how to transform populist purée politics into a pluralistic polyphonic potato tornado. Finally, we’ll throw the manifesto and the potato stamps into a soup that will be served at the end of the workshop and eaten by all participants, thus digesting the original zine.

Sunflower Soup was born out of a shared activist engagement and a need to explore what art can mean beyond the confines of the individual. The collective is driven by a number of questions: can a shared way of working contribute to a less detached experience of art? How do people relate to each other and to the more-than-human world? How do we reconcile the importance of activism with a poetic visual language that allows for humour, paradox and ambiguity?

Reserve your spot on the Eventbrite-page of the event.
Participation is free, but donations are very welcome.

The Potato Parliament: A Spud-itorial Debate

Do all potatoes have the same interests or needs? What would potatoes say in a debate? Are all potatoes created equal and privy to the same rights? This workshop explores the existence, language, and connected system of potatoes through playful embodiment and poetic political imagination. 

In the first part of the workshop, participants will be provided with a potato for whom they will form a political party. Each person will receive an information card about their potato and formulate a proposal for a new law through the eyes of their potato. The facilitator, i.e. Head Potato, will help guide each party to come up with a name, slogan, and main debate points. 

In the second half of the workshop, all of the potato parties will come together and debate whether the proposed laws should be passed in Parliament or not. All members will vote on passing or rejecting the bill. 

The debate session will be recorded and presented during the remaining days of the PPP workshop programme.

The Potato Parliament: A Spud-itorial Debate with Jody Aikman
Saturday 31 May, 12:00 – 15:30
Wednesday 18 June, 12:00 – 15:30

Jody Aikman is a poet and performer exploring the intersection where artist, audience and message meet. She researches the silences in language by questing meaning, ambiguity, and implication through her writing. Her performances are created to blur the line between audience and artist, investigating the relationship between herself, the other and the world. 

Reserve your spot on the Eventbrite-page of the event.
Participation is free, but donations are very welcome.

PotatoPress

On 29 May, PotatoPress opens the doors of its editorial room to all curious, wandering, and ambitious potato journalists to contribute to the PPPotato newspaper! Come peel a potato to reveal its hidden layers, dig deep in the earth for its roots, expose its versatility, become the paparazzi of potatoes, bring out the latest (fake) news, or contribute to the entertainment section. 

In the editorial room, we’ll explore the politics of the potato together. Using different perspectives, personal knowledge, field research, and (reliable) sources, we’ll reflect on the role of the potato in our society, the global economy, our common thinking, different ideologies and strong opinions. What does the potato have to tell us? How can the potato nurture our ideas about the politics of being together and interacting with each other? We’ll also dive deep into our primal Dutch frying culture and the snackbar as a meeting place. What is the role of the snackbar in today’s times? 

The newspaper will be published and distributed in the neighbourhood of P139.

Participants can drop in and join any time. You can sign up using the Eventbrite link.

Mul-thee-fuhngk-shuh-nl is a collective that creates dynamic installations with a crossover between workshops, public space installations, and happenings through interactions with others. Their projects share a common focus on engaging with the environment and fostering exchanges with a diverse audience, generating new imaginaries around the contexts the projects take place in.

P(r)otato Propaganda Production workshop

Make Playful P(r)otato Propaganda with Sunflower Soup! During this workshop, participants will engage in experimental ways of imagining politics, while creating new PPP slogans, pamphlets and monumental banners together. Using PPP’s very own Pulp-font stamps, and an amazing collection of fabrics, we will produce PPP propaganda that is poetic, colourful, and polyphonic. Let’s Peel the Power! And practise the politics of poetic potato promotion.

The workshop is open to all ages (grown up and baby potatoes) and no prior skills are required to take part. The banners produced in the first workshop will become part of the PPP and will be displayed in the space. 

P(r)otato Propaganda Production workshop with Sunflower Soup

Sunday May 25, 15:00 – 18:00
Saturday June 14, 14:00 – 17:00

Sunflower Soup was born out of a shared activist engagement and a need to explore what art can mean beyond the confines of the individual. The collective is driven by a number of questions:can a shared way of working contribute to a less detached experience of art? How do people relate to each other and to the more-than-human world? How do we reconcile the importance of activism with a poetic visual language that allows for humour, paradox and ambiguity?

Reserve your spot on the Eventbrite-page of the event.
Participation is free, but donations are very welcome.

Potato Growing Workshop

13:00 hrs at W139 or 14:00 hrs at the 4Siblings field.

Polyculture, in opposition to monoculture, is a system of growing plants that are beneficial to each other and create a regenerative effect on the soil. We think of polyculture as a symbol of political practices of living together in community. In this workshop we will collectively learn about polyculture and the life cycle of plants—from seed to sowing, to growth, and harvest. On 13 May we will sow potatoes and think about other plants and their existence from seed to harvest, throughout the seasons. In order to facilitate this thought process on the lifecycle of plants we will engage in an embodied personification exercise with all the elements that contribute to the life of our small garden. The workshop will be outdoors, so please wear warm clothes, closed shoes and bring a bottle of water. No experience with farming or performance is needed.

Please note: if you join the workshop at 13:00 at W139, you will be participating in an approximately 30 minutes bike procession to the 4Siblings field. Please bring your bike and a bag or carrier to transport material.

A follow up workshop will be dedicated to harvesting the results. 

