Tag: Evenement

Met de tweede editie van W139 hosts… zijn we verheugd onze tentoonstellingsruimte te openen voor een dynamisch zeven weken durend programma dat 55 makers en initiatieven de kans biedt om nieuwe projecten of werk-in-uitvoering te presenteren. Tijdens W139 hosts… betrekt elke week een nieuwe samenstelling van makers en collectieven de tentoonstellingsruimte, die omvormt tot een omgeving die voortdurend in verandering is. 

Foto’s door Elodie Vreeburg.

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Thomas Mohr
To Make up a Balance

To connect the past with the present moment. Thomas wants to meet you. He will be present in the large space of W139 to discuss his work in progress: To Make Up A Balance. In 2021, Mohr has started to process his archive of more than 600.000 pictures taken by himself since 1985. The motifs are various, touching on all kinds of subjects: from the most personal to events which are part of the collective memory, from trash to art, travelling from here to there. In 1988, Mohr has taken his first pictures at W139. Time to complete the circle.

So far 174,528 images are processed in a system of 144 units as a first step of compression. It will take quite some years to complete the task. Conditions coming with increasing age can slow down the process. And photographing hasn’t stopped. It may be just utopian.

The visitor is invited for an individual presentation as a possibility for a conversation. Questions could be: What do we remember and why? How do we relate to crises? How do we relate to change? What is one’s reality? Can we choose a point of view? What can be expected from an artist?

Artist Bio:
Moving, changing, transformation, experience. Exploring processes of perception and memory systematically in performance, painting, video, installations.From 1985 onwards a growing archive containing more than 600000 pictures regarding a wide range of events of transition from a collective meaning to very personal moments. Distributed by LIMA. Screenings at various festivals since 2009: IFFR/Rotterdam, JMAF/Tokio, Ars Electronica, Transmediale Berlin, IFF Japan, NeMaf/Seoul, IKFF/Hamburg, Jihlava IDFF, HAFF/Utrecht, Media Art Biennale Wro, Rencontres Paris/Berlin, EMAF, Atonal Berlin, Projects with music at Stedelijk Museum, Orgelpark Amsterdam, Edith Russ Haus Oldenburg, CCAM / Scène Nationale de Vandœuvre

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Nieuw Jurk & the Wee-Wee’s
Abracadabra Garments

Nieuw Jurk processes the fashion trauma of being stuck in the system through making installative and sculptural work of worn clothes and discarded textiles, with a focus on building a sustainable art practice on a social-cultural, communal, and production level. In her most recent works, she exposes the fashion industry as one of the most oppressive systems of contemporary society — for workers, consumers, designers, ecosystems, and non-human animals.

Abracadabra Garments appeared to Jurk as a vision with W139 as the scenery, located in the sucking core of the hypnosis spiral: Amsterdam’s commercial area. In this fashion-hypnosis Pop-Up, the (shopping) public can discover and immerse themselves in the latest trends that must be followed in order to become perfect and worthy. Get rid of your fashion guilt and dump your last-season apparel on the growing piles of discarded clothes, making the immensity tangible. 

Collaboration and exchange are essential for Nieuw Jurk’s way of working. For Abracadabra Garments, Nieuw Jurk brought together a temporary collective of so-called weirdos. Featuring: soft sculptor Aga bringing the fashion victims to life; hypnosis tent builder Tudor; video performance icon Zen Archer; and film wizard Tibrian. 

In honour of Ruud van der Peijl – King of Style, wardrobe inheritance

Thanks to:
Sjoerd Vocking, 3D-printed lamps & props
Julia Walter, jewellery art
Emilio Valdes, music and performance text contribution

Artist Bio:
Nieuw Jurk is a transdisciplinary artist who throws her artistic, public, and private body into battle to analyze and emphasize injustice and hypocrisy in social and cultural behaviour and structures. In her work, she employs and unravels the implicit codes and language of clothes and textiles; shaping imaginary worlds based on real-life absurdism — magnifying human behaviour fueled by destructive systems. She crashes the hidden rules of outer appearance that shape and control our lives; the dictatorship of modern society that grips us in our fragile urge to belong. Not dodging any confrontation, Jurk shows us there’s a way out.

