UNRULY KINSHIPS
Book Release with Aneta Rostkowska and Kris Dittel
Fri 19 September, 7 p.m.

 

The book for the project Islands of Kinship.

Unruly Kinships examines the possibilities and forms of kinship and the ways we may create relations with/in the world. Through essays, artistic reflections and conversations, it delves into kinship as something to be made and not given – as an ongoing process of relational experimentation.

 

Spanning three chapters and featuring contributions from artists, theorists and writers, this book ventures into unruly desires, ancestral connections and liberatory forms of care to envision expansive possibilities for kinship. By challenging the boundaries of blood relations, Unruly Kinships inspires a reimagining of care, solidarity and connection in a world where the nuclear family no longer holds absolute sway.

 

More information on the book here.

 

Kris Dittel is a Rotterdam-based curator, editor and occasional writer. Informed by her background in economics and social sciences, her curatorial practice pays attention to the social, political and economic context of her work. Her long-term research projects materialise in a multitude of ways, as exhibitions, performances, publications, talks, public events, and other. Most recent research interests include On Kinship (Temporary Gallery, Cologne 2022—2024); The Voice as Material (Post-Opera at TENT, V2_, Operadagen Rotterdam, 2019); and The Question of Value (The Trouble with Value at Bunkier Sztuki, Krakow and Onomatopee, Eindhoven, 2016–19). With Eloise Sweetman Kris co-hosts I Hope This Message Finds You Well, a podcast about curating.

 

Her latest publications include Unruly Kinships  (Jap Sam Books, 2025) co-edited with Aneta Rostkowska, and a children’s book Life with Fifi (_BÖKS, 2025) co-authored with Angelica Falkeling. Her previously edited publications include Spatial Folders: Extraction and Extractivism, co-edited with Golnar Abbassi (MIARD, Piet Zwart Institute, 2023); The Material Kinship Reader, co-edited with Clem Edwards (Onomatopee, 2022), The Trouble with Value: Art and Its Modes of Valuation (Onomatopee, 2020), Marjolijn Dijkman: Radiant Matter (Onomatopee, 2018), among others. Kris has recently founded a small press, _BÖKS, which publishes ageless children’s books, poetry, and weird erotica.

 

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Kris Dittel

Funding and support
Made possible with the support of Stiftung Kunstfonds, Kunststiftung NRW, medienwerk.nrw and the Mondriaan Fund