Valentina’s practice-based Ph.D. trajectory will look into the capability of art practitioners to leave dispositions upon the eventuality of death. Care for the afterlife. Handling dying processes and posthumous wishes in the arts (working title) will explore the demands of art practitioners towards death and for the afterlife of their artistic practice. The research will inquire how the artistic infrastructures (especially art and talent development programs in the Netherlands), the dominant legal and financial frames (of inheritance law and estate planning), and the technologies of death management (such as last wills and testaments) support practitioners in affirming personal wishes and defining the afterlife of their artistic works.

Performative strategies will be used to explore forms of attunement and care in research making, in both setting up and facilitating participatory fieldwork. The Ph.D. is supervised by Christoph Rausch (UCM), Eliza Steinbock (FASoS), and Ulrike Scholtes (ZUYD University).

Valentina is an art practitioner working in performance, writing, scripting, and tracking the activation of performative movements. She is interested in queerfeminist approaches to death management in the arts, and in observing how some languages prescribe/rationalise and standardise actions (like in contracts) while others keep track of bodily movements (like in notations used to score immaterial research and work).

She created solo and collaborative projects for, among others, Kunstlicht (NL), Marwan (NL), The Physics Room (NZ), the 16.ma Quadriennale di Roma (I), Konstfak (SWE), Centrale Fies (IT), Kunstraum Munich (D), ar/ge kunst (IT), New York Art Book Fair, Flux Factory and Center for Book Arts (U.S.A.). See her work at felicitybequeathment.com and curandikatz.net.