de Appel curatorial programme Lumbung Practice
Biquini Wax EPS, interviewed by Tropical Tap Water
For the 30th edition of de Appel’s Curatorial Programme (CP), we have welcomed four collectives who are learning and practising lumbung as a model and method for collective organisation. The programme takes the lumbung practices of Documenta fifteen as a case study. During Documenta fifteen, lumbung developed into both a rhizomatic collective of collectives and the practice of decentralised collective redistribution, transforming the art institution and its exhibitionary logic. This edition of the programme is dedicated to collectives whose art and curatorial practices are distinguished by their role as a conduit for the communities they engage with. The programme is in collaboration with Sandberg Institute’s Temporary Master Programme and Gudskul’s Collective Study, and it extends into 2025/2026 as a fellowship.
The 2024 CP will unfold through a series of workshops, sessions and collective work, which are punctuated by intensive site visits and research. While de Appel’s CP is known for formative international travel, we are compelled to rethink this model post the COVID-19 pandemic, in light of the environmental crisis, and amid concerns about cultural extractionism. The participants will instead travel to each other’s localities, to the localities of the participants of the Sandberg Institute programme and to Gudskul in Jakarta. They will spend longer periods of time learning about each other’s practices and concerns and forming lasting relationships.
Throughout the 2024-2025 period, participants gain full access to de Appel’s distinctive three-part institutional structure comprised of our open, lively Archive; our free-thinking, hands-on Curatorial Programme; and our community-oriented Education Initiatives - all of which contribute to the learning ethos in our programming. Through collective study and shared responsibility they will shape the very DNA of our experimental institution. At the end of the first year, they will collectively curate a project that furthers their research and practice. In June 2026, they will collectively organise a harvest festival: a summation of their learning processes and provisions for the future, which could take the shape of exhibitions, public programmes, or performances to which their ecosystems are invited.
Lumbung is a rural pre-colonial practice (and architecture) where the village stores the surplus of the harvest for the future wellbeing of the community. It is where the surplus is collectively governed and celebrated. During documenta fifteen (2023) - a large scale exhibition which takes place in Kassel, Germany, every five years since 1961 - artist collective Ruangrupa, which was responsible for co-curating Documenta fifteen, introduced and practised lumbung along with other artistic and social collective practices. After Documenta 15, lumbung has come to mean: a collective of collectives, a set of self organised practices of the commons worldwide, a social discourse about art that stems from inter-local heritage, and an aesthetic quality.
At a time when ethical concerns about sustainability and inclusion are raised, the persona of the jetlagged star curator is being called into question. In addition, the close collaboration with artists and the power dynamics between curators and artists have been much debated in art and academic institutions. In the forthcoming edition of the programme, curators will work more closely with artists; they will learn together how to share resources, processes and decision making. The focus will be geared towards establishing lasting relationships between the (curatorial and artist) collectives and planning for their sustainability.
In the forthcoming edition of the programme, curators will work more closely with artists; they will learn together how to share resources, processes and decision making
Tropical Tap Water interviewed the participating collectives in the CP programme. Here you can find their conversation with one of them, the Biquini Wax. Biquini Wax (BW) is a multipolar arts collective and permeable cultural center in Mexico City. Since its inception in 2011, it has been committed to being an interdependent art-space collectively managed by and for the cultural community interested in the intersection of contemporary arts and critical thought. It is both a communal living/working/hangout space as well as a self-organized study center/experimental exhibition-making (para)site. The interview is with the participating members present in Amsterdam: Denisse Vega de Santiago, Gerardo Contreras, and Mili Herrera.
Daniel (D): Hello, I’m Daniel from Tropical Tap Water, how are you? We are about to do this interview for the de Appel Curatorial Programme. It is meant to be a chill conversation, a way of introducing each collective participating in the Curatorial Programme ‘Lumbung Practice’ of de Appel, and yourselves as individuals too. Could you briefly introduce yourselves?
Mili Herrera (MH): My name is Mili Herrera, I’m a visual artist, performer, drawer, painter - whatever you want to pay me for. My personal practice is mostly referencing comic books or manga. I also like to do workshops with different collectives, mostly in Oaxaca (Mexico) but also at Biquini in Mexico City. In Oaxaca, I do workshops in different villages about supernatural local legends and oral knowledge, using the comic book to build bridges between the different languages and cultures of Oaxaca. After being friends with Biquini Wax for several years, doing collaborations and all kinds of stuff, I joined the collective one year ago.
