Para-siting – Page 2

Para-siting: Tempodesert

Desert Without Sand: Sequential Practices is a space for contemplation and investigation into the desert as both a physical landscape, an abstract concept, and a site for speculation. Through a cluster of activities, including performative reading, public events, and mapping and diagramming workshops, Sequential Practices aims to navigate and discuss multiple performative practices approaching to the desert’s complexity.

Desert Without Sand came out of urgency to negotiate the multiplicity of the desert as a space of fugitivity, a land of resistance, as space of hermeticism, as nature, as un-nature, as site of erasure, as site of emergence, as stage for speculative futures, as memory keeper, as a map of silence and echoes, as witness, as site of grief, as myth, as home, as desert.

Friday 10 October — First Sequence
Friday 17 October — Second Sequence
Saturday 25 October — Third Sequence
Friday 31 October — Fourth Sequence

Tempodesert is a performance-based collaboration between Fay Aldhukair and Mohamed Abdelkarim, with occasional contributions from others. It emerged after experiencing the world “after 8/8,” a term coined when Fay and Abdelkarim watched The Draw of the Desert 8/8 Seminar by Iranian philosopher Reza Negarestani on March 15, 2024.

They operate as a performative lab, poetically exploring the holistic and layered temporalities of the desert, geological, ephemeral, eternal, and mythological. Through various mediums such as performances, plays, texts, songs, films, publications, workshops, and walks, Tempodesert seeks to investigate, reclaim, and liberate the desert from colonial narratives and imposed perceptions.

Desert Without Sand: Sequential Practices was made possible by Ettijahat and CBK Rotterdam.

Amsterdam Conference of Autonomous Book-Makers

“To create is to resist”, the more so when we do it together. On the last day of Spooktember, come in to make your own buttons or screenprint your clothes, while we’re joined by other autonomous and anarchist book and zine crafters to provide a mini book and zine fair!

Spookstad is a publishing collective that emerged from the squatting movement in Amsterdam. They make books in close collaboration with various activist collectives.

Between Palestine and Us: publishing in the service of solidarity

The student encampments of 2024 marked a first global wave of mass mobilizations in support of Palestine and against Western complicity. On the basis of the Spookstad-published book about the student uprising in Amsterdam, we explore how art, writing and documentaries contribute to the Palestine solidarity movement, and how we can take it further.

Programme Saturday 20 September

14:30 — Mapping solidarity: interactive session hosted by Saja Amro. What is the role of art, cultural work, academia, and activism in the West, particularly in the Netherlands, in times of genocide? And how to strengthen our networks to avoid fragmentation and consolidate our strategies towards effective aims?

We will create a map together to serve as an active tool for documentation and strategy building. This session is a continuation of the Mapping Solidarity Project, in collaboration with platform BK. Please register by sending an email to hello@spookstad.boo.

16:00 — Film screening “Class outside”: a collective video diary capturing everyday moments of resistance, solidarity, and conflict, following the student encampments in Amsterdam during May 2024 and the various subsequent actions. By Aylin Kuryel, Fırat Yücel & Deniz Buga.

17:00 — Performance of “Dear, Comrade”, by Lila Swindles and Olga Tsyganova. A play about the student occupations, resistance, collectivity, and the attempt to not lose hope.

Program will also be part of Amsterdam Bangs Festival.

Spookstad is a publishing collective that emerged from the squatting movement in Amsterdam. They make books in close collaboration with various activist collectives.

Take Back Mokum: squatting, printing, and the right to the city

Against the forces of capital and the housing crisis, squatting is one of our best remaining tactics of resistance. It is also an inherently creative act, transforming buildings, public space, and potentially the whole city. Spooktember opens with the launch of our new zine about the Klokkenhof squat and invites you to explore together how to reclaim the right to the city.

Programme Saturday 13 September

18:00 — Expo opening! Launch of zine Permanence Through Print (made by Layla Gijsen & Boris, published by Spookstad), music by Big Toilet Radio, drinks, art, zines, books.

Programme Sunday 14 September

13:00 — Linocut workshop by Layla Gijsen. Free, but register by sending an email to: laylagijsen@gmail.com

16:00 — Film screening new video work by Yannesh Meijman, with a Q&A after.

Spookstad is a publishing collective that emerged from the squatting movement in Amsterdam. They make books in close collaboration with various activist collectives.

Para-siting: Spooktember

From 13 September, we welcome our new Para-siting residents Spookstad, who are organizing Spooktember—four weekends that explore the art and politics of radical publishing: art, books, workshops, performances, film screenings and more!

“To create is to resist”, the more so when we do it together. During Spooktember, we invite you to explore with us the art and politics of radical publishing.

Mobilizing various forms of creativity in the service of solidarity, Spooktember is a place for reimagining life in the city, the ways publishing interacts with protest and resistance, and coming together to create alternatives.

For four weeks, Spooktember will be home to a radical library and reading corner, the visual art of direct action, and weekly events ranging from workshops to performances and film screenings. The art works and events are based around our publications’ topics, including squatting and the housing struggle, the pro-Palestine student uprising, and the sex workers’ struggle against the Erotic Center, and we wrap up with the very first Amsterdam Conference of Autonomous Bookmakers. Join us for a month of knowledge-sharing, collective discussion, mutual learning, and getting involved.

Spookstad is a publishing collective that emerged from the squatting movement in Amsterdam. They make books in close collaboration with various activist collectives.

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.

Participation is free, Reserve your spot on the Eventbrite-page of the event.

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 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.