IF
I
CAN’T
DANCE,
IF
I
CAN’T
DANCE,
I DON’T WANT TO BE PART OF YOUR REVOLUTION
 

Education is a key site through which we share in and contribute to the field of performance. We teach yearly courses at the Dutch Art Institute (ArtEZ) and the School of New Dance Development (Academy of Theatre and Dance), and guest teach and give workshops at institutions in the Netherlands and abroad.


Long-term collaboration with artists and researchers is central to our work. These endeavours take shape in artistic practice (Artist Commissions) and research into performance genealogies (Research Commissions). While these new productions follow their own unique paths, they remain in dialogue with the field of inquiry underlying each respective biannual programme.


Every two-year cycle coalesces around a field of inquiry invested in performance and performativity. Fellows lead a Reading Group to theoretically and artistically explore this material that is grounded in the social and political rituals of daily life. The gleanings are shared in Open Reading Groups guided by guests, and unpacked in conversations with local practitioners on Radio Emma and in Exhibitions presented in our Library. Finally, Readers document this dynamic and collaborative research.




2023-24
Master course
Dutch Art Institute – COOP 23/24

The Word and the Wound

Course

2023-2024

The study group opened a series of reflections on practice and its roots in everyday life. The “word” is synonymous with work; the “wound” denotes an environment. In this sense, the title is open to different questions about the relationship between artistic practice and context. This form of ‘work’ can be viewed in connection to what we can call the creative process. But what is creation? How do we actually initiate a process of creation?  How do we form, and how are we formed by, daily life? And how can we – as proposed by Italian feminist Wanda Tommasi – understand working as a process of symbolic creation that leads to repair?

 

These questions are used to encourage the study group to think about their daily (artistic) practices, and to find methodologies through which individual and collective work can be performed and sustained.

 

Course tutors: Snejanka Mihaylova, Frédérique Bergholtz

 

Students: Ania Yilmaz, Ariell Zéphyr, Cristina Ramos González, Elif Cadoux, Helena Estrela, Lisa Vlamings, Maria Miguel Pratas, Sam Mountford, Seán Bean, Stephen McEvoy, Tereza Darmovzalová, Valeria Moro, and Yi-Hong Wang (Hong).

 

Read full syllabus

 

Sites

 

Nida, Lithuania

 

Essaouira, Morocco

 

Middelburg, Netherlands

 

Amsterdam, Netherlands

 

 

2022–23
Edition IX

Bodies and Technologies

Finale

September 2023 – February 2024

Programme booklet Finale Edition IX – Bodies and Technologies. Photo: Maarten Nauw

It is with great pleasure that we invite you to the Finale of Edition IX – Bodies and Technologies, featuring artists (collectives) Black Speaks Back and Constantina Zavitsanos, and researchers Susanne Altmann, Devika Chotoe, Samia Henni, Nuraini Juliastuti, and Grant Watson. During a seasonal festival, taking place from September 2023 through February 2024 across Amsterdam venues, they present their new productions and publications. Each in their own way, they tackle the complex and plural entanglements between bodies and technologies – from experiences of pleasure and intimacy to the ongoing embodied realities of colonial and ableist frameworks.


Image description
Cover of the programme booklet, with text in Times font on white background, stating: Finale Edition IX – Bodies and Technogolgies; names of the participating artists and researchers: Susanne Altmann, Black Speaks Back, Samia Henni, Nuraini Juliastuti, and Constantina Zavitsanos; dates: September 2023-February 2024; and the city where the programme will take place: Amsterdam.

Acknowledgements

The Edition IX commission series is curated by programme curators Sara Giannini and
Megan Hoetger in conversation with the If I Can’t Dance artistic team.

Venues across Amsterdam

 

Programme booklet

Artist Commissions
Black Speaks Back

Black Speaks Back (est. 2016, Brussels. Based in Amsterdam) is a Belgo-Dutch grassroots media platform for multidimensional Black narratives. Their film tackles issues of hyper-sexualisation, cultural fragmentation and collective remembrance at the boundaries between intimacy and sexuality, freedom and conditioning, and myth and reality. The Zwarte Ibis project is led by Chris (Ci) Rickets and Alexine Gabriela in collaboration with Smita James.

Musoke Nalwoga on ZWARTE IBIS

Visitor report

Spring 2024

Musoke Nalwoga on ‘ZWARTE IBIS, visitor report Portrait: Musoke Nalwoga, photo by Simara van Bochove.
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At If I Can’t Dance we see the visitor report as a method of documentation. The affectual, relational and embodied nature of performance work is not always easily captured in audio-visual formats. To supplement such formats, If I Can’t Dance commissions written visitor reports, offer subjective responses to a lived experience of a work and its context. The visitor report is, therefore, not to be confused with a critical review. It is first and foremost a form of witnessing. The people commissioned to write the report span a range of positions and practices within and outside the field of art. For the premiere of Black Speaks Backs’ film ZWARTE IBIS we invited curator and researcher Musoke Nalwoga.

Read the visitor report

Inside ZWARTE IBIS

Artist talk and Film screening

Saturday 3 February 2024, 17hr

Behind-the-scenes documentation of 'Zwarte Ibis', 2023, photo: Henck Pengel.

This moving artist talk connects BSB’s installation at CBK Zuidoost with the Bijlmerbios movie theater. Members of the collective gather to discuss their collaborative production process, as well as the central role of Amsterdam’s Bijlmer neighbourhood within their project.


Acknowledgements

ZWARTE IBIS is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger. The artist talk and screening are realised in partnership with CBK Zuidoost and the Bijlmerbios. Special thanks to CBK event programme curator Claudio Ritfeld for his support of the artist talk.

Begins at CBK Zuidoost
Anton de Komplein 120
1102 DR Amsterdam

 

Free with registration for the film screening

ZWARTE IBIS

Film premiere 

Friday 12 January & Saturday 13 January 2024, 19hr

Poster for 'ZWARTE IBIS'. Design by Naomi Quartey. 
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The collective invites audiences to join them for world premiere of ZWARTE IBIS, their newest short film, which portrays a young Black woman’s quest for intimacy in a world where the boundaries between the individual and the collective, the political and the personal, the past and the present, become ever blurrier. The screenings are accompanied by a welcoming DJ set, singing bowl performance, and post-screening panel discussions on black intimacy featuring members of the cast and crew.


Acknowledgements

ZWARTE IBIS is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger who also serves as the film’s production supervisor. The production of the film was made possible with the support of a “Research, Act & Reflect” grant from Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie, and the premiere programme is realised in partnership with Africadelic, Caribbean Creativity, and Re/Presenting Europe. Special thanks to Melkweg, Amsterdam for hosting the programme.

 

Co-producer: La Fam

Director: Emma-Lee Amponsah

Composer: Chris “Ci” Rickets

Writing team: Nohely Koeyers, Emma-Lee Amponsah, Chris “Ci” Rickets, and Alexine Gabriela

Director of Photography: Henck Pengel

Edited by: Chris Tjong Ayong

Color grading: Yavuz Salim Isler

Text: Mathieu Charles

Narrator: Burnice Hiwat

Lead Actress: Henriette “Aelia Sapph” Valies



Melkweg

Lijnbaansgracht 234A

1017 PH Amsterdam

 

Tickets:

€11 regular / Cineville free

First screening (fully booked)

Second screening (fully booked)

 

 

Zwarte Ibis: An Exploration of Black Intimacy

Exhibition

Thursday 7 December 2023 – Saturday 3 February 2024

Exhibition Opening Thursday 7 December 2023, 17–20hr

Free with registration here

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As a culmination of their time in CBK Zuidoost’s BijlmAIR residency, the collective’s presents an installation featuring audio and visual materials from their production process, including: recordings from their 2022 Kitchen Table Talks, collective notes from scriptwriting in February 2023 and behind-the-scenes footage from filming in summer 2023.


Accessibility information

– Seats available

– Ground floor, wheelchair accessible

– Wheelchair accessible WC; gender-neutral WC

– Language: Dutch and English


Acknowledgements

ZWARTE IBIS is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger. The installation is realised in the frame of the CBK Zuidoost BijlmAIR Residency programme as part of the exhibition ‘AIR in Zuidoost #2023.’ Special thanks to Renske de Jong and Yazan Maksoud for their support with constructing the installation.

 

CBK Zuidoost
Anton de Komplein 120
1102 DR Amsterdam

Opening times: Tuesday – Friday 11–17hr; Saturday 10–17hr

 

Free

The Making of Zwarte Ibis

Work-in-Process

From May 2023

Black Speaks Back, ‘Zwarte Ibis: Preliminary Experiments’ (2022), performance presentation for the If I Can’t Dance Edition IX – Bodies and Technologies Introductory Event, Amsterdam. Photo: Maarten Nauw.

The grassroots media collective introduces aspects of their film-in-the-making Zwarte Ibis through a series of three media campaigns that share elements of their research, scriptwriting and filming processes. Featuring a Zwarte Ibis music playlist, the studio page includes re-broadcasted material from the group’s Instagram story archive and a wide network of hyperlinks to follow, taking visitors inside the topic of intimacy, histories of (Black) cinema and the behind-the-scenes of their film set.


Image description

Full colour photo depicting in the foreground a row of three, loosely positioned full-length mirrors, free standing on wheels, with each having several wax lights on their base. In the background are two people sitting on a table, in front of a wall covered in a red glow and depicting the video-projected sentence: ‘Has your Blackness formed your experience of intimacy?’. The mirrors reflect fragments of a theatre tribune, flight cases and the audience.


Acknowledgements

ZWARTE IBIS is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger who conceived and realised the online studio room in collaboration with Kommerz design studio.

If I Can’t Dance Studio

Zwarte Ibis: The Spirit of Black Intimacies

Screening & Performance

Saturday 2 July 2022, 11–19hr

Black Speaks Back, ‘Zwarte Ibis: The Spirit of Black Intimacies’ (2022), screening and performance. Photo: Maarten Nauw. Black Speaks Back, ‘Zwarte Ibis: The Spirit of Black Intimacies’ (2022), screening and performance. Photo: Maarten Nauw. Black Speaks Back, ‘Zwarte Ibis: The Spirit of Black Intimacies’ (2022), screening and performance. Photo: Maarten Nauw. Black Speaks Back, ‘Zwarte Ibis: The Spirit of Black Intimacies’ (2022), screening and performance. Photo: Maarten Nauw.
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A multimedia performance in which the collective experiments with audio, visual and somatic strategies for approaching the question, ‘how do Black people navigate the intimate sphere in a context where their bodies are heavily politicised and under constant interrogation?’ The mirror plays a key role, foregrounding the frameworks of projection and internalisation through which intimacies with self and others are formed.


Image description
Square graphic logo in black-and-white monochromatic colour scheme where ‘the ground’ is flat black and ‘the figure’ a stark white pairing of the words ‘Zwarte’ and ‘Ibis’. ‘Zwarte’ appears more-or-less in the centre of the graphic, and ‘Ibis’ is right-centred with the ‘Ibi’ aligned directly below the ‘te’ of Zwarte. The ‘s’ in Ibis transforms into the long-beaked head of an ibis bird.

Acknowledgements

ZWARTE IBIS is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger.

 

If I Can’t Dance is structurally supported by the Mondriaan Fund and the AFK (Amsterdam Fund for the Arts); the productions in Edition IX are realized with financial support of Ammodo and Cultuurfonds.

 

Special thanks to Likeminds for hosting the event.

Likeminds (formerly Dansmakers)
Gedempt Hamerkanaal 203
1021 KP Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

€17 regular / €13 student
(includes meal)

 

Part of Edition IX Introductory Event

 

For tickets see Introductory Event listing

Jessika Khazrik

Jessika Khazrik (b. 1991, Beirut. Lives in Beirut and Berlin) is an artist, composer, writer and technologist whose ‘indisciplinary’ practice involves performance, machine learning, ecotoxicology, cryptography, visual art, history of science and music. Working towards a hyper-media performance, she explores the convergences of the histories of science and magic through fieldwork and rehearsals in environmental medicine research centres and scientific laboratories for sonocytology, biomedical imagery and exposome studies.

قرابادين Pharmakopoeia

Essay-Performance

Saturday 2 July 2022, 11–19hr

Jessika Khazrik, ‘ قرابادين Pharmakopoeia’ (2022), essay-performance. Photo: Maarten Nauw. Jessika Khazrik, ‘ قرابادين Pharmakopoeia’ (2022), essay-performance. Photo: Maarten Nauw. Jessika Khazrik, ‘ قرابادين Pharmakopoeia’ (2022), essay-performance. Photo: Maarten Nauw. Jessika Khazrik, ‘ قرابادين Pharmakopoeia’ (2022), essay-performance. Photo: Maarten Nauw. Jessika Khazrik, ‘ قرابادين Pharmakopoeia’ (2022), essay-performance. Photo: Maarten Nauw. Jessika Khazrik, ‘ قرابادين Pharmakopoeia’ (2022), essay-performance. Photo: Maarten Nauw.
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The artist maps out the plural strands of research that depart from pharmacopoeia, the formularies of shared remedies that would, up until some centuries ago, thoroughly instruct how to identify ailments and prepare compound medicines. Questioning the linguistic, environmental and techno-political links between remedies, medicine and media, Khazrik delves into the divinatory afterlives and militarised roots of biomedical practices of sonification, sensing, imaging and anamnesis.


Image description

Palimpsestic project image of قرابادين Pharmakopoeia. Realised digitally, the graphics mixes, almost in a steganographic way, different colours (ranging from acid green, to red, purple and pink), geometric patterns (mainly circles, crescents, lines and triangles), slightly floral shapes, images and Arabic scripts. The composition has a square landscape orientation. It centres the project title in light fluorescent green and an image of colourful small balls or pearls. These two elements are positioned against a light, patterned, square background that is framed by stronger green- and purple-coloured shapes.


Acknowledgements

Commissioned by If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution and co-produced with Iaspis – The Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s International Programme for Visual and Applied Arts as part of their Holes, Spirals, Waves (2022) programme. Part of the research is carried out at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Munich where Khazrik is an artist in residence from spring 2022 to spring 2023.

 

If I Can’t Dance is structurally supported by the Mondriaan Fund and the AFK (Amsterdam Fund for the Arts); the productions in Edition IX are realized with financial support of Ammodo and Cultuurfonds.

 

Special thanks to Likeminds for hosting the event.

Likeminds  (formerly Dansmakers)
Gedempt Hamerkanaal 203
1021 KP Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

€17 regular / €13 student
(includes meal)

 

Part of Edition IX Introductory Event

 

For tickets see Introductory Event listing

Constantina Zavitsanos

Constantina Zavitsanos (b. 1977, Reading, United States. Lives in New York City, United States) works in sculpture, performance, text and sound to elaborate what’s invaluable in the re/production of debt, dependency and means beyond measure – sometimes sculpting inaudible sound waves or the performance of everyday life like school loan debt or years of sleep. Continuing their interference with what is perceivably accessed, they experiment with heat, infrared light, infrasound, haptics and written scores beyond sight and fixed form.

Staci Bu Shea on Entrophy

Visitor report

Spring 2024

Staci Bu Shea on ‘Entrophy’, visitor report Portrait: Staci Bu Shea, photo by Zazie Stevens.
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At If I Can’t Dance we see the visitor report as a method of documentation. The affectual, relational and embodied nature of performance work is not always easily captured in audio-visual formats. To supplement such formats, If I Can’t Dance commissions written visitor reports, which offer subjective responses to a lived experience of a work and its context. The visitor report is, therefore, not to be confused with a critical review. It is first and foremost a form of witnessing. The people commissioned to write the report span a range of positions and practices within and outside the field of art. For Entrophy we invited curator and writer Staci Bu Shea.

Read the visitor report

Entrophy

Performance(s)

Saturday 30 September 2023, 15hr & 18hr

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A set of three performances (on-site and online) catalysed by the artist and conjured with the performers who co-create them through an experimental score belonging to no one. In a space of collaboration and not-knowing, the works unfold through chance, improvisation, shared in/capacities and desire. Moving across thresholds of perception, the performance(s) are inhabited by sound, infrasound and infrared light. Each has air and water; some have fire and only one has earth. Repeated twice at different tempos, time flows in many directions as well as through layered descriptions, interpretations and captions.

 

Performers and co-creators of the score: Angelo Custódio and Pedro Matias, S*an D. Henry-Smith and Geo Wyex


Image description

A cropped photograph taken in a two-mirror Schlieren system (with knife edge) shows a black background that hosts otherwise invisible entropic air currents against the shadowed ground of a telescope mirror. Two fingers curl over an igniting open flame that lights a candle. It’s serving something in the blur of mourning and celebration; the vibe is a bit of a full moon feel.


Accessibility information

– Hybrid performance(s), online and on-site
– Live-stream on Zoom
– The on-site performance(s) are seated. There will be priority seats for wheelchair users as well as for deaf and hard of hearing audiences. If you come a bit earlier, our hosts will help you find a spot
– Ground floor, wheelchair accessible
– Wheelchair accessible WC downstairs via elevator; gender-neutral WC
– Language: English
– The performance(s) employ sound and infrasound (vibrations)
– Sign language interpretation (NGT on-site, ASL online)
– CART captioning (Dutch and English on-site, English online)
– Poetic audio description (English, both on-site and online)
– Masking during the performance(s) is welcome and highly encouraged; masks are available at the entrance
– Splendor has a café where you can hang out before and after the event


Acknowledgements

Concept: Constantina Zavitsanos
Initiator of the score: Constantina Zavitsanos
Performers and co-creators of the score: Angelo Custódio and Pedro Matias, S*an D. Henry-Smith and Geo Wyex
Curator and production manager: Sara Giannini
Stage manager: Annick Kleizen
Set design: Constantina Zavitsanos with the performers
AV: Leroy Chaar
Light design: Marion Tränkle
In-house technician and floor manager: Thomas Myrmel
Live-stream production: Hans van Eck, Barry Jonas and Zsolt Szederkényi
Production assistance: Sancha Meca Castro
NGT interpreters and Dutch CART: Faye Schippers and Clarissa van den Elzen
ASL interpreters: Candace Davider and company
English CART: Veerle Haverhals
Audio description on-site and online: Constantina Zavitsanos
Front of house team: Naomi Collier Broms and Sancha Meca Castro
Accessibility advisors: Staci Bu Shea and Annick Kleizen
Zoom production advisors: Patrick Mahaney and Lauren Parrish
Accessibility financial support: I Wanna Be With You Everywhere

 

We would like to thank I Wanna Be With You Everywhere for their generous contribution in making the event more widely accessible. We are also very grateful to Eliane Baudet, Staci Bu Shea, Marja de Kinderen, Annick Kleizen, Patrick Mahaney, Lauren Parrish and Simon(e) van Saarlos for sharing their expertise and advising us in different phases of the project. Finally, a warm thank you to the Splendor collective, and in particular to Nora Fisher, for hosting the programme.

 

On-site:
Splendor
Nieuwe Uilenburgerstraat 116,
1011 LX Amsterdam

 

Tickets:

€16,50 regular / €10 students

 

– First slot: Saturday 30 September 2023, 15-16:30hr (Fully booked)*

– Second slot: Saturday 30 September 2023, 18-19:30hr (Fully booked)*

 

Online:
The event will be live-streamed on zoom 
Free with registration

 

* Each slot includes all three performances.
They are presented one after the other with no intermission.

Entrophy

Score

A twist on the deductive reasoning game Twenty Questions, this performance score reflects the artist’s research into entropy, polyvocality and indeterminacy. Initiated by the artist, it is formed collectively with the performers who will stage it. With Zavitsanos in the role of the guesser, the performers are asked to think of ‘absolutely nothing’ before answering a set of twenty yes/no questions about the performance they will enact. Their answers determine the performances in a space of collaboration and not-knowing, unfolding through chance, improvisation, shared in/capacities and desire.


Acknowledgements

Concept and score: Constantina Zavitsanos
Performers, interpreters and co-creators of the score: Angelo Custódio and Pedro Matias, S*an D. Henry-Smith and Geo Wyex

Experimenting with Entrophy

Work-in-Process

From May 2023

Two images of the glowing filaments mounted above the central plane of the methanol pool fire

In their studio room, the artist opens a window into their own studio while working towards Entrophy, a series of collaborative performances riffing on questions of entropy, heat, interdependency and shared in/capacities. Here they share the research and experimentations that underlie these performances: from visual references and tests with heat and infrared cameras, to different engagements with accessibility and modes of seeing.


Image description

Two side by side images. Against a dark background, cold blue smoke-like shadows are scored by repeating horizontal lines of bright light.

If I Can’t Dance Studio

Entrophy

Lecture-Performance

Saturday 2 July 2022, 11–19hr

Constantina Zavitsanos, ‘Entrophy’ (2022), lecture-performance. Photo: Maarten Nauw. Constantina Zavitsanos, ‘Entrophy’ (2022), lecture-performance. Photo: Maarten Nauw. Constantina Zavitsanos, ‘Entrophy’ (2022), lecture-performance. Photo: Maarten Nauw. Constantina Zavitsanos, ‘Entrophy’ (2022), lecture-performance. Photo: Maarten Nauw. Constantina Zavitsanos, ‘Entrophy’ (2022), lecture-performance. Photo: Maarten Nauw.
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The artist shares their experimentation with heat through technologies and performance tactics that unravel at the perceived limits of the sensorial, opening up sight, sound and measurability to a dimension of feeling. Instead of treating heat as something that can be captured for observance by an audience, the artist works with the felt, shared qualities of heat among bodies in space.


Image description

A black screen hosts two lines of overlapping projected captions in white and grey. The two texts interrupt and join one another in partial occlusion that complicates the legibility of one and produces new texture. Joined text reads as: ‘Slick in the The way up and down is the same the Heisenberg cut like a band Each lives the death of the other cedes our birth.’

 

A black screen hosts two lines of overlapping projected captions in white and grey. The two texts interrupt and join one another in partial occlusion that complicate the legibility of one and produces new texture. Joined text reads: ‘Hotel, motel, you don’t tell. She got a boson for her birthday and wore it out in quar.’


Acknowledgements

Entrophy is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Sara Giannini. 