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Margherita Soldati and Hanna Steenbergen Cockerton
BURNOUT* MANIFESTATIONS *   For the lack of a better word

Hanna and Margherita, connected on their joint experience of burnout. Both utilise their art practices as a transformative means for personal healing and expression but also as a means for sparking conversations with a broader audience.

‘BURNOUT* MANIFESTATIONS’ is their collaborative project that aims to give burnout a tangible and visible space. By recreating their studio setups in the gallery, they illustrate the ongoing, process-led nature of healing. Visitors are invited to join, chat, and engage with the artists as they work on their projects. Hanna’s ink drawings, ‘The Confessionals/Het Mag er Zijn’ and Margherita’s ‘Alchemy of Resilience, part 2’ demonstrate each artist’s individual journey. No two burnouts look the same. Their shared vision is to break the stigma that surrounds burnout, fostering solidarity, understanding, and generating awareness within the creative community. Partnering with W139 in Amsterdam, provides a platform for open conversations about the actual effects of burnout on peoples’ mental health and well-being. Our working sessions have designated times, recognizing the importance for a healthy work/life balance and generating space for downtime and rejuvenation. ‘BURNOUT* MANIFESTATIONS’ stands as an authentic representation of resilience and serves as a space for acknowledgment and awareness.

Artist Bio:
Hanna Steenbergen-Cockerton’s (UK/NL, 1989) artistic methodology involves using painting not only as a tool for self-exploration but as an act of resilience, navigating between physical, psychological, and emotional ways of production and labour in order to create strength and sustainability in individuals, communities and spaces.

Margherita Soldati (IT/NL, 1991) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Amsterdam and co-founder of Absurd Beings Collective. With a profound sense of care and curiosity for the intersection of art and well-being, Margherita’s work centers on the transformative potential of materials and their profound connection to the human senses.

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Rasha Dakkak
to walk along the wall – المشي جنب حائط

To walk along the wall is part of a lengthy process to extract my voice from the layers it gathered due to adapting to a fear-driven culture. As I come from a stateless household, uncertainty is a recurring motif, leading to self-imposed barriers against perceived authorities.

This culture had norms, including valuing education for status. The equation was simple: more education and English proficiency grant greater access. While this calculation holds some accuracy, my journey through the teachings of academic institutions has highlighted a significant limitation. Over the years, my engagement with these corpus-based structures has hindered my ability to express myself fully. It constrained my thought process by urging me to mimic the language of scholars, artists, etc., modifying depending on the context and living between languages an endless dubbed series of thoughts. 

The work’s title is an ancient proverb circulating since the Fatimid ruler of Cairo built an extensive wall around the city to protect the ruling class, suggesting to stick to walls: to safety and security while avoiding interfering with the established power structures. 

A phrase I constantly heard from my parents.  

Artist Bio:
Rasha Dakkak is a Palestinian researcher and maker with publishing and curatorial initiatives alongside working in art and design education. Her research and artistic practice center on the interplay of language, imagery, and education as nuanced soft power tools, disclosing the subtle yet potent dynamics that underlie the creation of canons and narratives and influence the formation of knowledge and its accessibility.

She was formerly trained in visual communication and holds graduate degrees in fine art and design from Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam and The FHNW Academy of Art and Design in Basel.

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Publieksprogramma

Ksenia Perek
White Cube / Manifesto, 2023
15 min Performance

White Cube / Manifesto, 2023 originates from Perek’s critical understanding of the ‘White Cube’ paradigm, comprising its thematics, modes of expression, audience engagement, and the formation of artist’s profiles. The performance presents the audience to a narrative journey to an Art heaven, where the artist explores intriguing questions surrounding trends, aesthetics, gallery life, competition and artistic ingenuity. Additionally, the 15-minutes performance elaborates in sculptural costume and free use of an electric guitar. “Imagine. Out of blue. Far in the ceiling; The Art heaven opens. Blue, pink and rainbow clouds… the techno music plays louder and louder (…) The beam-light transpasses a thin layer of press releases suspended above my head. I see a beautiful sculpture… a unicorn… on top of it – a mermaid, then a chihuahua and on top of that… a small non-binary snail with a permanent housing contract stuck in his shell. (…) I say: “HELLLO?” They say: “WHAT’s your question”? ….” – opening text, White Cube / Manifesto, 2023

Artist Bio:
(b.1993, Poland) is an Amsterdam-based performance artist.

