BK lecture by Sandra Smets and Esther Didden

Under the title "Artists and Social Issues," Sandra Smets and Esther Didden will deliver the BK Lecture during Art Rotterdam on Friday morning, Feb. 10.

Listening to BK information

BK Information has been bringing the ten-volume podcast series What's that doing here? about artists and the social issues they deal with. In each episode Esther Didden, together with a co-host, talks to artists who realize their work within a social context. A context in which very different criteria apply than within the "usual" art discourse.

The artists featured actively work with residents and users of a place and in social domains such as welfare, care or business. What does that bring to their artistry? What criteria do they have to deal with? And what does it bring to society? What does an artist add when they sit at a conference table?

Subscribers to BK Information will have a chance to win free tickets to Art Rotterdam when they register for the lecture.

During the lecture, Sandra Smets explains how artists' practices relate to social issues in which art can play a role. Where is the seed for this kind of art? Then Esther Didden will discuss the podcast itself. She will talk about what she has noticed so far - at the time of the lecture, three of the ten episodes have been published - and what we can still expect in the upcoming episodes.

Conversation

With each episode of the podcast, a thesis statement will appear on the podcast page of our website for discussion. If there is still time left after the lecture, we will engage in conversation based on one or more statements.

Sandra is an art historian and writes about visual art, including art in public space. She worked at CBK Rotterdam for over ten years and has been a visual arts contributor for NRC since 2006. She also writes for various magazines and publications. She is currently researching artists in Rotterdam during the Second World War in collaboration with Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen as part of the project '75 Years of Freedom'.

Esther Didden

Esther studied monumental design at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and Philosophy at Erasmus University Rotterdam. She was project leader of BK-information's anniversary project with the 100 key works, the campaign What is that doing here? and the anniversary symposium in 2020. The podcast series grew out of that.

Date and time

Friday, Feb. 10 at 11 a.m. Afterwards, you can visit the fair.

For subscribers

For the lecture and visit to Art Rotterdam, subscribers pay €10 per person. A subscriber can purchase a maximum of two tickets for that price (keep your subscriber number handy). The first 70 subscribers will receive admission to Art Rotterdam.

For non-subscribers

Non-subscribers are also welcome to the lecture they pay €15. Admission to the fair is unfortunately not possible for them.

Art Rotterdam

The twenty-fourth edition of art fair Art Rotterdam will take place from Thursday, February 9 to Sunday, February 12, 2021. Location will once again be Rotterdam's Van Nelle Fabriek. This edition will include the Sculpture Park, a new section at the fair that presents mainly large-scale artworks that establish a relationship with nature or the urban environment. For the 11th year in a row, the Mondriaan Fund is organizing the exhibition Prospects in the Van Nelle Fabriek, featuring work by seventy-three visual artists who received a contribution from the Mondriaan Fund through the Kunstenaar Start scheme.