 

If I Can’t Dance is structurally supported by the Mondriaan Fund and the AFK (Amsterdam Fund for the Arts); the productions in Edition IX are realized with financial support of Ammodo and Cultuurfonds.

 

Special thanks to Likeminds for hosting the event.

Likeminds  (formerly Dansmakers)
Gedempt Hamerkanaal 203
1021 KP Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

€17 regular / €13 student
(includes meal)

 

Part of Edition IX Introductory Event

 

For tickets see Introductory Event listing

Research Commissions
Susanne Altmann

Susanne Altmann (lives and works in Dresden) is a feminist art historian, curator, and leading scholar in the contextualisation of women’s artistic production in former East Germany, working to reorient historical understandings of the region in relation to Eastern Europe rather than to the West. Her new research investigates media experimentation connecting women’s art and working methods, from the early Soviet avant-garde through the last years of the Eastern Bloc.

Elisabeth Rafstedt on When Technology Was Female

Visitor report

Spring 2024

Elioa Steffen on the reading performance of Grant Watson’s ‘How We Behave’, visitor report Portrait: Elisabeth Rafstedt, photo by Rietlanden Women's Office.
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At If I Can’t Dance we see the visitor report as a method of documentation. The affectual, relational and embodied nature of performance work is not always easily captured in audio-visual formats. To supplement such formats, If I Can’t Dance commissions written visitor reports, which offer subjective responses to a lived experience of a work and its context. The visitor report is, therefore, not to be confused with a critical review. It is first and foremost a form of witnessing. The people commissioned to write the report span a range of positions and practices within and outside the field of art. For the conversation and film programme accompanying the launch of Susanne Altman’s publication we invited designer Elisabeth Rafstedt.

Read the visitor report

When Technology Was Female: Histories of Construction and Deconstruction, 1917-1989

Publication

Available via the If I Can’t Dance webshop

Continuities and ruptures between the early Soviet (c.1917) and late state socialist (c.1980s) periods are examined through detailed discussions of a wide range of women’s artistic practices, including Liubov Popova, Varvara Stepanova, Tina Bara, Sibylle Bergemann, Věra Chytilová, Natalia LL, Dora Maurer, the Erfurt Women Artists’ Group, Běla Kolářová, Evelyn Richter, Zorka Ságlová, and many others. Featuring over one hundred images of works ranging from costume sketches and stage maquettes, to photographs and film stills, the book offers a sweeping study of over seventy years of women’s artistic production and is meant for any reader engaged at the intersections of feminist and (post-)socialist art histories.

 

Author: Susanne Altmann
Graphic design: Experimental Jetset
Managing editor: Megan Hoetger
Series editor: Frédérique Bergholtz
Copy editor: Janet Grau
Page count: 320
ISBN: 978-94-92139-22-1


Acknowledgements

When Technology Was Female: Histories of Construction and Deconstruction, 1917-1989 is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger who also serves as managing editor for the publication.

 

Special thanks to all who allowed for image reproductions, including: A.Lupas, P420, Bologna, and the Pejkoski Collection, London; The Art Institute of Chicago/ Art Resource, New York/ Scala Florence; the Deutsche Fotothek; Dóra Maurer and the Vintage Galéria, Budapest; Else Gabriel; the Estate of Běla Kolářová; the Estate of Zorka Ságlová and Hunt Kastner Gallery, Prague; the Evelyn Richter Archiv der Ostdeutschen Sparkassenstiftung im Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig; Jan Krumbach and the Ester Krumbachová Archive; the Kunstsammlung Jena; Lindenau-Museum Altenburg; the Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest; MOMus – Museum of Modern Art – Costakis Collection, Thessaloniki; Monika Andres; the Museum of Modern Art, New York/ Scala, Florence; the Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin; Ostkreuz – Agentur der Fotografen GmbH; the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden; Tina Bara; Verena Kyselka; and Zofia Kulik and the KwieKulik Foundation.

When Technology Was Female

Film programme

Saturday 20 January 2024, 14–18hr

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Taking over all three floors of the Goethe’s canal house on Herengracht, the installation features a selection of works from across different geographic, temporal and aesthetic constellations, including greater- and lesser-known works like Aelita (1924, dir. Yakov Protazanov); Zemlya (1929, dir. Oleksandr Dovzhenko); Fraülein Schmetterling (1965, dir. Kurt Barthel); Daisies (1966, dir. Věra Chytilová); Wäscherinnen (1972, dir. Jürgen Böttcher); Getting to Know the Big Wide World (1979, dir. Kira Muratova); and Signale (1989, Erfurt Women Artists’ Group).


Accessibility information

– Seated event
– First floor, no elevator
– No wheelchair accessible WC; gender neutral WC
– Language: English


Acknowledgements

When Technology Was Female is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger.

 

Technical preparation of the programme was supported by Julia Sokolnicka with installation assistance from Viola Karsten and the team of Goethe-Institut Amsterdam.

Goethe-Institut Amsterdam
Herengracht 470

1017 CA Amsterdam

 

€7,50 regular / €5 students
Purchase your ticket here

When Technology Was Female

Book Launch

Saturday 20 January 2024, 18.30-20hr

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Following an afternoon film programme is a lively conversation between the art historian and design collective Experimental Jetset with whom she worked to realise her book’s experimental form. Moderated by Megan Hoetger (managing editor), they discuss performativity, strategies of enactment, and the intersections with political histories of design that link the early Soviet avant-garde, the (post-)punk era and today. They also touch on works by artists including Alexandra Exter, Liubov Popova, Varvara Stepanova, Sibylle Bergemann, Kira Muratova, Věra Chytilová, Tina Bara, Evelyn Richter and the Erfurt Women Artists’ Group.


Accessibility information

– Seated event

– First floor, no elevator

– No wheelchair accessible WC; gender neutral WC

– Language: English


Acknowledgements

When Technology Was Female is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger who also serves as managing editor for the publication.

 

Special thanks to Viola Karsten and the Goethe-Institut Amsterdam for hosting the public conversation.

Goethe-Institut Amsterdam
Herengracht 470

1017 CA Amsterdam

 

Free

Pants Wear Skirts: The Erfurt Women Artists’ Group, 1984–1994

Panel conversation

Friday 26 May 2023, 16.30hr

Susanne Altmann, ‘Pants Wear Skirts’ (2023), panel conversation. Photo: Sara Giannini. Christa Maria Lerm-Hayes, Anna Seidl, Susanne Altmann and Megan Hoetger in conversation, ‘Pants Wear Skirts’ (2023), panel conversation. Photo: Sara Giannini. Susanne Altmann, Introduction for ‘Pants Wear Skirts’ (2023), panel conversation. Photo: Frédérique Bergholtz.
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In conversation with programme curator Megan Hoetger and University of Amsterdam professors Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes and Anna Seidl, the art historian discusses the new publication Pants Wear Skirts: The Erfurt Women Artists’ Group, 1984–1994. Published to accompany her recent co-curated exhibition at the nGbK Berlin, the book is the most extensive examination of the prolific production of the Erfurt Women Artists’ Group, which was formed by artist Gabriele Stötzer in the early 1980s, as a space for women in East Germany to meet, share experiences and, eventually, to collectively create films, music and fashion together.


Acknowledgements

When Technology Was Female is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger.

 

Special thanks to Viola Karsten and the Goethe-Institut Amsterdam for hosting the public conversation.

Goethe-Institut Amsterdam
Herengracht 470
1017 CA Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

Free, reservation required

Visiting information

Three Seminars from When Technology Was Female

Work-in-Process

From May 2023

Zorka Ságlová, ‘Kladení plín u Sudoměře’ (‘Laying Diapers at Sudoměře’), series of bw photographs, 30 x 40 cm each, 1970

In a series of three seminars, programme curator Megan Hoetger brings together visual and textual materials from across the art historian’s project. Each seminar shares a different facet of the research, ranging from explorations of women’s artistic practices in the early Soviet Union (c. 1917) and late East Germany (c. 1980s), to interests in forms of feminist writing and samizdat, or self-publishing, legacies in the former Eastern Bloc. Each seminar also features an episode of the podcast series Talk Me Through…, which takes listeners inside the art historian’s method of close reading analysis.


Image description

Black and white photograph depicting a group of five women putting big sheets of white fabric on a meadow, with around eight pieces lying on the grass in the foreground of the image.


Acknowledgements

When Technology Was Female is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger who conceived the seminars in conversation with Susanne Altmann and realised the online studio room in collaboration with Kommerz design studio.

 

Special thanks to Kirila Cvetkovska for assistance with audio editing of the Talk Me Through… podcast series, and to Naomi Collier Broms and Marta Santos for their research assistance.

If I Can’t Dance Studio

Socialist Collectivity and the Aesthetics of (Dys)Functionality

Workshop

Thursday 10 November 2022, 13–17hr

Susanne Altmann, ‘Socialist Collectivity and the Aesthetics of (Dys)Functionality’ (2022), workshop. Photo: Temra Pavlović. Susanne Altmann, ‘Socialist Collectivity and the Aesthetics of (Dys)Functionality’ (2022), workshop. Photo: Temra Pavlović. Four black and white film stills. The first three show elements of reproductive labor (breastfeeding, children and men eating), and the last shows productive labor (farm machines in the fields). Four black and white film stills. The first three show elements of reproductive labor (breastfeeding, children and men eating), and the last shows productive labor (farm machines in the fields). Four black and white film stills. The first three show elements of reproductive labor (breastfeeding, children and men eating), and the last shows productive labor (farm machines in the fields). Four black and white film stills. The first three show elements of reproductive labor (breastfeeding, children and men eating), and the last shows productive labor (farm machines in the fields).
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In a masterclass workshop at the University of Amsterdam, the historian leads students through an examination of the concept of ‘the collective’, as it was ideologically envisioned through texts, as well as visually represented across films. Directors and artists under discussion are: David Maryan, Lev Kuleshov/ Aleksandr Rodchenko, Kira Muratova, Jürgen Böttcher, Evelyn Richter and the Erfurt Women Artists’ Group (Künstlerinnengruppe Erfurt).


Image description

Four black and white film stills feature elements of reproductive and productive labour. The first three stills focus on reproductive labour: two women feeding children a long dining table; three women sitting in a line and breastfeeding; and another long dining table, this one filled with young men waiting to eat the food. The final still shows agricultural equipment in transit. In each still there is a strong perspectival line and repetition of elements, emphasising a machine-like understanding of human work and social relations.


Acknowledgements

When Technology Was Female is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger, and the workshop appears as part of the Collectivities and Technologies Entangled masterclass seminar, organised by Hoetger and Professor Dr. Christa Maria Lerm-Hayes at the University of Amsterdam.

 

Altmann’s participation in the programme is generously supported by the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis and the Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture.

 

Full programme:

 

Collectivities Otherwise: Party Lines, Counterpropositions and (Post-)Socialist Spaces

Lecture by Susanne Altmann and roundtable discussion with Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes, Eszter Szakaćs and Robbie Schweiger

9 November, 17hr (Spui 25, University of Amsterdam Academic-Cultural Centre)

Free with registration

 

White Papers of Dissent

PhD defence by Barbara Cueto with responses from Gregory Sholette, Massimiano Mollona, Nishant Shah (ArtEZ), Jeroen de Kloet, Margriet Schavemaker and Paula Albuquerque

10 November, 10hr (Agnietenkapel, Oudezijds Voorburgwal 229-231, 1012 EZ Amsterdam)

Free

 

Socialist Collectivity and the Aesthetics of (Dys)Functionality

Masterclass workshop with Susanne Altmann

10 November, 13–17hr (closed session)

For student registration only

 

Principles of Internet Criticism: Aesthetics and Social Imaginaries

Appointment lecture by Geert Lovink

18 November, 16.30hr (University Aula, Singel 411)

Free

University of Amsterdam

Location OMHP (oudemanhuispoort) E2.01

 

Closed session

Collectivities Otherwise: Party Lines, Counterpropositions and (Post-)Socialist Spaces

Lecture and Roundtable

Wednesday 9 November 2022, 17hr

Susanne Altmann, ‘Collectivities Otherwise: Party Lines, Counterpropositions and (Post-)Socialist Spaces’ (2022), lecture and roundtable. Photo: Temra Pavlović. Susanne Altmann, ‘Collectivities Otherwise: Party Lines, Counterpropositions and (Post-)Socialist Spaces’ (2022), lecture and roundtable. Photo: Temra Pavlović. Susanne Altmann, ‘Collectivities Otherwise: Party Lines, Counterpropositions and (Post-)Socialist Spaces’ (2022), lecture and roundtable. Photo: Temra Pavlović. Susanne Altmann and Christa Maria Lerm-Hayes in conversation, ‘Collectivities Otherwise: Party Lines, Counterpropositions and (Post-)Socialist Spaces’ (2022), lecture and roundtable. Photo: Temra Pavlović. Susanne Altmann, ‘Collectivities Otherwise: Party Lines, Counterpropositions and (Post-)Socialist Spaces’ (2022), lecture and roundtable. Photo: Temra Pavlović. Megan Hoetger, Eszter Szakaćs, Christa Maria Lerm-Hayes, Susanne Altmann, and Robbie Schweiger, ‘Collectivities Otherwise: Party Lines, Counterpropositions and (Post-)Socialist Spaces’ (2022), lecture and roundtable. Photo: Temra Pavlović. Group portrait with five women, all wearing fantastical costumes.
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The art historian presents research-in-process, examining the entanglements of industrialisation with notions of ‘the collective’, and tracking moments in which the latter was reclaimed and rearticulated by artists working outside and alongside the socialist party apparatus in East Germany and the erstwhile Eastern Bloc. The presentation is followed by a discussion with programme curator Megan Hoetger, Professor Dr. Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes, and researchers Eszter Szakaćs and Robbie Schweiger on contested notions of collectivity operative across (post-)socialist spaces then and now.


Image description

Group portrait with five white women, all wearing fantastical handmade costumes. Four of the women are standing and one kneels. The kneeling woman peers out from behind a large mask that she holds like a shield in front of her torso. The mask is assembled from olive green, chocolate brown and ash gray textile remnants pieced together to form an ominous face. Behind her, the other four women strike robotic poses, with arms and legs extended in awkward and unexpected angles. From left to right: one of the women wears a plastic suit and hat stitched together with pieces of newspaper and red vinyl. Her right leg is lifted and slightly bent, as if in mid-step. Next to her, another woman stands naked with white body paint covering her head, as well as right shoulder, breast and arm. The rest of her body is marked with black stripes, which also appear on her painted face, demarcating the brow bone with a heavy line. Her arms are slightly bent, as if about to plie, and she looks directly into the camera. The third standing woman wears a loose-fitting patchwork dress. She is positioned behind the others with her arms fully extended away from her body and her gaze is also fixed on the camera. The final standing woman is completely concealed behind a large polyhedron-shaped mask made of thin metallic sheets held together by riveted metal strips. These strips extend down her torso and right arm, forming the suggestion of a suit of armor. Behind the armor, she wears a shirt and pants, head-to-toe black, and her right arm is lifted perpendicular to her body with a slight crook at the shoulder. The group is posed in front of a nondescript wall, which is half flat-blue paint and half covered with black and red line drawings on newsprint. The newsprint extends out onto the floor below them.


Acknowledgements

When Technology Was Female is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger, and the lecture appears as part of the Collectivities and Technologies Entangled masterclass seminar, organised by Hoetger and Professor Dr. Christa Maria Lerm-Hayes at the University of Amsterdam. Altmann’s participation in the programme is generously supported by the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis and the Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture.

 

Special thanks to University of Amsterdam Faculty of the Humanities and SPUI25 for their support of the public presentation.

 

Full programme:

 

Collectivities Otherwise: Party Lines, Counterpropositions and (Post-)Socialist Spaces

Lecture by Susanne Altmann and roundtable discussion with Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes, Eszter Szakaćs and Robbie Schweiger

9 November, 17hr (Spui 25, University of Amsterdam Academic-Cultural Centre)

Free with registration

 

White Papers of Dissent

PhD defence by Barbara Cueto with responses from Gregory Sholette, Massimiano Mollona, Nishant Shah (ArtEZ), Jeroen de Kloet, Margriet Schavemaker and Paula Albuquerque

10 November, 10hr (Agnietenkapel, Oudezijds Voorburgwal 229-231, 1012 EZ Amsterdam)

Free

 

Socialist Collectivity and the Aesthetics of (Dys)Functionality

Masterclass workshop with Susanne Altmann

10 November, 13–17hr (closed session)

For student registration only

 

Principles of Internet Criticism: Aesthetics and Social Imaginaries

Appointment lecture by Geert Lovink

18 November, 16.30hr (University Aula, Singel 411)

Free

SPUI25 (University of Amsterdam Academic-Cultural Centre)
Spui 25–27
1012 WX Amsterdam

 

Free with registration

When Technology Was Female: A Cultural Investigation of Former Socialist Europe, 1917–89 and After

Lecture

Saturday 2 July 2022, 11–19hr

Susanne Altmann, ‘When Technology Was Female: A Cultural Investigation of Former Socialist Europe, 1917-89 and After’ (2022), lecture. Photo: Maarten Nauw. Susanne Altmann, ‘When Technology Was Female: A Cultural Investigation of Former Socialist Europe, 1917-89 and After’ (2022), lecture. Photo: Maarten Nauw. Surrealist social-realist painting of two female factory workers, one outside and the other inside as viewed through a window Susanne Altmann, ‘When Technology Was Female: A Cultural Investigation of Former Socialist Europe, 1917-89 and After’ (2022), lecture. Photo: Maarten Nauw.
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The ideological and infrastructural geographies of socialist industrialisation, from the post-revolutionary climate of soon-to-be Soviet territories (c.1918) up through the final decades of the Eastern Bloc (c.1980s) offer an uneven map. From visual detail to production methods, the historian explores how ‘industrialisation’ meant widely varied things across contemporaneous socialist contexts and, by extension, across artistic practices operating therein.


Image description

Two female factory workers are painted in surrealist social-realist style with uncharacteristically vibrant colours including a tangerine orange representing the factory’s exterior brick wall, a bright kelley green portraying the machinery inside the factory and a rose-pink worker’s headscarf. The women look directly at the viewer, appearing neither particularly happy nor sad but in the midst of work. One stands outside at the corner of the building, wrapped in a blue-brown apron and surrounded by industrial springs and coils. The other, in the pink headscarf, peers out from within with right arm raised to pull the lever of one of three assembly line machines moving back into a deep single-point perspectival space. This strong perspective line reinforced by receding lines of the fence that closes on the left side, has a counterpoint in the window on the right through which the worker can be seen and which seems to open up the composition.


Acknowledgements

When Technology Was Female is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger.

 

If I Can’t Dance is structurally supported by the Mondriaan Fund and the AFK (Amsterdam Fund for the Arts); the productions in Edition IX are realized with financial support of Ammodo and Cultuurfonds.

 

Special thanks to Likeminds for hosting the event.

Likeminds (formerly Dansmakers)
Gedempt Hamerkanaal 203
1021 KP Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

€17 regular / €13 student
(includes meal)

 

Part of Edition IX Introductory Event

 

For tickets see Introductory Event listing

Samia Henni

Samia Henni (lives in Zurich) is an architectural historian, exhibition maker and educator who through text and visuals interrogates the built, destroyed and imagined environment. Continuing her anti-colonial and decolonial research in close dialogue with the activists and archives of Lyon-based demilitarisation research centre Observatoire des armements, the publication and exhibition expose France’s atomic infrastructures in the Algerian Sahara and their archival, economic, environmental and social impacts.

Performing Colonial Toxicity

Exhibition

Friday 22 March – Sunday 16 June 2024

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The Mosaic Rooms presents Performing Colonial Toxicity, an archival survey exhibition documenting France’s secret nuclear programme in Algeria during and after the Algerian Revolution (1954-62). This expansive research project, put together by architectural historian and exhibition maker Samia Henni, unfolds across a series of audio-visual assemblages — each consisting of maps, photographs, film, stills, documents and archival testimonies.

 

The public programme running in tandem with the exhibition offers multiple entry points to further engage with the concerns and research in the exhibition. The programme embraces Henni’s methodologies, engaging in alternative approaches to archival investigations to interrogate colonial histories and untold stories.

 

Friday 22 March 2024

11 am

Exhibition Tour with Samia Henni

  

Tuesday 30 April 2024

7pm

Radiant Matter

Online talk by scholar Jill Jarvis to examine the role of art and literature as a witness to trauma endured by Algerians during and after French colonialization

 

Tuesday 4 June 2024

7pm

Nuclear colonialism

Panel discussion with David Burns, Samia Henni, Alisher Khassenaliyev and Maïa Tellit Hawad on the historic and ongoing impacts of nuclear colonialism, toxicity, and extraction

 

Thursday 6 June 2024

7pm

Ciné-Sahra: An unknown part of us lives in this desert and an unknown part of this desert lives in us

Film programme curated by Abiba Coulibaly and Emma Bouraba


Acknowledgements

The exhibition is a co-production If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution and Framer Framed, which was realised within the frame of Henni’s Performing Colonial Toxicity, a two-year research project commissioned for the If I Can’t Dance Edition IX – Bodies and Technologies (2022-23) biennial programme and curated by If I Can’t Dance programme curator Megan Hoetger. The project is supported by Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia. Special thanks to the Observatoire des armements, Centre de documentation et de recherche sur la paix et les conflits; the Établissement de communication et de production audiovisuelle de la Défense (ECPAD); and to filmmakers Élisabeth Leuvrey and Larbi Benchiha with producer Farid Rezkallah for use of images and film excerpts in the exhibition; as well as to Prof. Dr. Roxanne Panchasi, Simon Fraser University for her support for the Tamasheq-to-French translation of Algerian testimonies.

 

The exhibition is generously supported by Arts Council England.

The Mosaic Rooms
226 Cromwell Rd
London SW5 0SW
United Kingdom

Mrinmayee Bhoot with Samia Henni on Performing Colonial Toxicity

Interview

January 2024

Mrinmayee Bhoot and Samia Henni in conversation about Samia Henni's ‘Performing Colonial Toxicity’, published by Stir World magazine, January 2024

An in-depth interview about the Performing Colonial Toxicity project between Mrinmayee Bhoot and Henni, published by Stir World magazine.