Having graduated from the Fine Arts department (2018, Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, NL), she treats her art performances as an artwork, equal to a painting or a sculpture. She actualises forms such as an interview, letter and a manifesto. Perek elaborates in installation, sculptural costume and free use of an electric guitar. 

In her work she searches for a spectrum of possible positions of fine art and performance art towards collective (political and artistic) memory.

Since 2019 Perek has been represented by ADA gallery in Rome. 

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Met de tweede editie van W139 hosts… zijn we verheugd onze tentoonstellingsruimte te openen voor een dynamisch zeven weken durend programma dat 55 makers en initiatieven de kans biedt om nieuwe projecten of werk-in-uitvoering te presenteren. Tijdens W139 hosts… betrekt elke week een nieuwe samenstelling van makers en collectieven de tentoonstellingsruimte, die omvormt tot een omgeving die voortdurend in verandering is. 

Fotografie door Elodie Vreeburg.

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Maarten Schuurman
All the Galaxies

All the Galaxies explores the act of reenacting. In order to perform Bruce Nauman’s 1967 Square Dance (Dance or Exercise on the Perimeter of a Square) Schuurman translated Nauman’s movements to machine code and built an arcade machine to conduct his movements. Not only the initial set of rules but also the execution by Nauman was adapted resulting in an almost indecipherable logic. While in use the machine orchestrates and monitors the operator, step-by-step, move-by-move. During W139 hosts the arcade machine will be open for public to play/reenact. High Scores will be rewarded!!!

Artists bio: 
Maarten Schuurman (b. 1979, NL) works and lives in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. His practice employs a variety of media including video, print, sculpture, installation, and programming; referencing aspects of (online) gaming culture and celebrating conceptual traditions. Schuurman draws inspiration from contemporary gaming culture. Fascinated by the game not only as a ritual (Johan Huizinga) but also as a set of algorithmic and action based systems, social structures and visual languages. 

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Art to Support
(a) testimony of self-determination

The right to self-determination is considered a fundamental right. However, refugees lose autonomy upon arrival. They can no longer decide where they live, what or when they eat, or who they share a room with. (Undocumented) refugees live in shelters throughout the city, with limited privacy and agency in basic decision-making. Opening a bank account is impossible and prohibits them from moving freely within society. There is debate about migrants but hardly with deteriorating their autonomy even further. However, the collective refuses to label themselves as victims and searches for ways to enhance their autonomy through artistic practice. 

Art to Support is showing works in progress that reflect on their position as (undocumented) refugees within the Netherlands. The works in progress and documentation exhibited represent a testimony that enhances their visibility and voice, through artistic expression. Ultimately enhancing their autonomy while amplifying the necessity to question and explore the invisibility of undocumented migrants within our society. 

Collective bio:
Art to Support is a new collective consisting of undocumented refugees living in Amsterdam. During an initial 10-week program, the collective visited several art institutions and project spaces alternating with dedicated studio time for in-depth exploration of the collective’s artistic narrative. One of the collective’s points of interest is exploring the framework’s surrounding autonomy-making through the means of expression. 

Art to Support is part of Here To Support, which works with undocumented people and aims to make migrants visible, audible, and resilient. The projects are set up by artists, cultural producers, academics, and campaigners in collaboration with undocumented people.

Members of the collective:
Mbatudde Asha, Sidibe Amara, Charles Wakabi, Namata Farida, Ley Ley Diang Mut, Morsy Hmida, Mohamed Mussa Omar, Usman Mendes, and Veronica Lubi

Artist Sharan Bala provides a facilitating role and supports the artistic practice of the collective.

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Bring Your Own Book
bring your own FILE; on A4 publishing

For the duration of the week BYOB is setting up a publishing station at W139. We publish everyone. You are invited to fill out-in-up the given template, which will be printed on demand and distributed in W139 over the span of the week. The publishing station also serves as a display system for the ongoing research on practices around self-publishing. All the printed work left behind will be bound into a publication on the 16th of September.

Find the template here:

byobfair.xyz

Please send the filled in file to byobfair@gmail.com,come print it at W139 with your own USB stick or bring an a4 copy to scan.

