Dimitrivandenwittenboer@gmail.com
@dimitri_van_den_wittenboer
In the last years Dimitri has (co-)initiated several collaborative community projects in the Netherlands (Open; The Pit; City Market Otherwise; Nest) and abroad (Fireplace (FR); Neighbourhood of Commonining (CH); Boiling Room (DE)). He also collaborated with various individuals, collectives and organisations within the field of arts, social work and activism (Bureau Postjesweg (NL), The Bookstore (NL), Performing Arts Forum (FR), City Space Architecture (IT), No Border Camp (NL), Reclaim The Seeds (NL), Rue Pare Community (NL)) and am partly involved in their work on an ongoing basis. Through these experiences he gained a diverse expertise in working with people, building and facilitating communities, and organising/activating space in a participatory way. During my Research Master "Performing Public Space" at Tilburg University, Dimitri has also acquired theoretical knowledge about the global discourse on public space and developed professional expertise in practice-led artistic research. In 2023 with the support of the Mondrian Artist Start Grand he did two 3-months artist residencies in the anarchist border squat in Cesana Italy (Care, 2023) and a anarchist-catholic homeless shelter The Catholic Workers in NYC (Open Day, 2023). Both projects enriched his expertise on a practical level in the fields of organization of alternative community spaces, that are critical towards the state and aim to create a care structure for vulnerable and politically oppressed groups. Since November 2023 he is an active member of the Support Network in Brussels that provides housing and basic care for sans-papiers and asylum seekers. In this context he did a residency in the art space Au Jus in Brussels where hosted and lived together with 15 Palestinian asylum seekers for 2 months (Home at Au Jus, BE). In September 2024 Dimitri started a PhD at the Antwerp Research Institute for the Arts. His artistic research project explores power dynamics within care structures for precarious groups, by focusing on theoretically and practically re-imagining ethics through love as an aesthetic within relationality