Read the interview

Colonial Toxicity: Rehearsing French Radioactive Architecture and Landscape in the Sahara

Publication

Available via the If I Can’t Dance webshop

Between 1960 and 1966, the French colonial regime detonated four atmospheric atomic bombs, thirteen underground nuclear bombs and conducted other nuclear experiments in the Algerian Sahara, whose natural resources were being extracted in the process. This secret nuclear weapons programme, whose archives are still classified, occurred during and after the Algerian Revolution, or the Algerian War of Independence (1954–62). This publication brings together nearly six hundred pages of materials documenting this violent history of France’s nuclear bomb programme in the Algerian desert. Meticulously culled together by the architectural historian from across available, offered, contraband, and leaked sources, the book is a rich repository for all those concerned with histories of nuclear weapons and engaged at the intersections of spatial, social and environmental justice, as well as anticolonial archival practices.


Acknowledgements

Colonial Toxicity is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance.The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger who also serves as managing editor for the publication, which is co-published with edition fink, Zürich and Framer Framed, Amsterdam. The project is supported by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.

 

Special thanks to all who allowed for image reproductions, including: the Observatoire des armements, Centre de documentation et de recherche sur la paix et les conflits; the Établissement de communication et de production audiovisuelle de la Défense (ECPAD); and to filmmakers Élisabeth Leuvrey and Larbi Benchiha with producer Farid Rezkallah.

 

Author: Samia Henni
Graphic design: François Girard-Meunier
Managing editor: Megan Hoetger

Contributing editor: Georg Rutishauser
Series editor: Frédérique Bergholtz
Copy editor: Janine Armin
Co-publishers: Framer Framed, Amsterdam; Edition Fink, Zürich

 

Page count: 592
ISBN: 978-94-92139-24-5

Finissage conversation with Samia Henni and Nuraini Juliastuti

Conversation and Book launch

Sunday 14 January 2024, 15–17hr

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For her exhibition’s finissage, the architectural historian invites fellow If I Can’t Dance researcher Nuraini Juliastuti to join her for a conversation on counter-archive practices and anti- and decolonial research methods and distribution strategies. The discussion also marks the launch of Colonial Toxicity: Rehearsing French Radioactive Architecture and Landscape in the Sahara, offering an introduction to the experimental form of the book and the “acts of rehearsing” it proposes.


Accessibility information

– In the exhibition seats are available, the public programmes are seated events
– Ground Floor, wheelchair accessible
– Wheelchair accessible WC; gender-neutral WC
– Language: English


Acknowledgements

The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger who conceived this event with Henni, Juliastuti, and programme curator Sara Giannini. The event forms part of the public programme for the exhibition Performing Colonial Toxicity, which is co-produced with Framer Framed, Amsterdam. The project is supported by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia. Framer Framed is supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science; Amsterdam Fund for the Arts; Municipality of Amsterdam; and VriendenLoterij Fonds.

 

If I Can’t Dance is structurally supported by the Mondriaan Fund and the AFK (Amsterdam Fund for the Arts); the productions in Edition IX are realized with financial support of Ammodo and Cultuurfonds.

Framer Framed
Oranje-Vrijstaatkade 71
1093 KS Amsterdam

 

Free with registration

 

For accessibility information, visit
www.framerframed.nl

And still, it remains

Film screening

Saturday 13 January 2024, 15–17hr

Within the frame of the Performing Colonial Toxicity exhibition, the new artists’ film And still, it remains by directing duo Arwa Aburawa and Turab Shah is presented. Spending time with residents of a village in Algeria’s Hoggar Mountains who live surrounded by ancient rock art and the legacy of France’s nuclear bombs, the film asks: What does it mean to live in such intimacy with toxic colonialism? The filmmakers join programme curator Megan Hoetger for a post-screening discussion to reflect on sonic landscapes and modes of listening taken up in their work.


Accessibility information

– In the exhibition seats are available, the public programmes are seated events
– Ground Floor, wheelchair accessible
– Wheelchair accessible WC; gender-neutral WC
– Language: English


Acknowledgements

Performing Colonial Toxicity is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger who conceived this event with Framer Framed head of exhibition production Jean Medina. The event forms part of the public programme for the exhibition Performing Colonial Toxicity, which is co-produced with Framer Framed, Amsterdam. The project is supported by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia. Framer Framed is supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science; Amsterdam Fund for the Arts; Municipality of Amsterdam; and VriendenLoterij Fonds.

 

If I Can’t Dance is structurally supported by the Mondriaan Fund and the AFK (Amsterdam Fund for the Arts); the productions in Edition IX are realized with financial support of Ammodo and Cultuurfonds.

Framer Framed
Oranje-Vrijstaatkade 71
1093 KS Amsterdam

 

Free with registration

 

For accessibility information, visit
www.framerframed.nl

Performing Colonial Toxicity

Lecture and Tour

Sunday 14 January 2024, 13-14hr

Sunday 26 November 2023, 15-16.30hr

 

Detail from Samia Henni, ‘Performing Colonial Toxicity’ (2023-24), exhibition. Co-produced with Framer Framed, Amsterdam. Photo: Maarten Nauw. Detail from Samia Henni, ‘Performing Colonial Toxicity’ (2023-24), exhibition. Co-produced with Framer Framed, Amsterdam. Photo: Maarten Nauw. Detail from Samia Henni, ‘Performing Colonial Toxicity’ (2023-24), exhibition. Co-produced with Framer Framed, Amsterdam. Photo: Maarten Nauw. Detail from Samia Henni, ‘Performing Colonial Toxicity’ (2023-24), exhibition. Co-produced with Framer Framed, Amsterdam. Photo: Maarten Nauw. Detail from Samia Henni, ‘Performing Colonial Toxicity’ (2023-24), exhibition. Co-produced with Framer Framed, Amsterdam. Photo: Maarten Nauw.
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Samia Henni guides us through the exhibition Performing Colonial Toxicity (2023), providing background into her seven-year research on the subject of French nuclear colonialism in the Algerian Sahara and its ongoing effects. Henni will also provide more insight into the connections between the different components of the project including the forthcoming publication Colonial Toxicity: Researching French Radioactive Architecture and Landscape in the Sahara.

 

The exhibition Performing Colonial Toxicity can be visited until Sunday 14 January 2024 at Framer Framed.


Accessibility information

– In the exhibition seats are available, the public programmes are seated events

– Ground Floor, wheelchair accessible

– Wheelchair accessible WC; gender-neutral WC

– Language: English


Acknowledgements

Performing Colonial Toxicity is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger, and the tours with Henni form part of the public programme for the exhibition Performing Colonial Toxicity, which is co- produced with Framer Framed, Amsterdam. The project is supported by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia. Framer Framed is supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science; Amsterdam Fund for the Arts; Municipality of Amsterdam; and VriendenLoterij Fonds.

 

If I Can’t Dance is structurally supported by the Mondriaan Fund and the AFK (Amsterdam Fund for the Arts); the productions in Edition IX are realized with financial support of Ammodo and Cultuurfonds.

Framer Framed
Oranje-Vrijstaatkade 71
1093 KS Amsterdam

 

Free

 

For accessibility information, visit
www.framerframed.nl

Performing Colonial Toxicity Tour: The Testimony Translation Project

Conversation and Tour


Saturday 28 October 2023, 15.30-17hr

Detail from Samia Henni, ‘Performing Colonial Toxicity’ (2023-24), exhibition. Co-produced with Framer Framed, Amsterdam. Photo: Maarten Nauw. Detail from Samia Henni, ‘Performing Colonial Toxicity’ (2023-24), exhibition. Co-produced with Framer Framed, Amsterdam. Photo: Maarten Nauw.
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The architectural historian’s exhibition is activated through a special tour that focuses on the testimonies of Algerian and French victims of the France’s secret nuclear detonation programme, which feature in the installation. The testimonies are drawn from the Testimony Translation Project, an open access digital database built in the If I Can’t Dance Studio, and have been developed in collaboration with a global network of twenty “translator-participants.” Moving between the exhibition and online repository, programme curator Megan Hoetger leads the tour, and she is joined by a group of translator-participants who share their reflections on the translation process.


Accessibility information

– In the exhibition seats are available, the public programmes are seated events

– Ground Floor, wheelchair accessible

– Wheelchair accessible WC; gender-neutral WC

– Language: English


Acknowledgements

Performing Colonial Toxicity is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger who is facilitating the tour in collaboration with Framer Framed head of exhibition research and development Ashley Maum. Special thanks to Anik Fournier, Martine Neddam, and Alice Rougeaux from the Testimony Translation Project for their participation. The event forms part of the public programme for the exhibition Performing Colonial Toxicity, which is co-produced with Framer Framed, Amsterdam. The project is supported by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia. Framer Framed is supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science; Amsterdam Fund for the Arts; Municipality of Amsterdam; and VriendenLoterij Fonds.

Framer Framed
Oranje-Vrijstaatkade 71
1093 KS Amsterdam

 

Free with registration here

 

For accessibility information, visit
www.framerframed.nl

Performing Colonial Toxicity

Exhibition

Saturday 8 October 2023 – Sunday 14 January 2024

Exhibition opening on Saturday 7 October 2023, 19–21hr

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An immersive multimedia installation organised into a series of thirteen stations meant to be traversed and engaged by bodies. Each station presents an assemblage of materials spanning audio-visual and textile-like displays, which trace and name the spatial, atmospheric, and geological impacts of France’s atomic bombs in the Sahara, as well as its colonial classification vocabularies, and the (after)lives of its radioactive debris and nuclear wastes.


Accessibility information

– In the exhibition seats are available, the public programmes are seated events

– Ground Floor, wheelchair accessible

– Wheelchair accessible WC; gender-neutral WC

– Language: English


Acknowledgements

Performing Colonial Toxicity is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The exhibition is a co-production with Framer Framed, Amsterdam and is realised within the frame of Henni’s two-year commission, which is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger. The project is supported by Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.

 

Special thanks to the Observatoire des armements, Centre de documentation et de recherche sur la paix et les conflits; the Établissement de communication et de production audiovisuelle de la Défense (ECPAD); and to filmmakers Élisabeth Leuvrey and Larbi Benchiha with producer Farid Rezkallah for use of images and film excerpts in the exhibition; as well as to Prof. Dr. Roxanne Panchasi, Simon Fraser University for her support for the Tamasheq-to-French translation of Algerian testimonies. Framer Framed is supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science; Amsterdam Fund for the Arts; Municipality of Amsterdam; and VriendenLoterij Fonds.


If I Can’t Dance is structurally supported by the Mondriaan Fund and the AFK (Amsterdam Fund for the Arts); the productions in Edition IX are realized with financial support of Ammodo and Cultuurfonds.

Framer Framed
Oranje-Vrijstaatkade 71
1093 KS Amsterdam

 

Opening times:
Tuesday – Sunday, 12–18hr

 

Free

 

 

Performing Colonial Toxicity: Testimony Translation Project

Online work

Monday 15 May – Saturday 30 September 2023

Fragment of a scan of original testimony. To protect the privacy of the individual who gave their eye-witness account, as well as the family of that individual, identifying information has been redacted.

Together with a network of twenty collaborators from around the world, the researcher develops an open access digital database, which begins the long process of digitalizing and translating the over seven hundred pages of written and oral testimonies from Algerian and French victims of the French nuclear detonation programme in the Algerian Sahara (1960-66). Drawn from three key sources, the online repository includes a selection of forty testimonies ranging from individual recollections to intergenerational familial and community memories.


Image description

Fragment of a black and white scan of an original testimony. The document is written in French, for the larger part in Times font, with at the upper part in the centre, in capital letters, the word ‘attestation’. To protect the privacy of the individual who gave their eye-witness account, as well as the family of that individual, identifying information has been redacted through black bars covering these parts in the document.


Acknowledgements

Performing Colonial Toxicity is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger who serves as managing editor for the database, which is realised in collaboration with Kommerz design studio.

 

Much gratitude to the people and institutions responsible for having collected together these testimonies, including: Patrice Bouveret and the Lyon-based anti-nuclear NGO Observatoire des armements (est. 1984); the former European Parliament politician, co-founder of the Green Party in France and environmental activist Solange Fernex (b. Strasbourg, FR, 1934; d. Biederthal, FR, 2006); and the Paris-based Algerian photographer Bruno Hadjih (b. Kabylia, DZ).

 

Special thanks also go to the twenty translator-participants: Raoul Audouin, Adel Ben Bella, Omar Berrada, Megan Brown, Séverine Chapelle, Simona Dvorák, Hanieh Fatouree, Alessandro Felicioli, Anik Fournier, Jill Jarvis, Augustin Jomier, Timothy Scott Johnson, Anna Kimmel, Corentin Lécine, Natasha Llorens, Miriam Matthiesen, Martine Neddam, M’hamed Oualdi, Roxanne Panchasi and Alice Rougeaux. Funding support for the Tamazight-to-French translation of Algerian testimonies has generously been provided by Dr. Roxanne Panchasi, Associate Professor, Department of History, Simon Fraser University.



If I Can’t Dance Studio

Toxic Coloniality or Colonial Toxicity?

Lecture

24 March 2023, 17–18.45hr

Samia Henni, ‘Toxic Coloniality or Colonial Toxicity?’ (2023), lecture. Photo: Temra Pavlovic. Megan Hoetger introducing ‘Toxic Coloniality or Colonial Toxicity?’ (2023), lecture. Photo: Temra Pavlovic. Samia Henni, ‘Toxic Coloniality or Colonial Toxicity?’ (2023), lecture. Photo: Temra Pavlovic. The trace of the explosion of France’s first nuclear bomb in the ground zero, the Algerian Sahara © 1960, Raymond Varoqui / SCA / ECPAD
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Continuing her work of tracing and naming the spatial, atmospheric and geological impacts of the French nuclear detonation programme in the Algerian Sahara (1960–66), the historian explores the lives and afterlives of radioactive debris and nuclear wastes, exposing the coloniality toxicity – or toxic coloniality? – of the norms and forms of France’s weapons of mass destruction, including the classification of its very sources.


Image description

Archival black-and-white photograph taken by a French military photographer in the Algerian Sahara, which depicts an aerial view of the blast imprint from a nuclear bomb detonation. The imprint appears as a black circular form with striation lines radiating out from a slightly raised mound in the centre, and it sits in stark contrast to the vastness of mid-tone grey desert floor that surrounds it. No other forms appear in the space and even the horizon line is pushed to the very top of the image’s frame, creating visual confusion around the imprint’s scale.


Acknowledgements

Performing Colonial Toxicity is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger, and is co-produced with Framer Framed, Amsterdam. Special thanks to Jeff Diamanti from the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam for support of the public presentation. Framer Framed is supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science; Amsterdam Fund for the Arts; Municipality of Amsterdam; and VriendenLoterij Fonds.

 

If I Can’t Dance is structurally supported by the Mondriaan Fund and the AFK (Amsterdam Fund for the Arts); the productions in Edition IX are realized with financial support of Ammodo and Cultuurfonds.

PC Hoofthuis, room 1,05
Spuistraat 134
1012 VB Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

More information

Performing Colonial Toxicity

Performance-Lecture

Saturday 2 July 2022, 11–19hr

Samia Henni, ‘Performing Colonial Toxicity’ (2022), performance-lecture. Photo: Maarten Nauw. Samia Henni, ‘Performing Colonial Toxicity’ (2022), performance-lecture. Photo: Maarten Nauw. Black-and-white archival photograph: five figures in gas masks and hazardous materials (hazmat) suits pose in the Algerian Sahara. Black-and-white archival photograph: nuclear blast imprint in the Algerian Sahara. Samia Henni, ‘Performing Colonial Toxicity’ (2022), performance-lecture. Photo: Maarten Nauw.
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The researcher experiments with fragmented choreographies of (moving) image, sound and silence as she works her way through archival materials from the French nuclear detonation programme in the Algerian Sahara (1960–66). Moving between official and contraband sources, a speculative narrative is built around visual gaps, redactions and low threshold copies that explores the intersections of performativity, bodies, radioactivity, coloniality and violence.


Image description

Archival black-and-white photograph taken by a French military photographer in the Algerian Sahara, which depicts an aerial view of the blast imprint from a nuclear bomb detonation. The imprint appears as a black circular form with striation lines radiating out from a slightly raised mound in the centre, and it sits in stark contrast to the vastness of mid-tone grey desert floor that surrounds it. No other forms appear in the space and even the horizon line is pushed to the very top of the image’s frame, creating visual confusion around the imprint’s scale.

Archival black-and-white photograph taken by a French military photographer in the Algerian Sahara, which depicts a group of five figures donning black gas masks and bright white hazardous materials (hazmat) suits. Their startling almost apocalyptic appearance is intensified by their gazes – all seem to look directly into the camera. Two figures, one in the centre and one at the far left, carry Geiger counter equipment. Behind the group, military tents and vehicles populate the landscape with some signs of activity. Between the tents on the right, a sixth figure in a hazmat suit appears; and a seventh figure, also in a hazmat suit, emerges from a tent on the left far off in the background. Two towers, one a communications antenna and the other a water storage container, rise up from behind the tents.


Acknowledgements

Performing Colonial Toxicity is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger, and is co-produced with Framer Framed, Amsterdam. Framer Framed is supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science; Amsterdam Fund for the Arts; Municipality of Amsterdam; and VriendenLoterij Fonds.

 

If I Can’t Dance is structurally supported by the Mondriaan Fund and the AFK (Amsterdam Fund for the Arts); the productions in Edition IX are realized with financial support of Ammodo and Cultuurfonds.

 

Special thanks to Likeminds for hosting the event.

Likeminds  (formerly Dansmakers)
Gedempt Hamerkanaal 203
1021 KP Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

€17 regular / €13 student
(includes meal)

 

Part of Edition IX Introductory Event

 

For tickets see Introductory Event listing

Nuraini Juliastuti

Nuraini Juliastuti (b. 1975, Surabaya, Indonesia. Lives in Leiden, the Netherlands) is a translocal practising researcher and writer who focusses on art organisations, activism, illegality, alternative cultural production and unofficial, everyday practices of vernacular archiving. Conceived to culminate in a radio play, her research departs from the practice of cultural activist groups located in Indonesia and Timor Leste that are committed to the recuperation of suppressed indigenous knowledge across agriculture, language and craft.

Eva Posas on Stories of Wounds and Wonder

Visitor report

Spring 2024

Eva Posas on ‘Stories of Wounds and Wonder’, visitor report
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At If I Can’t Dance we see the visitor report as a method of documentation. The affectual, relational and embodied nature of performance work is not always easily captured in audio-visual formats. To supplement such formats, If I Can’t Dance commissions written visitor reports, which offer subjective responses to a lived experience of a work and its context. The visitor report is, therefore, not to be confused with a critical review. It is first and foremost a form of witnessing. The people commissioned to write the report span a range of positions and practices within and outside the field of art. For the radio play, display and conversation accompanying the launch of Nuraini Juliastuti’s publication we invited curator Eva Posas.

Read the visitor report

Stories of Wounds and Wonder

Publication

Available via the If I Can’t Dance webshop

This experimental children’s book narrates cross-species practices of survival across the Indonesian archipelago, centring the perspectives of local animals such as endangered monkeys, cosmopolitan rats, migrant sparrows and fugitive dogs. Written in the form of a play, its six episodes ground the readers in the animals’ struggles and aspirations as they go about their daily lives and face the consequences of postcolonial erasure, ecological destruction and capitalist expansion. While the stories unfold, their interconnected existences become an archive of uncertainties, where the fate of many different creatures, humans included, is inseparable from each other. As a script for intergenerational transmission, the book thoughtfully combines dialogues, songs and drawings, with contextualising essays and extensive notations. Through these different modes of reading, children and adults alike will learn about cross-species solidarity and rebellious movements, but also about disappearing Indigenous cosmologies, and the brave women who wove cloths around the mountains in eco-political resistance.


Acknowledgements

The work forms a part of Juliastuti’s investigations of the ‘commons museums’: counter-authoritative cultural institutions and non-human centric practices of world-making that are based on radical pedagogy, vernacular archiving and community-based techniques of life.

 

Author: Nuraini Juliastuti
Hand-drawn illustrations: Nuraini Juliastuti
Graphic design: Theetat Thunkijjanukij
Managing editor: Sara Giannini
Series editor: Frédérique Bergholtz
English copyeditor: Janine Armin
Indonesian copyeditor: Dyah Permatasari
English translation from Indonesian: Andy Fuller
Research interlocutors and collaborators: Sekolah Pagesangan (Yogyakarta, Indonesia) and Lakoat Kujawas (Mollo, Indonesia)

 

Page count: 151
ISBN: 978-94-92139-26-9

Broadcast on Radio Alhara

Radio

25 February 2024, 13-16hr, Palestine time (+1 CET)

 

For all those far away or unable to attend live on the 17th of February, the whole launch programme is broadcast by Bethlehem-based Radio Alhara on the last day of the display companion.


Acknowledgements

The launch events of Stories of Wounds and Wonder are presented in partnership with Framer Framed, Amsterdam, with additional support from the project Worlding Public Cultures: The Arts and Social Innovation at the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis (ASCA), University of Amsterdam.

 

Many thanks to Radio Alhara, and in particular to Yazan Khalili, for allowing us to share Stories of Wounds and Wonder with many communities of listeners around the world.

www.radioalhara.net

Guided tour

Display tour

21 February 2024, 16.30-18hr

T-shirts produced by Animal Friends Jogja — an independent initiative working for animal rights in Yogyakarta.

During this tour, Juliastuti gives an introduction to the materials in the room and the multi-purpose libraries that the display companion is modelled on. As a way to activate and contribute to the display, the visit also includes an impromptu drawing session.


Accessibility information

– In the display seats are available;
– First floor, wheelchair accessible via elevator
– Wheelchair accessible WC; gender-neutral WC


Acknowledgements

The launch events of Stories of Wounds and Wonder are presented in partnership with Framer Framed, Amsterdam, with additional support from the project Worlding Public Cultures: The Arts and Social Innovation at the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis (ASCA), University of Amsterdam.

