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studium resort
Following an enjoyable series of ten events where studium resort facilitated an informal environment for artist talks, we are continuing this year by stretching the format and making studium resort into a monthly event. Understanding that sharing creative processes takes shape in diverse and fluid ways, the upcoming ten series of events will explore artistic practices through dialogue, experimentation, and a hands-on approach.
The upcoming season explores how particular crafts, artistic skills, or concepts come into practice. For this, studium resort will host workshops, performative manifestations, and artist talks in order to encourage and foster a sense of sharing between the visiting artist, a collective, or a practitioner of a specific craft.
Becoming a side dish that complements the flavours of het resort's main courses, studium resort will kick off on the 24th of February and will continue each month till December (with August being a summer break).
– Klaudija Ylaite,
programmer studium resort 2025
Monday July 7, 16:00 – 20:00
talk + dinner | Food is the Future
Louwrien Wijers & Egon Hanfstingl
! max of 25 people, sign up via mail: communicatie @ hetresort.nl
location: nieuwe sint jansstraat 35, groningen
entry: free
language: english
accessibility: wheelchair friendly
16:00 doors open
16:10 lecture by Louwrien Wijers
17:00 lecture by Egon Hanfstingl
17:45 q&a
18:15 collective Cooking with Egon Hanfstingl
19:00 communal Dinner
20:00 end
program
Food is more than nourishment. It carries the stories of civilizations, spiritual practices, and care for the Earth. Louwrien Wijers takes us through the early history of food and culture. From the fall of Atlantis and the legacy of the Celts, to Buddhist influences in Europe and the rise of agriculture. Her lecture explores how grains shaped societies and why a plant-based diet can be an act of compassion and future-oriented thinking.
Egon Hanfstingl shares his 40 years of experience in holistic food practice, where thought, breath, digestion, and care are central. After the lectures, we will prepare a fresh, healthy meal together and enjoy it as a shared dinner!
Louwrien Wijers (NL 1941), visual artist and writer, feels she is a sculptor. After 18-years of collaboration with Joseph Beuys (1968-'86). Marathon interviews with Joseph Beuys, Andy Warhol and the Dalai Lama resulted in ‘Art meets Science and Spirituality in a Changing Economy’ (1990, Stedelijk Museum), which remains influential on digital democracy and basic income. In June 2025, she received the Gerrit Benner Prize in recognition of her leading contribution to the visual arts in Fryslân.
Egon Hanfstingl (DE 1960), artist and cook, collaborates with Louwrien since 1986. In 1993 he founded Harmony Foods for Health and Happiness, a social sculpture project based on fresh, local, organic food. He began to work on ‘Art=Life=Work’ in 2003, which brings all their initiatives in art and food together.
next up:
sept 15 / oct 20 / nov 17 / dec 15
past past past past past past past
2025
June 2, 17:00 – 22:00
talks & workshops | Recipes as Carriers of Cultural Identity and Resistance
Mitrthe Berentsen / Beyond the Nuclear Family
Guided by Mirthe Berentsen and with contributions from Dr. Brenda Bartelink (University of Groningen), chef Marente van der Valk, and artist Henry Alles, we explored how recipes are more than just cooking instructions during studium resort on June 2.
The evening began with a lecture and conversation on recipes as forms of heritage and emancipation, followed by a recipe exchange and zine-making workshop. Meanwhile, in the kitchen, dishes like poffert and a healing broth were being prepared, and visitors could sample slices of the 75 cm long krentenwegge with butter and cheese. Participants wrote their own cherished family recipes and shared related personal stories. The evening concluded with a communal dinner and reflection.
May 12, 19:00 – 21:00
talk / performance | Fire Water, Spirit Work: A Social Ritual in Real Time
Yemo Park
During Studium Resort on May 12, Yemo Park guided us through her performance Fire Water, Spirit Work: A Social Ritual in Real Time. She presented her research into the distillation of jenever, made from fermented, chewed Groningse knolskoek. This work was developed as part of the exhibition doesn’t last then, does it?, on view (and to taste) at De Souffleur until June 7.
Through drawings, stories, and a live distillation session, Yemo offered insight into the making of her work. As the mash heated in the pot, she shared her inspirations and spoke about her experiences with a local moonshining mentor in Groningen.
