COOP Living Room: (to) live by ear, and the eye will follow

“There are no more precious words than the ones that were written in spite of. In spite of pain, censorship, torture.”¹

The cohort of de Appel COOP Living Room: Rehearsals for Placemaking, as part of the Dutch Art Institute (DAI) masters programme, would like to invite you to their living room, temporarily constructed at de Appel. Here they read, honour, and reflect on the writings of those whose freedom has been denied, by translating letters by Palestinian political prisoners; letters that have been written in spite of pain, censorship and torture. How can we be better listeners to their letters to ensure they are not forgotten?

‘(to) live by ear, and the eye will follow’ ² is a continuation of activities and actions collectively facilitated by de Appel COOP Living Room: Rehearsals for Placemaking. Since 2023, de Appel has partnered with DAI’s educational programme — a nomadic study programme fostering a variety of intersections of art and theory grounded in feminist, anti-capitalist, and decolonial orientations. As part of DAI’s curriculum, COOP’s bring together makers, researchers, writers and curators — students and tutors alike — around clearly defined and urgent questions. de Appel COOP 2025–26 evolves around the relationships of land and water as formative resources of culture, asking what kinds of traditions, knowledge, and practices they have generated, and how they continue to shape the present.

Tutor team: Noor Abuarafeh, Marina Christodoulidou. Student participants: Annette Rodriguez Fiorillo, Carlos Azeredo Mesquita, Dana Andrei, Ginevra Collini, Helena Estrela, Ivčo Ružić, Julian Rieken, Keit Bonnici, Lisa Vlamings, Sharon Romie, Tuba Kılıç.

¹ quote by Dalia Taha
² title borrowed from Etel Adnan

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