 

Concept: Nuraini Juliastuti

Curator: Sara Giannini

Design support: Theetat Thunkijjanukij

Production support: Dewi Laurente

Framer Framed
Oranje-Vrijstaatkade 71
1093 KS Amsterdam

 

Free with registration

Stories of Wounds and Wonder

Book Launch

Saturday 17 February 2024, 14.30–17.30hr

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On the occasion of the launch, the book is turned into a radio play performed live by Mercedes Azpilicueta, Astrit Ismaili, Nuraini Juliastuti, and Ratu R. Saraswati. The play is followed by a conversation between Juliastuti and architect, artist, and cultural producer Yazan Khalili. The conversation touches upon the main themes of the publication and their intersection with Khalili’s expansive practice, including anti-colonial knowledge production and community-based infrastructures, intergenerational publishing, drawing as research, and cross-species solidarity.

 

Hosted by If I Can’t Dance programme curator Sara Giannini and artist Reza Afisina. Music selection and groovy intermissions by Cempaka.


Accessibility information

– Seated event

– First floor, wheelchair accessible via elevator

– Wheelchair accessible WC; gender-neutral WC

– Language: English


Acknowledgements

The launch events of Stories of Wounds and Wonder are presented in partnership with Framer Framed, Amsterdam, with additional support from the project Worlding Public Cultures: The Arts and Social Innovation at the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis (ASCA), University of Amsterdam.

Framer Framed
Oranje-Vrijstaatkade 71
1093 KS Amsterdam

 

Free with registration

Stories of Wounds and Wonder: A Companion

Display

15–25 February 2024

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A display of books, fables, textiles, prints, puppets, stickers and other artefacts that inspired Juliastuti’s children’s book Stories of Wounds and Wonder. An ode to the library as a space for reading, copying, playing and being together, the display welcomes audiences of different ages to sit down, chat, snack, read, copy, colour-in, play and make worlds!

 

For a sneak peek into the display-in-the-making, visit ificantdance.studio.


Accessibility information

– In the display seats are available;
– First floor, wheelchair accessible via elevator
– Wheelchair accessible WC; gender-neutral WC


Acknowledgements

The launch events of Stories of Wounds and Wonder are presented in partnership with Framer Framed, Amsterdam, with additional support from the project Worlding Public Cultures: The Arts and Social Innovation at the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis (ASCA), University of Amsterdam.

 

Concept: Nuraini Juliastuti

Curator: Sara Giannini

Design support: Theetat Thunkijjanukij

Production support: Dewi Laurente

Framer Framed
Oranje-Vrijstaatkade 71
1093 KS Amsterdam

 

Tue – Sun, 12-18hr

 

Free

How to Talk with Our Fellow Animals?

Children’s workshop

Saturday 17 February 2024, 10.30-12.30hr

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Juliastuti’s children’s book Stories of Wounds and Wonder is the departure point for a storytelling workshop on friendships across animal species. In the first part some episodes of the book are read out loud as a script and discussed in relation to books, fables, textiles, prints, puppets and other artefacts that inspired it. After, participants are invited to share stories from their own contexts and draw their own animal characters, practising how they can all live and talk together in a new imaginative world.

 

The workshop is conducted in English and is imagined for children aged 9 to 13 with a migration background.


Accessibility information

– First floor, wheelchair accessible via elevator
– Wheelchair accessible WC; gender-neutral WC
– Language: English


Acknowledgements

The launch events of Stories of Wounds and Wonder are presented in partnership with Framer Framed, Amsterdam, with additional support from the project Worlding Public Cultures: The Arts and Social Innovation at the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis (ASCA), University of Amsterdam.

Framer Framed
Oranje-Vrijstaatkade 71
1093 KS Amsterdam

 

Registrations are closed

Sketching Stories of Wounds and Wonder

Work-in-Process

From May 2023

Nuraini Juliastuti, sketch for ‘Stories of Wounds and Wonder’ (2023).

The researcher introduces aspects of her project for intergenerational learning and trans-species practices of survival and solidarity, culminating in an illustrated publication for children and adults. The studio room functions as an expansion of Juliastuti’s writing desk where you are invited to return to the coming months for a series of teasers of the play-script-in-the-making, from its characters and environments to the political and cultural contexts these have arisen from.


Image description

Four dogs sketched from different angles and with only the outlines indicated, drawn in pencil, surround a tree embellished with foliage, drawn in green and brown pencil. Hand-written in pencil in the upper left corner: ‘Bello’; and next to tree: ‘Ansana Tree’.

If I Can’t Dance Studio

Commons Museums: Technologies for Covering the Wounds

Lecture

Saturday 2 July 2022, 11–19hr

Nuraini Juliastuti, ‘Commons Museums: Technologies for Covering the Wounds’ (2022), lecture. Photo: Maarten Nauw. Nuraini Juliastuti, ‘Commons Museums: Technologies for Covering the Wounds’ (2022), lecture. Photo: Maarten Nauw. Nuraini Juliastuti, ‘Commons Museums: Technologies for Covering the Wounds’ (2022), lecture. Photo: Maarten Nauw. Nuraini Juliastuti, ‘Commons Museums: Technologies for Covering the Wounds’ (2022), lecture. Photo: Maarten Nauw. Nuraini Juliastuti, ‘Commons Museums: Technologies for Covering the Wounds’ (2022), lecture. Photo: Maarten Nauw.
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An introduction to the practices of radical pedagogy and cultural resistance promoted by the activist groups at the core of the research. Their transgenerational practices of transmission and living together are conceptualised by Juliastuti as ‘commons museum’. Through storytelling, a glimpse of their collections, displays and archival methodologies are disclosed, while questioning the colonial heritage these notions and technologies carry with them.


Image description

Six women harvest rice in a field situated within or at the edge of a tropical forest. They are crouched in a line that cuts the image diagonally, five seated, with the last on the left standing, looking elsewhere, possibly taking some rest. Facing the crop, they show their backs to the camera. With the exception of the last seated woman, who is visibly holding a cutter, we can’t see their faces. Their heads are protected by headscarves and/or conical rice hats in different colours – from light green to black, fuchsia, rose, green and blue. Their clothes are quite casual, and in different colours and in striped, square or floral patterns. At least two wear flipflops. While their faces or gestures are not visible, the point of view of the photograph enables one to see the second woman in the act of cutting. Next to her lays a bundle of rice, which also appears further down the line, next to the woman whose face is partially revealed.


Acknowledgements

Stories of Wounds and Wonder is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Sara Giannini.

 

If I Can’t Dance is structurally supported by the Mondriaan Fund and the AFK (Amsterdam Fund for the Arts); the productions in Edition IX are realized with financial support of Ammodo and Cultuurfonds.

 

The lecture is realised in dialogue with Sekolah Pagesangan (Yogyakarta, Indonesia), Lakoat Kujawas (Mollo, Indonesia) and Arte Moris Free Art School (Dili, Timor Leste).

 

Special thanks to Likeminds for hosting the event.

Likeminds (formerly Dansmakers)
Gedempt Hamerkanaal 203
1021 KP Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

€17 regular / €13 student
(includes meal)

 

Part of Edition IX Introductory Event

 

For tickets see Introductory Event listing

Bodies and Technologies
Field of inquiry

How do various technologies condition the performance and experience of one’s own body and of other bodies? And, in turn, how do different bodily experiences re-condition, retune and perhaps even disrupt technologies? In this edition we tackle the complex and plural entanglements between bodies and technologies, from experiences of pleasure and intimacy to the ongoing embodied realities of colonial and ableist frameworks. These investigations are led by Devika Chotoe (b. 1992 Netherlands. Lives in Amsterdam) a dancer, poet and organiser who researches the ongoing impacts of Dutch colonialism on communities of colour in the metropole, with a special focus on the (queer) histories of Indian and Indo-Surinamese migratory trajectories.

Reading Group

Emerging out of a desire to create time and space for collective study, the reading group is a platform to explore methods for collaborative, embodied learning.

 

The reading group participants are invited based on their work’s affinity to the theme Bodies and Technologies: Tammam Azzam, Josefin Arnell, Keerthi Basavarajaiah, Frédérique Bergholtz, Milena Bonilla, Sancha Castro, Naomi Collier Broms, Angelo Custódio, Anne de Andrade, Paca Faraus, Antonella Fittipaldi, Anik Fournier, Sara Giannini, Megan Hoetger, Nuraini Juliastuti, Francisca Khamis, Arif Kornweitz, Pedro Matias, Martine Neddam, Temra Pavlovic, Fazle Shairmahomed and Charlie Trier/

“Put Your Mouth On Your Lower Back”(Oral Imaginations)

Reading Group

Wednesday 30 November 2022, 18-20hr

A speech chain diagram taken from Nina Sun Eidsheim’s ‘’The Race of Sound’’. The image portrays a symbolic depiction of the process of speech production and speech perception.

The last reading installment closes with vocal ephemerality and oral imaginations. Research-based artist Angelo Custodio guides the group in a voice practice in which they collectively vibrate and tune in to their bodies and each other.

 

Texts: Nina Sun Eidsheim, Brandon LaBelle


Image description
A speech chain diagram taken from Nina Sun Eidsheim’s “The Race of Sound”. The image portrays a symbolic depiction of the process of speech production and speech perception.

If I Can’t Dance
Westerdok 606–608
1013 BV Amsterdam

 

Closed session

Multiplicitous Self and Sacred Subjectivity

Reading Group

Wednesday 26 October 2022, 18-20hr

Image taken from the cover of ‘’Pedagogies of Crossing’’. A predominantly turquoise and black painting depicting wild water and waves transforming into four bodies. A fetus in an oval shaped egg form is situated at the center of the image, in between the waves.

Sacred and ancestral interference can advance understanding a plural sense of self. For instance, M. Jacqui Alexander invokes African cosmologies as a means to make the invisible tangible and Gloria Wekker provides a lexicon of the self through the cosmology of Winti, an Afro-Surinamese religion.

 

Texts: M. Jacqui Alexander,
Gloria Wekker


Image description
Image taken from the cover of “Pedagogies of Crossing”. A predominantly turquoise and black painting depicting wild water and waves transforming into four bodies. A fetus in an oval shaped egg form is situated at the center of the image, in between the waves.

If I Can’t Dance
Westerdok 606–608
1013 BV Amsterdam

 

Closed session

Embodying Change

Reading Group

Wednesday 28 September 2022, 18-20hr

Embodying Change, reading list

Departing from the understanding of the body as a site for the perpetuation of intergenerational and socio-political traumas and mechanisms, this session looks at technologies of self-care and creativity to invoke ways for undermining those mechanisms. The session closes with a somatic practise guided by performance artist Fazle Shairmahomed.

 

Texts: Silvia Federici, Jose Esteban Munoz, Nicole LePera, Kai Cheng Thom, Resmaa Menakem, Adrienne Maree Brown, Julietta Singh, Ursula K. Le Guin, Alok Vaid-Menon


Image description

A list of the texts read during the reading group.

If I Can’t Dance
Westerdok 606–608
1013 BV Amsterdam

 

Closed session

So… You Want to Queer Your Pedagogy and Design a Pluriverse?

Reading Group

Wednesday 25 July 2022, 18-20hr

A black and white doodle with circular and curvy shapes. Drawn by Pedro Matias.

KUNCI Study Forum & Collective in Yogyakarta co-founder Nuraini Juliastuti discusses study groups and student press following the New Order Regime in 1998 during Indonesia’s Reformation movement. Amid monetary crisis and corruption, reading groups – often under police surveillance – drove student movements and circulated critical thought. During this session doodling is encouraged to re-enact KUNCI’s practice, after which Devika Chotoe leads a collective reading and textual exercise seeking discursive, affective and rhythmic connections between Kate Morales’s and Arturo Escobar’s texts.

 

You can listen to an extract of this collective reading exercise below.

 

Texts: Arturo Escobar, Kate Morales

 


Image description
A black and white doodle with circular and curvy shapes. Drawn by Pedro Matias

If I Can’t Dance
Westerdok 606–608
1013 BV Amsterdam

 

Closed session

Listening to Images

Reading Group

Wednesday 27 April 2022, 18-20hr

 

16 African identity photos taken in front of a red background. A white square covers each of their faces.

Devika Chotoe introduces a text by Tina Campt that promotes listening to images to attune to quiet, quotidian practices of black refusal in identification photography. This method opens up radical interpretative possibilities for images and state archives, considering images not as sites of social reproduction, but rather as ruptures in the sovereign gaze of colonial regimes within which they were made. Campt attends to the infrasonic grammar of black futurity as well as the stasis and muscular tension visualised in these images that is not perceived through vision alone.

 

Text: Tina M. Campt


Image description
Sixteen Ugandan identity photos taken in front of a red background. A white square covers each of their faces

If I Can’t Dance
Westerdok 606–608
1013 BV Amsterdam

 

Closed session

Technologies of Perception

Reading Group

Wednesday 30 March 2022, 18-20hr

Anzaldua’s handwriting bulletpointing ‘’nos/otras’’ and a drawing of a puppet.

To move towards knowledge rooted in queer and decolonial perception, Devika Chotoe proposes darkness as a mode to subvert the visual and rational as dominant signifiers of knowledge. Texts include Rolando Vázquez on the modern gaze’s control of representation and experience that perpetuates colonial difference and, to bridge the distance that creates, Gloria Anzaldua on hybrid consciousness. Donna J. Haraway’s ‘situated knowledges’, restructured depending on subject, are also considered.

 

Texts: Gloria Anzaldua, Donna J. Haraway, Rolando Vázquez


Image description
Anzaldua’s handwriting bulletpointing ‘nos/otras’ and a drawing of a puppet                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

If I Can’t Dance
Westerdok 606–608
1013 BV Amsterdam

 

Closed session

Radio Emma

The radio programme unpacks key terms from our research into Bodies and Technologies with invited local guests from various disciplines and practices.

Excavating technologies of perception from within the vistas of modernity

Radio

Wednesday 20 September 2023, 18hr

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Devika Chotoe in conversation with Tina M. Campt, Black feminist theorist of visual culture and contemporary art and Rolando Vázquez Melken, teacher and decolonial thinker about excavating technologies of perception as a key site for emancipative pedagogies. The conversation was held in presence of a live audience at SHEBANG.

 

Guests: Tina M. Campt and Rolando Vázquez Melken
Host: Devika Chotoe


Image description

(1) A black silhouette of a person, holding their arms, crossed at the wrists, above their head, against a dark-purple/blue background.

 

(2) photo of a intense dark space, with about eight dispersed, candle lit, spots.


Accessibility information

– Seated event

– Ground floor, wheelchair accessible

– No wheelchair accessible WC; gender-neutral WC

– Language: English


Acknowledgements

Acknowledgments:
Jingle: Paula Montecinos Oliva
Light technician, ZOOM and sound engineer: Barry Jonas.

SHEBANG: Jeroen Beker and Esther Meijer

SHEBANG
Hettenheuvelweg 8
1101 BN Amsterdam

 

€7,50 regular / €5 students

 

Listen here

Queer Pedagogy

Radio

Wednesday 21 September 2022, 13-14hr

 

Devika Chotoe with Sorab Roustayar, Feargal Agard and Elioa Steffen, 'Queer Pedagogy' (2022), radio show. Photo: Marcel van der Berg. Image taken from IHLIA LGBTI Heritage’s Instagram
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Taking pedagogical practices as a crucial site where bodies and technologies converge, Devika Chotoe has invited three guests to share their insight on what it means to queer pedagogy and vice versa: how to feature queerness as topic of pedagogy? Together they will touch upon the different initiatives Sorab, Feargal, and Elioa initiated to foster queer teaching and knowledge creation, ranging from archival and performative practices, to organising kink workshops and play parties.

 

‘’..we are queering the word ‘’education’’, queering who is doing the teaching and who is doing the learning, queering ‘’school’’ as we build ecoversities out of our homes and on the land, queering our bodies as we relate differently with ourselves and heal from the too small boxes they tried to fit us in, queering society as we build collective knowledges together outside of colonial institutions’’ (Kate Morales).

 

Guests: Sorab Roustayar, activist and founder of Fite Qlub; Feargal Agard, archivist IHLIA LGBTI Heritage and founder of Humans of Film Festival; Elioa Steffen, Co-coordinator of IPOP, a queer pedagogy research project at the ATD. Host: Devika Chotoe.


Acknowledgements

Editorial team: Frédérique Bergholtz, Devika Chotoe, Anik Fournier
Jingle: Paula Montecinos Oliva
Technician and sound engineer: Monty Mouw
Livestreaming, equipment and post-production: Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee

Listen on site:

If I Can’t Dance

Westerdok 606-608

1013 BV Amsterdam

 

Please arrive not later than 12.30hr

Free, meal included

 

Listen here

Bodies and Technologies

Radio

Wednesday 29 June 2022, 13-14.30hr

Listen here

If I Can't Dance team Frédérique Bergholtz, Sara Giannini, Megan Hoetger, research fellow Devika Chotoe and radio producer Monty Mouw, 'Bodies and Technologies' (2022), radio show. Photo: Anik Fournier.

Edition IX tackles the complex and plural entanglements between bodies and technologies. This broadcast stages a conversation with the If I Can’t Dance artistic team – Frédérique Bergholtz, Anik Fournier, Sara Giannini and Megan Hoetger – and research fellow Devika Chotoe, who share their entry points into the programme and engagements with the Bodies and Technologies field of inquiry.


Acknowledgements

Technician and sound engineer: Monty Mouw
Livestreaming, equipment and post-production: Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee

Library Exhibition

Library displays further the research into Bodies and Technologies by activating material from our library holdings and archive.

Scoring Liveness

Exhibition

22 September – 15 December 2022

Image: keon gaskin and Temra Pavlovic, fragment of artist’s research, 2017

This library exhibition proposes the score as a technology of reproduction. A score is both binding and open in nature, having the capacity to assemble different kinds of bodies, temporalities and materialities, each time anew. Scoring Liveness includes scores, documentation, works and books from the If I Can’t Library and Archive by Yael Davids, Mariana Fernández M, keyon gaskin and Temra Pavlovic, Jacob Korczynski, Constantina Zavitsanos and Park McArthur, together with works borrowed from Amsterdam based artists Martine Neddam and Jo Baer. Throughout the duration of the show a collective writing group led by Michał Dawid and Naomi Collier Broms will explore writing and scoring as a performative practice distinguished by unstable boundaries between bodies. I want the thing that you had when you wrote that keeps writing itself — unmoored and adrift and alive, can be followed live as it unfurls in the ificantdance.studio


Image description

Figure walking down a neighborhood street completely draped in national flags. Their hands are risen above their head. They are pulling the material of a flag across their face so that the facial
features can be seen through the fabric.


Acknowledgements

Scoring Liveness is curated by Anik Fournier (curator of archive and research) in conversation with Frédérique Bergholtz (director). The writing workshop and studio page I want the thing that you had when you wrote that keeps writing itself — unmoored and adrift and alive is curated by Michał Dawid and Naomi Collier Broms and designed by Kommerz. The exhibition poster and handout are designed by Maud Vervenne.

If I Can’t Dance
Westerdok 606-608
1013 BV Amsterdam
Open Mon-Thu, 10-17hr
Please call before you stop by

 

Exhibition Opening: Thursday 22 September, 17-20hr

One day exhibition with Jo Baer

Conversation

Thursday 22 September 2022, 18-19hr

Jo Baer and Frédérique Bergholtz in the artist’s studio, Summer 2022. Jo Bair, detail of 'The Lord God’s Magical Circus', 2022
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For the opening of Scoring Liveness we present two new paintings by Jo Baer before they leave for New York: The Lord God’s Magical Circus and Bone Keaper, Adam’s symmetry, A Paradice Gone. Writer and editor Janine Armin will deliver a short lecture on Baer’s work, which is the subject of her PhD dissertation. Jo Baer (via Zoom) and Malin Persson will be present for a Q & A.


Image description

First image: two people standing and talking in an artist studio. Two large paintings leaning on the wall with various animals, trees and stones can be seen behind them. A black dog is lying on the floor in the foreground.

 

Second image: detail from Jo Baer’s painting ‘The Lord God’s Magical Circus’.

If I Can’t Dance
Westerdok 606-608
1013 BV Amsterdam

 

Free, no reservation required

Co-writing with algorithms
Conversation

Wednesday 19 October 2022, 18-19hr

Martine Neddam, ‘Mouchette.org’ (1996-ongoing), website. Maria Fernandez Mora, excerpt from ‘Dear Machines’ (2022), artist book.
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Artists Martine Neddam and Mariana Fernández M in conversation about ‘scoring liveness’ in their practices, moderated by Anik Fournier.


Image description

A screenshot of a website on which a close-up image of a large bright pink lily is seen. In the top
left-hand corner there is an image of a young girl, beside which is a list of biographical descriptions. At the bottom of the page is a dropdown menu. The first option is: browse me.

If I Can’t Dance
Westerdok 606-608
1013 BV Amsterdam

 

Free, no reservation required

Exhibition opening hours today: 10-20hr

What is a score?

Children’s workshop

Sunday 13 November 2022, 14-17hr

Image taken from joe.ie

Workshop on scores for children between the ages of 8 and 12, held in the library and surrounding neighborhood. Participants are introduced to different forms of scores in art and daily life, with the goal to develop and execute playful scores together.


Image description

An IKEA instruction manual. Billy Disassembly Instructions is written at the top in black bold
letters, under which are six steps performed by a drawn figure disassembling a book shelf.

If I Can’t Dance
Westerdok 606-608
1013 BV Amsterdam

 

€12,50

Reservation, before 10 November, required via office@ificantdance.org

I want the thing that you had

when you wrote that keeps

writing itself — unmoored and

adrift and alive

Conversation

Thursday 15 December 2022, 18-19hr

Image generated using Midjourney

As part of the finissage of the exhibition, the writing group presents the process and some materializations of their experiments in collective writing based on scoring liveness.


Image description

Botanical drawing of a tree with a heavy brown trunk that transforms into tentacle like branches and green foliage on top and reptile-like roots on the bottom. There are cursive black words written around the tree that are illegible.

If I Can’t Dance
Westerdok 606-608
1013 BV Amsterdam

 

Free, no reservation required

Exhibition Finissage: Thursday 15 December, 17-20hr

Performance

Performance organised in the frame of Edition IX (2022–23) – Bodies and Technologies.