Artist Bio:
Bring Your Own Book is a collective that started as a student initiative at the Rietveld academie in 2021. Since then we have been working on an interdisciplinary programme around self-publishing, activated through events, lectures, workshops and book fairs.

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Maria Khatchadourian
Flour, water, salt; when appetite becomes home

“Flour, water, salt; when appetite becomes home” is a work-in-progress where kneading and flatbread-making take center stage as a durational/sculptural artifact; a poetic space where layers of thin crust flatbread, stacked, hold within their structure and gluten, unspoken histories of labor and care – of kinship and hardship. Flatbread, with its three simple ingredients of flour, water and salt, is simple yet so complex and fragile; and like a grain of wheat, we too carry within ourselves, a landscape built upon layers of extraction, lives-as-struggle, rituals of care, erasures, and memories. Throughout this week-long experiment at W139, bread imagery will become a gathering ground where the familiar and unfamiliar overlap; flour and water, against and through the harshness, where appetite becomes home.

Over the coming year, Khatchadourian will be looking into ways to grow this work as a durational, collaborative performance, a hybrid form where movement, food, and archival research become enmeshed.

Artist Bio:
Maria Khatchadourian’s (b.1982) artistic practice exists in a hybrid form at the intersection of food and art. She is currently looking into ways to develop a multi-faceted (sculptural/durational) installation, where food and food imaginaries become the element that weaves together fragments of her research that deals with notions of exile, inherited recipes/embodied knowledge, and the endless search for the conquest of a place; a home which exists only in our memories.

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Paulina Martínez Marín
The Topiary Social Club

The Topiary Social Club is an amateur club. With its founding members—a bunch of topiary balls—we learn from club experts and transfer what we learn to our Club, which mutates to try to generate membership among the topiary balls of the world and anyone else who wants to feel part. Other times we do not mutate, even risking members. 

At first, we were mainly concerned about the legitimacy of our Club, but suddenly it took off. At our previous board meeting, an attendee who now calls themself a member suggested taking a topiary member to London and starting a Club branch there. 

This provocative suggestion of scattering members worldwide seduced us with the idea of expanding. Although we realize that just as we decided not to keep records of our members – to avoid feelings of superiority and using membership to enter spaces- in the case of members moving around, it may lead to imperialistic desires. 

Now, we are left with the challenge of exploring it. In W139, we will discuss this with experts from the exclusive Art Club. Through members’ meetings, conversations about expansion and workshops on members’ falsification, we will occupy the space for 8 days.

Artist bio:
Paulina Martínez Marín is a visual artist and community psychologist from Chile. Her practice entails arts and social processes, exploring different ways of moving with other spaces, objects and beings. 

Inspired by the boredom that the world’s predictability gives her and the surprise that appears when this predictability fails, Paulina’s interest lies in investigating possibilities of dislocating norms within public spaces by introducing strangeness and absurdity. Through play and collaboration, she seeks to trigger complicity with others, provoking ways of relating and flirting with new ways of inhabiting. 

Currently, she is the director of The Topiary Social Club.

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Publieksprogramma

Common Ground
5 hours participatory performance/ workshop

It takes a village to feed a wedding. With Labour of Love we want to invite you to be part of our village, to feed the opening night of Hosts. Together we want to fulfil the expectation of care that would normally fall on the women of the village, by communally rolling a biiiig big pot of warak 3enab (stuffed vine leaves). Through this process, we want to celebrate and mourn the responsibility of feeding; to talk about labour, hands, inherited knowledge and community. As the pot cooks, the smell fills the space testing our patience. Waiting for the big flip, the celebration, the moment of reward. On the menu: labour, sweat, time, dedication, love and flavours. As the food settles in your stomach, satisfaction settles in your soul, and a smell of sourness will haunt you for days to come. You want to eat this food again, but you are too lazy to make it, it takes a lot of labour.

Artist bio:
Common Ground is a collaborative artistic project started by Anna Celda and Saja Amro. Using the dining table and the kitchen as research laboratories, CG creates a caring and comforting space to delve into topics like female labour, inherited knowledge and culinary histories. Inspired by indigenous food cultures and traditions, the duo responds to the individualistic and isolating eating habits of modern life through immersing audiences in sensory experiences that spark reflection and connection, and offering foodscapes of indulgence and abundance.

