Para-siting

100 Years of Absent Academy

On the weekend of 19 and 20 July, Absent Academy celebrates their 100-year anniversary, dedicated to the memory of those who have been forcibly disappeared. Sîpan Sezgin Tekin and Agat Sharma are opening their work space during an open rehearsal, asking the question: “How can a performative space provide a ground for disappeared knowledge to be present?”

They invite the audience to participate in a drawing exercise that explores how to speak about enforced disappearances under the looming threat of state violence and surveillance. They imagine a new country—one where it is possible to confront and process enforced disappearances. Maybe a new country for all those who have been made to disappear by the deep state.

Absent Academy is a semi-public pedagogic space, aiming to think about enforced disappearances, which is an extrajudicial practice employed by deep state actors across Central and South Asia.

Agat Sharma is an artist, educator and theater maker who focuses on long-term research into the history of cotton. Through theatrical experiments, he explores the pre-colonial legacy of cotton, colonial extractivism and the ongoing agricultural crisis in India. His work focuses on themes that explore the origin, evolution and erasing of the relationship between land and body. Agat uses a broad view of what a song and a story can be, and uses them as instruments to bring collective postcolonial imaginations to life. Agat works both in the Netherlands and in India.

Sîpan Sezgin Tekin, born in Amed/Kurdistan, is a multidisciplinary performer and theatre maker whose work explores political and historical narratives through the embodied use of language. Focusing on multilingualism, language physicality, and identity politics, he creates immersive performances that examine the role of mother tongue in shaping identity, performance, and the perception of borders and nationality. Sîpan based in Turkey and in The Netherlands.

Para-siting: Absent Academy

The 100-year celebration of Absent Academy is dedicated to the memory of those who have vanished, ceased to be visible, receded from view, faded, melted, withdrawn, departed, dissipated, dispelled, dematerialised, evaporated. Those who have been forced to disappear. Those with the power to shapeshift and become wind, water and snakes to pass through borders, barricades, checkpoints, fences, walls, watchtowers, frontiers and restricted zones. By force and deception, those in power have made them disappear, but their songs still resonate in the landscape. In this edition of Absent Academy, we will learn to sing these songs and draw out their faces from our dreams.

On 25 June, we will welcome our next Para-siting residents: Absent Academy. Sîpan Sezgin Tekin and Agat Sharma will create a shared semi-public pedagogic space, aiming to think about enforced disappearances, which is an extrajudicial practice employed by deep state actors across Central and South Asia. In both their cultures, it is possible to talk to those who have ceased to be amongst us through songs and drawings. The form that Absent Academy takes in this edition is that of an open research rehearsal process, towards making a performance to culminate the residency. During the residency, the visitors can join the rehearsal and research process.

FLUSH #7: PITXANTU

Eli Wewentxu has arrived to the swamp, from the distances of Wallmapu where he currently lives and works with the land, sowing and caring for animals. Wewentxu will close FLUSH’s cycle in the W139 toilet in the best way possible: with his sounds and his music.

PITXANTU sound archives, as a work, is born from deep listening during walks through the pitxantu, or pitxa forest, located in the territory where Wewentxu lives and where his family has lived for several generations. Field recordings, soundscapes, synthesizer layers, and melodic lines with bowed string instruments and txompe compose these pieces, which seek an imaginary dialogue with the territory, the beings that inhabit it, and their forces, which in turn perceive and listen to us.

Entry to concert is free.

Eli Wewentxu is a Mapuche artist from PLC, Gulumapu – Wallmapu, now known as south-central Chile. He trained as a violinist from an early age. In sound, he works with improvisation and musical composition with the idea of redefining listening through a narrative close to the territory in resistance to which he belongs.

FLUSH: a sudden rush of intense emotion is a flourishing collaboration between Espacio Estamos Bien and W139, located in the toilets of W139. FLUSH operates as a flexible form of organizing and creating, enabling various types of collaboration. FLUSH aims to foster inter-local relationships, viewing Amsterdam as a hub for facilitating diverse interactions and building connections that bridge distances. Joyful, friendly and decentralized connections extend beyond the Amsterdam art scene.

EEB’s 3rd Birthday Party

As part of their residency, Espacio Estamos Bien will be celebrating their three year birthday party at W139.