Forthcoming (Not Yet Here, But Always Been There) 

Performance

19 & 20 November 2022, 16hr

Anne Jesuina rehearsing for Devika Chotoe’s performance Forthcoming (Not Yet Here, But Always Been There), within the context of patricia kaersenhout’s exhibition The Third Dimension in CBK Zuidoost, November 2022. Photo: Devika Chotoe.
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Devika Chotoe responds with a performance to patricia kaersenhout’s exhibition in CBK Zuidoost. In this exhibition a central role is played by kaersenhouts’s new film Le retour des femmes colibris in which she stages a fictional meeting with Josephine Baker, Suzanne Césaire, Christiane Diop, Frida Kahlo, and Paulette and Jeanne Nardal – all women who played a key, if not also invisible, role within the Négritude movement.


Acknowledgements

Concept and performance: Devika Chotoe, Anne Jesuina
Sound and performance: Paula Montecinos
Sound assistance: Leroy Chaar
Commissioned by If I Can’t Dance, Forthcoming (Not Yet Here, But Always Been There) is co-produced with CBK Zuidoost.

CBK Zuidoost on site
Hettenheuvelweg 8
1101 BN Amsterdam

 

More information

Reader

Bodies and Technologies

Publication

Launch February 2024

Edited by Devika Chotoe

Bodies and Technologies opens-up a multi-sensory terrain, exploring the ways in which technologies condition the experience of our bodies, and how different embodied ways of being in the world, can rewire and even disrupt the behaviors and performance of technologies. This Reader compiles the texts read by If Can’t Dance’s reading group in Amsterdam as part of the artistic programme of Edition IX – Bodies and Technologies (2022–23). Enfolded within its pages is a commissioned sonic artistic intervention by Ciro Goudsmit.  Authors: Rolando Vázquez, Gloria Anzaldúa, Tina M. Campt, Kate Morales, Arturo Escobar, adrienne maree brown, Resmaa Menakem, Kai Cheng Thom, Ursula K. Le Guin, M. Jacqui Alexander, Gloria Wekker, Brandon LaBelle, and ALOK.

Master course
Dutch Art Institute – COOP 22/23

On Tradition – Future Ancestors 3: The Mother, The Archival, and The Symbolic Order

Course

2022-2023

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The third iteration of ‘On Tradition – Future Ancestors’ focuses on the tryptic: The Mother, The Archival and The Symbolic Order, to further an understanding of tradition and what it means to be a future ancestor. At the heart of this investigation is an attention for the pictorial, asking what role the human act of drawing plays in inscribing, unearthing and envisioning the urges of our current(s), past(s) and future(s). By bringing together our individual practices and experiences, like that of a collective unravelling scroll, the course asked what pictures might possibly unfold?

 

A focus on visual, textural and sonic making explores how to create a vessel to share references and connections between individual paths of research. The group engages with existing archives, while it also questioned the creation of an archive of the experience over the year. Through a series of group rituals that includes working with choreography, movement exercises, drawing, painting, visual scenography, listening, writing and translation, connections are built among the group’s participants and lead towards the development of collaborative work.

 

Course tutors: Snejanka Mihaylova and Rory Pilgrim

 

Students: Ania Yilmaz, Baoxin Liao (Bobo), Evija Kristopane, Gamze Öztürk, Gleb Maiboroda, Iarlaith Ni Fheorais, Louis Schou-Hansen, Maxi Smith, Mara Ittel, Pelumi Adejumo, and Theresa Zwerschke.

 

Read full syllabus


Acknowledgements

Guest tutors: Andrea di Serego Alighieri, Frédérique Bergholtz, Claudia Castellucci, Anik Fournier, Maaria Treima, and Sands Murray-Wassink.

Sites

 

If I Can’t Dance Archive Amsterdam

 

Nida Art Colony,

Vilnius

 

PAF, St. Erme

 

Salina, Italy

Hochschule der Künste Bern

Remapping the terms of performance: body, relation, and liveness

Course

28 – 29 March 2023

According to performance theorist Jonah Westerman, performance art is not a medium, but rather, a set of questions concerning the way art relates to its audiences and wider social context. In this seminar we will take this proposition as a starting point to open-up and remap three keywords that have been central to understandings of performance art, positing them as interrelated questions: What is a body? What is a relation? What is liveness? The students’ work will center the discussion, adding new articulations of what a body, relation and liveness can mean, and new perspectives onto their practice at one and the same time. The seminar further aims to highlight how questions specific to performance manifest in embodied acts of transmission and encounter, in and outside the field of art; in cultural practices past, present and in process of becoming; and between living, and material and technological forms of being. Highlighted in this seminar is how questioning the body, the relation and liveness have aesthetic, and also, ethical and political consequences that are important to think through in artistic practice, each time anew.

 

 

Teachers: Frédérique Bergholtz and Anik Fournier


Acknowledgements

Coordination: Marianne Flotron and Madeleine Amsler.

Sites

 

HKB MA Contemporary Arts Practice

 

Kunsthalle, Bern

 

Cabinet of Curiosities of Natural History Museum Bern

Bachelor course
School for New Dance Development – Course 2023

Performative forms of documentation and writing

Course

2023

This class explores the many forms that documentation can take, as well as the functions it can serve in a performance practice. In particular, we focus on the slippery status of “the document” itself and its many temporalities, highlighting non-visual forms of documentation, especially creative writing. Each morning we pull materials out from the If I Can’t Dance archive, this year related to the commissions of Charlotte Prodger, Grant Watson, Samia Henni, and Derrais Carter, and bring them in dialogue with short readings, screenings, the students’ own work and visits to exhibitions presently open in Amsterdam. In the afternoons students are given a small writing exercise in which they are asked to explore in practice the techniques for documentation we focus on in the mornings.

 

Course tutors: Anik Fournier and Megan Hoetger

 

Students: Nana Pinay, Anllel Tanus, Doga Ak, Marta Crespo, Rafael Ferreira Reinata, Reyer Barneveld, rose bouvet, Xiao Chuyue, Yooha Cheon, Elias Klark, Carl-Johan Paulsen

Sites

 

Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam

 

Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

 

Framer Framed, Amsterdam

2021-22
Master course
Centre Pompidou

Cultures d’avenir

Course

1-5 November, 2021

This workshop explores different modes of knowledge production and transmission, which performance – as a practice and a lens onto the world – proposes, and what archival practices can learn from this. We centre methods taken up by past artist and research commissions: the speculative approach of Basque artist Isidoro Valcárcel Medina in 18 pictures, 18 Stories (2010-12); curator Grant Watson’s method of using the interview format to register embodied queer histories in How We Behave (2013-ongoing); the role of storytelling in the transmission of intergenerational trauma among diasporic communities in Mounira Al Solh’s Freedom is a Habit I Am Trying to Learn (2017-18); and finally we navigate the dynamic structure of The Gift Science Archive developed to archive the relational nature of Sands Murray-Wassink’s artistic practice (2019-21).

 

Teachers: Anik Fournier and Megan Hoetger

Centre Pompidou, Paris

Dutch Art Institute – COOP 21/22

On Tradition – Future Ancestors 2: Rurality and Law

Course

2021-2022

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‘On Tradition – Future Ancestors’ focuses on two specific inquiries: Rurality and Law. In a time of increasing crises – from migration, public health, to the destruction of the biosphere – what role does art play in responding to the urgencies of our contemporary moment?

 

By bringing together the plurality of traditions and contexts from those within the COOP, we will investigate how we can develop methodologies as artists that rethink and challenge our understandings of tradition, rurality and law on global and local levels. In this respect we ask: What is law within tradition(s)? What is legislation? Is there a need for new legislation? How can this be formulated? As a focus point, the COOP engages with practices of writing and storytelling to look at the notion of law/lore and their relation to questions of tradition and future ancestry.

 

Course tutors: Snejanka Mihaylova and Rory Pilgrim

 

Students: Pelumi Adejumo, Dylan Spencer-Davidson, Cristina Emmel, Iarlaith Ni Fheorais, Michael Sites Fischer, Izaro Ieregi Gonzalez, Nadja Henß, Gleb Maiboroda, Adriana A. Leanza, Marilú Mapengo Namoda, and Liza Rinkema Rapuš.

 

Read full syllabus 

 

Sites

 

Lithuania

 

Wongema and Schiermonnikoog, NL

 

Bergamo, Italy

 

Baco Art Institue, Bergamo, IT

 

St. Erme, FR

Bachelor course
School for New Dance Development – Course 2022

Performative forms of documentation and writing

Course

2022

This class explores the many forms that documentation can take, as well as the functions it can serve in a performance practice. In particular, we focus on the slippery status of “the document” itself and its many temporalities, highlighting non-visual forms of documentation, especially creative writing. Each morning we pull materials out from the If I Can’t Dance archive, this year related to the commissions of Derrais Carter, Grant Watson, the library exhibition Scoring Liveness, Constantina Zavitsanos, and Fred Moten and Wu Tsang, and bring them in dialogue with short readings, screenings, the students’ own work and visits to exhibitions presently open in Amsterdam. In the afternoons students are given a small writing exercise in which they are asked to explore in practice the counter-techniques for documentation we focus on in the mornings.

 

Teachers: Anik Fournier and Megan Hoetger

 

Students: Tom Boyaval, Matthieu La-Brossard, Lucas Lagomarsino, Thalia Livingston, Sancha Castro, Helene Ridderberg, Horatcio Vlijter, Jakob Wittkowsky, Sam Zanardo, Kairo Edward.

Sites

 

Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam

 

Framer Framed, Amsterdam

 

Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

2020-21
Master course
Dutch Art Institute – COOP 20/21

On Tradition – Future Ancestors: let rhythm be your guiding light

Course

2020-2021

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‘On Tradition – Future Ancestors’ takes place through a framework of collective reading, listening, and creating to explore our individual and collective relationships to tradition and what it means to be a future ancestor. Through this course we ask ourselves: how do we radically enable nuance, storytelling, and experience in the traditions we become caregivers of? By looking into structures of performance and music composition, the COOP explores how the score can give freedom to different tempos and textures that exist within time. In what sense can we truly think of something from the past anew and enable a creative manifestation of the future to be present? How can rhythm be nurtured as a tool of agency, prophecy and emancipation?

 

Course tutors: Snejanka Mihaylova and Rory Pilgrim

 

Students: Ilgin Akseloglu, Bambi van Balen, Felix Bahret, Alexandra Duvekot, Dandelion Eghosa, Raffia Li, Marilú Mapengo Namoda, Kari Rosenfeld, Rosa Ronsdorf, Lou Lou Sainsbury, Iga Świeściak, Marie Tučková́, Rhodé Visser, Eli Witteman, Zane Zajančkauska, and Lau ten Zeldam.

 

Read full syllabus


Acknowledgements

Guest tutors: Rachel O’Reilly, Ghalya Saadawi, Georgi Ilchev, Ima Abasi-Okon, Miyuki Inoue, and MPA.

Bachelor course
School for New Dance Development – Course 2021

Performative forms of documentation and writing

Course

2021

This class explores the many forms that documentation can take, as well as the functions it can serve in a performance practice. In particular, we focus on the slippery status of “the document” itself and its many temporalities, highlighting non-visual forms of documentation, especially creative writing. Each morning we pull materials out from the If I Can’t Dance archive, this year related to the commissions of Pauline Curnier Jardin, Grant Watson, The Otolith Group, and Sands Murray-Wassink, and bring them in dialogue with short readings, screenings, the students’ own work and visits to exhibitions presently open in Amsterdam. In the afternoons students are given a small writing exercise in which they are asked to explore in practice the counter-techniques for documentation we focus on in the mornings.

 

Teachers: Anik Fournier and Megan Hoetger

 

Students: Sára Korom, Saman Mahdavi, La Uyi Ihasee, Hugo Liu, Dora Brkarić, Billy Morgan, Barros de Soussa, Agnė

Sites

 

Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam

 

Framer Framed, Amsterdam

 

Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

Performative forms of documentation and writing 

Course

2021

This class explores the many forms that documentation can take, as well as the functions it can serve in a performance practice. In particular, we focus on the slippery status of “the document” itself and its many temporalities, highlighting non-visual forms of documentation, especially creative writing. Each morning, we pull materials out from the If I Can’t Dance archive, this year related to the commissions of Bulegoa z/b with Isidoro Valcárcel Medina, The Otolith Group, and Sands Murray-Wassink, and bring them in dialogue with short readings, screenings, the students’ own work and visits to exhibitions presently open in Amsterdam. In the afternoons students are given a small writing exercise in which they are asked to explore in practice the counter-techniques for documentation we focus on in the mornings.

 

Teachers: Anik Fournier and Megan Hoetger

 

Students: Rene Bizimana, Alex Blum, MingJou Chen, Asia Deinekina, Julius Frodermann, Corina Mitrovici, Caner Teker, Adam Jönsson.

Sites

 

Het Hem, Zaandam

 

Oudekerk, Amsterdam

2019–21
Artist Commissions
Pauline Curnier Jardin

(b. 1980, Marseille. Lives in Amsterdam and Berlin) is an artist and performer whose personas in (art)history, folklore and myth are invested in questions related to the contemporary conditions of women. The making of her first feature film extends her interest in rituals that accompany stages of life.

Sea of Roses by Ana Carolina

Screening

9 February 2022, 19hr

Ana Carolina, 'Sea of Roses (1978), screening. Poster: Maude Vervenne. Screening of Ana Carolina's 'Mar de Rosas' (Sea of Roses) (1977) as part of 'Bodies Extra-ordinaires' library exhibition (2022). Photo: Temra Pavlovic. Screening of Ana Carolina's 'Mar de Rosas' (Sea of Roses) (1977) as part of 'Bodies Extra-ordinaires' library exhibition (2022). Photo: Temra Pavlovic.
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Within the framework of our research exhibition Bodies Extra-ordinaires we host the screening of this film at our production studio in Westerdok and online on the ificantdance.studio. Set against the backdrop of second-wave feminism and the larger struggle to escape the repressive authoritarian regime in 1970s Brazil, Sea of Roses proposes a set of women figures whose behaviours and violent acts deliver a raw critique of institutions and established beliefs regarding the family, education, religion, romantic love and the honouring of the father. Following a gruesome attempted murder at the start of the film, mother and daughter set off on a journey full of mischievous, surreal events, which leaves viewers situated in a complex negotiation of identification and alienation. We are happy to offer a new subtitled version of this important film after the copy with the English subtitles was burnt in a fire at the cinematheque of São Paulo.

 

Sea of Roses, 1h30 min, col. Brazilian/Portuguese with English Subtitles.


Acknowledgements

Thank you to director Ana Carolina and Crystal Cine for their enthusiasm and support for the project and permission to screen the film.

If I Can’t Dance production studio
Westerdok 606–608
1013 BV Amsterdam

 

Studio (streaming only once at 19hr)

ificantdance.studio

 

Free, the audience number is limited to 25 people, first come first served

 

Corona QR code is required to attend

 

Soup and drinks will be served from 18hr, the screening starts at 19hr

 

Before the screening the library display is open to visit

Freak Orlando by Ulrike Ottinger

Screening

22 December 2021, 19hr

Ulrike Ottinger, 'Freak Orlando' (1981), screening. Poster: Maude Vervenne.

Within the framework of our research exhibition Bodies Extra-ordinaires we host the screening of this film online at the ificantdance.studio. Ulrike Ottinger’s world of ‘freaks’ or unusual characters with physical or mental oddities gradually seem much less odd than their physically ‘normal’ contemporaries. Over the course of five episodes the film traces different origin stories.

 

Freak Orlando, 126 min, col. German with English subtitles

ificantdance.studio

A Question of Silence by Marleen Gorris

Screening

11 November 2021, 19hr

Marleen Gorris, ‘A Question of Silence’ (1982), screening. Poster: Maude Vervenne. ‘Bodies Extra-ordinaires’ (2021), exhibition. Photo: Temra Pavlovic. Bodies Extra-ordinaires’ (2021), screening Marleen Gorris A Question of Silence. Photo: Temra Pavlovic. Pauline Curnier Jardin and Giulia Damiani, ‘Bodies Extra-ordinaires’ (2021), screening Marleen Gorris A Question of Silence. Photo: Temra Pavlovic.
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Within the framework of our research exhibition Bodies Extra-ordinaires we host the screening of this film at our production studio in Westerdok and online on the ificantdance.studio. Three women are accused of the murder of a shopkeeper. The film subtly layers the forms of microaggressions experienced by the women and carried out by male partners in their lives and work. The narrative poignantly intersperses silence and laughter, which comes to a culmination in the last scene of the film. In 1983 artist Barbara Kruger reviewed the film for Art Forum and described how at each screening she attended in New York the infectious laughter of the women spread from the screen to the theatre audience.

 

A Question of Silence, 92 min, col. Dutch with English Subtitles.

 

Soup and drinks will be served from 18hr the screening starts at 19hr.

 

Artist Pauline Curnier Jardin will be present.

If I Can’t Dance production studio
Westerdok 606–608
1013 BV Amsterdam

 

Studio (for 24 hours)
ificantdance.studio

 

Free, the audience number is limited to 35 people, first come first served

 

Corona QR code is required to attend

Bodies Extra-ordinaires

Library & Studio Display

27 October 2021 – 9 February 2022

‘Bodies Extra-ordinaires’ (2021), exhibition. Photo: Temra Pavlovic. ‘Bodies Extra-ordinaires’ (2021), exhibition. Photo: Temra Pavlovic. ‘Bodies Extra-ordinaires’ (2021), exhibition. Photo: Temra Pavlovic. ‘Bodies Extra-ordinaires’ (2021), exhibition. Photo: Temra Pavlovic. ‘Bodies Extra-ordinaires’ (2021), exhibition. Photo: Temra Pavlovic.
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At the premises of the If I Can’t Dance production studio, both in Westerdok and online, archivist Anik Fournier and scholar Giulia Damiani create a research space and dramaturgy of activities inspired by Curnier Jardin’s feature film in the making. Departing from the artist’s somatic world of martyred saints, secreting beings and anatomic caves, a library display explores potentials of transforming bodies, human and more-than-human, in cinematic language. Furthermore, the ificantdance.studio accumulates other resources around the vocabularies, stories and feminist genealogies informing Curnier Jardin’s film production. The project runs in conjunction with the exhibition Waiting for Agatha, Sebastian and the Rest of the Holy Children — Unfolding A Filmic Research at Index in Stockholm.


Acknowledgements

The project is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance, curated by Sara Giannini and co-produced with Index Stockholm. Bodies Extra-ordinaires is curated by Anik Fournier (Archive and Research Curator, If I Can’t Dance) and Giulia Damiani (independent researcher and dramaturg).

Library display

If I Can’t Dance production studio
Westerdok 606–608
1013 BV Amsterdam
Exhibition Opening: 27 October, 17hr
Open daily Wednesday, 13–17hr

 

Studio display

ificantdance.studio

 

Please note that to compensate the period of closure due to the lock down, the library display will be extended until 9 February

Qu’un sang impur

Screening

Saturday 26 October 2019, 15–16hr

Pauline Curnier Jardin, ‘Qu’un sang impur’ (2019), screening. Photo: Marcel de Buck. Pauline Curnier Jardin, ‘Qu’un sang impur’ (2019), screening. Photo: Marcel de Buck.
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Pauline Curnier Jardin, Explosion Ma Baby, 2016. HD video and sound, 7 minutes (excerpt) © Pauline Curnier Jardin

The artist’s research in Italy is shared through a video letter and trailer, alongside viewings of Explosion Ma Baby (2016), in which naked babies are lifted in front of alter pieces during Italy’s chaotic Saint Sebastian festival, and Qu’un sang impur (2019). In the latter, based on Jean Genet’s homo-erotic film Un chant d’amour, Qu’un sang impur (1950), the male bodies in the original are replaced with menopausal women celebrating their erotic powers.

 

Qu’un sang impur, 16 min 5 sec, col, German with English Subtitles

Explosion Ma Baby, 9 min, col


Acknowledgements

Qu’un sang impur is co-produced with Bergen Assembly and Freunde der Nationalgalerie / Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Introduction
Not Yet Shebang

Hettenheuvelweg 16

1101 BN Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

Free, reservations required

MPA

(b. 1980, Redding, CA. Lives in Los Angeles) uses meditative, durational, theatrical and actionist modes of performance to engage the energetic as a potential material in live work. Enriched with ritual and theatricality, her work examines behaviours of power, such as global arms race, patriarchy and life on other planets. She creates a new theatre performance in which she focusses on defense mechanisms, telepathic means and the basic elements of matter.

Fire for Water

Performance

21 & 22 October 2022, 20hr

MPA, ‘Fire for Water’, 15 October 2021, Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen, Vijfhuizen. Photography: Konstantin Guz.

A meditation on human violence and the possibility of transformation, Fire for Water is a solo performance by Los Angeles based artist MPA. The duality of fire as a force of both creation and destruction is a metaphor that burns throughout the piece, igniting the complicated entanglements between wounds and armaments, protection and oppression, spectacles and wars. Led by an original soundtrack, the piece enacts a dream-like space where different visions appear. Water vessels, armors, fires, and telepathic means are characters in a story that unfolds across different modes of being. Speaking to the wounds that inhabit us, self-armaments are undone, leaving space to the desire to be wet and to be with water.

 

After it premiered with If I Can’t Dance at Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen in October last year, Fire for Water will be presented this month as a full theatre piece in the space of Gessnerallee in Zürich.


Acknowledgements

Concept and performance: MPA
Curatorial team: Sara Giannini with Frédérique Bergholtz (If I Can’t Dance), Catalina Insignares (Gessnerallee) and Zippora Elders (Kunstfort)
Sound: MPA with Leroy Chaar, including tracks by MV Carbon
Sound design: Leroy Chaar
Lighting design: Maria Shaplin
Set design: MPA with contributions by Julian Abraham ‘Togar’ and Andrea Verdecchia
Costumes: MPA with Danielle Garrabrants
Production manager: Bianca Góis Barbosa
Team Kunstfort performance: Frédérique Bergholtz, Gert-Jan Brok, Samuel Does, Zippora Elders, Sara Giannini, Irene de Gelder, Jim van Geel, Marion Tränkle

 

Commissioned by If I Can’t Dance, Fire for Water is co-produced with Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen and Gessnerallee Zürich.

