Art and Intervention | Concept

In this moment of huge changes and paradigm shifts, when cultural relations are highly charged and heavy conservative forces reacting against the changes, there is a need to focus on different modes of perception and production of narrative. The focus of my teaching for the class Art and Intervention | Concept —as it is in my artistic work—is the enabling of critical and differentiated thinking. Not only for us as makers, but enabling that possibility for a viewer through the art work. Since I believe we develop this creative critical thinking whilst making, and since I believe that learning is a collective process, I view the processes of making as collective, where teaching and learning happens for all involved.

In the studio Art and Intervention | Concept, we develop individual and collective practices that are aiming to work towards a production of new narratives to intervene in the normative. The forms that this can take are various: from filmmaking and performing to writing, publishing, printmaking, to painting, object making etc. The focus is on how a work of art might be political or how can we ‘flip the script’ through such a work. We take a reflective approach towards method, production and viewing to develop an art practice. Research plays a large role - insistently practiced through production and collaboration. Current social political processes and the structures that form and hinder us, are the motor for each part of the work. Methods and ethics of making are as important as the skills to produce any of the above forms.

We learn together through collective reading, viewing and discussion with the whole class, focused on decolonial, queer feminist and black studies and counter dominant voices in art, culture and politics. Individual work is developed in the studio, and we learn to articulate feedback and further the works through collective processes including small group meetings and sharing knowledges.

wendelien van oldenborgh - Jan 2026