The Current Current Award 2025: work that resonates - now and in the future
- Design
- Creative Writing
- ArtEZ Prizewinner
ArtEZ Academy of Art & Design Arnhem brings an old tradition back to life. Its annual academy prize returned during finals 2025, under a new name: The Current Current Award. This year’s winners: Isaac van den Aker (Design Art Technology) and Sofie de Vroom (Creative Writing).
Sound, video, code and installation
Isaac van den Aker presents an installation full of everyday technology. But nothing works the way you expect. Powerbanks generate their own current. Phones seem to think. Old desktop computers crash endlessly in a loop.
His work explores promises. What technology promises us. And what it never delivers. Instead of fixing things, everything remains as it is. That’s where the poetry lies. In the grey, something silver flickers.
Isaac works with found materials. He turns PowerPoint into performance. Interfaces become instruments. That’s how he reveals the poetic potential of the machine.
Connecting through words and theatre
Sofie de Vroom builds a moving landscape of language. She calls it Limita. It’s not a story, but an experience. Words become body. Memory becomes landscape. Boundaries dissolve.
Her work blurs roles and definitions. The ‘I’ disappears. Everything moves between failure, longing and collectivity. Limita invites you to get lost. In a language we haven’t invented yet.
Sofie is a writer, artist and founder of collectives like LAS VULVINAS and ECOJAM. She’s working on Stichting Literaire Verbinding and explores new ways of being together through artistic and social practices.
About The Current Current Award
With The Current Current Award, ArtEZ Academy of Art & Design celebrates work that moves. Work that questions. Work that speaks to the now. And gestures toward what’s to come. Each programme nominated one student. The winners received a starting grant of €2,600.
Curious about these bachelor’s programmes at ArtEZ Academy of Art & Design Arnhem?