Gessnerallee

Gessnerallee 8

88001 Zürich

Switzerland

 

Tickets

Fire for Water

Performance and Exhibition

Performance:
Friday 15 and Saturday 16 October 2021

MPA, Fire for Water, 2021 MPA, ‘Fire for Water’, 15 October 2021, Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen, Vijfhuizen. Photography: Konstantin Guz. MPA, ‘Fire for Water’, 15 October 2021, Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen, Vijfhuizen. Photography: Konstantin Guz. MPA, ‘Fire for Water’, 15 October 2021, Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen, Vijfhuizen. Photography: Konstantin Guz. MPA, ‘Fire for Water’, 15 October 2021, Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen, Vijfhuizen. Photography: Konstantin Guz. MPA, ‘Fire for Water’, 15 October 2021, Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen, Vijfhuizen. Photography: Konstantin Guz. MPA, ‘Fire for Water’, 15 October 2021, Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen, Vijfhuizen. Photography: Konstantin Guz. MPA, ‘Fire for Water’, 15 October 2021, Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen, Vijfhuizen. Photography: Konstantin Guz. MPA, ‘Fire for Water’, 15 October 2021, Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen, Vijfhuizen. Photography: Konstantin Guz. MPA, ‘Fire for Water’, 15 October 2021, Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen, Vijfhuizen. Photography: Konstantin Guz.
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Departing from the question ‘Can we stop bullets with our minds?’, the performance develops further the artist’s investigation of psychological and esoteric dynamics propelling human violence and systems of defense. The piece is conceived specifically for the spaces and gardens of the Kunstfort, a former military fort on the Amsterdam defence line. The fort’s bunker becomes a dream-like space where different visions appear. As if in a perverted fashion show, self-armaments are done and undone, igniting the complicated entanglements between protection and oppression, spectacles and wars. After the two evenings, remnants of the performance stay at the Kunstfort conjuring an afterlife of the dreams awakened.


Acknowledgements

Concept and performance: MPA
Curatorial team: Sara Giannini in dialogue with Frédérique Bergholtz and Zippora Elders
Sound: MPA with Leroy Chaar, including tracks by MV Carbon
Sound design: Leroy Chaar
Lighting design: Marion Tränkle
Set design: MPA with contributions by Julian Abraham ‘Togar’ and Andrea Verdecchia
Costumes: MPA with Danielle Garrabrants
Make-up: Samuel Does
Fire keeper: Guadalupe Rosales
Production team: Sara Giannini, Irene de Gelder, Jim van Geel
Backstage manager: Irene de Gelder
Building and construction: Gert-Jan Brok

 

Commissioned by If I Can’t Dance and co-produced with Gessnerallee, Zürich and Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen.

 

18hr, shuttle departure at 17hr
20hr, shuttle departure at 19hr

 

€10/€12,50 with shuttle from Amsterdam

 

Purchase your tickets here

 

Exhibition:

Friday 22 October – Sunday 5 December 2021

Friday – Sunday, 13–17hr

 

€4 adults / €2 children 12–18 years / free children up to 12 years

 

Purchase your ticket here

 

Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen

Fortwachter 1

2141 EE Vijfhuizen (Haarlemmermeer)

The Netherlands

Unknown Address

Radio transmission

Saturday, 13 February 2021, 20–22hr

The artist shares a public address in the context of El Caldo/the Broth, a festival transmitted by Gessnerallee, Zürich. Thinking about oceanic and diasporic journeys, El Caldo focusses on the invisible ways in which people, in order to survive, communicate through waves, spores, winds and telepathies. Somewhere in between the lines of practical communiqué and channelled phantasms, MPA’s sonic meditation ruminates on the foreignness of coming together across cosmological distances. The radio transmission is one of the many manifestations of her performance commission Fire for Water.

 

You can listen to the piece here.


Acknowledgements

Co-produced with Gessnerallee, Zürich and Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen, Fire for Water is curated by Sara Giannini.

Gessnerallee
Gessnerallee 8
8001 Zürich
Switzerland

Liveness

Performance

Saturday 26 October 2019, 13–14hr

MPA, ‘Liveness’ (2019), performance. Photo: Marcel de Buck. MPA, ‘Liveness’ (2019), performance. Photo: Marcel de Buck. MPA, ‘Liveness’ (2019), performance. Photo: Marcel de Buck. MPA, ‘Liveness’ (2019), performance. Photo: Marcel de Buck.
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The audience is seated astride a sort of catwalk with a sword at one end. In angular sunglasses, black jeans and a dark hoodie, the artist offers concise statements: ‘These are dark times, but these are not the darkest times’; ‘Will we save each other from ourselves?’ She closes by kneeling, repeating the same phrase – a ritualistic moment in which ‘spectators’ might negotiate their position and possibly join her.

Introduction 
Not Yet Shebang

Hettenheuvelweg 16

1101 BN Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

Free, reservations required

Sands Murray-Wassink

(b. 1974, Topeka, Kansas. Lives in Amsterdam) is a painter, body artist, writer and perfume collector with his main materials being thoughts, feelings, behaviours, emotions and relationships. His practice is indebted to various forms and permutations of intersectional feminist and queer art where Carolee Schneemann, Hannah Wilke and Adrian Piper serving as key coordinates. He and his collaborators dig through, order and “take stock” of his studio as a durational performance of archiving over a two-year period.

giftsciencearchive.net

Website

20 January 2022

A database archiving the artist’s work, which is assembled through storytelling and reproductive labour methods developed with his collaborators Amalia Calderón, Megan Hoetger and Radna Rumping over the nearly three-years of their eponymous durational performance of archiving. The website catalogs nearly 2400 ‘studio objects’, tracing the web-like network of relations that characterize the artist’s practice and highlighting the multiplicity of ways in which objects and their stories can be entered.


Acknowledgements

Gift Science Archive is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger, and is co-produced with mistral, Amsterdam and Auto Italia, London with support from the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam. The architecture of the website is conceived by Hoetger and project assistant Amalia Calderón, and is realized in collaboration with Kommerz design studio.

giftsciencearchive.net

I am not American (I love Adrian, I miss Carolee, I follow Hannah)

Exhibition

13 January – 6 March 2022

Sands Murray-Wassink, ‘I Miss Carolee’ (2019), acrylic paint on canvas board. Sands Murray-Wassink, from the ’Signature Collage’ series (1993-1995), oil crayon on A4 xerox
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The exhibition brings together works exploring humour as a strategy for describing alternative representations of gay male sexuality and mental health; and which centre the influence of feminist figures, including the artist’s former teacher and long-time friend Carolee Schneemann. Through such strategies, the artist consciously and systematically links with the history of feminist art practice.

 

The show is accompanied by commissioned and restaged performances from Cassie Augusta Jørgensen (DK) & Rory Pilgrim (UK / NL), Harilay Rabenjamina (FR) and Ebun Sodipo (UK). For more on the exhibition and public programme, visit: https://autoitaliasoutheast.org


Acknowledgements

Gift Science Archive is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger, and is co-produced with mistral, Amsterdam and Auto Italia, London with support from the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam. I am not American is curated by Auto Italia director Edward Gillman. The exhibition and public programme in London have additional support from Arts Council England, Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands UK, Institut français du Royaume-Uni, and Mondriaan Fonds.

Opening hours: Thursday – Sunday 12-17hr

 

Auto Italia, London

44 Bonner Rd, Bethnal Green

London E2 9JS

United Kingdom

Process Event #3: COLLABORATION: How Can We Work Together?

Conversation

Monday 21 June, 12–13.30hr

Gift Science Archive in operation Megan Hoetger and Sands Murray-Wassink unfurl Tryout Wallpaper in the Gift Science Archive studio-depot at the Rijksakademie, February 2020. Photo: Radna Rumping Amalia Calderón visits Sands Murray-Wassink in his home studio and explores the ongoing perfume collection from Monument to Depression, December 2020. Photo: Robin Wassink-Murray Sands Murray-Wassink and Radna Rumping install Signature Collage at mistral, Amsterdam for the exhibition In Good Company (Horsepower): Materials from the Gift Science Archive, 1993-present. Photo: Megan Hoetger Frédérique Bergholtz and Sands Murray-Wassink install works from “Working 2010s” series for Without You I’m Nothing (Blue) at the Rijksakademie Open Studios 2021, June 2021. Photo: Megan Hoetger
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In the final process event, the artist and collaborators Amalia Calderón, Megan Hoetger and Radna Rumping sit together with If I Can’t Dance archive and research curator Anik Fournier to discuss the structures of ‘collaboration’ within the group’s performance of archiving and the modes of feminist storytelling and knowledge production developed over the course of their eighteen months working together. They also share insights into their respective roles and shared tasks throughout the process.


Image description

Gift Science Archive is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance, curated by Megan Hoetger and co-produced with mistral, Amsterdam and Auto Italia, London, the project is supported by the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam.


Acknowledgements

Gift Science Archive is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger, and is co-produced with mistral, Amsterdam and Auto Italia, London with support from the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam.

Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten

 

Free, live-streamed

 

Backstage with the Gift Science Archive

Performance

Saturday 19 June 2021, 15–18hr with the artist and Radna Rumping
Friday 25 June 2021, 15–18hr with the artist and Megan Hoetger

Studio-depot Gift Science Archive with a fragment of Horse Cloud View through the door into the studio-depot of Sands Murray-Wassink and the Gift Science Archive at the Rijksakademie van beeldende Kunsten. Photo: Sander van Wettum View of the studio-depot of Sands Murray-Wassink and the Gift Science Archive at the Rijksakademie van beeldende Kunsten. Photo: Sander van Wettum View of the “Rolled Paintings” series of works, awaiting cataloging in the studio-depot of Sands Murray-Wassink and the Gift Science Archive at the Rijksakademie van beeldende Kunsten. Photo: Sander van Wettum Sands Murray-Wassink unfurls a “Rolled Painting” work on paper for the camera. Photo: Sander van Wettum
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As a pendant piece to the artist’s exhibition for the Rijksakademie Open Studios 2021, the durational performance invites visitors inside the project’s studio-depot where the artist and collaborators Megan Hoetger and Radna Rumping offer a peak into the group’s working processes and relational methods.


Acknowledgements

Gift Science Archive is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger, and is co-produced with mistral, Amsterdam and Auto Italia, London with support from the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam.

Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, studio (A14)
Sarphatistraat 470
1018GW Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

€10, registration required

Without You I’m Nothing (Blue)

Exhibition

Thursday 17 – Sunday 27 June 2021

Sands Murray-Wassink, installing Without You I'm Nothing (Blue), Rijksakademie Open Studios, 17-27 June 2021 Installation view of Without You I’m Nothing (Blue) at the Rijksakademie van beeldende Kunsten. Photo: Sander van Wettum Detail of “Working 2010s” series in Without You I’m Nothing (Blue) at the Rijksakademie van beeldende Kunsten. Photo: Sander van Wettum Detail of Body Print / Gay Shadows and Anal Collage (PRIDE & JOY) in Without You I’m Nothing (Blue) at the Rijksakademie van beeldende Kunsten. Photo: Sander van Wettum
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Conceived within the frame of the Rijksakademie Open Studios 2021, the exhibition presents a wide selection of never-before-seen works, which have been unearthed in the artist’s performance of archiving, including paintings on paper and fabric, photographs and video, and works by Senga Nengudi and Carolee Schneemann from his personal collection. The installation highlights the artist’s long-standing practices of writing, painting, posing, and feminist citationality.


Acknowledgements

Gift Science Archive is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance.The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger, and is co-produced with mistral, Amsterdam and Auto Italia, London with support from the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam. Without You I’m Nothing (Blue) is co-curated by Hoetger and director Frédérique Bergholtz.

Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, studio (A15)
Sarphatistraat 470
1018GW Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

€10, registration required

In Good Company (Horsepower): Materials from the Gift Science Archive, 1993 – present

Exhibition
6 March – 23 May 2021
Sands Murray-Wassink, ‘In Good Company (Horsepower): Materials from the Gift Science Archive, 1993 – present’ (2021), exhibition. Photo: Charlott Markus. Sands Murray-Wassink, ‘In Good Company (Horsepower): Materials from the Gift Science Archive, 1993 – present’ (2021), exhibition. Photo: Charlott Markus. Sands Murray-Wassink, ‘In Good Company (Horsepower): Materials from the Gift Science Archive, 1993 – present’ (2021), exhibition. Photo: Charlott Markus. Sands Murray-Wassink, ‘In Good Company (Horsepower): Materials from the Gift Science Archive, 1993 – present’ (2021), exhibition. Photo: Charlott Markus. Sands Murray-Wassink, ‘In Good Company (Horsepower): Materials from the Gift Science Archive, 1993 – present’ (2021), exhibition. Photo: Charlott Markus. Sands Murray-Wassink, ‘In Good Company (Horsepower): Materials from the Gift Science Archive, 1993 – present’ (2021), exhibition. Photo: Charlott Markus. Sands Murray-Wassink, ‘In Good Company (Horsepower): Materials from the Gift Science Archive, 1993 – present’ (2021), exhibition. Photo: Charlott Markus. Sands Murray – Wassink, ‘In Good Company (Horsepower): Materials from the Gift Science Archive, 1993 – present’ (2021), exhibition. Photo: Charlott Markus. Visitor-researcher Richard John Jones engages with materials from Gift Science Archive at mistral, Amsterdam. Photo: Megan Hoetger Visitor-researcher Mohamad Deeb engages with materials from Gift Science Archive at mistral, Amsterdam. Photo: Megan Hoetger Visitor-researchers Marina Vrodljak and Kenneth Geurts engage with materials from Gift Science Archive at mistral, Amsterdam. Photo: Megan Hoetger Visitor-researcher Marina Pollock engages with materials from Gift Science Archive at mistral, Amsterdam. Photo: Megan Hoetger Visitor-researchers engage with materials from Gift Science Archive at mistral, Amsterdam. Photo: Radna Rumping
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The installation opens up the process of the ‘monumental’ 18-month collaborative performance Gift Science Archive (GSA) to the public for haptic engagements with the artist’s working and archiving processes. Visitors are invited to peruse the GSA database and to pull materials from the collection for a closer look and, over a cup, for a story. The ‘research experience’ is thus set into relational motion, by conversations – a central part of Murray-Wassink’s practice.


Acknowledgements

Gift Science Archive is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance.The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger, and is co-produced with mistral, Amsterdam and Auto Italia, London with support from the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam. In Good Company is co-curated by Hoetger together with mistral co-directors Radna Rumping and Huib Haye van der Werf.

mistral

Groenhoedenveem 2
(entrance round the corner at Veemkade)
1019 BL Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

Research Visits: Thursdays and Saturdays, 12–17hr
Book here

 

Virtual Tours: Fridays, 17–18hr
Book here

 

Free

 

Exhibition folder

Process Event #2: RELATIONSHIPS. Feminist Legacies, Queer Intimacies

Epistolary Exchange

26 June 2020–6 February 2021

Digital photograph of Aimar’s left hand touching Sands’ book on Aimar’s desktop sent to Sands as an email attachment on 15 August 2020.

The second of the Gift Science Archive process events unfolds over eight months, as the artist corresponds with Bilbao-based curator Aimar Arriola, reflecting on how ‘queer’ relationships – including the one in the making here – form, grow, shift and blossom. Across the letters, they share insights into their lives and perspectives on the primary materials (thoughts, feelings and relationships) and key thematics (sex, sexuality, gender, health and self-care) in Murray-Wassink’s art/life practice. The exchange (26 June 2020–6 February 2021) is available for the public as a quilt-like network of chapters at ificantdance.studio.


Acknowledgements

Gift Science Archive is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance.The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger who facilitated the correspondence and realised the online studio room in collaboration with Kommerz design studio. The project is co-produced with mistral, Amsterdam and Auto Italia, London with support from the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam.

ificantdance.studio

Process Event #1: VALUE / What is trash? What is trashy but valuable?

Conversation

Friday 6 March 2020, 18.30–20.30hr

Right to left: Radna Rumping, Sands Murray-Wassink, and Vivian van Saaze, ‘Gift Science Archive Process Event #1: VALUE’ (2020), workshop. Photo: Silvia Ulloa Márquez. Sands Murray-Wassink, ‘Gift Science Archive Process Event #1: VALUE’ (2020), workshop. Photo: Silvia Ulloa Márquez. Sands Murray-Wassink, ‘Gift Science Archive Process Event #1: VALUE’ (2020), workshop. Photo: Silvia Ulloa Márquez. Sands Murray-Wassink, ‘Gift Science Archive Process Event #1: VALUE’ (2020), workshop. Photo: Silvia Ulloa Márquez. Sands Murray-Wassink, ‘Gift Science Archive Process Event #1: VALUE’ (2020), workshop. Photo: Silvia Ulloa Márquez. Sands Murray-Wassink, ‘Gift Science Archive Process Event #1: VALUE’ (2020), workshop. Photo: Silvia Ulloa Márquez. Sands Murray-Wassink, ‘Gift Science Archive Process Event #1: VALUE’ (2020), workshop. Photo: Silvia Ulloa Márquez.
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In the opening of a three-part series, the artist takes stock of the role of ‘value’ in his 25-year oeuvre at the start of his collaboration with the Gift Science Archive group, including storyteller Amalia Calderón, programme curator Megan Hoetger, and independent curator Radna Rumping. In connection to the group’s year-long studio residency at the Rijksakademie, the conversation unfolds as a studio visit with Associate Professor of Conservation and Museum Studies at Maastricht University, Vivian van Saaze and members of the Amsterdam artist community.


Acknowledgements

Gift Science Archive is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger, and is co-produced with mistral, Amsterdam and Auto Italia, London with support from the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam.

Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten

Sarphatistraat 470

1018 GW Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

Free, reservations required

Up To and Including His Limits

Performance

Saturday 26 October 2019, 16–17hr

Sands Murray-Wassink, ‘Read My Work’ (2011), acrylic paint on synthetic fabric. Photo: Marcel de Buck. Sands Murray-Wassink, ‘They Don't Understand Me’ (2010), acrylic on synthetic fabric. Photo: Marcel de Buck. Sands Murray-Wassink, ‘Up To And Including His Limits’ (2019), performance. Photo: Marcel de Buck. Sands Murray-Wassink, ‘Up To And Including His Limits’ (2019), performance. Photo: Marcel de Buck. Sands Murray-Wassink, ‘Up To And Including His Limits’ (2019), performance. Photo: Marcel de Buck. Sands Murray-Wassink, ‘Up To And Including His Limits’ (2019), performance. Photo: Marcel de Buck. Lisa Robertson in front of Sands Murray-Wassink’s ‘I Want To Fuck’ (2009), acrylic on 'distressed polyester’. Photo: Marcel de Buck.
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The artist’s textile paintings adorn the space throughout the weekend. Here, he shares on his multimedia practice, concentrating on its early beginnings in 1993, in a slide show that makes clear his reliance on feminist figures like Carolee Schneeman, Hannah Wilke and Adrian Piper. He then dances before a dual projection – a Schneemann video and footage from his studio – in and out of step with ‘Starlight’ by The Supermen Lovers.


Acknowledgements

In a two day event, the Edition VIII artists and researchers introduce their work at Not Yet Shebang. Edition VIII artists and researchers are invited by director Frédérique Bergholtz. The commission series is curated by programme curators Sara Giannini and Megan Hoetger.

Introduction
Not Yet Shebang

Hettenheuvelweg 16

1101 BN Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

Free, reservations required

 

Research Commissions
Derrais Carter

(b. 1984, Augsburg, Germany. Lives in Tucson, AZ) is an artist and assistant professor in the Department of Gender & Women’s Studies at the University of Arizona where he teaches Black Critical Theory, Black Popular Music and Black Queer Studies. Drawing on these subjects the artist looks at Ernie Barnes’ Sugar Shack (1976) to delve into ‘black ass social history’ in cultivating a space for black interiors and social lives.

Black Vitality: Life, Listening and ‘The Sugar Shack’

Lecture-Performance

27 April 2023

19hr (EST)

Event poster for “Black Vitality: Life, Listening and ‘The Sugar Shack’”.

Part of the Arts Everywhere Festival, this Big Ideas in Art + Culture talk with Carter is a collective listening session masquerading as a lecture. Pairing musical selections from his Black Revelry Quiet Storm radio show with close readings of Ernie Barnes’ painting The Sugar Shack, Carter together with his audience explore what happens when we apply the painting to our social worlds.


Acknowledgements

Black Revelry: In Honor of ‘The Sugar Shack’ is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger who also serves as managing editor for the publication, which is supported by the Netherland American Foundation. The publication includes contributions from Taylor Renée Aldridge, Samiya Bashir, Dr. La Marr Jurelle Bruce, DJ Lynnée Denise, Dr. William Mosley III, Dr. Zoë Samudzi, S*an D. Henry- Smith, Melanie Stevens, and Phillip B. Williams, with design by Karoline Świeżyński and sound production by MJ Mouw.

Art Gallery of Guelph
358 Gordon St

Guelph, ON N1G 1Y1, USA

 

No RSVP required.

 

For more information, click here.

black poesis/radical composition: Derrais Carter & Samiya Bashir

Reading & conversation

19 April 2023
16–17:30hr (EST)

Event poster for the black poesis/radical composition series featuring the work ‘Untitled (black city)’ by Renee Gladman.

Convened by Dr. Saidiya Hartman, this event is part of the “black poesis/radical composition” series, which examines literary experiments in prose and poetics by contemporary writers, critics and artists whose work in sonic production, visual culture, critical thought, textual assemblage and auto-theory articulates possibilities of living and making inside the racialized enclosure. Carter is joined by Black Revelry contributor Samiya Bashir for a reading from the publication followed by a small academic seminar led by Carter, Bashir and Hartman.


Acknowledgements

Black Revelry: In Honor of ‘The Sugar Shack’ is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger who also serves as managing editor for the publication, which is supported by the Netherland American Foundation. The publication includes contributions from Taylor Renée Aldridge, Samiya Bashir, Dr. La Marr Jurelle Bruce, DJ Lynnée Denise, Dr. William Mosley III, Dr. Zoë Samudzi, S*an D. Henry- Smith, Melanie Stevens, and Phillip B. Williams, with design by Karoline Świeżyński and sound production by MJ Mouw.

