A changing vision for the Studium Generale
For over ten years the Studium Generale at the KABK has been organized as an interdisciplinary lecture series that ´hovers, as it were, over the departments, addressing themes that may not have an immediate practical use, but are potentially relevant to each and every student.' This year the Studium Generale is making its own educational turn, from an active-passive lecture-theatre to a self-directed learning place to be owned up by students who may use it as a testing-ground and amplifier for their issues of concern.
This year's Studium Generale will put its ears to the ground and listen to the many-gendered witches that history couldn't burn. Many second-wave feminist groups and contemporary traditions like Wicca and WITCH (the Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell), found in the figure of the Witch an embodiment of the supreme feminine. These groups did the relevant and necessary groundwork. However, they relied on essentialistic and binary notions of gender, which empowered some at the expense of the exclusion of others.
Today, the witch resurfaces in new, more inclusive guises to respond to the current clusterfuck of multiple crises. During this Studium Generale witchcraft is approached as first and foremost a contemporary feminist liberatory practice offering tools for storytelling, self and community care and survival appealing to queer, trans folx, gender non-conforming people, and BIPOC.
Sometimes a broom is not just a broom, but a dildonic device that allows wounded healers to draw circles and boundaries and mark the end of this (structurally racist and sexist) world as they know it. Ultimately, they have always had to use magic to survive.
Opposed to the commodified and tamed cultural representation of the witch, opposed to the unmarried, child-devouring mean-spirited black demonic hag stands the Wxtch. Opposed to rational, scientific reason with its many tools of oppression stands Craft.
Wxtch Craft Fall Cycle 20/21: Reclaiming the Wxtch
Wxtch Craft Spring Cycle 20/21: The poisons, the remedies
Zine
Zine design by Dayna Casey
Shrine
To break with the somewhat static and disembodied nature of the webinar in which these viral times are forcing us, we have set up a gift exchange with our speakers consisting of virtual parts (playlist and online encounter) and a physical part (our emergent, collaborative shrine).
Follow the Studium Generale on Instagram account to be in the loop of this exchange. Resources are shared, and we are available for you with a ready mind and sympathetic ear to all your suggestions, concerns and ideas.
This physical shrine can be found at the rear end of the academy (Bleijenburg, BA.0HC).
Created by Tommy Smits in collaboration with Dayna Casey.
Interventions in the shrine by all participating KABK students can be followed via the Instagram page.
Contact
Suggestions/Questions/Remarks
Drop us a note at studiumgenerale@kabk.nl or via instagram
Colophon
Curator and concept whisperer: Erika Sprey
Coordinator and unmissable production powerhouse: Janne van Gilst
Visual communication, art-direction, program touchstone: Dayna Casey
Shrine interventions: all participating KABK students
Shrine: Tommy Smits