About : Keeping It Real Art Critics

We are KIRAC — an Amsterdam art collective developing, in real time, a new way of making profound and independent art films. Our filmmaking process is radically earnest, not ironical or cynical. It is carried by belief and conviction, pursued with aggression and passion.

By watching this hardcore experiment in contemporary cinema, you may find yourself drawn into the same quest for art and beauty that drives us. Our audience includes artists and scholars in the humanities, but also lawyers, engineers, entrepreneurs, and creators from other fields who recognize the universal struggle of creating and perfecting something meaningful.

KIRAC’s experimental and avant-garde art films are produced internationally and shown worldwide. The collective also exists out of a desire for friendship among those who love and create art.

You can watch our films as standalone pieces or follow them as a series starting from episode 1. We release between one and six new episodes each year, thanks to the support of our patrons.

Founders — Kirac was founded by Stefan Ruitenbeek (1982, Breda) and Kate Sinha (1988, Deventer) in 2016, producing writing, films, talks, events, poetica and artistic schooling.

Mission — In 2019, Kate wrote: In fact KIRAC is in search of love, in the form of truth. To achieve that, it uses that sincerest and most impossible enlightenment fetish of all: dialectics: the belief that the truth can and will emerge only from reasonable discussion. This implies that discussion and criticism is always permitted, and that in the end, each opponent really is an ally in this overriding search for truth.

In September 2025 the KIRAC collective consisted of the following people:

Mette Maria van Dijk (Writer)
Simon Delobel (Curator, Conservator)
Philip van den Hurk (Mecenas)
Karel Geeraedts (Pianist)
Oliver Lardner (Artist)
Ben Lunato (Artist)
Isa Morriën (Actress)
Stefan Ruitenbeek (Artist, Writer, Film Director)
Levina van Winden (Poet)
Paul Rhoads (Artist)
Jini van Rooijen (Artist)
Kate Sinha (Writer)
Brant Peije Teunis (Composer)
Sebastiaan Verbeeten (Film Director)
Willem de Witte (Philosopher)

Sean Tatol about KIRAC in The Manhattan Art Review, 2022

More artistically potent and relevant, even “new”, than what the vast majority of what the arts currently has to offer, whether one is in Amsterdam or New York. Their films achieve an odd sense of realism, a reflection of the world back at itself at time when it seems almost impossible to grasp anything as it really is.

Art advisor Paul van Esch about KIRAC in 2018

Kirac is one of the most promising projects in recent years. Rebellious, perversely funny and crazy independent. Exactly what the art world, which suffocates itself following and examining its own codes, needs. Watching those same codes and sources be questioned so exactingly is painful and hilarious at the same time. Kirac has the potential of growing so much bigger and evolving into a great and profound work of art on the psychology of our time, using the art world, the artist, the work and their environment as metaphors. Their films are the only art films I watch through to the end.

Wikipedia about KIRAC

Academia about KIRAC

Donations

With your donations we produce our cultural activities. Patrons get courtesy access to writing, films and events. You can become a patron here: https://www.keepingitrealartcritics.com/wordpress/support/

https://bunq.me/kirac
Stichting Cultuurbord KIRAC: NL48 BUNQ 2044 4303 71