How can we approach the significance of contemporary art and curation as modes of research, creation, and action in times of systemic crisis? How can we actualize the potential of curatorial and creative practices – including those forms that refuse to cohere fully into “art” or “research” – as sites of affirmation in the pursuit of social change and in-depth transformation? What, if anything, does it mean to act in this world as an artist, curator, researcher, student, thinker or maker driven by a desire for progressive change and social justice through cultural intervention? How do we give form, both within and beyond the institutional spaces of the (art) academy, to our individual and collective attempts to curate new modalities of being – and becoming – in the twenty-first century? What, concretely, do we do to make a difference? How do we begin? And how do we keep beginning anew? Join us as we approach these and related questions through the work of our two keynote speakers, Luca Soudant and Bruno Alves de Almeida!

Luca Soudant (Maastricht, 1993) is a PhD researcher at the Open University, artist, DJ (ADIË), and theory teacher at the Maastricht Institute of Arts. They graduated from the University of Amsterdam with a research master’s degree in Cultural Analysis and from the Sandberg Institute with a master’s degree in Critical Studies. Luca’s research combines academic scholarship and artistic practice to explore how gender is culturally (per)formed through sound. Working with the queer materiality of sound as it appears and disappears in-between human and nonhuman actors, objects, and environments, Luca proposes “sonic thinking” as both an artistic research method and a trans*formative politics toward non-binary and anti-essentialist conceptions of the worlds we inhabit. They have created numerous audiovisual performances, installations, and soundscapes, including, among others, Sonic Manspreading (2019), On Sonic Intimacy (2020), and REVOICE (2022), a performance on a barrel organ playing sound recordings from a solidarity protest in Amsterdam against the then-looming decision of the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the national right to abortion.

Bruno Alves de Almeida (Brasil/Portugal, 1987) is a curator, architect and researcher based in the Netherlands, currently the curator and resident liaison of the Jan van Eyck Academy, Maastricht, and tutor of the Design Academy Eindhoven. He holds a master’s degree from the Mendrisio Academy of Architecture, Switzerland, and is a graduate of De Appel’s Curatorial Programme, Amsterdam. Bruno’s practice is rooted in transdisciplinary thinking and site/context-specificity, resulting in projects responding to timely issues and going beyond customary forms and spaces for the presentation, production, and experience of artistic practice. In Sao Paolo, Brazil, Bruno has spearheaded numerous exhibitions and site-specific public commissions exploring the socio-spatial aspects of contemporary urbanity. In recent years, he has expanded his interest to include the natural environment, exploring the civic significance of art, design, and other creative practices in relation to the ongoing socio-ecological crisis. At the Jan van Eyck, Bruno has curated, among other projects, the Urgency Intensive: Intergovernmental Panel on Art and Climate Change, an annual event which fosters new crossovers between disciplines and communities of interest at the interface between contemporary art, science, policy, and global politics.