Welcome

Take off your shoes

Feel free to walk around

Rest, recline, speak

And have some tea

Shifting Spaces’ evokes physical and temporal awareness that arises when we allow ourselves to a slowed-down, sentient experience. When looking at global issues, it is important to take a local and human perspective to open up the mental, physical, public and private space. During the month, various artists inhabit W139, giving in to a sense of community. The artworks range from daily performances to an enormous mural and from video screenings to a teahouse. Jacco Weener and Joaquin Wall live in the space to realize performances every day nurtured by the energy around them. Furthermore, Louwrien Wijers screens ‘Art Meets Science and Spirituality in a Changing Economy’, while Eric Peter presents his dialogues on the near future as Lola Bezemer’s red dots migrate through the space.

This project unites you with over 20 transnational artists, theorists and local activists in the need to discover positive change together. Weekly events allow us to discover togetherness through open dialogues, dinners, radio sessions and many workshops. Manjit Krishna Kaur leads a storytelling school on two evenings – critically, yet mesmerizing. The Keti Koti Dialogues by Mercedes Zandwijken evolve around one-on-one dialogues to see in what ways we can change our visions. The Open Dialogues engage everyone into a conversation on positive change.

Can we honour our differences through compassion? In what way can doubt, confusion and mistakes be strengthening forces? And what does it mean to truly listen and speak with one another?

