Mayis Rukel

Mayis Rukel is a Turkish artist, writer, and filmmaker based in Rotterdam. His work explores magical research, liberatory remembering, radical pedagogies, child-woven futures, and befriending ghosts. He received the GRA Awards for Autonomous Arts 2020 and Mondriaan Fonds Kunstenaar Start (2023). His short fiction The Pendant was featured at the Nederlands Film Festival (2020), and his feature-length fiction-documentary Movement Song was part of Mondriaan Fonds Prospects 2025.

In 2022, he participated in the Atelier AM residency, and the resulting multimedia performance piece ‘To get from one place to another’ was shown at Corrosia Theater in Almere. He holds a BFA from Gerrit Rietveld Academie and an MFA from the Sandberg Institute’s Ecologies of Transformation, where he explored the role of art and artists in social change.

Rukel is the co-facilitator of Radical Roots, a community-building art project based on stories of food and migration in the refugee centers across the Netherlands. His collaborations include KABK, TENT Rotterdam, and IMPAKT, and his work has been reviewed in De Volkskrant, Het Parool, Metropolis M, and Filmkrant. His debut novel is set for release in fall 2025.

news 02 apr 25

Tactics of the Plot: Reimagining Tools and Methods for Resistance & Collective Futures

Between November 2024 and March 2025, the research group Plot(ting), part of the Lectoraat Art & Spatial Praxis, hosted Tactics of the Plot: Reimagining Tools and Methods for Resistance & Collective Futures. This project, a collaboration with the Institute of Network Cultures, brought together a diverse group of makers, researchers, activists, and those working across disciplines whose practices can be examined through Sylvia Wynter’s concept of the plot. Participants included Inte Gloerich, Elisa Guiliano, Wouter Stroet, Sepp Eckenhaussen, Mayis Rukel, and Lina Bravo Mora.