Event | APRiCot Garden 2025 – Research as Regenerative Practice

We warmly invite you to join us for APRiCot Garden 2025. On the 10th of May upcoming the Dutch Art Institute will be generously hosted by the Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam.

APRiCot Garden is envisioned as an annual event bringing together research trajectories by alumni and practitioners from the wider DAI community.

At this critical juncture of the interlocking planetary crisis, this inaugural edition’s loose point of departure is a recognition that artists might be carriers of profound healing—not the individualized, commodified self-optimization of the spiritual industrial complex, but healing as a transversal epistemic and political project, where difference,  mutual aid and regenerative knowledge practice become a condition of collective renewal. This APRiCot Garden thus invokes a warm, pulsating mycorrhizal network of artistic intelligence—one that breathes, transforms, and perpetually exceeds the calculative boundaries of knowledge “production” constrained by capital’s technologies of extractive, predictive, statistical knowing.

This year’s event is dedicated to affirming gathering as a form of experimental research methodology. Open inquiry, writerly experimentation, ritual, performance, lecture, embodied practice, close readings, and theoretical intervention will intertwine throughout the duration of 10 hours.

Rather than showcasing polished conclusions, the day’s sessions embrace Incomplete Circuits where participants explicitly identify the gaps and uncertainties in their current research and invite collective engagement with these unresolved spaces. The gathering builds upon the premise of Process Exposition by asking participants to foreground not just their research but their approaches to research itself—revealing the scaffolding that typically remains hidden. Moving beyond purely presentational, textual and verbal exchanges, the gathering incorporates Sensate Knowing through movement and sensory engagement. The event also reimagines Documentation as Process, tracing methodological evolution and transformations in thinking.

The rhizomatic trace and curatorial afterscore that emerge become a soft incipience for the following edition, allowing for the growth of the research garden from one year to another. This regenerative approach, which allows for unexpected cross-pollinations and ecological succession that resist domestication, recognizes that knowledge otherwise—knowledge beyond the dominant epistemologies of extraction—requires not just alternative content but attentive and regenerative conditions of growth.

With student-alumni: Alaa Abu Asad, Lucas Lugarinho, Clara Saito, Yoeri Guépin, Raffia Li, Simon(e) van Saarloos, Taka Taka, Yen Noh & tutor-alumni: Ramon Amaro, Nikita Dhawan, The Otolith Group: Kodwo Eshun & Anjalika Sagar, Emily Pethick and Ashkan Sepahvand.

Conceptualized and curated by Antonia Majaca with programming developed in collaboration with Bethany Crawford and in conversation with Gabriëlle Schleijpen.

Conceptual note-taking by Clem Edwards and students at NICA (Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis).

PROGRAM

Throughout the day:

What assumptions are / already / here / in the space? research / game/ performance /dialogue by Raffia Li

Morning Session

10:00 – 10:10 

Introduction to the day by Dina A. Mohamed 

10:10 – 10:45 

Pacifier ~ video game performance by Lucas Lugarinho Braga

10:45 – 11:20 

In the absence of the invasive: Japanese Knotweed as Future Companion ~ lecture

performance by Alaa Abu Asad

11:20 – 12:05 

Opening remarks: Antonia Majaca, Ramon Amaro, Gabriëlle Schleijpen 

12:05 – 12:20  

BREAK

12:20 – 13:05 

The Otolith Group (Kodwo Eshun, Anjalika Sagar) in dialogue with Emily Pethick

13:05 – 13:40 

‘Dare to Know’ versus ‘Care to Know’: Rethinking Knowledge in a Postcolonial World ~

keynote lecture by Nikita Dhawan

13:40 – 14:15

Regenerative Garden Workshop by Yoeri Guépin

14:15 – 14:50

LUNCH 

Afternoon Session

14:50 – 15:25 

In Between Seances ~ performance by Yen Noh 

15:25 – 16:00 

the ends of origins ~ performance by Ashkan Sepahvand

16:00 – 16:35 

Embracing Despair: Releasing Trans of Its Promise and Ambition ~ lecture performance by

Simon(e) van Saarloos

16:35 – 17:10 | Clara Saito (35 min)

Sad Clown ~ performance by Clara Saito

17:10 – 17:25 | BREAK (15 min)

Evening Session

17:25 – 18:00 

Artistic Intelligence as Practiced Incommensurability ~ lecture by Antonia Majaca

18:00 – 18:35 

Chaosymbiotic Grafting: A Collective Drag Involution ~ performance by Taka Taka

18:35 – 20:30 

Diner Dansant

Chef Manuela Goncalves Tavares and  DJ Nummerstation|Katja Molenkamp

Please return to this page for eventual updates and for the LIVE STREAM 

SIDE PROGRAM

Open sessions with tailored advice to anyone who wants to bring writing or (PhD or not PhD) research from Bethany Crawford.

Open sessions offering tailored advice on studying with DAI (MA in Art Praxis) from Marika Vandekraats.

Screening of three movies from DAI’s archive A Piece of Dada (2018), Study, Bodies and the Spaceship: Movements in a Minor Key (2019), and Evergreening the Cut (2023).

DAI Friends & Alumni Grant candy bar hang-out steered by Clem Edwards.

KIOSK Rotterdam bookshop curated by Philippa Driest.

APRiCot Garden as a future oriented, ongoing project was initiated by Gabriëlle Schleijpen, artistic director and head of program, in conversation with Dina A. Mohamed, research curator, and organized and produced by DAI’s crew: Lauren Alexander & Hanna Rullmann (communication design), Giulia Crispiani (publishing), Fagner Lima (photography and live streaming), Peter Sattler (technical coordination), Jacq van der Spek (travel & accommodation), and Corine van der Wal (bookkeeping). Production is supported by Koen Landman and Laura Lakam from Nieuwe Instituut.

Food & drinks steered by Kastė Šeškevičiūte, and especially prepared for us by Nieuwe Café.

LUNCH: Costs for vegan/vegetarian ciabatta including coffee, tea, water: € 6,50. DAI-students+alumni pay € 5,00.

DINNER: Costs for the vegan/vegetarian dinner-buffet including a glass of wine, still/sparkling water: € 20,00. DAI-students+alumni pay € 15,00.

IMPORTANT: click here to contact Kaste, and let her now that you want to join lunch and/or dinner. Limited availability!

Entrance to the program is FREE.

How to get to Nieuwe Insitituut, Museumpark 5, Rotterdam.

Accessibility: Het Nieuwe Instituut is wheelchair, walker, and mobility scooter accessible, with a designated disabled parking space available. Guide dogs are also welcome.
Click here for more accessibility details. 

The DAI will provide Speech-to-Text Support (Live Captioning) during the lectures in the auditorium.