Aanmoedigingsprijs 2020

Jury report Stroom Encouragement Award 2020

The award of the so called Aanmoedigingsprijs this year is in many ways a special event. Not only is it the 30th time that the Encouragement Award will be granted. The year 2020 also marks the 30th anniversary of Stroom, FKA Witte de With and Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons. These three institutions had a plan in place to celebrate together their shared artistic communities as part of their anniversary. However, the festive summer event we had in mind had to be cancelled due to Covid-19. For the occasion of the Aanmoedigingsprijs, Stroom brought the anniversary institutions together again.
For this special occasion, the jury chose for three awards, instead of one winner and two nominations. Besides, the price money was raised to € 3.000,-.

Marlot Meyer (BA Interactive/ Media/ Design) reminded the jury about the importance of being playful and experimental, the importance of mediation and combining different platforms to address the relation between technology and the body and how this affects us. Meyer brings together technology, the physical and performative action into a multisensory work. It is well thought through in terms of engaging audiences, and interacts directly with them both onsite and offsite. Meyer involved fellow students in the project - not only in realising it, but also in the onsight mediation of the work.

In the case of the second winner, Narges Mohammadi (BA Fine Arts), it was also through community building, the resourcefulness of the art community at school and collaboration that helped the artist to create her intensive labourous work. The work itself highlights to the jury the importance that art has for remembrance and commemoration, and the importance of working physically, with the hands, to build images that speak about the present and the past.

The jury was drawn into the playful, fantasy oriented environment of Mischa Lind & Tudor Ulrich (BA ArtScience), which reflected an intense collaboration and friendship in realizing the work. It is a world on its own, where codes are at play that only seem to speak to the world that the artists created and invented.

It struck the jury that each of these three installations create an environment unto their own and acknowledge the interdependency that the artists have with their community in making that environment materialize.
The works also engage with important issues of this time, and particularly this year: technology, nature, death and mourning. And how a closed environment can be opened, because that is also what the artists do and achieve with the works.

Last but not least, the jury also wanted to point out to the high quality of the artist books that many of the graduating students included as a component of their larger presentation.
It was remarkable how everyone had elaborated on the form and content of the books, which in some cases resulted in very professional publications.