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Ekat Yawa
Krakend Koken

Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral(?) [First comes the food, then comes morality(?)] (B. Brecht). Everybody needs to eat. And we need to organize a more just way of doing that in Amsterdam. With our experimental work Krakend Koken we are bringing food justice to people through taste and smell. A recipe for experiment: In Amsterdam Centrum there is a wild kitchen available to everyone for free. We show people what there is to forage and all the things you are able to make from this. We invite the community to join us to reclaim the food which is overlooked in the city; tasting and smelling what is around us rather than only picking pre-packaged items from supermarket shelves . Finding new and just routes in the food system, we forage, find and ‘fiend’ from the De Wallen and Waterloopleinbuurt. Together with our audience, we will dissent against the supermarket chains we seemingly cannot get away from and find a new way of being together as a community with food being our love language (or commonality if you don’t like this love language text).

Artist bio:
Ekat Yawa – the art of giving back. We are 3 artists and activists who have met through our activism and now work as an art collective. We have an atelier on the Zwanenburgwal from where we do our artistic and activist activities. This season we foraged elderflower in the city to make hundrerds liters of vlierbier, been active at people’s kitchens across the city and food giveaway markets. Previously we have run a free give-away clothing swap shop. 

Ekat Yawa is made up of: Rots (@upperkutje): poet, contrarian, body builder, reasonable guy — Adil (@notshitprint): printer, video pirate, projectionist (images/emotions) — Bente (@b_nte): sewer, craftsperson, mender

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Erica Gargaglione and Kimberley Cosmilla
The Clingy Bulletin

As publishers of the Bulletin, we care to bring light to collective processes that usually remain behind the scenes. This publication intends to disseminate observations on the terms and relations entailed when organizing cultural events collectively. The Bulletin hosts a jumble of diary entries and stories dissecting the experience of participation in the current exhibition, a collage of open questions, text excerpts, and blank spaces to be filled. Designed on the go, it is a surface facilitating interactions within a collectivity of artists, cultural organizers, audiences, and/or other bodies that happen to be all three at once.

Artist bio:
After they met in the context of a master’s program (XPUB, experimental publishing), Erica and Kimberley began experimenting with collective practices involved in the field of hosting and curating.

Through shapeshifting methods but consistent use of narration, Kimberley focuses her practice on deciphering and documenting sensitive-to-document processes. Her area of concern includes collective processes, collective editorial, dissemination techniques, and vernacular archiving methods. Erica’s work evolves around digital tools and situated small-scale infrastructures that can enable public spaces for communities, relations of care and collaborative autonomy.

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Kexin Hong
Objects In The Mirror Are Closer Than They Seem.
20 min Film

Propaganda exploits a symbolic “Other” to achieve its political objectives and in the post-truth era of social media, historic traumas are either obscured or re-appropriated through sensationalist digital representations. Digital capitalism breeds as the intensity of self-projection perpetuates cycles of sensory numbing which in fact contributes to the construction of a centralized “reality”. Our data and experiences serve authoritarian goals, concealing our traumas and confining our faculties. This process iterates in the post-truth era, catalyzing our repetition compulsion. Objects In the Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear is an art video developed from Kexin’s fictive I-novel to prompt reflection on projective identification and selfhood in the post-truth era of the virtual world. Video allows Kexin to comment on gaze relations in locating the so-called truth, it is this distance that makes “truth” easier to produce and control. The film’s protagonist is suddenly unable to perceive her own reflection in real life and begins instead to project her missing sense of self onto an online character. This virtual other gradually becomes the fictional reality through which the protagonist confirms her identity

Artist bio:
Kexin Hong (b. China) is a multidisciplinary artist and designer working with video, installation and digital fabrication to explore psychosocial and political forces in the digital realm.

Kexin investigates the increasingly blurred lines between reality and virtuality, the real and the fictive, truth and post-truth, particularly in relation to the self and how it responds to bodies of power in the digital age. Kexin investigates the ways in which propaganda exploits a symbolic “Other” to achieve its political objectives, specifically in the context of the post-truth era and 
social media.

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Yan-Zhi Kang
I tried to carry a statue with me
Film

In life, there are certain situations where people have to learn to move on from the past and live life, adapting to new perspectives. During this process, certain things cannot be preserved, while others are constantly remembered, reinforced, and eventually coalesce into beliefs.

