damdam Harvest Festival 2025

You are invited to a public programme spanning two weeks convened by damdam, an interconnected web of collectives emerging from de Appel’s Curatorial Programme, the Lumbung Practice Temporary Master Programme at Sandberg Instituut and Gudskul’s Collective Study Programme in Indonesia. Between 26 May and 7 June 2025 at de Appel and several other locations in and outside of Amsterdam, damdam will host a public living space to introduce their ecosystem. It's a celebration — a first exercise in the unfolding of coalition-building through contradiction, starting from a belief in the possibility of constructing a platform where we can work from our struggles, expand collectivities, and find more examples and inspirations in the work of allied collectives. Below is an invitation from damdam:

Building on the 25 years of Lumbung kindred experiments leading to lumbung - documenta fifteen, for the first time this year we will gather with collectives to practice sustainable economies, to think about our collective infrastructures, shared practices, common resources and values. One of our values is caring about the process, rather than focusing on the production of artworks or exhibitions as isolated outputs. We turn toward each other and the relations that bind us. Our curatorial approach is embedded in the politics of friendship, interdependence, trust, collective joy as well as engagement with Amsterdam and our localities.

Alongside mapping our resources and needs in our ecosystem, we build a common ground and think about potential seeds to plant. Out of this process, several self-organised working groups emerged around common urgencies: community, land, economy, printing, publishing, pedagogy, documenting and archiving. In the Harvest Festival 2025 we share our understanding of lumbung practice and ongoing processes through nongkrongs (gatherings), workshops, screenings, discussions, dinners and parties. What kind of future can we envision if we reorient our work around sharing, communal rhythms, and solidarity?

More information and the full programme will follow soon!