Program

• Opening, Friday 18th March, 20:00 – 01:00 with Discourse, Elie Karam
• In Conversation: Race, Vulnerability and Persistence, Saturday 26th March, 17:00 – 20:30 This evening focusses on experiences of isolation, pain and vulnerability faced by people of colour in dominantly white spaces: the inability and difficulties experienced in speaking up about topics such as race, colonialism and dominance of whiteness. We look into how we can give more space to experiences in these processes and in getting to a point where racism is discussed. We will explore how we could move towards a more enriching and persistent struggle.
  With Mitchell Esajas – New Urban Collective, Patricia Kaersenhout – visual artist and cultural activist, University of Colour – Amandla Awethu, Katayoun Arian – art / research / activism – Discourse, Monique Duurvoort – choreographer, Quinsy Gario – artist, writer, Roet In Het Eten, Decolonize The Museum – Hodan Warsame
  Food: we start the evening with a dinner from 17:00 to 18:00
• A way a lone a last a lost a loved a long the. Audio-visual renarration of Finnegan’s Wake, Thursday 31 March, 17:00 – 21:00
  Audio-visual renarration of Finnegan’s Wake with Mariana Darvas Lanari, Sjoerd Leijten and Katinka de Jonge. Making music, reading out loud, listening softly. We are a trio performing passages from ‘the Wake’. Using an aquarium, electroacoustic sounds and words to create a faithfully unfaithful renarration of the story.
  Finnegans Wake is often seen as the most difficult work produced in literature. If you look beyond, you discover the rich, bizarre imagination of a man who had a highly idiosyncratic vision of the world. Joyce opposed the glorification of violence, he tried to pierce the dogmatic gender roles of men and women and he was very critical of religion. These were progressive ideas for the strict Catholic Ireland of the early twentieth century, but also for the time in which we live now. The infinite imagination and elegant, socially engaged thoughts make Finnegans Wake unique and urgent reading, hence we started this project.
  Since the book takes the form of a dream, Joyce made a dream language. A language that breaks the rules of grammar and spelling, in which words of different languages are glued together, in a prose mixed with musical forms constructed with onomatopoeic qualities. The first page states for example: The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!). It refers to the fall of man from paradise, but also the fall of Humpty-Dumpty from the wall in the old English children’s song. The fall is followed by a so-called thunder-word, a word composed by the word thunder in different languages that mimics the sound of thunder and someone falling down the stairs. The language appears in first instance as absurd, comical nonsense, yet it contains all sorts of meanings and references below the surface. This meaningful playfulness is what attracts us in Finnegans Wake.
  Besides the strong musical aspect of the language, the visual aspect of the text is also vital to the story. To create a frame where the text is projected, we use an aquarium as a metaphor for the book that flows in water, the feminine principle, from beginning to end. The text starts in a river, produces clouds, rain and ends in the ocean in the last page to eventually become a river again.
  We want to emphasize that the language is a character in Finnegans Wake: it comments on events by changing themselves following the same events. We focus on developing a piece in which fragments of Finnegans Wake are told and sung, accompanied by electro acoustic music, guitar, violin, banjo, sample loops, patterns, iterations and vocals. The computer code behind the setup enables us to control and sample on-the-fly, yet also delivers unexpected artifacts, sounds and structures. This leads to a performance which is more an open network of possibilities, associations and interpretations, an analogy to the book.
  This project follows our contribution in Waywords and Meansigns (2015) a complete musical version of Finnegans Wake produced by American writer and radio producer Derek Pyle, for which we did the last and first chapter of the book.
  Food: food will be available, but donations are very welcome so we can get a compassionate economy going.
• Open Dialogue I: You’re My Other, Saturday 2nd April, starts at 18:00 The Open Dialogue evenings attempt to expend visions, understanding and compassion by creating a moment and a space to listen and speak. Three people from different backgrounds and experiences are invited to share their knowlegde in a dialogue with each other and the audience. The evening focusses on an exchange of words and silences, with the invited speakers as the igniters of a fire that will burn amongst all of us.
  During this first dialogue we will talk about the other. Who is this other? Can you be the other or the other’s other? And what happens when one speaks for or to the other?
  Speakers
  Rory Pilgrim, Elie Karam, Anne Russchen and Alfie Vanwyngarden
  Moderator
  Christine Quinan
  From 17:00 to 18:00, you can enjoy Egon Hanfstingl’s Blissful Peas/Peace Soup for a small donation. The Open Dialogue starts at 18:00.
• Workshop Speaking to See: Listening to Feel: Art of Process, Tuesday 5th April, 19:30 – 22:00 Come and take part in the storytelling workshops and learn the fascinating, useful and empowering nature of the human voice. You can try out the tools and tricks you learn from the workshops in front of a live audience and check out immediately, how storytelling improves the way you communicate with yourself and others.
  Manjit Krishna Kaur: the Storytelling workshops for Shifting Spaces shall be given by Manjit Krishna Kaur who shall also MC the Storytelling evening. Krishna is the Creative Director of the Fifth Friday Sisterhood based at the Mezrab Cultural Centre in Amsterdam, has a MA from Dasarts and is a writer, journalist as well as a social activist and performance artist, Kaur is a British Asian and has lived in Holland for nearly 30 years.
• Performance: Speaking to See: Listening to Feel: Storytelling Evening, 8th April, 20:00 – 22:30 This performance, Storytelling Evening is going to explore how “Speaking” a story can effect the ways many different individuals experience or feel by “Listening”. When spoken words draw a group into a story of characters or situations and places, do speaker and the listener shift from the here and now to the space being created by spoken words, or are we in two places at the same time.
  Can we feel the pain, anger, love, hope or despair and desires from the story we hear? Or are we projecting our own inner emotions onto the imaginary contours of the story and claiming it as our own story through understanding and acceptance? And who does the story belong to once it’s been spoken, the one who was telling it or to those who by hearing change the way they feel.
  The ancient art of storytelling has been helping us explore our feelings, beliefs, morals and the world around us since humans were able to speak. It has given the human brain a portal to universe that is the human mind, helped shape our dreams and ideals and even given us the right to bear wittiness and give testimony to create rule of law.