Columbia University
Deutsches Haus
420 W. 116 Street
New York 10027, USA

 

No RSVP required, seating on a first come first serve basis.

 

For more information, click here.

Black Revelry: A Dinner and Lecture

Lecture-Performance

17 March 2023
18:30hr (EST)

Menu for the ‘Black Revelry’ dinner and lecture.

Organized by Dr. Aleia Monae Brown and Carter, this event features a five-course meal with readings from Black Revelry, as well as sonic interludes from the Black Revelry Quiet Storm radio show, between courses.

Coffee + Spice

1025 West Fifth Street

Greenville, North Carolina 97834, USA

Black Revelry: In Honor of ‘The Sugar Shack’

Book Launch

1 June 2022, 19hr

Derrais Carter, ‘Black Revelry: In Honor of “The Sugar Shack”’ (2022), book launch. Photo: Hopscotch Reading Room. Megan Hoetger, Karoline Świeżyński, and Derrais Carter (left to right), ‘Black Revelry: In Honor of “The Sugar Shack”’ (2022), book launch. Photo: Hopscotch Reading Room. Megan Hoetger and Derrais Carter, ‘Black Revelry: In Honor of “The Sugar Shack”’ (2022), book launch. Photo: Hopscotch Reading Room. Derrais Carter, ‘Black Revelry: In Honor of “The Sugar Shack”’ (2022), book launch. Photo: Hopscotch Reading Room. Derrais Carter, ‘Black Revelry: In Honor of “The Sugar Shack”’ (2022), book launch. Photo: Hopscotch Reading Room.
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The Berlin launch of Derrais Carter’s publication Black Revelry: In Honor of ‘The Sugar Shack’ is hosted by the wonderful Hopscotch Reading Room, a bookshop centering non-western and diasporic perspectives. For the launch, the poet-scholar is joined in conversation by managing editor Megan Hoetger and publication designer Karoline Świeżyński to discuss key conceptual and material elements of the album-book, including notions of the detail and the sprawl in relation to the readerly experience. The dialogue closes with a DJ set from Carter, which draws together a selection of songs from his Black Revelry Quiet Storm radio shows, aired between December 2020 and February 2021.


Acknowledgements

Black Revelry: In Honor of ‘The Sugar Shack’ is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger who also serves as managing editor for the publication, which is supported by the Netherland American Foundation. The publication includes contributions from Taylor Renée Aldridge, Samiya Bashir, Dr. La Marr Jurelle Bruce, DJ Lynnée Denise, Dr. William Mosley III, Dr. Zoë Samudzi, S*an D. Henry- Smith, Melanie Stevens, and Phillip B. Williams, with design by Karoline Świeżyński and sound production by MJ Mouw.

 

Special thanks to Siddhartha Lokanandi and Hopscotch Reading Room for hosting the event.

Hopscotch Reading Room
Kurfürstenstraße 14/Haus B
10785 Berlin, Germany

 

Free

Black Revelry: In Honor of ‘The Sugar Shack’

Publication
‘Black Revelry: In Honor of The Sugar Shack’, edited by Derrais Carter with contributions from Taylor Renée Aldridge, Samiya Bashir, Dr. La Marr Jurelle Bruce, DJ Lynnée Denise, Dr. William Mosley III, Dr. Zoë Samudzi, S*an D. Henry-Smith, Melanie Stevens, and Phillip B. Williams. Design by Karoline Świeżyński. ‘Black Revelry: In Honor of The Sugar Shack’, edited by Derrais Carter with contributions from Taylor Renée Aldridge, Samiya Bashir, Dr. La Marr Jurelle Bruce, DJ Lynnée Denise, Dr. William Mosley III, Dr. Zoë Samudzi, S*an D. Henry-Smith, Melanie Stevens, and Phillip B. Williams. Design by Karoline Świeżyński. ‘Black Revelry: In Honor of The Sugar Shack’, edited by Derrais Carter with contributions from Taylor Renée Aldridge, Samiya Bashir, Dr. La Marr Jurelle Bruce, DJ Lynnée Denise, Dr. William Mosley III, Dr. Zoë Samudzi, S*an D. Henry-Smith, Melanie Stevens, and Phillip B. Williams. Design by Karoline Świeżyński. ‘Black Revelry: In Honor of The Sugar Shack’, edited by Derrais Carter with contributions from Taylor Renée Aldridge, Samiya Bashir, Dr. La Marr Jurelle Bruce, DJ Lynnée Denise, Dr. William Mosley III, Dr. Zoë Samudzi, S*an D. Henry-Smith, Melanie Stevens, and Phillip B. Williams. Design by Karoline Świeżyński. ‘Black Revelry: In Honor of The Sugar Shack’, edited by Derrais Carter with contributions from Taylor Renée Aldridge, Samiya Bashir, Dr. La Marr Jurelle Bruce, DJ Lynnée Denise, Dr. William Mosley III, Dr. Zoë Samudzi, S*an D. Henry-Smith, Melanie Stevens, and Phillip B. Williams. Design by Karoline Świeżyński. ‘Black Revelry: In Honor of The Sugar Shack’, edited by Derrais Carter with contributions from Taylor Renée Aldridge, Samiya Bashir, Dr. La Marr Jurelle Bruce, DJ Lynnée Denise, Dr. William Mosley III, Dr. Zoë Samudzi, S*an D. Henry-Smith, Melanie Stevens, and Phillip B. Williams. Design by Karoline Świeżyński.
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An experiment in book making, which takes up the form of the LP record as a starting point for re-configuring the haptics of the printed book. Presented as a collection of unbound pages inside a gatefold record sleeve, the publication includes a pressed record, as well as written, visual and sonic contributions from scholars, poets, artists, choreographers and DJs. Through the logic of the detail, each contributor imaginatively (re)produces Ernie Barnes’s iconic painting The Sugar Shack as an archive of personal histories and a universe of intergenerational connections. Held together as an album, it is a performance to be made at home, which invites readers/listeners to feel art’s histories and to be in them with their bodies.


Acknowledgements

Black Revelry: In Honor of ‘The Sugar Shack’ is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger who also serves as managing editor for the publication, which is supported by the Netherland American Foundation.

 

Special thanks to the Ernie Barnes Foundation for permission to work with visual elements from The Sugar Shack, and to Naomi Collier Broms and Marta Santos with their assistance in assembling the album-books.

 

Editor: Derrais Carter

Contributors: Taylor Renée Aldridge; Samiya Bashir; La Marr Jurelle Bruce; Derrais Carter; DJ Lynnée Denise, William H. Mosley, III, Zoé Samudzi, S*an D. Henry-Smith, Melanie Stevens and Phillip B. Williams

Managing editor: Megan Hoetger

Series editor: Frédérique Bergholtz

Design: Karoline Świeżyński

Sound production: MJ Mouw

 

Black Revelry Quiet Storm Reprise

Book Launch

Live broadcast and conversation

Thursday 25 November 2021, 12-19hr with conversation 19-20.30hr

Derrais Carter, ‘Black Revelry Quiet Storm Reprise’ (2021), book launch. Photo: Konstantin Guz. Monty Mouw and Derrais Carter, ‘Black Revelry Quiet Storm Reprise’ (2021), book launch. Photo: Konstantin Guz. Derrais Carter and students from Sandberg Institute, ‘Black Revelry Quiet Storm Reprise’ (2021), book launch. Photo: Konstantin Guz. Derrais Carter, ‘Black Revelry Quiet Storm Reprise’ (2021), book launch. Photo: Konstantin Guz. S*an D. Henry-Smith and Derrais Carter, ‘Black Revelry Quiet Storm Reprise’ (2021), book launch. Photo: Konstantin Guz. S*an D. Henry-Smith, ‘Black Revelry Quiet Storm Reprise’ (2021), book launch. Photo: Konstantin Guz. Megan Hoetger, ‘Black Revelry Quiet Storm Reprise’ (2021), book launch. Photo: Konstantin Guz. Derrais Carter, ‘Black Revelry Quiet Storm Reprise’ (2021), book launch. Photo: Konstantin Guz.
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To accompany the release of Carter’s publication, a seven-hour live broadcasting marathon featuring all three of his radio shows, as well as a very special one-hour guest set from publication contributor DJ scholar Lynnée Denise. The live broadcast is hosted by the Sandberg Instituut where the space is transformed into a listening lounge replete with pillows, blankets, and cocktail selections. At the finale of the marathon, Carter hosts a conversation with artist and publication contributor S*an D. Henry Smith on ritual and revelry. The live session in Amsterdam is followed by radio broadcasts in Los Angeles and Berlin.


Acknowledgements

Black Revelry: In Honor of ‘The Sugar Shack’ and Black Revelry Quiet Storm are commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger with production support for the live broadcast from MJ Mouw and realised in partnership with the Sandberg Instituut and Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee, Amsterdam. Other broadcasts are realised in partnership with dublab, Los Angeles and reboot.fm, Berlin.

 

Special thanks to Eva Hoonhout and Liza Prins for their support creating the listening lounge, and to Rachel Day, Diana McCarty and Radna Rumping for their support of the broadcasts.

Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee, Amsterdam
Fred. Roeskestraat 96
1076 ED Amsterdam

 

Other broadcasts
Monday 29 November 2021, 12-19hr
dublab, Los Angeles

 

Sunday 28 November 2021, 2-9hr
reboot.fm, Berlin

What We Do, Language Can’t Touch

Installation

18 – 25 November 2021

Derrais Carter, ‘What We Do, Language Can’t Touch’ (2021), installation. Photo: Konstantin Guz. Derrais Carter, ‘What We Do, Language Can’t Touch’ (2021), installation. Photo: Konstantin Guz. Derrais Carter, ‘What We Do, Language Can’t Touch’ (2021), installation. Photo: Konstantin Guz.
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In conjunction with the end of his residency in the Sandberg Instituut’s Fine Arts department, Carter presents a display of elements from Black Revelry: In Honor of ‘The Sugar Shack’, bringing attention to the incredible scope of haptic and sensorial experiences held together in the publication’s LP sleeve.


Acknowledgements

Black Revelry: In Honor of the ‘The Sugar Shack’ and Black Revelry Quiet Storm are commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger and the exhibition realised in partnership with the Sandberg Instituut.

 

Special thanks to Eva Hoonhout and Liza Prins for their support with the installation.

Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam
Fred. Roeskestraat 96
1076 ED Amsterdam

Black Revelry Quiet Storm, #3. Frequency: Return. Repeat. Replay. This set is inspired by the atmosphere of ‘Let’s Do It Again’ by The Staples Singers

Radio

Wednesday 17 February 2021, 22–24hr

I Want You (1976) by Marvin Gaye In Full Bloom (1977) by Rose Royce
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Carter as late-night DJ experiments with different modes of storytelling, weaving together sonic readings of ‘the detail’ in Ernie Barnes’s Sugar Shack through song selections (jazz, soul and R&B), personal commentary and recitations of Black critical theory. Episode three, FREQUENCY, shares songs and rhythms that just keep coming back, whether as remakes and remixes, or as embodied memories.

 

Podcasts of the show now available:

 

· Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee

 


· Dublab

 


· reboot.fm

 


Acknowledgements

Black Revelry Quiet Storm is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger with production support for the show’s recording from Radna Rumping and MJ Mouw of Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee, Amsterdam. The broadcasts are realised in partnership with Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee; dublab, Los Angeles; and reboot.fm, Berlin.

 

Special thanks to Rachel Day and Diana McCarty for their support of the broadcasts in Los Angeles and Berlin.

Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee, Amsterdam and dublab, Los Angeles

 

Sunday 21 February 2021, 2-4hr

reboot.fm, Berlin

Black Revelry Quiet Storm, #2. Dispersal: This groove is long, slow, and winding. Stretch, expand, and linger

Radio

Wednesday 20 January 2021, 22–24hr

Eargasm (1976) by Johnnie Taylor Naturally (1980) by Leon Haywood
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Carter as late-night DJ experiments with different modes of storytelling, weaving together sonic readings of ‘the detail’ in Ernie Barnes’s Sugar Shack through song selections (jazz, soul and R&B), personal commentary and recitations of Black critical theory. Episode two, DISPERSAL, presents a playlist built around ‘the stretch’ of time, of energy – collective and personal – and, most basically, of song length.

 

Podcasts of the show now available:

 

· Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee

 


· Dublab

 


· reboot.fm

 


Acknowledgements

Black Revelry Quiet Storm is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger with production support for the show’s recording from Radna Rumping and MJ Mouw of Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee, Amsterdam. The broadcasts are realised in partnership with Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee; dublab, Los Angeles; and reboot.fm, Berlin.

 

Special thanks to Rachel Day and Diana McCarty for their support of the broadcasts in Los Angeles and Berlin.

Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee, Amsterdam and dublab, Los Angeles

 

Sunday 24 January 2021, 2–4hr

reboot.fm, Berlin

Black Revelry Quiet Storm, #1. Gathering: An invitation for now and maybe tomorrow

Radio

Wednesday 16 December 2020, 22–24hr

Detail of record cover for Invitation (1979) by Norman Connors including the title track “Invitation” Detail of record cover for The Night I Fell in Love (1985) by Luther Vandross including the track “If Only For One Night”
1/2

Carter as late-night DJ experiments with different modes of storytelling, weaving together sonic readings of ‘the detail’ in Ernie Barnes’s Sugar Shack through song selections (jazz, soul and R&B), personal commentary and recitations of Black critical theory. Episode one, GATHERING, anticipates the winter solstice, offering a rumination on ‘coming together’ from whatever distances are between us.

 

Podcasts of the show now available:

 

· Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee

 


· Dublab

 


· reboot.fm

 


Acknowledgements

Black Revelry Quiet Storm is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger with production support for the show’s recording from Radna Rumping and MJ Mouw of Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee, Amsterdam. The broadcasts are realised in partnership with Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee; dublab, Los Angeles; and reboot.fm, Berlin.

 

Special thanks to Rachel Day and Diana McCarty for their support of the broadcasts in Los Angeles and Berlin.

Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee, Amsterdam and dublab, Los Angeles

 

Sunday 20 December 2020, 2-4hr

reboot.fm, Berlin

Black Revelry

Performance-Lecture

Sunday 27 October 2019, 15–17hr

Derrais Carter, ‘Black Revelry’ (2019), lecture/screening. Photo: Marcel de Buck. Derrais Carter, ‘Black Revelry’ (2019), lecture/screening. Photo: Marcel de Buck. Derrais Carter, ‘Black Revelry’ (2019), lecture/screening. Photo: Marcel de Buck. Derrais Carter, ‘Black Revelry’ (2019), lecture/screening. Photo: Marcel de Buck.
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Structured after a ‘late-night radio show’ – or ‘Quiet Storm’ hour – the artist sits before a projection of Ernie Barnes’ Sugar Shack (1976), a painting as rhizome for black intimacy. The project uses art history and popular music to create a Black written and performative mood, what Aliyyah Abdur-Rahman calls the ‘black ecstatic’. Anecdotes on Gladys Knight and Marvin Gaye – and a circulating bottle of cognac – make for a connected vibe.


Acknowledgements

In a two day event, the Edition VIII artists and researchers introduce their work at Not Yet Shebang. Edition VIII artists and researchers are invited by director Frédérique Bergholtz. The commission series is curated by programme curators Sara Giannini and Megan Hoetger.

Introduction
Not Yet Shebang

Hettenheuvelweg 16

1101 BN Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

Free, reservations required

 

Sara Giannini

(b. Civitanova Marche, Italy. Lives in Amsterdam) is a curator, writer and educator with a background in theatre studies and semiotics. In questioning the cultural canons that created his persona, she focusses on the controversial legacy of actor, author and director Carmelo Bene (b. 1937, Campi Salentina, Italy; d. 2002, Rome).

Sara Giannini and Silvia Bottiroli in conversation

Conversation

24 November 2023, 18hr

'Maquillage as Meditation: Carmelo Bene and the Undead', Sara Giannini with contributions by Jacopo Miliani, Snejanka Mihaylova, and Arnisa Zeqo. Design Raoul Audouin.

Upon the invitation of the newly established Carmelo Bene Archive in Lecce, Sara Giannini is joined by performance curator and educator Silvia Bottiroli to discuss the practices of contextualisation and de-centering that are at play in the book. In particular, they dwell upon Giannini’s approach to Bene’s controversial legacy in relation to performance genealogies in Italy, as well as to feminist and performance-based methodologies of history-writing.

Archivio Carmelo Bene
Piazza Carducci
Lecce, Italy, 73100

 

Free, no reservation required
More information: Facebook.com

How do you embody the undead?

Workshop

31 October 2022, 09:30–12:30hr

Divination game with the letters composing Carmelo Bene's name, watercolour, realized in winter 2019

On the anniversary of the book Maquillage as Meditation, the workshop How do you embody the undead? is organized in collaboration with the TXT Department of the Rietveld Academie and facilitated by Daniel Blanga Gubbay (performance curator and researcher), Sara Giannini (If I Can’t Dance programme curator), and Mercedes Azpilicueta (artist and TXT Department director).

 

If I Can’t Dance

Westerdok 606–608

1013 BV Amsterdam

 

Closed session

 

A few external spots are available. If you want to join, please send a short motivation (150 words) around your own personal ‘undead’ to ssg@ificantdance.org before October 26.

 

Maquillage as Meditation: Carmelo Bene and the Undead

Book Launch

30 October 2022, 16-18hr
Conversation at 16.30hr

Sara Giannini, ‘Maquillage as Meditation: Carmelo Bene and the Undead’ (2022), book launch. Photo: Temra Pavlovic. Arnisa Zeqo, Sara Giannini and Daniel Blanga Gubbay, ‘Maquillage as Meditation: Carmelo Bene and the Undead’ (2022), book launch. Photo: Temra Pavlovic. 'Maquillage as Meditation: Carmelo Bene and the Undead', Sara Giannini with contributions by Jacopo Miliani, Snejanka Mihaylova, and Arnisa Zeqo. Design Raoul Audouin.
1/3

On the anniversary of the book Maquillage as Meditation, Sara Giannini is joined by performance curator and researcher Daniel Blanga Gubbay for a gathering that articulates the questions and the embodied research methodologies that are at the core of this work: What do we do with the “dirt of our past”? How does one reconcile—or even just face—those early influential figures? How do we understand the experiences they engender(ed), even if it might not be our desire to return to those experiences? But what can happen if we do return? Book contributor Arnisa Zeqo also joins the conversation.


Acknowledgements

Maquillage as Meditation is realised with the support of the Italian Council (Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity, Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism) and Q-International, La Quadriennale di Roma.

San Serriffe
Sint Annenstraat 30
1012 HE Amsterdam

 

Free, no reservation required

Maquillage as Meditation: Carmelo Bene and the Undead

Publication
'Maquillage as Meditation: Carmelo Bene and the Undead', Sara Giannini with contributions by Jacopo Miliani, Snejanka Mihaylova, and Arnisa Zeqo. Design Raoul Audouin. 'Maquillage as Meditation: Carmelo Bene and the Undead', Sara Giannini with contributions by Jacopo Miliani, Snejanka Mihaylova, and Arnisa Zeqo. Design Raoul Audouin. 'Maquillage as Meditation: Carmelo Bene and the Undead', Sara Giannini with contributions by Jacopo Miliani, Snejanka Mihaylova, and Arnisa Zeqo. Design Raoul Audouin. 'Maquillage as Meditation: Carmelo Bene and the Undead', Sara Giannini with contributions by Jacopo Miliani, Snejanka Mihaylova, and Arnisa Zeqo. Design Raoul Audouin. 'Maquillage as Meditation: Carmelo Bene and the Undead', Sara Giannini with contributions by Jacopo Miliani, Snejanka Mihaylova, and Arnisa Zeqo. Design Raoul Audouin. 'Maquillage as Meditation: Carmelo Bene and the Undead', Sara Giannini with contributions by Jacopo Miliani, Snejanka Mihaylova, and Arnisa Zeqo. Design Raoul Audouin. 'Maquillage as Meditation: Carmelo Bene and the Undead', Sara Giannini with contributions by Jacopo Miliani, Snejanka Mihaylova, and Arnisa Zeqo. Design Raoul Audouin.
1/7

Partly a script, partly a personal voyage into the psyche of diseducation, this book happens, has happened and will happen on the 31st of October in a place called ‘The Palace of Melancholy’. In this temporal and spatial loop, the figure of Italian actor, author, director, philosopher, and public persona Carmelo Bene is summoned to hopefully be dismissed once and for all. Bene is looked at by the author reluctantly and yet resolutely through inner voices of dissent, shame and rebellion. He is imagined in gatherings that didn’t happen and read through an epistemology of contradiction. In Giannini’s company and support, Snejanka Mihaylova, Jacopo Miliani, and Arnisa Zeqo probe the walls of the Palace, looking for an exit.


Acknowledgements

Author and editor: Sara Giannini
Contributors: Snejanka Mihaylova, Jacopo Miliani, Arnisa Zeqo
Series editor: Frédérique Bergholtz
Design: Raoul Audouin

Maquillage as Meditation

Event

Saturday 31 October 2020, 21hr


Acknowledgements

Supported by the Italian Council (Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity, Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism) and Q-International, La Quadriennale di Roma

 

Jacopo Miliani’s participation is a collaboration with NOS Visual Arts Production, Bologna

Palazzo della Malinconia

Sent via the If I Can’t Dance newsletter

 

Maquillage as Meditation: Dis-identity, Ecstasy and the Feminine in Carmelo Bene’s Performance Philosophy

Lecture & Screening

Sunday 27 October 2019, 13–14hr

Sara Giannini, ‘Maquillage as Meditation. Dis-identity, ecstasy and the feminine in Carmelo Bene’s performance philosophy’ (2019), lecture/screening. Photo: Marcel de Buck. Sara Giannini, ‘Maquillage as Meditation. Dis-identity, ecstasy and the feminine in Carmelo Bene’s performance philosophy’ (2019), lecture/screening. Photo: Marcel de Buck. Sara Giannini, ‘Maquillage as Meditation. Dis-identity, ecstasy and the feminine in Carmelo Bene’s performance philosophy’ (2019), lecture/screening. Photo: Marcel de Buck. Sara Giannini, ‘Maquillage as Meditation. Dis-identity, ecstasy and the feminine in Carmelo Bene’s performance philosophy’ (2019), lecture/screening. Photo: Marcel de Buck. Sara Giannini, ‘Maquillage as Meditation. Dis-identity, ecstasy and the feminine in Carmelo Bene’s performance philosophy’ (2019), lecture/screening. Photo: Marcel de Buck.
1/5

An intimate and experimental text explores the researcher’s conflictual relationship with actor, author, director and public persona Carmelo Bene since she first saw him on Italian television at age 10. Following this entry into dis-identity, ecstasy and the feminine, Bene’s first cinematic experiment, the short-film Hermitage (1968), is shown.

