IMAGE BY MARC JAUSS
Josephine Baan (also goes by the names Joseph, Jo, or any variation thereof) is an artist and educator. Their practice engages in art, education and collaboration as ways to forge creative survival. They’re interested in the complexity of collectivity and in the possibility of establishing a solidarity that does not homogenise, but affirms difference.
They make performances, installations, texts, group works, collaborative formats, and scores that aim to unpack the problem of relating, shifting roles and readings of power and control in relation to affect and gestures of care. They see performance as a way to become receptive to one’s own alterity when relating to others, offering the possibility to have embodied experiences that one does not identify with. Joseph is currently engaged in a PhD research at the Zürich University of the Arts and Mozarteum in Salzburg that investigates the political currency of incoherence and performative strategies of ambiguity, dissociation, and confusion, asking what aspects of performance might angle towards liberatory or non-sovereign politics and possibly negotiate or abolish the constraints one is born into.
Joseph’s practice is closely linked to their work as an educator, which is influenced by experimental and radical pedagogies and non-hierarchical collaborative methods. They are a founding member of Rotterdam-based research group SOHERE; a community of practitioners working in the fields of art, design and science who develop collaborative, horizontal learning environments. From 2019-2022 they co-ran Zurich based School of Commons; a grassroots initiative dedicated to the study and development of decentered knowledge, with a focus on practices of peer learning and commoning. They teach critical theory and performance at the Chair of the History of Art and Architecture at the ETH in Zurich.