Gerardo Contreras (GC): I’m Gera or Gerardo, a visual artist and a kind of independent researcher of technology, Mesoamerican ancient cultures and anthropology. I started collaborating with Biquini Wax seven years ago.
D: Can you tell us a little bit about Biquini and introduce your work?
GC: Biquini started in 2011 in León, Guanajuato, Mexico. Since 2012, the collective has been based in Mexico City. In the beginning, Biquini was an artist-run space for exhibitions for young artists, but in time it became a strange cultural center revolving around topics on Latin American Art History, Marxisms and Collectivity. One important part of the project is the idea of merging art and life practices. We exhibit a lot in the domestic space, this is a very important characteristic in our houses (we have moved to three different houses so far in Mexico City). Members of the collective, who all have different backgrounds - arts, philosophy, history, activism, et cetera - all live in the same house, where we organise exhibitions and have long discussions.
MH: Throughout the years, it has been a very important part of the project to organically make study groups with themes or agendas that are relevant at the moment. Topics that do not matter only to the arts, but also to philosophy, science, sociology, politics or economics, et cetera. Usually, these study groups become a curatorial practice to generate exhibitions by doing artistic productions with those eclectic groups. I was part of a couple of them. I think it’s a very good way to generate knowledge outside of the academic environment, to produce our own tailor-made epistemologies to understand a specific problem.
D: About your participation in the Lumbung Practice Programme at de Appel, what are you doing there? What is your plan?
GC-: It’s complex and interesting, I think. We are trying to understand more about this idea of Lumbung Practice, at the same time as we are meeting other collectives who share similar ideas of work and making art projects, in countries under precarious conditions. It’s been a real formative process. For us, one of the most important things we want to explore during our time at de Appel is collective wellbeing. For example, the idea of co-living is important in Biquini. What are the most important conflicts or problems in the house or in this co-living process? We want to understand more deeply what our values and our resources are to make projects in the contexts we face, like precarious economic conditions, the lack of funding, et cetera.
D: In what phase or moment is your collective, and how does it resonate with Lumbung Practice and de Appel’s Curatorial Programme?
MH: I think the main reason for us to come here was to survive. At the moment, we are directly affected by the conditions of gentrification in Mexico City and the high prices of the speculative housing market. We might have to move out of our house and find other ways to continue working. I now see a global context and a common thread of more precarity: we are being pressured by our governments. The idea of precarity is always connected with the idea of dignity. How can we continue our collective project with dignity, you know, with trust between ourselves? How can we build that trust? And what’s the life of the projects? So, we are in a phase of exploration and openness and that is very related to the Lumbung Practice programme. We believe this programme is a way to open new doors. We can learn new techniques and knowledge from the other collectives that maybe we share a lot of conditions with. We are keeping all those techniques we are learning through harvesting methods. That’s the future for Biquini - an uncertain future. But we choose to sit with hope and also to continue this work that is outside of money beliefs, but inside friendship and a deep core belief in what we are doing.
GC: I think, at Biquini, we are constantly rethinking and trying to understand our practices better. We make exhibitions, we engage in hospitality practice, and produce a lot of art theory in collectivity. In Mexico, contemporary art is a way of thinking, it is like an illustration of ideas and/or a process. So, we want to ask ourselves: what is Biquini Wax at the moment? How can we understand our practices of co-living, hosting or assembling, our ‘cleaning roles’ as a critical practice? I think those things were invisible in other moments of our collective, but actually now they are a core aspect of our idea of trying to not contribute to more capitalism.
There are, of course, conflicts and controversies of coming to Europe and what that means, but I think the programme has been a very good one because it’s a non-Western focused programme
D: How has it been, for you and as a collective, going from one country to another?
MH: For us, it is clear that the work in Mexico is the core of what we are doing here, so that implies asking how our presence here can nourish our collective. It’s been complicated, it’s like a long-distance relationship. But I think we are learning a lot of stuff, and I think the experience of what we are learning will be used to build a new Biquini: doing stuff, living together, smoking together, and doing theory. But if that changes, it’s also good. Because anyways, our ages and backgrounds are already changing a lot since the creation of the project, and we are entering adulthood. We are not young people or teenagers anymore, and this affects, of course, the domestic-art-relationship. A lot of needs are changing, and that’s part of the dignity of growing old. There are, of course, conflicts and controversies of coming to Europe and what that means, but I think the programme has been a very good one because it’s a non-Western focused programme. It feels more like surfing the platform that Europe is by bringing a lot of non-Western people here. We are investing our savings by coming here. It’s like a jump of fate to the emptiness. I hope it will result in a good thing.