Espacio Estamos Bien started as two, in 2022 and now they are many. Acquaintances, friends, confused, visitors, fans, etc. During their years of life they have approached many -sometimes with short notice- to invite new people as partners and accomplices of the spontaneous (and not so spontaneous) ‘nonsense that we come up with‘.

During these 3 years we have made 20 situations come true, 20!!!! How nice to go back, to remember, to archive and to understand each other. This text is written while we organize ourselves in a space that was granted to us for a month and a half, and that we have decided to take to look back, between doubts and clarifications. We have also decided to celebrate our anniversary

Although originally our birthday celebration was an ephemeris of the birthday of the king of Holland. This year we have decided to born again on May 25th, International Africa Day, World Soccer Day, Thyroid Day and the new birthday of Espacio Estamos Bien.

Espacio Estamos Bien, has been a refuge, a reality, a factor of exhaustion, a meeting place and, if sanity and assertiveness crosses us, maybe one day, rich.

We invite you to come and celebrate with us on the 25th of May from 17:00 until 22:00. We will have piñata, torta, snacks, drinks, performances, Karaoke and more!

This meeting is once again an effort to be together and work with comrades, and celebrate collectively

Participant artists that make this birthday a reality: Andoni Zamora, Annette Wolfsberger, Antonio Duarte, Ausencia Nada, Clara Rojas, Cosima zu Knyphausen, Dana Klassen, Desiree Schouteten, Elsa Casanova Sampé, Julia Nowicka, Klaas Baby Cow, Lina Bravo, Lorena Solis, Lucía del Valle, Lucie Sahner, Macarena Magaña, Mili Herrera, Nick Sheraan (derde graphic designer), Rizquita Naherta, Santiago Saizu (Santi Angel), Sergi Casero, Taylor Le Melle, Valentina Cadena.

Para-siting: Espacio Estamos Bien

We welcome Espacio Estamos Bien as our new Para-siting residents. They will be working on their project We do this not because it’s easy, but because we thought it was going to be easy: Mission, Vision, Fiction, a space for autobiographical archiving, collective work sessions with cooperators, landing ideas, laughing, and reflecting—with a view toward a realistic near-present.

As part of their residency, Espacio Estamos Bien will be celebrating their birthday on 25 May at W139, remember to save the date!

Espacio Estamos Bien is an art cooperative and nomadic project space based in Amsterdam that facilitates gatherings, publications, exhibitions, workshops, and other situations. EEB began by plotting around the idea of a new space in Amsterdam—not necessarily a physical one—that could provide an affectionate and supportive context. A space for those who do not belong in the institutional circuit, one that is always changing, always moving, but always available.

Para-siting: Clearance

Is looking back an act of necessity or just nostalgia in disguise? In a time oversaturated with images, references, and remakes, the impulse to return—to retrieve and to reframe—feels inevitable. But who’s hoping to find what?

So what happens when three outsiders step into an institution’s archive—a space built, rearranged, and stolen from? They ask questions, some quiet, some loud: Who is this? Why do they keep this? They sift, select, document, and romanticize. But really, they wonder, how does an archive, dense with its own relevancies, make room for the new?

For three weeks at W139, bring your own book presents Clearance, a display and auction where selected ‘valuables’ from the archive will be exhibited—and made available for purchase. Clearance is a temporary shift in ownership, a redistribution of institutional memory and an experiment in circulation.

Para-siting is a new programme that runs parallel to our exhibition programme. During Para-siting, W139 will allow other organisms to take over, providing space for encounters and the exchange of ideas, allowing for a more flexible and rapid response to current or urgent developments.

Visual identity by Studio Buy My Talent.

The Myth of a Life Sentence, أسطورة المؤبدات

As part of Saja Amro and Wassila Abboud’s on-going research program Remove the Dot, they’ll be screening excerpts from a recent interview with newly released political prisoner Wa’el Jaghoub with a short discussion following the screening.

