In collaboration with the ArtEZ Honours Lab and the ArtEZ MA Critical Fashion Practices, we developed the new interdisciplinary track 'Practicing Solidarity', which we kicked off in October 2023. This new track of the Honours Lab explores various forms of solidarity, both within and outside of fashion, by focusing on three key themes related to solidarity: solidarity economies, intersectional solidarity, and interspecies solidarity. 

This track is open to both Bachelor and Master students, and aims to bring together many different ways and experiences of learning. The Honours Lab invited students from all ArtEZ-departments who are interested in critically relating their artistic practice to pressing ecological urgencies, in a way in which theory is inseparable from artistic practice.

Why solidarity?

We find ourselves living in untenable and inhumane systems, where living beings are often reduced to passive numbers, objects, instruments of production, or commodities. Besides this, we see that human beings often place themselves at the center of everything. We enact power over nature, leading to the exhaustion and exploitation of Mother Earth. At the same time, we witness a rising urgency to practice more care for and with others. There are more and more calls for solidarity, which come from a renewed sense of being interconnected with and interdependent on both each other, as well as nature. 

The track explores three main themes in relation to solidarity: solidarity economies, intersectional solidarity, and interspecies solidarity. Collectively we will explore what solidarity could or perhaps should (!) entail. What does (practicing) solidarity actually mean? What or whom do we need to be solidary with? What does it entail to be solidary with each other, with non-human beings, or with the earth, for example? How could we learn to do so, and what should we unlearn? 

A collective practice

Together, we will explore and develop new affirmative, critical strategies and embodied practices that activate how to practice more solidarity with all living beings and living matter. During this track, all participants will work on a portfolio, in which they will both individually and collectively gather, share, and activate different ways of practicing solidarity. In this growing and fluid document, participants are invited to keep track of their process by collecting reflections and results, ask questions and find answers, explore discourse and dive deep into specific theoretical concepts. What are existing strategies for solidarity; do you employ any of these strategies; and what shape could your solidary practice take? 

The second deliverable has a more collective nature, and will start from a shared (working) portfolio for the entire group. In this portfolio, participants will collectively explore and develop a solidary practice, working along questions such as: What does solidarity mean to you as a group? How do your individual perspectives collide, and how do your disciplines connect? How can you practice and internalise solidarity in relation to each other, and what infrastructures of support are needed for this? 

The shape and contents of the track will be partially co-designed with the participants, to explore how practicing solidarity might be of value to art school-students and how their discoveries can further build and sustain their practice. 

During classes, we will work together using both theory and artistic practice, through exercises, guests who walk the talk, theory dives, reading (together), field trips, group exchanges, and one-on-one moments.

Guest lecturers

In this course we focus on three main themes: solidarity economies, intersectional solidarity, and interspecies solidarity. Each theme is kicked off by a guest lecturer. In October we welcomed Caroline Woolard, who presented her vision on 'Solidarity Economies'. And in November we will kick off the second theme of the track, 'Interspecies Solidarity', with a guest lecture by Yasmine Ostendorf-Rodríguez, author of the book Let's Become Fungal (Valiz, 2023).

Facilitated by

This new Solidarity track is developed and facilitated by dr. Daniëlle Bruggeman (Professor of Fashion), together with Lenn Cox (community organiser, designer, educator, and programme maker), and Chet Bugter (Head of Programme Master Critical Fashion Practices, and embodied and artistic researcher).