Step by step, she guided the audience through the distillation process—from the toxic methanol to the aromatic ‘head’—touching on themes such as transience, ritual, labor, and collectivity. The jenever distilled on-site was bottled and will be available for tasting during the finissage.
April 14, 19:00 – 21:00
performance | Of soft tannins, complex beliefs and mouthful communities
Lena Longefay
What does it take to learn the vocabulary of wine, and how do we come to understand its journey to our tables? On Monday, the 14th of April, Lena Longefay brought to Studium Resort ‘Of soft tannins, complex beliefs and mouthful communities’, a performative work revolving around the themes and tastes of grapes and wines. For an evening, Studium Resort was transformed into a satirical elegance of a bougie environment. There were six tables set with one long, ironed white tablecloth, on which long-legged wine glasses, Dutch cheeses, marinated olives, and fresh green grapes were set.
Through four carefully selected wines, Lena guided us on a journey—one that unravelled the intersections of land, labour, and taste. Each glass became a conduit for narrative: from the mineral-rich soils of Burgundy to the reclaimed lands of the Netherlands. As each wine was opened and shared amongst the audience, so did reflections on tradition, trade, and transformation. Lena expanded our winery budtastes with local stories, witty jokes about cultural differences in heritage and historical narratives. Stories surfaced of Dutch influence on French viticulture, colonial entanglements, and the slow fermentation of identity through ritual and cultivation.
The evening oscillated between intimacy and irony, for which Lena layered historical anecdotes with personal experiences. A vocabulary of tasting emerged as a living archive—formed in communal exchange, shaped by memory, and grounded in soil and history. With this approach, ‘Of soft tannins, complex beliefs and mouthful communities’ resisted the elitism often ascribed to wine culture(s). In the end, the performance leaned into ambiguity rather than resolution, offering a democratic, humorous, and critical take on wine role in our culture(s).
March 17, 19:00 – 21:00
Workshop | Digging In: An Inquiry into the Edibility of Earth
masharu
What sensation arises when we taste different kinds of soil? During the event ‘Digging In: An Inquiry into the Edibility of Earth’, Studium Resort invited Dr. masharu who brought with them their collection of soils from the Museum of Edible Earth. Collectively, we tasted four different kinds of soil, accompanied by Dr. masharu’s insights on the locations, cultural and symbolic significances, and (inter)personal experiences these soils carried.
For starters, Dr. masharu opened a small sample box of chalk, whose taste and texture were complimented by the participating audience as familiar, with some pointing towards a direction of a taste of painkillers. The chalk in Dr. masharu’s collection of soils plays an important role, as they have indicated chalk as the beginning of the fascination with the inquiry of earth tasting.
For the appetizer, masharu served Luvos Healing Earth, a soil officially sold as a medicinal clay-based product. Luvos contains silicate, calcium, potassium, iron, magnesium, copper, and zinc and can be easily purchased on the Luvos Healing Earth website as a food supplement rich in minerals! Keeping in mind the unspoken controversy of tasting or eating soil in contemporary society, Luvos Earth embraced a sense of possibility for the hesitant ones. However, the connoisseurs of the event found this soil most dull and simple.
The third soil, a sort of main dish, came from Guatemala, which Dr. masharu themselves collected from the market in Esquipulas in 2019. Pan de Dios, or in English, Bread of God, is a compressed soil tablet engraved with sacred imagery, such as a Catholic cross or Virgin Mary. Bread of God, according to masharu, is usually blessed by the local church and ingested for spiritual cleansing. For the participating tasters, this soil, followed by its sacredness and masharu’s visual story of the soil's collection, gave an elevated feeling of taste, while for some it suggested a taste of chalk, making us wonder how stories revolving around soil affect our sensory experiences and therefore alter our taste buds.
For dessert, Dr. masharu introduced us to one woman’s story who is known to solely live from eating sand. In honour of her sandy diet, the sand is presently kept in the Museum of Edible Earth's collection and is titled Monstvilene Stanislava's Earth. While the sand's composition is a mix, the taste of it brought us to a pine forest filled with hints of morning dew.
Ultimately, the sensation of tasting different soil samples ignited a multiplicity of experiences, bringing us closer to understanding how taste is never just about flavour—it is shaped by location, cultural history, and the narratives we attach to what we consume.
