Dutch Art Institute COOP Chronicles

Since 2023, de Appel has partnered with Dutch Art Institute’s (DAI) educational programme — a nomadic study programme fostering a variety of intersections of art and theory grounded in feminist, anti-capitalist, and decolonial orientations. DAI invigorates practices of thinking, researching, performing, curating, writing, voicing, making and publishing. The partnerships play a significant role in the programme, functioning as co-drivers, positioning students as practitioners and researchers through their intersections of research, pedagogy, activism, curation and publicness.

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. The collective inquiries evolve into public assemblages, where the study groups gather for several days sharing research and develop group work, in forms of seminars, group presentations, workshops, reading groups, walks, site visits, screenings, exhibitions, rituals, exercises or otherwise, that later become the base for a range of published Chronicles.

Here, de Appel presents selected Chronicles from the past two years created by student-participants of the COOP programme in collaboration with de Appel under the themes: The Salt of The Earth and Living Room: Rehearsals towards Place-making. For a full overview of Chronicles, please visit DAI’s website.

2025–26: The Salt of The Earth
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. The COOP approaches these questions not only through critical theory, but also through oral histories, myths, folklore, songs, lullabies, dances, and other embodied forms of storytelling. These parallel histories — too often excluded from dominant accounts — become a lens through which to understand current realities, while imagining alternative futures.

Tutor team: Noor Abuarafeh, Marina Christodoulidou. Guest tutors: Dirar Kalash, Saba Innab, Tewa Barnosa. Student participants: Agnese Spolverini, Aimeé Phillips, Asmaa Barakat, Erik Peters, Javier Rodriguez Perez, Jip van der Hek, Oliver Turvey, Rana Kelleci, Sarmistha Bose, Shiva Yourdkhani, Stellar Meris.

2024–2025: Living Room: Rehearsals towards Place-making
Living Room: Rehearsals towards Place-making unfolded in a series of participatory confluences throughout the academic year 2024 -2025. The COOP followed questions on how places and practices are socially constructed, focusing on de Appel’s core research themes: land, water, housing, and institutions today, as subjects where agency is reclaimed and moved beyond their geographical locations. The collaboration dived into how spaces, or institutions, are not neutral but shaped by people, relationships, social structures, economies, and histories.

Tutor team: Noor Abuarafeh, Marina Christodoulidou. Guest tutors: Dalia Taha, Haytham el-Wardany, Emiddio Vasquez, Ali Hussein Al-Adawy, Sophie Fetokaki, Rahme Veziroglu. 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.