‘It is through the “not-knowing” that a stimulating and caring environment can be created to confidently share vulnerability.’
Risk Hazekamp is researcher within the Regenerative Art and Design research group and tutor for the Art & Research study programme at St. Joost School of Art & Design.
Risk Hazekamp (pronouns: they/them) is an interdependent visual artist and researcher. Risk is also an art educator in the broadest sense of the word. For more than twenty years, their work has revolved around the complex and constantly changing relationship between body and image. Gender has been a central element, not only as a subject, but also as a theoretical framework. For the past ten years, Risk has applied questions formulated within the theme of gender to other socio-political issues. Through a combination of personal activism, decolonial practices and analogue (currently organic) photography, visual intersectional processes are developed to change existing systems. In doing so, Risk takes on the position of a student as often as possible to unlearn photography.
After their studies at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam and the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht, Risk worked and lived in Berlin for 11 years. Their work has been shown extensively at international art fairs, such as Art Cologne, Arco Madrid, Art Forum Berlin, Liste Basel and Paris Photo. In 2010, Risk decided to no longer participate in commercial art contexts. Since this decision, long-running often ongoing projects are preferably presented on locations where space, subject and time are interrelated.
Risk has taught at various art academies, including teaching Photography from 2010 to 2014 at the Maastricht Academy of Fine Arts, and from 2015 onwards at St Joost School of Art & Design in the Art & Research department and the minor Arts & Humanity.
They graduated ‘magna cum laude’ from the Advanced Master of Research in Art & Design of the Sint Lucas School of Arts in Antwerp and took part in the Decolonial Summer School, a collaboration between the Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven and the University College Roosevelt of Utrecht University.
Professional Doctorate Research
Currently, Risk is the first candidate pursuing a Professional Doctorate at CARADT, where they are conducting pioneering research under the project Unlearning Photography: Listening to Cyanobacteria. This project investigates alternative photographic methodologies, moving away from toxic traditional photographic processes by utilizing cyanobacteria as a more-than-human partner in image-making. This approach aims to create a sustainable photographic process that rethinks human dominance in visual culture, aligning with Risk’s broader commitment to decolonial and ecological practices.
Unlearning Photography: Listening to Cyanobacteria
Risk Hazekamp, researcher from the Biobased Art and Design group has received funding from Regieorgaan SIA for their PD project – Unlearning Photography: Listening to Cyanobacteria.
Publications
Hazekamp, R. (2024, Oct) Limited ‘Makeability’ of Society. The Societal Impact of Applied Design Research, NADR Symposium. Dutch Design Week, Eindhoven
Hazekamp, R., Coordes, H.H. (2024, Sep) Expanded Semantic Levels in Fashion // Unlearning Photography: Listening to Cyanobacteria by Harm Heye Coordes & Risk Hazekamp. Dialogue at Encounters in Artistic Research (Day 2: Making, Thinking, Writing), Minerva Art Academy
Hazekamp, R. (2024, April). How can BioArt facilitate a living alternative photographic methodology to envision our world without a camera, through a non-chemical production process and with a non-human gaze? [Conference presentation]. Helsinki Photomedia Conference 2024, Aalto University, Finland.
Hazekamp, R. (2024) Book review of ‘LET’S BECOME FUNGAL! Mycelium Teachings and the Arts‘ by Yasmine Ostendorf-Rodríguez, Volume 31, Issue 1, Apr 2024, p. 62 – 65. https://doi.org/10.5117/FORUM2024.1.008.HAZE
Hazekamp, R., Lykke, N. (oct. 2022) Ancestral Conviviality. How I fell in love with queer critters, FORUM+, Volume 29, Issue 3, Oct 2022, p. 30 – 36.
Hazekamp, R. (2020) Unlearning Photography, Mister Motley, Motley College.
Research Group: Biobased Art and Design (2018 – 2024)
The research group Biobased Art and Design capitalises on the role of artistic practice in unlocking the unique potentials of living organisms for everyday materials and communicating these to a broader public. In doing so, the group aims to instigate and accelerate our widespread understanding, further development and usage of such materials. The group’s research approach encourages tangible interactions with the living organisms, such as algae, fungi, plants and bacteria, to explore and understand their unique qualities and constraints through diverse technical and creative methods taking artists, designers and scientists as equal and active partners in the material creation.
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