February 24, 18:00 – 21:00
Workshop | A pinch of salt, a drop of brine, a memory in fermentation
Marina Sulima
'A Pinch of Salt, a Drop of Brine, a Memory in Fermentation' was a communal act of preservation—including food, stories, and the fleeting connections that arise when people gather with curiosity and intention. Marina Sulima guided us through the tactile, alchemical process of fermentation by opening the space to ask ourselves questions on how culture(s) ferments over time, absorbing influences, deepening in complexity, and altering as it is passed along.
The act of fermentation—allowing time, salt, and microbes to work their tangible magic—stands as a potent metaphor for resilience and renewal. Amid a “heartbroken era,” as Marina noted upon the invitation to the workshop, the evening felt like an act of defiance—an assertion that slowness, sharing, and care hold communal power. The fermentation process required us to slow down, trust in transformation, and let in the material forces that appeared through all things interconnectedness. This age-old practice was further elaborated by Marina’s readings of short sections from the selection of her private book collection. These readings got woven into the act of fermentation —transmitting knowledge, evoking memories, and inviting reflection.
The evening was concluded with a communal meal—borsch, which, much like fermentation itself, carries cultural significance across Eastern European traditions.
This first studium resort evening echoes Ursula LeGuin’s reflections on change and resilience, as LeQuin once said: “Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.”* Small as it may seem, fermentation embodied a quiet form of resistance, a reminder that cultures are not static but rather alive, ever-fluctuating, and held together by the hands that nurture them.
* Quote from Ursula LeQuin from her speech given at the National Book Awards in 2014, where she received the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.
List of books read during the workshop:
- Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice (2021) by Rupa Marya and Raj Patel.
- Ways of Being Alive (2022) by Baptiste Morizot
- The World-Ending Fire (2019) by Wendell Berry
- Dandelions (2022) by Thea Lenarduzzi
- Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation (2004) by Silvia Federici
2024
DEC 19 '24 – Klaudija Ylaite – invites Dajana Heremic and prof. Kim Knibbe – on navigating ecological futures through ritual practices, contemporary spirituality, and artistic research
How could rituals impart a framework for rethinking our relationship to Earth and foster ecological futures that are both holistic and sustainable? In what ways might spirituality, as an awareness of the immanence of Earth's sacredness, inform our action regarding environmental distress? What role may ritual play in artistic research as a means of bridging the gap between human experience and environmental science? How can ritual-based artistic practices generate new ways of thinking and acting toward ecological sustainability and ecospirituality? What role do ritual and spirituality play in artistic research?
Ecofeminism in Practice: Ritual as Medium, Art as Message
Dec 19'24 – a recap of a three-way conversation moderated by Klaudija Ylaitė featuring Kim Knibbe, an Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology of Religion at RUG, and Dajana Heremic, an artist and an activist
(...) “When asked to participate in a ritual, you always do it as a particular, embodied person,” Kim noted. This can be challenging, especially when considering socially sanctioned rituals that one may feel obliged to partake in, even when their underlying values are not personally aligned (think of, for instance, the consumerist dimension that Christmas has taken on). After all, what one is often asked to embody in ritual is what classical anthropologists call the fundamental values of (...) read more
NOV 15 '24 – Alina Lupu on navigating precarity, the arts, and activism, within shifting geopolitical landscapes
How do we move from individual interest to collective organizing and care? How can conflicts be solved when clashes become an inevitable part of collective work? What can artists do in times of crisis?
Ride with us: from individual introspection to reflective solidarity
Nov 15'24 – a recap of the artist talk by Joshua Miller
(...) Her research into the isolation of systemic precarity and the alternative of conscious collectivity and connection reminded me of reading The Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing. Human beings are social creatures, as mutually entangled by the sum of our relationships, hopes and dreams and (...) read more
OCT 18 '24 – Staci Bu Shea on endings and continuity, on letting go and holding on
What does it mean to live with irresolvable realities? How does facing death and grief support life-affirming practices? Between personal and political, theory and practice, how do we find balance?