While delving into the memories of family within this belief, I discover plausible traces derived from the history of East Asia and ideology originating from geopolitics. By seeking out fragmented pictures of past memories and reenacting them, I attempt to reassemble the ideological tension derived from fragmented beliefs in the past and present, visualizing it in the form of a textual narrative.

Artist bio:
Yan-Zhi Kang (b. 1996) is a visual artist based in The Netherlands. His artistic practice, utilizing video and installations as mediums, seeks to reacquaint us with the seemingly reasonable yet troubling trivialities of everyday life that affect most people. Through research in archival documents, interviews, and narrative reconstructions, he frequently combines first-person narration with the experiences of others to share the emotive encounters hidden beneath the mundane matters of daily life with viewers.

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Hahae Son
Paint me to Life
PERFORMANCE 2 HRS

Using her body as the literal canvas upon which those present may paint, the white layer upon her skin represents the scars the artist has accumulated over the years, as well as being the traditional mourning color of Corea. With the artist herself healing from and addressing societal evils such as loneliness, abuse, and oppression, she invites co-creators to engage in contributing to our collective liberations by asking for consent to “paint only what you need”, above all with a grounding intention of love.

Artist bio:
Hahae Son (she/they) is a multidisciplinary creator working to unravel the spaces between the known and unknowable. Aiming to nurture genuine intimacies, her work explores the meaning of love. 

8 July, SALWA is organizing a conveniently Extremely Late Brunch from 18:00 to 22:00.

The brunch will include interventions and live interviews in collaboration with INC’s The Void. The brunch will inappropriately end by a drag performance by Créme de L’Amer @cremedeamer ⁠
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The event is part of our Internet Café Gatherings and exhibition program, and will take place at W139.⁠
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Tickets are €5.

A Reality Through Words and Images is een groepsscreening van experimentele documentaires, essayfilms en poëzie van Iraanse kunstenaars dat plaatsvindt op 8 Maart bij W139. Het programma introduceert direct of indirect ideeën over doordringbaarheid en entropie, het politieke landschap, het vrouwelijk lichaam, ontheemding en vernieling door tochten in familiegeschiedenissen. Met videowerk van Mehraneh Atashi, Amirali Ghasemi, Mahoor Mirshakkak, VidAmir en Gelare Khoshgozaran, wiens werken de radicale vorm van documentaire en de hedendaagse kunst omarmen. 

Below you will find a list of featured artists’ and their work: 

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Gulistan (Rose Garden) | 06:40 | by Mehraneh Atashi, 2011

Based on a poem written by Saadi, a 13th century Persian poet: “The night was spent at the garden with a friend; such a pleasant setting with tree branches meeting above, as if pieces of crystal and the cluster of pleiades were hanging from its vines. In the morning, when the thought of returning exceeded the desire to stay, I saw my friend ready to leave for the city with a lapful of flowers, basil, and hyacinth. I said: “As you know, flowers do not last and unfulfilled are the promises of the garden. Men of wisdom advise against attachment to that which is ephemeral.” “So, what is to be done?” asked my friend. I replied: “For the pleasure of observers and the delight of those present, I shall compose the gulistan (‘The flower garden’) whose pages the autumnal wind cannot rend and whose vernal bliss the passage of time cannot turn to the woes of winter.”

Mehraneh Atashi (b. Tehran, Iran) Atashi holds a BFA in Photography from Tehran University of Art, IR and completed the two-year residency at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, NL. Mehraneh’s work unfolds between the time of the self and the time of the world. Through an excavation of memories, archiving and documentation of the self. Her works have been exhibited internationally.

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Sediment | 18:00 | by Vida Kashani and Amir Komelizadeh, 2019

‘Sediment’ is a short docu-fiction film. In this film, which takes place both in Iran and the Netherlands, there is a focus on girls and women in two cultures—Iranian and Dutch—which provides the viewer another way to look at diversities. There is a sense of sameness, rather than individuality, that emerges, despite their differing social and cultural environments. But at the same time, the viewer is aware of their very real social, economic and cultural divides. The film is a visualisation of gaps and struggles in the stories and the upbringing of women which causes social injustices in both cultures. 

