For the tenth anniversary of WhyNot, they return to W139, the place where it all began, for an old school evening of dance, performance, music and art! The evening at W139 is curated in collaboration with Julidans, Vlaams Cultuurhuis de […]
In de eerste week van februari doneerden meer dan 170 kunstenaars hun werk. Deze online veiling is een kans om samen sterker te staan tegen het wegvallen van financiering en tegen de dreigende sluiting van W139, de iconische en historische kunstinstelling van Amsterdam! Toon aanstaande Valentijnsdag je liefde door te bieden op […]
A collective world-building journey to revive our earthly interconnections. A work by Juliette Lizotte aka jujulove. Sisters.°· Let me take you to my world.•º Sisters of the Wind is the fruit of an artistic research on witches, ecofeminism, and science-fiction […]
Under Bat Hill is a group exhibition that imagines the W139 as a glorious cavern in the middle of the city. Isolated from the outside world and its dwellers, this huge space is activated through a daily program of screenings […]
Tijdens het Amsterdam Art Weekend 2021 presenteert W139 een selectie uit het archief om terug te kijken op de afgelopen vier decennia aan artistiek experiment, en de diversiteit van de benaderingen, materialen, stijlen, technologieën en esthetieken van kunstenaars in deze […]
In 2021, the participants of Architectures of Noise were working individually and collectively in art-based research processes. They involve reading sessions, walks, talks, accompanied by architectural and sculptural interventions, performances, workshops, and experiments, especially in the sense of experiri (experience), reason, and resonance in the public and private domains. During the summer […]
In collaboration with artist and researcher Sher Doruff, Arefeh Riahi researched the uncertainty of language, as well as its potential for resisting archival modes of communication. What do ‘limitation’ and ‘consolidation’ mean in relation to language? In what ways are […]
Platform BK kicks off the new cultural season with a three-day workshop on art, solidarity, and self-organisation in the Amsterdam art space W139 and surroundings on August 27, 28 and 29, 2021. Read all about the event and how you can participate below. Active […]
Verbógen Verbrijzeld onderzoekt hoe wit licht versplinterd en verbogen kan worden - hoe je met de materie kan samensmelten. In de solotentoonstelling van Philip Vermeulen maak je kennis met zijn nieuw ontwikkelde ‘hyper-sculpturen’, die wit licht ombuigen en mechanisch verbrijzelen tot […]
Verbógen Verbrijzeld (Shattered Scattered) examines how white light can be splintered and bended - how you can become one with matter. In the solo exhibition by Philip Vermeulen you will get to know his newly developed ‘hyper-sculptures’, which shatter and mechanically […]
Our contemporary moment is saturated with the politics of polarisation and dichotomist thinking—with us- or -against us-, liberal or conservative, right or wrong, all-or-nothing. Binary thinking often happens when complex ideas and issues are overly simplified into twofold answers. When […]
The opening of That Those Beings Be Not Being will take place on Oct. 22, 2021. The opening will feature a performance by EMIRHAKIN, WHO'S GOING TO DIE IF I KILL MY SELF? Photography by Elodie Vreeburg.
23, 24, 30, 31, October & 6, 7, 13, 14 November Tracing Erased Memories is a site-specific multimedia guided walk, that aims to connect Amsterdam and Cairo through their harboured memories of resistance against state violence. Throughout the walk, participants experience […]
Four Sisters is a public garden and a community project initiated by Marija Šujica, Müge Yilmaz, and The Beach i.s.m Iris Dik. In a plot of land of 45m x 45m, rented from Gemeente Amsterdam in Nieuw West, an edible labyrinth […]
WHO’S GOING TO DIE IF I KILL MY SELF? is een video, performance en sculpturale installatie geïnspireerd door EMIRHAKIN’s ervaring in, en terugkijkend op, het Turkse leger. Met zijn eigen ervaring van de dienstplicht als uitgangspunt, in relatie tot zijn queer […]
For many years, artists have been exploring their identities by fictionalizing alternative characters. Through the alter ego, or the alternative self, one can speak about things that they aren’t often able to openly express. It becomes a way to deal […]
Join us on Saturday 13 November for a fruit-full workshop led by Veronika Babayan. The workshop involves watching, listening, remembering, and using our hands together. There will be undulating, non-linear storytelling and readings by Veronika as well as cutting, cooking […]
During the course of global conflicts, visual material generated by trained and untrained video makers could potentially be the only documentation of recorded events. In contemporary times of post-truth and widespread manipulation of media narratives the related gatekeepers, caretakers and […]
W139 is pleased to invite you to the finissage of That Those Beings Be Not Being. For this last day of the exhibition we have put together a day program with a zine launch by The Wild and an extended edition of EMIRHAKIN’s WHO IS […]
The Wild is a series of pop-up bookstores and art experiences inspired by the tradition of Black fugitivity, initiated by Tracian Meikle and Marly Pierre-Louis. In a zine-making workshop on November 14, 2021, facilitated by Marly Pierre-Louis and Kimberley Cosmilla, […]
