The Hmm @ De Blokhuispoort

Jori(k) A. Galama moves between literature, fine arts, and documentary film. After doing a propaedeutic year in philosophy at the University of Amsterdam and finishing Image and Language at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, they were selected for the Slow Writing Lab by the Dutch Foundation for Literature. Their fiction writing and art criticism have been published in De Revisor, Kluger Hans, De Internet Gids, Tirade, Tubelight, Metropolis M, in various artist’s publications, and have been put to the stage by Toneelhuis Antwerpen. During their talk, Jori will draw on the research for Yntolerânsje (2024, in development), an archive essay film that begins with the factual story of the Île Amsterdam, a tiny island in the Indian Ocean where five cows were left by European settlers in the 19th century. This conversation led to a speculative narrative revolving around cows’ role in the Dutch colonial empire, current European farmers’ protests, the usage of raw milk as a dog whistle by white supremacist groups, as well as anti-globalist conspiracy theories involving cows and their extraterrestrial connections. Jori will explore ‘soy boys’, raw milk TikTokers, and parts of the manosphere that try to evoke pastoral fantasies and cultural archives of purity to push their far-right agendas. Link

Zarina Nares is a New York City-born artist of Indian Muslim and British descent. Currently based in New York State, her research driven practice investigates feminine identity in virtual spaces. Through video, audio, sculpture, and print, she explores femininity through the themes of self-worth, desire, authenticity, and performance of self. She examines how these aspects are digitally shaped and how they relate to broader societal structures both past and present, offering a view of womanhood’s evolution and enduring essence. Zarina will be talking about her new book (not yet out), “[BLANK] Girl,” which explores the concepts of aestheticization and performance of self as a means to express invisibility. Link

Dr. Deike Schulz researches online communication’s impact on organizations and society, and leads the Organisations and Social Media professorship at NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences (Leeuwarden). Deike will be speaking about the European Influencers Academy (EIA), an initiative at NHL Stenden that facilitates collective learning on responsible influencing through meaningful dialogues with influencers, students, researchers, and businesses. Link

Hieke is a Leeuwarden-based Twitch streamer who streams live chatting and VR games  — think VR chat and Beatsaber. In her talk, Hieke will be speaking about her Twitch channel and how she interacts with her followers. Link

Martina Denegri is a Groningen-based researcher and writer working in the fields of digital culture, digital archiving, cultural policy, and gender in arts and tech. Together with Maaike Meindertsma and Jens Huls, she is the co-founder of WILLOW Online Art Space, a virtual 3D space where emerging artists can research, experiment, and critically engage with digital media. During her talk, Martina will talk us through some of the critical points that shaped the process in developing WILLOW’s 3D space, and in particular the main theme of their artistic residency and upcoming exhibition: digital archiving.  Link

Minnie Bates is a design researcher at affect lab – an Amsterdam based creative and research studio, with a focus on using experimental fieldwork and immersive storytelling to inspire a more inclusive future. Minnie will speak about affect lab’s ongoing project Waiting for Cows – an interactive storytelling project that explores the complex relationship between humans, animals and technology. Set on a Friesian farm, the main protagonist is a Dutch dairy cow monitored by wearables, conditioned by algorithms and quantified in data. Minnie will explore the rare glimpses that Waiting for Cows offers into contemporary mechanic rituals of farm life where the flow of bovine data reveals much larger systems of power. Link