Date and time are still to be confirmed (depending on when the potatoes are ready to harvest.)

4Siblings is an artist collective and a community garden focusing on creating ecofeminist and queer connections to food and land. They focus on land-based art and research, collectively creating gardens as artistic platforms. These outdoor spaces allow artists and makers to develop their practice from the perspective of community and ecology. 

Reserve your spot on the Eventbrite page of the event.
Participation is free, but donations are very welcome.

Opening PPP

Join us on Friday 23 May from 19:00 for the opening of W139’s new exhibition: PPP!

This spring, the Sunflower Soup collective brings PPP to life—a Political Party for Potatoes and other beings. PPP transforms W139 into a site of collective practice: an open workspace where you are welcome to make and share!

While the potato plays a leading role within the party, the P’s are open to many interpretations: PPP could stand for Protorealist Pan-Political ProjectPractical Party of Provocation, or Pansexual Potato Phantasy. This way the PPP functions as a pluriform platform for overlooked or obscured perspectives and aims to be a refuge for those who challenge the current political status quo.

Through a comprehensive workshop programme PPP will gradually expand further over the course of two months. A multitude of collectives, makers, and visitors will collaboratively explore the politics of the potato and contribute to the PPP. As well as being playful and speculative, PPP will become a real physical place of political imagination and connection, proposing alternatives to the ways contemporary politics are shaped. Find out more about the workshop programme soon on our website!

Sunflower Soup was born out of a shared activist engagement and a need to explore what art can mean beyond the confines of the individual.

PPP is supported by Amsterdam Fund for the Arts, Mondriaan Fund and the Cultural Participation Fund.

Visual identity by June Jungeun Yang.

FLUSH #6: NO PARES (SIGUE SIGUE)

PRODUCE, HAVE FUN, IMPROVE AND SMILE! by Sergi Casero

Like hamsters on a wheel, we run in a race that has no finish line – because every now and then another goal appears on the horizon. This performance is for everyone who feels overwhelmed by too many responsibilities and activities. For those who are learning a new language, playing an instrument, obsessively setting goals and making to-do-lists, or in a constant quest for fulfilment, self-development and being a better version of themselves. Every second counts! In an achievement society doing nothing is a grave sin. But we are more than the sum of our achievements, or are we? How does the productivity obsession shape our desires, our bodies and our limits?

Through the structure of a spinning class, NO PARES (sigue sigue) confronts the hidden violence within neoliberal ideals of efficiency, self-optimization, and endless improvement.

How did we buy the neoliberal tale that we are the architects of our own fate?
Can we resist? Can we break free from the inertia of productivity and its seductive pull?

Join us for this participatory performance – an opportunity to reflect and endure.

Doors open — 18:30
Performance — 19:30
End — 20:30

The artist is supported by Amsterdam Fund for the Arts

FLUSH: a sudden rush of intense emotion is a flourishing collaboration between Espacio Estamos Bien and W139, located in the toilets of W139. FLUSH operates as a flexible form of organizing and creating, enabling various types of collaboration. FLUSH aims to foster inter-local relationships, viewing Amsterdam as a hub for facilitating diverse interactions and building connections that bridge distances. Joyful, friendly and decentralized connections extend beyond the Amsterdam art scene.

Curatorial Text: José Rosales 
Production: Julia Nowicka and Espacio Estamos Bien
Design: Sergi Casero

Rainbow Social Music Club

Join us for a drink to celebrate the end of the exhibition together with the Rainbow Soulclub members in an informal gathering followed by a sonic activation by The Social Music Club from 20:00 hrs onwards.

The Social Music Club is a participatory music session for musicians, non-musicians, amateurs, and professionals alike hosted by Aimée Theriot and Koen Nutters. In these gatherings for musical improvisation without dogmas, the emphasis lies on meeting and getting to know each other, while also discussing, putting into practice and stretching the understanding of what exactly music is and can be. Bring an instrument, an object or your own voice if you want to join.

Rainbow Soulclub is an art and solidarity collective founded in 2005 by visual artists Saskia Janssen and George Korsmit. Composed of makers and thinkers coming from different social, economic, and cultural backgrounds, they meet regularly at the collective studio in the drop-in centre of Stichting De Regenboog Groep, an organisation in Amsterdam dedicated to people experiencing homelessness, addiction, poverty, and the challenges that come with undocumented status.

This event is free, but The Social Music Club has a limited capacity so please register here via Eventbrite.

Meet Rainbow Soulclub #2

Join us on Saturday, April 12, to meet Rainbow Soulclub members during an informal afternoon featuring various activities, including live painting at the drawing table with Ebby, Abdi, and David, spiritual education in the tent with Mimosa, an informal group discussion on homelessness and housing in Amsterdam with Malika Amghar, a vegan spring roll workshop with Ting, and the classic Free Advice sessions with various Rainbow Soulclub members—get answers to all your life questions from an unexpected perspective.

Live music: Jacques (guitar and vocals)
Food: Soup by George & Perry (vegan)
Guided tour of the space – Tomas, George, Saskia

Malika Amghar has been working for more than 20 years in the social domain of Amsterdam on practical and creative solutions regarding homelessness and housing at De Regenboog Groep. Her focus is on what is possible and what does work: “I find coming up with solutions fascinating and challenging; my passion lies in removing a root cause in the system. I don’t like mopping with the tap running.

Picture by Maarten Nauw / Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.