Join MELT (Ren Loren Britton & Isabel Paehr)for a meditative gathering for a plurality of joyful Trans* and disabled futures. Together, we sen(s)d desires, wishes and intentions, and dream towards being in time differently. Online and at W139 participation is welcomed, we look […]
W139 hosts… marks the start of an energetic and dynamic month at W139. We invite you to experience this special programme from March 1 to April 8, which will include pop-up stores, workshops, meet-ups, but also gatherings, rehearsals, exhibitions, experiments, film screenings, […]
On Saturday 2 April W139 will host a fundraiser initiated by Ukrainian artists to support the Ukrainian art scene. How To Set Your Signs on Fire is a mixed event with performances, interviews, DJ’s. Above all, it is a call […]
How are we shaped by language? Are languages merely tools for expressing our thoughts, or do they actually shape them? In this solo exhibition, Sadik Kwaish Alfraji explores the complexities inherent in these questions. Encompassed in the animations, large scale […]
“I am both a stranger and a native to the same land, to the same mother tongue. This century told us too many times to stay alone, to cut all ties, never to look back, to go and conquer the […]
This event is part of 24h Centrum The myths, folklores, narratives, and stories that shape our societies, and permeate through multiple generations, are deeply entangled with language. Led by Sahand Sahebdivani, founder of Mezrab, and accompanied by Lara Ricote and Irina […]
As part of Sadik Kwaish Alfraji’s exhibition A Language Under My Skin, W139 will host a performance by The Names. Shaped by the ideas of critical music, listening and sounding practices, and the position of the post-musical, The Names combines […]
A book launch with love: a presentation, a night of conversation, performances and an abundance of presence, hosted by Simon(e) van Saarloos and W139, Amsterdam Cocktails & books available! Admission is free. W139 is wheelchair accessible but does not have […]
A critical supplement to your Dutch language and culture courses. Culture is leaky. As people have been moving around the world for as long as we can remember, we bring along traces and influences of other places. We borrow words […]
Through conversations about our personal experiences and using artistic resources, we will develop and share our own tools for translation. About this Event:Led by Sara Santana López and Maria Paris, in Choir of Tongues II, we get together to explore […]
The Wild is a series of pop-up bookstores and art experiences inspired by the tradition and history of black fugitives, maroons, refugees and exiles. The Wild is a meeting ground for Black togetherness that seeks to cultivate an intimate and […]
In Squeeze Crush Press Blush, curated by Afra Eisma and Marnix van Uum, twenty-one artists and filmmakers invite you to take a dive into their ever-changing minds. A crack in the gloss, a break, a rupture, a split, a breach, a slit, a smack, […]
“There are different ways to tell a story. I wanted to think about the way we bear ongoing witness to our own lives, and how this material tells bigger stories about the material, technological and socio-economic circumstances of the past […]
A new narrative for Ukraine: told by its children What is the influence of war on daily life in Ukraine? What is it like to grow up in a conflict zone? To live in constant fear? What dreams do young […]
Originally inspired by the urgencies of the pandemic and the anosmia that millions of people experienced, The Syntax of Smell looks at the entanglements between scent memory, nostalgia and toxicity. Our daily life has increasingly been scented by large conglomerates, and many […]
W139, along with two other venues, Zone2Source and Het HEM, is hosting the Sonic Acts Biennial exhibition one sun after another between Sept. 30 and Oct. 23, 2022. Departing from the long-running Sonic Acts research on pollution, the exhibition focuses […]
On Friday 30 September we celebrate the launch of Sonic Acts Biennial 2022 – warmly inviting you to the opening of our exhibition one sun after another at W139, Amsterdam. In conversation with the works exhibited, the evening includes interventions by researchers, artists […]
As a part of the Sonic Acts Biennial 2022 exhibition one sun after another, Félix Blume invites visitors to a listening session at W139, during which visitors will listen to Blume’s recordings and discuss his creative practice. Blume will discuss the making […]
Sonic Acts Biennial invites visitors to an evening conversation and book launch at W139, celebrating the two Sonic Acts commissioned works OBIT and Hard Drives from Space — and the publication of Oil News 1989-2020, a new artist book commissioned and released by Sonic Acts Press. […]
Led by artist Sam Lavigne, attendees will use Python in conjunction with basic command line tools to explore the possibilities of manipulating video with code. About the Workshop:Emerging in the early 2000s, the ‘Supercut’ is a genre of video editing made […]
Looking at loitering as both pollution and excess, Angeliki Diakrousi invites you to join us in hidden and regulated public spaces at the centre of Amsterdam. About the workshop:Are you a local, a teenager, an active neighbour, a digital citizen, a skater, […]