  this performance, Storytelling Evening is going to explore how “Speaking” a story can effect the ways many different individuals experience or feel by “Listening”. When spoken words draw a group into a story of characters or situations and places, do speaker and the listener shift from the here and now to the space being created by spoken words, or are we in two places at the same time.
  Can we feel the pain, anger, love, hope or despair and desires from the story we hear? Or are we projecting our own inner emotions onto the imaginary contours of the story and claiming it as our own story through understanding and acceptance? And who does the story belong to once it’s been spoken, the one who was telling it or to those who by hearing change the way they feel.
  The ancient art of storytelling has been helping us explore our feelings, beliefs, morals and the world around us since humans were able to speak. It has given the human brain a portal to universe that is the human mind, helped shape our dreams and ideals and even given us the right to bear wittiness and give testimony to create rule of law.
• Open Dialogue II: Geographies of Change, Saturday 9th April, starts at 18:00 The Open Dialogue evenings attempt to expend visions, understanding and compassion by creating a moment and a space to listen and speak. Three people from different backgrounds and experiences are invited to share their knowlegde in a dialogue with each other and the audience. The evening focusses on an exchange of words and silences, with the invited speakers as the igniters of a fire that will burn amongst all of us.
  During this second dialogue we will talk about the geography of the Earth. What does it mean to close borders deny people access to freely travel? How did globalization affect us? Can the diversity of our geographical locations be a strength? And in what ways can climate justice bring the change we need?
  Speakers
  Selçuk Balamir, Prahbu Kandachar, Wayne Modest and Teresa Borasino
  Moderator
  Isabel Hoving
  From 17:00 to 18:00, you can enjoy soup against a donation. The Open Dialogue starts at 18:00.
• A portrayal; IKEA, Sunday 10th April, 15:00 – 16:00 Maud Oonk makes performances composed of an emotional involvement towards formal structures. The construction it all results into deliberately shapes to look for authentic desires and to open-up a play-field in everyday life. Her method is to work with criteria for an attitude and power of judgment, to emancipate oneself from assumptions, prejudices, expectations and habitations. She opens up different formal situations by mirroring the different roles a person has to take in that is other then in his/her personal life.
  This year she started to develop a project by translating different jobs that are existing in modern western-society; like a barista, McDonald burger maker, the manager, fitness instructor, healthy guru, an artist and many more. The goal of the project is to develop a series of performances about the different roles and acts that one has to take to practice his/her job. For the performance in W139 she will become an IKEA employee. The performance is created through observing, taking notes and makes drawings.
• Screening: Transit Levantkade / Job en de Hollandse Vrijstraat, Sunday 10th April, 17:00 – 19:00 Shifting Spaces will screen two very special cult-documentaries: Transit Levantkade en Job en de Hollandse Vrijstaat. Both are about the topic of outsiders within (Dutch) culture and the squat culture of the late eighties and early nineties. Transit Levantkade and Job en de Hollandse Vrijstaat are made by Rosemarie Blank, who has been active as a film director and documentary maker since the early eighties.
  Transit Levantkade
  Stylised documentary portrait of the Amsterdam Levantkade area and the ‘urban nomads’ who in the late eighties sought refuge in this no-man’s-land now cleared. The film tells the story of the Levantkade, a quay in Amsterdam’s old doc area. In the twenties Levantkade was a gateway for Eastern European emigrants on their way to South America. In the eighties Levantkade became a haven for drop-outs, for foreigners and for homeless people who lived here on a different planet until the police came to clear the area for the wreckers. The film shows these ‘urban indians’ in documentary form, interspersed with archive material about immigrants, dating from 1926.
  (75 minutes)
  Job en de Hollandse Vrijstaat
  The film documents a personal memory. In 1988 I met a quietly eccentric man, who lived in the occupied Conradstreet in Amsterdam. More than 100 squatters lived there, mostly artists. Job was in my eyes the most authentic of them all. After the Conradstreet was dramatically cleared by the police the squatters left. Only Job stayed behind as if nothing had happened. After the buildings were pulled down he survived under the most bizarre conditions, apparently oblivious to time and space, but Job seemed to see something in stones and wood splinters that no-one else could see. One day he left and was never seen again.
  (47 minutes)
• (Sub)conscious, (Under)exposed and (Un)wanted Images in the Art World, Tuesday 12th April, 20:00 – 22:00 Come, participate and experience dialogues on representations, cultural heritage and complexities of ownership. We will sit in concentric circles in a structured dialogue while facing and taking turns in speaking and listening to each other. The dialogue questions will give insights into the personal experiences and perspectives of each other.
  Mercedes Zandwijken (Keti Koti Dialogue Table)
• Early Spring Musical Picnic, Thursday 14th April, 18:00 – 21:00 Come and enjoy some transnational bands playing for us: MONOCROMA and WARACHE BEAT. As an early spring musical picnic in Shifting Spaces, comfort your ears with some colourful music and your bellies with some delicious soup and tea!
• Decolonize Beauty and our Bodies, Friday 15th April, starts at 19:00 An evening on historic, (neo)colonial, capitalist constructions of beauty and how these are sustained/reinforced; a sharing of lived experiences and exchanging tips and tricks to circumnavigate the capitalist (neo)colonial cosmetic industry and reclaim our bodies from its oppressive ideal.
  We will collectively engage in a discussion about our bodies that decenters the white Western standard and binary constructions of beauty both within and beyond Europe. We reject the idea that the conversation about beauty is a superficial or apolitical one – it is intrinsically compromised by the colonization, racialization and gendering of bodies.
  University of Colour aims to decolonize the university. Our collective aspires to create a more balanced university at both curricular and demographic level that includes non-Eurocentric perspectives and ideas.
• TW000 Miles to The Netherlands, Saturday 16th April, 17:00 – 21:30 Khaled invites refugees in Amsterdam and surrounding for an evening with poetry, music and film. During the evening we’ll present the trailer of Yamen Abd Alnour’s Under the Sky and Leiden International short Film Experience will screen their Audience Award winner: Mama Agatha – The Film by Fadi Hindash. In colaboration with Stichting de Vrolijkheid, the band Art Colours will perform their beautiful music.
  The Arabic poetry will be translated in English.
  Food will be provided in collaboration with Guerilla Kitchen Amsterdam – Donations are welcome.