Vida Kashani (b. Tehran, Iran) and Amir Komelizadeh (b. Tehran, Iran) have a collaborative artistic practice under the name ‘VidAmir’, that moves from Iran outward to places such as the Netherlands, where they have been living since 2011. VidAmir’s practice encompasses the practices of art, filmmaking, installation, and is united conceptually by interests in poetry, storytelling, archive, and politics which provoke new imaginaries that are equally bound to aesthetics. VidAmir centre collaboration in their practice; they have thus far completed several projects in intensive collaborations with musicians, philosophers, and citizens. Their work has been screened/exhibited internationally. 

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Beak of Lies | 06:05 | Amirali Ghasemi  and Mahoor Mirshakkak, 2020

‘Beak of Lies’ is based on a poem of the same name by Amirali Ghasemi. It has been a while that he has been collecting his empty asthma inhalers, which are used in the film to visualise the poem. Mahoor Mirshakkak recorded the audio and video of the piece as Amirali Ghasemie re-performed the part. ‘Burning Things’ is an archival installation/expanded cinema project. It was developed and executed in the quarantine period as a self-assigned residency program at New Media Projects. 

The gloomy and bizarre words emulate events surrounding us in 2020 besides the political climate that made it even worse. The calm atmosphere of the analog lab creates an immediate unbalance when the mechanical aspect of making Photograms (without paper) creates a passing moment: the words will only last a few seconds. Though it is enough for the performer to read them, the words will inevitably disappear into the void. 

Amirali Ghasemi (b. Tehran, Iran) is a curator, media artist and a graphic designer based between Tehran & Berlin. Ghasemi has shown his photographs, videos, design works in various festivals and exhibitions internationally. As a curator he has been directing many exhibitions, workshops, and talks for Parkingallery projects, such as *Deep Depression (2004-06), Sideways (2008).

Mahoor Mirshakkak (b. Tehran, Iran) is a multimedia artist, filmmaker and sound designer who lives and works in Tehran. She holds a bachelor’s degree in painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Tehran University.

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Royal Debris | 35:00 | by Gelare Khoshgozaran (b. Tehran, Iran), 2022

Located at 3005 Massachusetts Ave N.W. Washington D.C., the former embassy of Iran in the US has been shuttered for four decades. The vacant and abandoned building embodies a contradiction: it is a ruin due to its deteriorating condition caused, in large part, by the ongoing US sanctions on Iran, and it is privileged with an exceptional protection thanks to its ‘foreign mission’ status. Taking the building’s symbolic and material status as its departure point, Royal Debris is a rumination on borders, displacement and ruination through excursions into family history, architecture, poetry and contemporary arts.

Gelare Khoshgozaran (b. Tehran, Iran) is an artist, filmmaker and writer whose work engages with the legacies of imperial violence. She uses film and video to explore narratives of belonging outside of the geographies and temporalities that have both unsettled our sense of home, and make our places of affinity uninhabitable. Gelare has exhibited internationally and is an editor at MARCH: a journal of art and strategy.

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Het programma is samengesteld door Vida Kashani, een onafhankelijke Iraanse filmmaker, schrijver, multimedia kunstenaar en producent, werkend tussen Amsterdam en Groningen. Ze heeft een master in Kunst en Design, richting moving image, van het Sandberg Instituut. Ze wordt vaak geïnspireerd door haar socio-politieke ontmoetingen en is daarom geïnteresseerd in het vertellen van onvertelde verhalen over onderwerpen als gender, vrouw-zijn en over inwoners van neo-liberale steden. Ze vertelt deze verhalen met poëtische benadering, voortkomend uit haar Perzische achtergrond. 

In de nasleep van de opstand van Jina (woman, life freedom) heeft Vida Kashani een avond samengesteld met videowerk van Iraanse kunstenaars in de hoop enig inzicht te bieden in de situatie in Iran. Het huidige Iraanse protest is een reactie op de dood van Jina Mahsa Amini, een jonge vrouw van Koerdische afkomst die stierf nadat ze door de zedenpolitie was gearresteerd wegens een ongepaste hijab. In meer dan 160 steden is gedemonstreerd, wat de grootste golf van protesten is in jaren. Tijdens deze avond willen solidariteit creëren met de strijd van de ongelooflijk moedige Iraanse mensen die vechten voor gelijkheid, vrijheid en mensenrechten. 

