MEDIENKUNSTFELLOW NRW
Kris Dittel

 

We welcome Kris Dittel as Medienkunstfellow NRW at Temporary Gallery

Kris Dittel is a current Medienkunstfellow NRW at the CCA Temporary Gallery in Cologne. During her fellowship she is involved in a research trajectory On Kinship speculating about utopian forms of kinship beyond property relations and the social reproduction of norms. It is about the critique of the nuclear family with an aim to expand the questioning spirit into practices of collective learning, sharing and contemplating other ways of organising life and social reproduction. Topics of interest include family abolitionism, queer kinship, reproductive justice, the role of technology in forming relations, as well as a reflection on raising children. The project aims to collectively contemplate the question of how to build communities that expand beyond the normative family unit, in a world that is set up to regulate social relations via the private socio-economic organisation of the nuclear family. Instead of presenting ‘new models’ or universalist ‘ideals’, the project aims to diverge from the idea of blueprints and hopes to collectively contemplate the question of how to build communities that expand beyond the normative family unit, in a world that is set up to regulate social relations via the private socio-economic organisation of the nuclear family.

The project involves a collaborative research between the fellow, Kris Dittel and the director of the CCA Temporary Gallery, Aneta Rostkowska. Additionally, a study group Forms of Kinship takes place. This series of gatherings aims to think collectively about the way we form relations in and with the world, outside of the nuclear family structure. The meetings take place monthly, online. Each session is led by an invited guest, including artists, thinkers, poets, activists and others. For the next event Sophie Lewis will give her talk "Forms of Kinship – On Family Abolition". Further information here.

Kris Dittel is a Rotterdam-based curator, editor and occasional writer. Informed by her background in economics and social sciences, her curatorial practice pays attention to the social, political and economic context of her work. Her long-term research projects materialise in a multitude of ways, as exhibitions, performances, publications, talks, public events, and other. Most recent research interests include On Kinship (Temporary Gallery, Cologne 2022); The Voice as Material (Post-Opera at TENT, V2_, Operadagen Rotterdam, 2019); and The Question of Value (The Trouble with Value at Bunkier Sztuki, Krakow and Onomatopee, Eindhoven, 2016–19). With Eloise Sweetman Kris co-hosts I Hope This Message Finds You Well, a podcast about curating.

Her latest publication, co-edited with Clementine Edwards, The Material Kinship Reader considers material beyond extraction and kinship beyond the nuclear family (Onomatopee, 2022). Previous edited volumes include The Trouble with Value: Art and Its Modes of Valuation (Onomatopee, 2020), Marjolijn Dijkman: Radiant Matter (Onomatopee, 2018), The Economy is Spinning (Onomatopee, 2017), and Antonis Pittas: Road to Victory (co-edited with Clare Butcher, Mousse Publishing and Hordaland Kunstsenter, 2017).

Funding and support
The funding program "Fellowships für Kunst, Technologie und Gesellschaft" of medienkunstwerk.nrw aims to bring impulses and approaches from other regions, countries and continents to NRW and thus establish new links with international discourses and practices in media art & digital culture.