Later: Designing the Afterlife of Things

Would you like to join the project week from16 November 2026 – 19 November 2026 10:00 – 17:00, AINSI, Lage Kanaaldijk 112?

A project organized by Bachelor Design & research centre What Art Knows, Zuyd University of Applied Sciences.

What happens after an artwork or designed piece is finished? What is the afterlife – if at all – of designed work and of the designer? What kind of work is required from designers, and from others in order to care for this afterlife? And what kind of a designer or artist emerges, by engaging with what happens later? How does it resonate with and shape one’s design practice or approach? We will experiment in this project by stretching time after the moment a work is finished. By incorporating what normally is outside and after and immaterial to the scope of making, as well as of teaching and researching, we hope to entice participants to explore, envision and create a future of their work and of their working practices.

This project takes these questions as a starting point. It is inspired by broader and sometimes overlapping themes: discussions about contemporary artists’ and designers’ artistic legacies and estates that are increasingly raising issues to do with sustainability and archiving artistic value, contemporary materials, and artistic methods and practices, on national and regional levels; questions about the archiving (or not) of artistic methods and materials and the relationship of these to young artists and designers; questions about sustainability of the practices of making, dependant as they are on colonial and capitalist approaches and habits in which scarcity, waste and economic value are primary and problematic.

This week we will think about, practice and explore these questions with a group of third year students from the Bachelor Design. We will work with several guest teachers with relevant artistic and research practices: Rita Hoofwijk is a Dutch artist collaborating internationally across site-responsive artistic and curatorial practices. Her works are not brought to a place, but unfold from it, often engaging the body. Vivian van Saaze holds a dual appointment as Associate Professor Museum Studies and Conservation Theory at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University and as Senior Specialist Modern and Contemporary Art at the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands. Artware is an independent project agency for visual arts and research, run by Tineke Kambier and Erik J de Jong. They focus on collecting (messy) archives of artistic practices. Valentina Curandi is an art practitioner who does performative artistic research. Her PhD in MERIAN works on sensitive processes of death and dying and preparing for the afterlife of the artist.

But you are also invited to join. Are you a student from the arts Zuyd, a teacher or researcher from this faculty? Are you a student, teacher, or researcher from Maastricht University? Are you interested in, or do you have a practice of designing the afterlife of artistic and design practices, please get in touch to see how you might become a part of this project. The registration deadline is November 9 at 11:59 PM.

Email: Sofie.hermans@zuyd.nl or Ruth.benschop@zuyd.nl.