Tijdens de avond kunt u geld doneren dat gaat naar in Iran gevestigde NGO’s die activistische vrouwenrechtenorganisaties zoals Mehrafarin en Nedaye Mandegar ondersteunen. 

Wilt u dit evenement bijwonen? Reserveer dan een (gratis) ticket via Eventbrite, zo weten we hoeveel mensen we kunnen verwachten.

Voor haar tienjarig jubileum is WhyNot Festival neergestreken in W139, waar het festival zijn start maakte met avonden gevuld met dans, performance, muziek en beeldende kunst. Deze avond is gecureerd in samenwerking met Julidans, Vlaams Cultuurhuis de Brakke Grond, Veem House for Performance en Cinedans.

Het festivalprogramma focust zich op het lichaam en architectuur, beweging en grenzen in breedste zin van het woord. Hoe zien performancekunstenaars en choreografen de rol van het lichaam in relatie tot geven, nemen of het definiëren van een ruimte? Welke rol spelen grenzen, zij het fysiek of cultureel, voor onze bewegingsvrijheid? En, hoeveel persoonlijke ruimte kunnen we claimen in een stad dat uit de voegen lijkt te barsten, en welke zich bevindt in een wereld welke onderhevig is aan deze druk?

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Programma

In de zes uur durende performance Relay van choreografe/performer Ula Sickle zweeft een zwarte vlag die door een groep performers voortdurend in beweging wordt gehouden, refererend aan de vele protesten wereldwijd. Het klapperen van de stof wordt een geluidschoreografie in een fascinerende test van uithoudingsvermogen. In Spell Action #1 onderzoekt installatie- en performancekunstenaar Ruta Butkute hoe een object in een ruimtelijke omgeving andere ‘lichamen’ kan leiden. Dunja Jocic brengt met Resident een beklemmend dansstuk over een man die langzaam vervreemd raakt van zijn eigen appartement. Clara Amaral geeft de ruimte van de W139 een extra dimensie met haar beeldscherm-voorstelling In our eyes, a cascade, een spel in perspectief. Scenograaf en ontwerper Theun Mosk verkent speciaal voor WhyNot de ruimte van de W139 en doet ingrepen die het publiek als vanzelf door de ruimte laat bewegen. Choreografe Fabienne Vegt maakte Scripted Space voor drie ijzersterke dansers (Chloé Albaret, César Faria Fernandes, Marne van Opstal) van het gerenommeerde Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT 1), waarin ze bewegingen en vormen terughalen die ooit op hun lichaam zijn geschreven. Begeleid door live muziek van o.a. Frank Rosaly (percussie), Torbjorn Zetterberg (bas) en Cene Resnik (saxofoon) vloeit de performance over in een feestje, waarbij geluidskunstenaar Salvador Breed (o.a. mede-curator Le Guess Who 2019) ons in zijn dj-set meeneemt op een dwaaltocht door muzikale werelden.

Verder op het programma o.a. de Merce Cunningham film Assemblage (1968) i.s.m. Cinedans, de eenpersoons-installatie GAIA Rising van Annika Kappner en Theun Mosk, een talk over micro- en macroscopische huizen door Rietveld-alumni Dr. Esmee Geerken en meer!

Om goed voorbereid op de dansvloer te staan kun je op zaterdag ook twee dansworkshops volgen van Mirte Courtens en Katharina Conradi.

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Tijdschema

15:00 – 20:15 Ula Sickle: Relay (WhyNot & Brakke Grond)
17:00 BAU lab presentations
19:00 Esmee Geerken: On macro- and microscopic houses
20:20 Ruta Butkute: Spell Action #1
21:00 Clara Amaral: In our eyes, a cascade (WhyNot & Veem)
22:00 Dunja Jocic: Resident (WhyNot & Julidans)
22:45 Fabienne Vegt: Scripted Space
23:00 Impro + dj set Salvador Breed
01:00 einde

Doorlopend:
15:00 – 01:00 Annika Kappner: Gaia Rising (installation, 20′)
15:00 – 01:00 Merce Cunningham: Assemblage (dance film, 58′)
15:00 – 01:00 Theun Mosk: One Floor (installation)