Dear class of 2025

Dear class of 2025,

Earlier this year, I visited Palestine. One of the many people I met owned a bookstore in East Jerusalem. A few weeks before my visit, Israeli police officers had entered his shop and confiscated three hundred book titles. Suspect to this raid were all the book covers that included maps of Israel and Palestine, their flags or words like Hamas, Gaza, Zionism. In many cases the policemen weren’t able to read the actual text, because of language barriers, so they would base their judgement on the outer appearance of the works in question.

This event is illustrative of the priorities of a fascist regime. What it tells us is that books and art will always be a threat to those who abuse their power. In fact, it shows us how dangerous we are, and that includes you, everyone here today waiting to leave this beautiful academy behind.
And I hope it gives you all the more reason to continue to challenge systems of oppression, to use your voice, your platform. I hope it inspires you to continue to be a threat.

That is the first life lesson I wanted to give you, today. 

I admit, this isn’t how I thought I would open this speech. I had a completely different plan that now seems ridiculous.

When I was invited to speak here today, I considered taking the mic and just cry. I would cry and you would wonder whether they were tears of joy or sorrow. I admit, I was never much of a performance artist, literature is my arena, maybe painting or drawing but that’s about it. Yet I did imagine that’s what I would do. I would cry and wipe away my tears and then I would ignite in a completely unrewarded and unnecessary acceptance speech, as if I had just won an award.
Like I said, I decided against that course of action.

One of the works I showed when I graduated from this academy quite some years ago, was a stack of televisions. On the screens my hungover face repeated the words of Kate Winslet, Gywneth Paltrow, Cate Blanchett and Marion Cottillard, while they accepted their Oscars, their Academy Awards.
Why, you ask?
Well, for a long time, watching and rewatching those speeches was my comfort watch. And I thought the work could be a reminder of how ephemeral and arbitrary our definitions of success are.
Also, what I love most about those speech is that they tend to revolve around life lessons.

Life is of course not to be reduced to a series of rules, or hacks. I guess if art school teaches us anything, it is that knowledge is not reductive, it is something that needs to be experience, that needs to run through your veins.

When I was in my final year, here, in this academy, the then newly installed head of my department invited a famous Dutch writer to come and give a talk. This whole undertaking was, I think, one big flex. It was pretty clear to us that the head of the department wanted to show his clout. When the famous writer arrived, he was wearing a sand colored, linen suit.

In that suit, he stood in front of the classroom and told us he had observed our dynamics. He had seen how we interacted with one another. He saw us having lunch outside, smoking our cigarettes afterwards, and he had come to a shocking conclusion: we, the students, got along with each other. We were friends, even. You might say some of us loved one another.
And, according to the author, that was a problem.
Instead of forming lifelong friendships, he thought we should compete with one another, our relationship should revolve around rivalry – not love. In his eyes, the bonds we formed were illustrative of how naïve we were. Weak, even.

I don’t think I need to explain that his words infuriated us and as you can see, I’m taking my opportunity today to get back at him once and for all.

But that strange, misplaced visit was memorable for another reason. Inviting the famous author suggested that successful people are some sort of authority, just like the people accepting their Academy Awards. They are to be taken seriously because they understand the game. And if we follow their moves, we might acquire the same amount of good fortune.

What I’m hoping you are realizing right now, is that I’m anything but an authority, I mean – I don’t even own a linen suit. I’m hoping that if art school left you with any life lessons at all, it is to always challenge figures of authority.

I want to leave you not only by congratulating you, but I want to offer you some more of my absolute favorite life lessons that have truly meant something to me, whether the source was Cate Blanchett or someone I never liked to begin with. Let these words sour, freed from their source, from the successful people who once uttered them and feel free to add your own to this incomplete list.
 
Here we go:

Sleep when you need to
Seek joy
Make Art
Have Faith
Seek Guidance
Nurture to your friendships
Close your windows in the middle of a summer day so that the heat doesn’t get in
Measure the distance between you and your parents
Don’t Lose Your Queerness
If you don’t possess any queerness, I’m so sorry
Give yourself space to ponder, to feel
Embrace solitude, it is a catalyst for growth
Love the questions in life, rather than seeking answers
Find inspiration in the mundane
Sit with the process, let it breathe
Fight oppression
Know that you are never alone
Get to know your elders, those who came before you
Focus on the work, not the awards
And finally, once again, the most important one if you ask me:
Continue to be a threat