Welcome to the Studium Generale Rietveld Academie website! To encourage critical making and thinking, Studium Generale offers a diverse and transdisciplinary programme every year on an urgent theme. Read more about the set-up and structure here.

This website consists of 3 substantive and informative layers that constantly feed each other.

The Programme Overview home page displays announcements of ongoing events and activities, and provides instant access to their live streams when appropriate.

Below the Programme overview is the Archive Picks area, which presents varying selections of older programme contributions, curated by guests or by ourselves. Older contributions can thus regain attention or meaning, or be presented in alternative arrangements.

At the bottom is the Archive. There you will find material from 2011 to the present: part of the video-recorded contributions to the annual conference of Studium Generale and since March 2020 also recordings of events and presentations of the preliminary programmes. The archive is searchable in various ways and offers a chronological overview of previous editions and links to the associated project websites. It also contains announcements and descriptions of previous programme components, which can no longer be relived, but do provide some glances in the histories of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie.

The purpose of the website is to inform and present what is happening at the moment, but it is also a memory, in which a lot can be found and unexpected encounters can take place.

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N.B. This website is still under construction! Not everything has been completed yet and the search functions in the Archive are not yet fully functional.

loving every-body as an act of resistance
Menko Dijksterhuis

Menko Dijksterhuis, *With Love Distorted*

What does it mean to show up for every-body when the world refuses to? In a world obsessed with bodily aesthetics, we’ll examine how love can function as a radical strategy and a political intervention against the systemic marginalisation and invisibilisation of certain “non-conforming” bodies. Through visual examples, queer and crip theory, and personal reflection, this lecture explores love and intimacy as acts of resistance. Together, we’ll imagine a future in which every-body is held in a soft and caring embrace.

Menko Dijksterhuis is a mixed media artist whose practice critically examines societal systems and juxtaposes them with visions of a future in which every-body and every perspective are acknowledged and celebrated. Through this work, he seeks to craft narratives that explore the nuanced and delicate interplay between visibility and invisibility, inviting audiences into moments of introspection and dialogue.