From 19 November until 18 December 2022, Gabriel Fontana’s Turning Towards Fluidity: A Tournament of the Unknown will take place at W139. Unfolding over a period of one month, and running parallel to the World Cup, A Tournament of the […]
Three games will be played during this event: Sonic Crosse, Multiform and Anonymous Allyship. In Anonymous Allyship, the notion of anonymity creates a situation where players don’t know who belongs to their team, and explores the feeling of belonging and the ways people perform in […]
On Nov. 18, the well-attended opening of Turning Towards Fluidity took place. Joana Cavaco accompanied the opening as MC through the evening, to the musical accompaniment of snufkin. Queer Choir Amsterdam opened the evening. After a special warm-up by Kexin […]
Researcher Nathanja van den Heuvel and Gabriel Fontana held a conversation on Nov. 29 about their joint research on sports and queer pedagogies. This was followed by a live screening of the World Cup soccer match Iran vs USA. The […]
Stop by W139 to watch the World Cup quarterfinals with mediation by artist and researcher Florian van Zandwijk. Surrounded by a TV studio set-up, Florian will do a pre- and post-match analysis linking the use of technology in and around […]
Ronnie CloseMore out of Curiosity 26:07 minutes, single-screen, 16:9, HD Digital Video, 2014. One of the key players in the new emergent political debate are Egypt’s fanatical football supporters, the Ultras. Although affiliated to different teams in the domestic league […]
Join us on January 27th from 19:00 for the opening of Dead Skin Cash, the upcoming exhibition by Salim Bayri and Ghita Skali at W139. Get money for your dead skin. Photography by Elodie Vreeburg.
Voluntarily or involuntarily we humans shed our dead skin. In this exhibition, Ghita Skali and Salim Bayri take this fact as their starting point to zoom in on the ambiguities within our relationship to dead skin—the tensions between its acceptance and […]
Six artists are invited to react to the prompt “Who can afford to not sell their own skin?” by curating a playlist of visual and audio materials for this weekly screening program. The schedule and invited artists are the following: […]
Taking place on March 8 at W139, A Reality Through Words and Images is a group screening programme of experimental documentaries, essay films, and poetry by Iranian artists. The screening programme directly or indirectly introduces ideas about permeability and entropy, political environment, the female body, displacement and […]
Join us next Tuesday 14th March at 20.00, as we conclude the public programme of Dead Skin Cash with Two Square Meters*: an open-discussion between dermatologist Dr. Marco van Coevorden, multi-disciplinary artist Ezzam Rahman and initiating artists Salim Bayri and […]
Substitutes engages with queer history and discourses around the body, gender, and sexuality. It features artists across several generations working in a variety of mediums to contextualise and converse with these discourses. The exhibition is about the absence of bodies, the abstraction […]
Substitutes engages with queer history and discourses around the body, gender, and sexuality. It features artists across several generations working in a variety of mediums to contextualise and converse with these discourses. The exhibition is about the absence of bodies, the […]
“For six years already I have been moving and becoming with HIV.” Keeping up with the Virus explores interdependency, connection seeking, risk-taking, and solidarity through the embodied metaphor of the virus performing in the artist’s body in the era of undetectability. […]
A dialogue between Louwrien Wijers, her friend and colleague Rory Pilgrim and exhibition initiator Philipp Gufler. First they will discuss Louwrien’s metal sculptures and invite the audience to listen to the sound of her brass music box titled ‘She and […]
4 June 2023 15:00-17:00Guided Tour of Substitutes 1Tomas Adolfs and Philipp Gufler Tomas Adolfs is part of W139's artistic team and an exhibition maker with an interest in artistic processes, experimental practices and DIY approaches. Philipp Gufler is the initiating artist […]
A film screening and book presentation with Angela Stiegler and Philipp Gufler in collaboration with the Goethe Institut Amsterdam. With their performative and collaborative works, Rabe perplexum was a subversive voice of queer subculture in the 1980s. In conversation with […]
Are you curious about how the internet has shaped the lives and creative expressions of migrant communities? During SALWA's Internet Cafe, we will dive into the topic of internet infrastructure in relation to migration. For the last three months, participants […]
The first SALWA Gathering in 2023: Exploring the Intersection of Community, Migration and the Internet. Starting at W139 or program, talks, food and drinks, and at 23:00 prepare to party hard in Garage Noord with Brussels based collective Yalla Nightlife. […]
8 July, SALWA is organizing a conveniently Extremely Late Brunch from 18:00 to 22:00. You can RSVP via the link in bio, and pay at the door!The brunch will include interventions and live interviews in collaboration with INC's The Void. […]
Journey inward in a four-hour trance experience. Swedish-Dutch Jefta van Dinther has sometimes been described as “the star of dark and mysterious techno dance”. His productions are hallucinatory and dynamic, sleekly designed and offer an outlook on humanity in a […]
