Artist collective Level Five from Brussels will participate in de Appel's Curatorial Programme in Amsterdam for the next two years. The 30th edition of the programme runs parallel to, and is a collaboration with, the Sandberg Institute's temporary master's programme ‘Lumbung Practice’ and Gudskul's Collective Study Programme in Jakarta. Participating collectives in the three programmes will learn about lumbung, self-organised and socio-political artistic and curatorial practices, and creating alternative institutions for the future. De Brakke Grond supports Level Five's participation in the programme in Amsterdam to help facilitate inter-national knowledge exchange and support the network of artist collectives.
About Level Five
Level Five is a cooperative studio community for and by artists. We collectively organise and take care of our spaces and the people making use of them. In this way we create a supportive environment for each of our artistic practices and initiatives.
Through cooperation, Level Five rethinks the organisational and economic structures of the arts, redefines what it means to be an artist, and rehearses potential fair practices that could take root in the locality we live and work in. As such our community develops an understanding of what it stands for and how we see ourselves, which prepares us for solidarity and coalitions with others in different situations but similar struggles. In this way collectively organising as artists is repoliticising being an artist. Level Five can be seen as a search for an alternative; a prefigurative practice, not a utopia—a continuous process of readjusting and working through difficulties to come to a new world in the shell of the old.
Established by artists in 2019, Level Five currently runs 3 studio buildings across 3 Brussels municipalities, providing artist studios for more than 100 members. All the members of Level Five are able to participate in the Lumbung Practice programme in de Appel. Some participate on a regular basis others more sporadically. This is made possible by the support of de Brakke Grond. Currently, Rori from Level Five is in Amsterdam for a year to coordinate and participate in the Lumbung trajectory, in the second year the aim is to put our findings and developed tools to use in Brussels at Level Five.
Curational Program de Appel Amsterdam
de Appel is almost fifty years old. It is wise yet daring, unafraid to change. It is an institution which remains in touch with contemporary urgent issues internationally via its Curatorial Programme alumni network. Over 150 curators around the world have graduated from de Appel’s Curatorial Programme, one of the oldest curatorial programmes in the world. The curators have become some of the most prominent worldwide, presenting Dutch artists and cultural producers wherever they go. The Education Initiative has been putting down roots within the Amsterdam community, practising embedded art at schools in Nieuw-West and working with the community in groundbreaking ways (in 2019, the Sound Gestures project was a laureate of the Museum Education Prize). de Appel combines the future of exhibition making with its history; the Archive is an important resource for art historians and artists. The uniqueness of the institution lies within its focus on the field of curating.
The Curatorial Programme was founded by de Appel in 1994. Running for ten months of the year, it has followed more or less the same structure ever since.. The selected (5-6) participants travel together, meeting curators, artists, and art and cultural institutions, gaining first hand knowledge and building lasting relationships with each other and the ecosystems they encounter. They work closely with mentors who help them reflect on their experiences and organise collective readings and writings. At the end of the ten months the participants curate a project together. Each year there is usually a thematic focus, which determines tutors and mentors.
The current 30th edition is a special programme, running from September 2024 until June 2025, followed by a fellowship from September 2025 until June 2026. It runs parallel and in collaboration with Sandberg Institute Temporary programme: Lumbung Practice (Amsterdam) and Gudskul’s Collective Study Programme (Jakarta). Participating collectives in the three programmes practise and learn about lumbung, self-organised and socio-political artistic and curatorial practices, and producing alternative institutions for the future. Read more.
About Lumbung Harvest
For the 30th edition of de Appel’s Curatorial Programme, which started in October 2024 and runs until June 2025, followed by a year long fellowship, we have been hosting four collectives who are learning and practising lumbung as a model and method for collective organisation. Lumbung during documenta fifteen was both a rhizomatic collective of collectives, and the practice of decentralised collective redistribution, transforming the art institution and its exhibitionary logic. This edition of the programme is dedicated to collectives whose art and curatorial practice is distinguished by its role as a conduit for the communities with which it engages. The programme is geared towards taking the lumbung practices of documenta fifteen as a case study. On this page we collect the harvests — interviews, witness reports, shared research, et cetera — from the programme trajectory.
The collectives this program are Biquini Wax, dash (-) , Papaya Kuir and Level Five. Read more here.
