Where we are right now
Summer School 2022
18.07.2022 — 22.07.2022
Steph Holl-Trieu
Steph Holl-Trieu is an artist and researcher based in Berlin and Vienna. She is interested in the imbrications and slippages between digital materialism, technical aesthetics and the political economy. She works with methodologies of performative gameplay, theoryfiction writing and collective worlding. Her work has been shown at Roter Salon (Volksbühne Berlin), Grounded Festival (Ljubljana), The Mosaic Rooms (London), 3HD Festival (Berlin) and the Exhibit Gallery (Vienna), amongst others. Holl-Trieu co-runs the project space Ashley in Berlin and is an active member of the newly formed Research Institute for Technical Aesthetics (RITA).

Kamai Freire & Suelen Calonga (Obará)
Kamai Freire is a musician, composer and researcher from Brazil. He graduated with a Bachelor in Composition from the Universidade de Brasília and a Master of Arts at the Unesco Chair on Transcultural Music Studies. His focus is on music, cultural heritage, and politics, with special interest in musical traditions of Africa and the Diaspora. Suelen Calonga is a visual artist and curator. Her ongoing research crosses academic, political and poetic experiences. Artistically, her work is situated between audiovisual, performance and, more recently, is moving towards critique of processes and procedures that sustain the colonization of knowledge through arts and science. (Obará is a word/name with spiritual meaning in West African and Afro-Diasporic religions. Obará is one of the 16 main ‘paths’ of humanity and the general idea is related to prosperity, wealth, transformation and faith.)

Okhiogbe Omonblanks Omonhinmin
First things first, Okhiogbe Omonblanks Omonhinmin na the pikin of Victoria Elomese Omonhinmin and Cosmos Ijogbe Omonhinmin, E family big well well and e believe say all these things na very important reason wey make am the person wey e be today, because of the type of pikin wey e be to e mama and papa, the type of brother wey e be to e siblings and the nephew, cousin and uncle wey e be to e extender family and the different communities wey e don stay, all join to make am the very person wey dey do the type of work wey e dey do and difference nor dey between e work and daily life, all of dem joining together as storyteller and spacemaker.
Na for Benin City, for Nigeria 1985 naim dem born Okhiogbe Omonblanks Omonhinmin. Omonblanks na interdisciplinary creative producer or “ambassador of entanglement” wey dey use everything e fit use take make things happen, like form or position wey e need take do e project. Na so e done take do everything like festival curating & producing, creative direction, film, music, art practice, sharing food, conversations and more. With critical discourse E dey rearrange intersections with all d plenty conceptual tools like research-based methods inside oral-storytelling, biographical conversation documentation, archiving, design and collaboration.

Julia Vandehof
Julia Vandehof is an Austrian performer and theater maker with a background in physical theatre. A visual language, non-linear forms of narration and the combination of movement, video, stage design and play characterize her work. Her focus is on collaborative devising, exploration of the poetic body, and embodied movement practice. Her artistic work moves between creating her own performances, working in participatory community based theater projects and as a performer. Current creative research areas include the tension between the representation and reality of gender roles in (mythological) stories, and a poetic view of dys/utopian future worlds.

Baruch Gottlieb
Baruch Gottlieb: Trained as a filmmaker, has worked in contemporary dance, theater, radio, television and performance. Currently, besides his professional work in digital media production, curation, writing and university, he specialises in participative events, schools, festivals, symposia, workshops, facilitation and organisation. He collaborates in Telekommunisten and Dinsnovation.org art collectives and is author of Digital Materialism (Emerald 2018) and A Political Economy of the Smallest Things (Atropos 2014). Baruch Gottlieb is curator at West Den Haag and is convenor of the School of ’21.

Information: The West Summer School 2022 is limited to 25 participants. There is a participant fee of € 175,- incl. lunches (student € 95,-). The program will be held in English. We will gather in the garden and auditorium at West in The Hague. To apply, please e-mail Chloë van Diepen: chloe@westdenhaag.nl before July 7th with a short motivation. If successful, you will receive a confirmation within the week. The Summer School is for participants only and is convened by Baruch Gottlieb.