From 22^nd to 24^th September 2017 I visited Van Abbemuseum to attended and participated in the ‘Collections in Transition’ series of talks, debates and workshop/seminars. On Friday 22^nd Kuba Szreder, Meg Down and Sebastian Cichocki discussed their on going project for the ‘Deviant Practice‘ research strand at Van Abbemuseum. Also the two Keynote presentations by Rolando Vazquez (on re-thinking the necessity of ‘Decoloniality’ in his paper ‘The Museum, Decoloniality and the End of the Contemporary’) and Geeta Kapur (who reconsidered the paramaters of a Western Modernist cannon via the de-centrist model of politics – as proposed by Ghandi – in her paper ‘Demodern:Why?’) were incredible. Whilst at Van Abbemuseum we also had the opportunity to look around and discuss their two key current exhibitions ‘The Way Beyond Art‘ and ‘The Making of Modern Art‘. I was also able to spend some time making a cool Lego car with Maarten, Steven and Doreen ten Thije.

On June 29^th 2017 I participated, via Skype in the Association of Arte Útil ‘Escuela de Arte Útil’ Project which at the Yerba Buena Centre for the Arts in San Francisco. The Escuela de Arte Útil, which is itself part of a collaboration/exhibition with Tania Bruguera at the Yerba Buena Centre for the Arts called ‘Talking to Power / Hablándole al Poder’ takes the form of a 3 month Arte Útil School. The full Escuela de Arte Util syllabus can be found at: https://admin.ybca.org/app/uploads/2017/06/Tania-Bruguera_Escuela-Syllabus_6-20-17.pdf

On June 5^th and 6^th 2017 the L’Internationale group of museums and galleries held a group meeting at SALT Galata/Istanbul to begin thinking through what the next EU bid after ‘The Uses of Art: The Legacies of 1848 and 1989’ might look like. Of particular interest was the developing Office of Useful Art at Salt  and how we might begin to tie in links and constituent practice across the Association of Arte Util network (arte-util.org) between Salt and the developing The Uses of Art Lab and The Florrie.