Nov 1'24 – a recap of the artist talk by Alica Plulíková
(...) This writing is also concerned with the idea of collective grief. Staci introduces us to this concept and contrasts it to individual grief. Claiming that these phenomenons differ in their structure, and therefore, have to be dealt with differently. While personal grief has to be met individually, interpersonally, and very often (but not always) involves gradual dying where there is the privilege of preparation and possibility for a "good death," collective grief has to (...) read more
SEP 20 '24 – Kitty Maria on labour and archetypes within a high-performance culture
What defines value in a high-performance culture? When does our embodied presence become a source of resistance? Can a performative body reach a state of total passivity?
The critique of the labourer trough the subodination of the artist as a machine
Oct 1 '24 – a recap of the artist talk by Vanesa Miteva
(...) which consolidates her critique of the contemporary labourer. Through her interventions, Kitty mysticises the industrial work environment, as an outsider who sees the absurdity of these
almost foreign worlds of production. She creates meaning out of the ambiguity she creates for
the labourers that (...) read more
JUNE 28 '24 – Nina Wijnmaalen on exploring metaphors, emotions and endurance within performance
When does the image begin to move, or how to make moving images in space? How can we integrate performance art and theatre, overcoming their traditional boundaries? How can we universalise emotions that come from personal and intimate experiences?
July 8 '24 – a recap of the artist talk by Sonia Polidori
(...) At the sixth studium resort, we had a conversation with Nina Wijnmaalen, an artist and performance director that works with universal emotions. Initially working with photography and film, Nina’s practice moved >>> to the theatrical. when creating a stage for her photographs, the artist realized how the process for the photograph was more intriguing and had a higher emotional impact than the final static product, which for her lacked “blood, sweat, and tears.” (...) read more
MAY 8 '24 – Müge Yilmaz on feminist science fiction to envision potential futures – in collaboration with University of Groningen / Art History
How can one sense the temporalities of soil-time? When do we blur the boundaries between science, fiction, art, and nature? How do we rekindle a sense of sacredness to land?
cultivating feminist fictions for protection
May 19 '24 – a recap of the artist talk by Andrea Romero
(...) Müge believes that reading feminist science-fiction is not only about reading. It requires the active engagement of the readers’ inner imagination. Unlike movies, ― that provide already-made images― it allows the readers to visualize and imagine the story in their minds. This approach informs her methodology for her artistic research, which involves (...) read more
26 APR '24 – Théo Demans on creating physical space of togetherness for immaterial practices
How can we (re)learn a language of ecology? How do we facilitate care? Going beyond safe-spaces, what other forms of togetherness can we provide?
radical honesty – a recap of the artist talk
May 9 '24 | by our reporter: Violeta Gamino Romero
at the fourth studium resort, we conversed with Théo Demans, an artist of sinuosity who creates narratives blurring boundaries between the tangible and the ephemeral. with this conversation they practised RADICAL HONESTY the willingness to confront existential questions that lurk beneath the surface of creative expression (...) read more.
2023
15 DEC – Feiko Beckers on on putting failure and discomfort on a pedestal
orchestrated failure – a recap of the talk
Jan 4 '24 | by our reporter: Violeta Gamino Romero
(...) “I am capable of doing nothing while everyone else is doing something,” he thought, only to recant when he realises that he is incapable of such inertia when surrounded by industrious individuals. this dichotomy leads his public to reflect on both labour andethical considerations. (...) read more.
17 NOV – eva susova on somatic and sound practice
sonic embodiment – a recap of the talk
Nov 22 '23 | by our reporter: Violeta Gamino Romero
(...) With a variety of materials - ceramics, metal, organic things, sound, and her own corporeal presence - she creates and tries to project embodied knowledge: histories, traumas, the intricate relationship we have with our bodies. guided by questions that birth movement, she draws inspiration from bodies (minds) like Deborah Hay. (...) read more.
8 NOV – Hilde Onis on object and material hierarchies within artworks
material alchemy – a recap of the talk
Nov 14 '23 | by our reporter: Violeta Gamino Romero
"on the evening of the 8th of November, the voids and fillings of Hilde Onis occupied the spaces of het resort, both mentally and physically through a conversation with Klaudija Ylaite, our guide through the exchange of ideas in this new series studium resort.
Hilde Onis shapes spaces, sometimes filling gaps and other times embracing them with her works. primarily focused on ceramics, as she feels a special ability to create it, she turns her liquid ideas into stone, oscillating between the in-between spaces." (...) read more.
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