Concepts are theoretical tools. They “do work” as they carve out phenomena or objects, and propose a perspective on the phenomenon or object thus established. As such, concepts are inherently creative and potentially critical: they provide meaning, establish connections, and generate reflection and perhaps debate. The world today invites us to dwell on the role and use of concepts as we try to grasp the phenomena that we are also part of. A growing number of publications and projects across academia and the arts are accompanied by glossaries, dictionaries, or lexicons. What in contemporary academic and artistic contexts or in the world at large necessitates the curation of, and with, new or modernized vocabularies? What can be done with concepts and what are the limits of concepting?

The above observations and questions form the starting point for the Creative Concepts workshop. It starts off practically by inviting all participants to partake in a collective concept-building exercise according to a pre-set script. After the exercise, the following discussants will provide reflections on concepting across academia and the arts:

· Kitty Zijlmans

· Lonnie van Brummelen

· Femke Herregraven

After the reflections, participants are invited to partake in another round of the collective concept-building exercise, now inspired by the reflections on concepting.

Creative Concepts is organized on the occasion of the publication of Critical Concepts for the Creative Humanities by Iris van der Tuin and Nanna Verhoeff (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022).

This workshop is mainly meant for academics, postdocs and PhD/MA students, artistic researchers, and artists interested in concepts and concepting.

RSVP: creativeconcepts@nwo.nl

Creative Concepts is a spin-off of the successful The Postresearch Condition (EARN/NWO Smart Culture) conference (January 2021; organized by Henk Slager with Odile Heynders, Janneke van Kersen, Iris van der Tuin and Kitty Zijlmans).

Creative Concepts was made possible by the MA of Fine Art, HKU University of the Arts Utrecht; the Creative Humanities Academy of Utrecht University; the Dutch Research Council (NWO).