Wael Naim Ahmed Al-Jaghoub was born in 1967 in Beita, a village south of Nablus. Al-Jaghoub was first arrested in 1992 and spent six years in prison before being released in 1998. His release period was cut short by a second arrest in 2001 which held a significantly harsher sentence of life imprisonment. While this period in prison was also met with harsher daily conditions, including long periods of solitary confinement, he continued to write and wrote several books capturing what he saw and understood from within the prison walls. During this time he also played a significant role in organizing within the prisons, serving as a leading figure in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

In this conversation, Wael recounts his time in prison, and his reflections on the occupation as a fantasy of dust هذا الوحش وهم من غبار. He reflects on the struggles of Palestinian prisoners whose sacrifices would not be in vain.

The event is free but space is limited, so please register via Eventbrite.

Para-siting: Remove the Dot

We are very excited to present Para-siting, a new programme that runs parallel to our exhibition programme. Para-siting is our response to the tremendous urgency we saw during W139 hosts… to create space for experimentation, try-outs, and work in progress. From 24 February to 30 March 2025, our first Para-siting project is Remove the Dot.

The work Remove the Dot is an ongoing research program by Saja Amro and Wassila Abboud that takes guidance from historical and present voices at the forefront of the liberation struggle. The program is in response to European institutional censorship which tends to obfuscate the material reality in Palestine. Through both a personal and material lens, Saja and Wassila explore how knowledge production in contexts of oppression and revolution help us to linger in spaces of imagination, specifically for those from the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance.

The work so far has evolved through various forms including diagrams, public sessions, reading groups, and study days. The recent on-going program explores the concept of martyrdom and the commitment to sacrifice for a land; requiring a rationality incomprehensible within western frameworks. Saja and Wassila will use their time, as part of the Para-siting program, to reflect on the previous iteration of the work, evolve it, and focus on the key question of how they can expand the research to create an open source tool, inviting a wider range of people to collaborate.

This series derives its name from Zakaria Zubeidi, a political prisoner who, along with five others, attempted to liberate himself from the high-security Israeli prison, Gilboa. Zakaria was arrested before he could complete his thesis. In a call with his lawyer, he asked her to remove the dot from the final paragraph he had written, symbolizing his wish for the story and the cultivation of knowledge to continue until liberation. His literal words translate to “Remove the Dot.”

Visual identity by Studio Buy My Talent.

FLUSH #6: NO PARES (SIGUE SIGUE)

PRODUCE, HAVE FUN, IMPROVE AND SMILE! by Sergi Casero

Like hamsters on a wheel, we run in a race that has no finish line – because every now and then another goal appears on the horizon. This performance is for everyone who feels overwhelmed by too many responsibilities and activities. For those who are learning a new language, playing an instrument, obsessively setting goals and making to-do-lists, or in a constant quest for fulfilment, self-development and being a better version of themselves. Every second counts! In an achievement society doing nothing is a grave sin. But we are more than the sum of our achievements, or are we? How does the productivity obsession shape our desires, our bodies and our limits?

Through the structure of a spinning class, NO PARES (sigue sigue) confronts the hidden violence within neoliberal ideals of efficiency, self-optimization, and endless improvement.

How did we buy the neoliberal tale that we are the architects of our own fate?
Can we resist? Can we break free from the inertia of productivity and its seductive pull?

Join us for this participatory performance – an opportunity to reflect and endure.

Doors open — 18:30
Performance — 19:30
End — 20:30

The artist is supported by Amsterdam Fund for the Arts

Curatorial Text: José Rosales
Production: Julia Nowicka and Espacio Estamos Bien
Design: Sergi Casero

FLUSH #5: Gates of Secretion

The Dutch call it “het privaat”, the English “privy”. The toilet in particular (the bathroom has a slightly broader meaning) is a space where you are mostly on your own, in full privacy. But not with a smartphone. The internet invades that sacred space at any given moment. Even if you think you’re alone, you are not.

Klaas Koetje transforms the toilet group of W139 into the ultimate private sphere. FLUSH #5 encourages the visitor—whether they are there for a sanitary stop, to withdraw from the crowd for a moment or for any other reason—to reconnect with the private self and reflect on the intrusion of technology in aspects of life as banal as taking a piss.

Klaas Koetje is a self-taught multimedia artist based in Groningen and a certified legend. We are honored that he agreed to be a part of FLUSH.

Text by Mauro Benavidez
Production by Julia Nowicka and Clara Rojas
Design by Josefina Contin