D: What is your understanding of the Lumbung Practice? Have you practiced something similar to the Lumbung before within your collective?
MH: Well, I come from Oaxaca. I lived in Mixtec and Zapotec towns. They have practices similar to Lumbung Practice under other names like tequio or mayordomia. So for me, it’s like an assurance that those processes are the way forward, and you find some hope in those similarities. And you see how old those traditions are and how they can sustain entire cultures and civilizations based on this kind of knowledge. These practices of the commons include a morality or a very human basic value: to be alive, and how, in the context of capitalism, the logic behind it is against life itself. Capitalists work with this logic of murder. Here at the Curatorial Programme, we are learning a lot from the other collectives and seeing that we have a lot of struggles in common. That, for me, is Lumbung. This distribution of surplus, these kinds of ideas make you believe that you are not alone. I like to think of the Lumbung as a web, an analog internet of affections. How can this be imagined? How can we create collectivities that can survive capitalist contexts
GB: Lumbung Practice is a tool to navigate the contemporary institutional art system. As collectives, we can sometimes act like a Trojan Horse, distributing or redistributing resources. It is important to learn about Lumbung, and at the same time to use these tools within our ecosystem to better understand ourselves collectively and to strengthen each other.
D: Why do you think it’s important to work collectively?
MH: I would say collectivity is the only way that we have. Collectivity is always in relation to individuality. It’s just about being awake, being present in the moment, being conscious. We should constantly ask ourselves: how are we living? And notice how we are a collective already, in society. Look at class, ethnicity, gender…The question is, how can we practice collectivity better? Especially against a system that pushes us towards ignorance or lack of empathy. We are all suffering from those individual ways, but that doesn’t need to be the case.
GC: I think it is also a political issue. We can work individually, but when authorship dissolves — particularly in artworks, curatorial projects, or educational initiatives — it builds a kind of temporary autonomy. Sharing knowledge and tools through collective production highlights an interest of our collective: economic and epistemic self-defense. We need to create more solidarities within our collectives while also seeking resources for our practices and our lives, without losing the imagination and irreverence of our shared sense of humor.
Tropical Tap Waters are professional jammers, open for hire for birthday parties, weddings, exhibitions, mournings, festivals and whatnot. Our dream is to play in a conference. The members are Daniel Aguilar Ruvalcaba, Diana Cantarey, Julian Abraham ‘Togar,’ and Simnikiwe Buhlungu.
The remaining interviews — with the other participating collectives Dash, Level 5 and Papaya Kuir - will be published on de Appel’s website: deappel.nl. About the other participating collectives in the Curatorial Programme:
Dash is an ecosystem that began its activity in 2023 in Isfahan, Iran, to experiment with a self-sustainable economy that utilises community resources. Each member of Dash is involved in other collectives within the Isfahan community. By connecting these collectives and engaging in trial-and-error, Dash reimagine an economy that integrates art with life by drawing inspiration from local stories and actively participating in the local community. In this process, instituting, educating, and collective care became Dash’s main activities.
Papaya Kuir is a trans lesbo feminist queer collective of migrants and refugees from Abya Yala living, working in the Netherlands, and passing to the Netherlands. Papaya Kuir is born out of the need to have a chosen family away from family. Papaya Kuir aims to highlight the precarious realities of Trans and Queer Latinx asylum seekers, who don’t manage to obtain refugee statuses because of the Dutch immigration refusal to acknowledge that their lives are endangered in their countries of origin, as well as inform society of the dangerous realities they and their communities are confronted with back in their countries.
Level Five is an artist cooperative in Brussels that supports artists by providing artist studios, artistic development programmes and advocacy for artists in Brussels. Since 2019 they provide accessible and qualitative artist studios for artists in Brussels through a practice of collective organisation and a culture of mutual support. Currently, 112 artist members work at 3 locations (Gabrielle Petit, Van Overbeke and Van Volxem), in 3 Brussels municipalities (Molenbeek, Ganshoren, Vorst/Forest). In addition Level 5 provides facilities and programmes to support creative practices such as visual arts, performative arts, theatre, architecture, film, writing and curating.