 

25 min, col, Italian with English subtitles

Introduction
Not Yet Shebang

Hettenheuvelweg 16

1101 BN Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

Free, reservation required

Lisa Robertson

(b. 1961, Toronto. Lives in Nalliers, Nouvelle Aquitaine, France) is a writer who began publishing in the early 1990s. Her poetry considers the political energies and pressures that shape language as an aesthetic object and a record of historical desire. She furthers her study of troubadour language as a phenomenon in which voice and text constitute each other.

Anemones: A Simone Weil Project

Book Presentation and Workshop

Book Presentation:

Thursday 2 February 2023, 19hr
Yoon Sook Cha and Lisa Robertson in conversation at Anemones: A Simone Weil Project, Feb 2, 2023. Photo by Rachel Topham Photography. Lisa Robertson reading in the Grand Luxe Hall, Feb 2, 2023. Photo by Rachel Topham Photography. Lisa Robertson reading in the Grand Luxe Hall, Feb 2, 2023. Photo by Rachel Topham Photography. Courtesy of Western Front.
1/3

Moving between the epistolary, poetry, performance and scholarly research, Anemones centres on a new translation of Simone Weil’s 1942 essay ‘What the Occitan Inspiration Consists Of.’ The text elevates the troubadour concept of love to a practice of political resistance rejecting force in all its forms. Robertson dwells on the transhistorical potential of this concept from the violent context in which it emerged to the troubling conditions of the present. Embracing actualised and suppressed histories, the work testifies to words, friendship and readership as resistance across distances.

 

After the publication was launched in Amsterdam in December 2021, we are thrilled to announce its upcoming presentation in Vancouver, adding another bead to the long and beautiful relationship of Lisa Robertson with Western Front. The event will begin with a conversation with Yoon Sook Cha, a Vancouver-based writer, photographer, and scholar of Simone Weil, and will be followed by a reading by Robertson of her translations of three troubadour poems and a Q&A period with the audience. For those not able to join onsite, the event can be followed online via livestreaming.


Acknowledgements

Presented in partnership with Western Front, Vancouver.

Reading by Lisa Robertson and conversation with Yoon Sook Cha

Tickets
Live stream

 

Workshop:

Saturday 4 February 2023, 13-16hr

Tickets

 

Western Front

303 E 8th Ave
Vancouver BC V5T 1S1
Canada

Anemones: A Simone Weil Project

Publication
'Anemones: A Simone Weil Project', Lisa Robertson with a contribution by Benny Nemer. Design Rietlanden Women’s Office. 'Anemones: A Simone Weil Project', Lisa Robertson with a contribution by Benny Nemer. Design Rietlanden Women’s Office. 'Anemones: A Simone Weil Project', Lisa Robertson with a contribution by Benny Nemer. Design Rietlanden Women’s Office. 'Anemones: A Simone Weil Project', Lisa Robertson with a contribution by Benny Nemer. Design Rietlanden Women’s Office. 'Anemones: A Simone Weil Project', Lisa Robertson with a contribution by Benny Nemer. Design Rietlanden Women’s Office. 'Anemones: A Simone Weil Project', Lisa Robertson with a contribution by Benny Nemer. Design Rietlanden Women’s Office. 'Anemones: A Simone Weil Project', Lisa Robertson with a contribution by Benny Nemer. Design Rietlanden Women’s Office.
1/7

The author’s research on troubadour poetry yields this experiment in thinking ‘near and with’ philosopher and political activist Simone Weil. Moving between the epistolary, poetry, performance and scholarly research, it centres on a new translation of Weil’s 1942 essay ‘What the Occitan Inspiration Consists Of’ that elevates the troubadour concept of love to a practice of political resistance rejecting force in all its forms. Robertson dwells on the transhistorical potential of this concept from the violent context in which it emerged to the troubling conditions of the present. Embracing actualised and suppressed histories, the work testifies to words, friendship and readership as resistance across distances.


Acknowledgements

Author, translator and editor: Lisa Robertson
Contributor: Benny Nemer
Managing editor: Sara Giannini
Series editor: Frédérique Bergholtz
Design: Rietlanden Women’s Office

Anemones: A Simone Weil Project

Book Launch

Radio Emma, live readings and floral action

Sunday 12 December 2021

Lisa Robertson's research material for 'Anemones: A Simone Weil Project' (2021), book launch. Photo: Temra Pavlovic. Lisa Robertson, 'Anemones: A Simone Weil Project' (2021), book launch. Photo: Temra Pavlovic. Benny Nemer's floral action as part of 'Anemones: A Simone Weil Project' (2021), book launch. Photo: Temra Pavlovic.
1/3

To accompany the release of Robertson’s publication, an afternoon with a Radio Emma Broadcast, live (poetry) reading by Lisa Robertson, and a floral action by Benny Nemer. During the radio show, curator archive and research Anik Fournier will be in conversation with Lisa Robertson, contributor Benny Nemer, designers of the book Rietlanden Womens Office’s Johanna Ehde and Elisabeth Rafstedt, and director Frédérique Bergholtz. Over the course of the day you are welcome to pass by and experience a floral action by Benny Nemer, browse through Robertson’s research materials and buy your copy of the book for a reduced launch price of 15 € (through 9 January, afterwards 22 €).


Acknowledgements

The live radio broadcast is realised in partnership with Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee. Special thanks to Naomi Collier Broms, Monty Mouw, Ellen de Bruijne Projects, and Master of Artistic Research of the Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten

Ellen de Bruijne Projects
Singel 372, Amsterdam
Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee

 

13–14hr

Anik Fournier a.o., Radio Emma

Tune in via Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee

 

14–17hr, ongoing
Benny Nemer, Floral Action

 

15hr (fully booked)

Reading – Lisa Robertson
A poem by Bernart de Ventadorn

 

16hr (fully booked)

Reading – Lisa Robertson
A poem by William IX of Poitiers

 

Both readings are fully booked, but please pass by for your copy and for experiencing Benny Nemers floral action between 14-15hr; 15.30-16hr; and 16.30-17hr

 

Free

Wide Rime

Lecture

Saturday 26 October 2019, 12–13hr

Lisa Robertson, ‘Wide Rime’ (2019), lecture. Photo: Marcel de Buck.

The researcher shifts registers between poetry and academic study in examining rhyme and voice among medieval troubadours – the first European poets to write in their spoken regional vernacular – in the Languedoc region. Her outline of voice and vernacular as a space where power is constantly renegotiated and reconfigured is punctuated by readings from her poetry.

 

Introduction
Not Yet Shebang

Hettenheuvelweg 16

1101 BN Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

Free, reservations required

 

Ritual and Display
Field of inquiry

How do ritualistic practices and modes of display contribute to discussions on performance and performativity, while resisting traditional forms of visual consumption? Following the idea that rituals have participants instead of observers, a collaborative platform is generated for study and expanded activities. Practitioners are invited based on their work’s affinity to the theme, led by fellow Giulia Damiani (b. 1989, Cesena, Italy. Lives in London and Amsterdam), whose work embraces magic, evocation and invocation.

Reading Group

Emerging out of a desire to create time and space for collective study, the reading group is a platform to explore methods for collaborative, embodied learning.

 

The reading group participants are invited based on their work’s affinity to the theme Ritual and Display: Becket MWN, Frédérique Bergholtz, Giulia Damiani, Yael Davids, Adele Dipasquale, Isobel Dryburgh, Lucy Engelman, Anik Fournier, Sara Giannini, Baha Görkem Yalım, Megan Hoetger, Zhana Ivanova, Annick Kleizen, Helena Lambrechts, Panagiotis Panagiotakopoulos (Taka Taka), Anna Maria Pinaka, Tchelet Pearl Weisstub.

Culmination

Reading Group

Wednesday 22 January 2020, 18–20hr

Sara Giannini, ‘Evil Eye’ (2020), screening and performance. Photo: Sara Giannini

Shaped by participants’ response to the trajectory with texts as objects or actions in the group include a video, dissertation fragment, riddle, ritual and more.


Image description

A group of people are sitting on a carpet on the floor with pillows, books, and papers scattered between them. They look up at a back wall where an image of a person in a kitchen standing next to a counter with their hand on a bowl is projected.


Acknowledgements

Special thanks to participants: Becket MWN, Frédérique Bergholtz, Giulia Damiani, Yael Davids, Adele Dipasquale, Isobel Dryburgh, Lucy Engelman, Anik Fournier, Sara Giannini, Baha Görkem Yalım, Megan Hoetger, Zhana Ivanova, Annick Kleizen, Helena Lambrechts, Panagiotis Panagiotakopoulos (Taka Taka), Anna Maria Pinaka, Tchelet Pearl Weisstub

If I Can’t Dance
Westerdok 606–608
1013 BV Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

Closed session

Rituals of the Everyday

Reading Group

Wednesday 18 December 2019, 18–20hr

Annea Lockwood and Alison Knowles, ‘Womens Work’ (2019), magazine. Photo: Giulia Damiani.

Dedicated to thinking about everyday ritualistic spaces, we push off from CAConrad’s ‘Memory, Ritual and Survival’ – an essay written in verse. Supported by an underlying interest in healing rituals, the piece beautifully untangles how ritual makes oneself present to oneself. The magic in everyday reality – clear in the two issues of Womens Work, the first publication of performance scores by women including Pauline Oliveros – remains a concentration among the readings.

 

Texts and materials: CAConrad, Pauline Oliveros, Victor Turner, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro


Image description

Image of a publication that looks a bit like a notebook with the words ‘women’s work’ written in big capital black letters. Under the title is two columns of eight names. The library barcode can be seen in the bottom left corner.


Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Irene Revell for sharing Womens Work and suggesting we experiment with the scores

If I Can’t Dance
Westerdok 606–608, 1013 BV Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

Closed session

Land and Display

Reading Group

Wednesday 27 November 2019, 18–20hr

Arjuna Neuman and Denise Ferreira da Silva, ‘4 Waters: Deep Implicancy’ (2018), still. Photo: Giulia Damiani.

Indigenous writer Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s ‘Land as Pedagogy’, a chapter from As We Have Always Done on her involvement with the Nishnaabeg community, launches this exploration into acknowledging communities invested in the individual and collective meaning generated through ritual. Léuli Eshrāghi and Hannah Donnelly’s work addresses the responsibilities of makers and viewers, opening questions on how modes of display might rebuild original relationships to objects.

 

Texts and materials: Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Hannah Donnelly, Léuli Eshrāghi, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Arjuna Neuman


Image description

In a darkened room, the silhouettes of bodies can be seen sitting on the ground on a carpet. They are partially lit by the projection of a grainy black and white image of sun reflected in water on a stony beach.

Logbook
If I Can’t Dance
Westerdok 606–608, 1013 BV Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

Closed session

Prophecies and Oracles

Reading Group

Wednesday 10 July 2019, 18–20hr

Athanasius Kircher, ‘Mundus Subterraneus’ (1665), illustration

How can the prophetess magnetize the future? How can silence be transformed into language and action? We look into instances where natural elements are used to divine the future and volcanic eruptions forebode the apocalypse while exposing the limits of rational thinking. Finally, the Oracle for a Reading Group by artist and researcher Hestia Peppe sees each of us become querent and oracle, questioning the agency of both and letting ourselves go.

 

Texts and materials: Steven Connor, Emily Dickinson, Silvia Federici, Athanasius Kircher, Leonilson, Audre Lorde, Hestia Peppe


Image description

A black and white square engraving. Putti positioned in each of the four corners blow clouds that fill up the margins around a large sphere that is transversed by a network of arteries and flower-like nodes. At the top of the engraving two putti hold a frontispiece on which is written
Pyrophylactorium.

If I Can’t Dance
Westerdok 606–608, 1013 BV Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

Closed session

Magic and Spells

Reading Group

Wednesday 19 June 2019, 18–20hr

In Bhanu Kapil’s poem 1947: Spell to Reverse a Line, each sentence is a boundary or communicates being bound – or spellbound – as the poet’s enchantment begins to undo the knot of the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan. Ernesto de Martino and Rebecca Tamás guide us through ritual as social and political practices within community, bringing us to ask: what if the figure of the witch returns to trigger decolonial and feminist responses?

 

Texts and materials: Bhanu Kapil, Ernesto de Martino, Rebecca Tamás

If I Can’t Dance
Westerdok 606–608, 1013 BV Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

Closed session

Ritual and Display

Reading Group

Wednesday 29 May 2019, 18–20hr

Le Nemesiache, ‘The Sibyls’ (1977), screening. Photo: Giulia Damiani.

Giulia Damiani introduces her work on Le Nemesiache and their extensive performance activity in Naples. The feminist collective’s archive elicits thoughts on ritual in the service of feminism, namely their film The Sibyls (1977), which engages with natural phenomena around Naples. We also look at theorist Richard Schechner’s work on the ritual form of performance, defined as an ‘efficacious’ action.

 

Texts and materials: Le Nemesiache, Richard Schechner
Italian–English subtitles: Giulia Damiani


Acknowledgements

Courtesy Le Nemesiache’s archive, Naples

If I Can’t Dance
Westerdok 606–608, 1013 BV Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

Closed session

Radio Emma

The radio programme unpacks key terms from our research into Ritual and Display with invited local guests from various disciplines and practices.

Ritual and Display

Radio

Friday 13 May 2022, 13-15hr

Bendegó the meteorite in the ruins of National Museum of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro, from Kent Chan's artist pages in Reader 'Ritual and Display' Inspiration for cover Reader ‘Ritual and Display'
1/2

Radio show on the occasion of the launch of our sixth reader, Ritual and Display, exploring the tensions and crossovers between ritual and display through notions of preparation, magic, landscape, bodily writing, feminist thinking, prophecy and contemporary performance practices.

 

Guests: Giulia Damiani, If I Can’t Dance research fellow for the Ritual and Display programme and editor of the reader; Kent Chan, artist and contributor to the artist pages in the reader; Bhanu Kapil, poet and contributor to the reader; Joris Kritis, designer of the reader series. Hosts: If I Can’t Dance’s director Frédérique Bergholtz and curator of archive and research Anik Fournier.


Acknowledgements

Editorial team: Frédérique Bergholtz, Giulia Damiani, Anik Fournier
Jingle: Radna Rumping
Technician and sound engineer: Monty Mouw
Livestreaming, equipment and post-production: Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee

If I Can’t Dance Studio
Westerdok 606–608
1013 BV Amsterdam

 

Attend the live broadcast at Westerdok (arrive no later than 12.45hr) or listen online via Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee

 

Free, meal included

 

Buy your copy of the reader at the If I Can’t Dance Studio or here for the special Amsterdam Art Week price of €15 (from 22 May €20).

Display and displacement

Radio

Wednesday 22 January 2020, 13–14hr

Charl Landvreugd and Rita Ouedraogo, ‘Display and Displacement’ (2019), Radio Emma. Photo: Anik Fournier.

How does display complicate the way objects and practices are perceived? What constitutes display, especially when it is the public showing of performative and ritual-based practices? The resurgence of interest in ancient traditions and alternative systems of knowledge is coupled with an urgent need to rethink collections resulting from Western colonial displacement. Yet displacement can also be generative for artists, addressing intergenerational knowledge and finding new shapes.

 

Guests: Charl Landvreugd, artist and researcher; Rita Ouedraogo, research programmer and curator; Jay Tan, artist
Host: Giulia Damiani

 


Acknowledgements

Editorial team: Giulia Damiani, Anik Fournier
Jingle: Radna Rumping
Sound engineer: Monty Mouw
Livestreaming, equipment and post-production: Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee

If I Can’t Dance
Westerdok 606–608
1013 BV Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

Free, meal included

 

Live broadcast

 

Rituals of the everyday

Radio

Wednesday 18 December 2019, 13–14hr

Left to right: Margriet Minnema, Desta Deekman, Tchelet Pearl and Giulia Damiani, ‘Rituals of the Everyday’ (2019), Radio Emma. Photo: Anik Fournier.

How does one engage with rituals in daily life? What is the state of ritual practices in Amsterdam? When you hear the word ritual, what do you think of? In this part of the world, traditional religious ceremonies and national rituals are losing momentum. That said, ritual-associated practices and ancient knowledges figure extensively in artistic and cultural contexts. With change at its core, can ritual bring societal change?

 

Guests: Desta Deekman, choreographer and herbalist; Margriet Minnema, secular chaplain working in prisons; and Tchelet Pearl Weisstub, Proud Jerusalemite, Guilty oppressor, Aging body, Lazy activist, Theatre maker, Visual artist
Host: Giulia Damiani

 


Acknowledgements

Editorial team: Giulia Damiani, Anik Fournier
Technician: Monty Mouw
Jingle: Radna Rumping
Sound engineer: Monty Mouw
Livestreaming, equipment and post-production: Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee

If I Can’t Dance
Westerdok 606–608, 1013 BV Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

Free, meal included

 

Live broadcast

 

Live-Stream Series

Live-stream series organised in the frame of Edition VIII (2019–20) – Ritual and Display

Session #4

Live-Stream Series

14 November 2020, 16.00–18.30hr

Elize Mazadiego, Giulia Damiani, Chandra Frank and Ros Murray

Concluding roundtable
Elize Mazadiego in conversation with Giulia Damiani, Chandra Frank and Ros Murray

 

Introduction by Frédérique Bergholtz.
Response session with Sara Giannini and Megan Hoetger.

 


Acknowledgements

Live-stream concept and realisation by Lukas Heistinger with dramaturgy by Megan Hoetger and audio-visual support from Fan Liao and Temra Pavlovic. Live-stream audience moderation by Amalia Calderón and Naomi Collier Broms.

Streamed from the If I Can’t Dance Westerdok production studio, Amsterdam

Session #3

Live-Stream Series

7 November 2020, 16.00–18.30hr

Chandra Frank and Gloria Wekker

Chandra Frank and Gloria Wekker

On the Amsterdam Black lesbian literary circle Sister Outsider

 

Introductions by Frédérique Bergholtz and Sara Giannini.

 

Due to connectivity issues throughout the live-stream, the registration of this session has not been approved for public sharing. More information on Chandra Frank’s research methodologies and the Sister Outsider collective can be found in Frank’s essay “Sister Outsider and Audre Lorde in the Netherlands: On Transnational Queer Feminisms and Archival Methodological Practices,” (2019) published by Feminist Review, vol. 121, 1: pp. 9-23, and available online here.


Acknowledgements

Live-stream concept and realisation by Lukas Heistinger with dramaturgy by Megan Hoetger and audio-visual support from Fan Liao and Temra Pavlovic. Live-stream audience moderation by Amalia Calderón and Naomi Collier Broms.

Streamed from the If I Can’t Dance Westerdok production studio, Amsterdam

Session #2

Live-Stream Series

31 October 2020, 16.00–18.30hr

Ros Murray

Ros Murray
On Les Muses s’amusent and feminist video activism in 1970s Paris

 

Introductions by Frédérique Bergholtz and Megan Hoetger.

Response session with Megan Hoetger, Anik Fournier and artist Wendelien van Oldenborgh.

 

The session included the screening of the documentary Delphine et Carole, insoumuses (Callisto McNulty, 2019, 71 minutes). For copyright reasons, a full version of the film is not included in this registration. Please contact the Centre Audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir for more information on screening accessibility.


Acknowledgements

Live-stream concept and realisation by Lukas Heistinger with dramaturgy by Megan Hoetger and audio-visual support from Fan Liao and Temra Pavlovic. Live-stream audience moderation by Amalia Calderón and Naomi Collier Broms.

Streamed from the If I Can’t Dance Westerdok production studio, Amsterdam

Session #1

Live-Stream Series

24 October 2020, 16.00–18.30hr

Giulia Damiani and Genevieve Hyacinthe

Giulia Damiani

‘Let’s Build a City with a Woman-Dimension: Orography and Dance with Le Nemesiache, from Naples to Amsterdam’ with contributions by Genevieve Hyacinthe, Le Nemesiache, Anik Fournier and Arnisa Zeqo.

 

Introduction by If I Can’t Dance Archivist Anik Fournier.

 

The session was preceded by an introduction to the Mythologies/Methodologies series by If I Can’t Dance Director Frédérique Bergholtz, Prof. Christa-Maria Lerm-Hayes (UvA, AHM), and If I Can’t Dance Curators Sara Giannini and Megan Hoetger.

 


Acknowledgements

Live-stream concept and realisation by Lukas Heistinger with dramaturgy by Megan Hoetger and audio-visual support from Fan Liao and Temra Pavlovic. Live-stream audience moderation by Amalia Calderón and Naomi Collier Broms.

Streamed from the If I Can’t Dance Westerdok production studio, Amsterdam and from the exhibition From the Volcano to the Sea. The Feminist Group Le Nemesiache in 1970s and 1980s Naples, Rongwrong, Amsterdam

Mythologies/Methodologies. Approaching Feminist Collectivities of the 1970s and 1980s

Live-Stream Series

Saturday 24 October 2020, 16–18.30hr

Saturday 31 October 2020, 16–18.30hr

Saturday 7 November 2020, 16–18.30hr

Saturday 14 November 2020, 16–18.30hr

Sister Outsider presents gala night for women, 1986, flyer by Jo Nesbitt

A four-part live-stream series exploring feminist collective legacies across (psycho)-geographies featuring: If I Can’t Dance 2019–20 Research Fellow Giulia Damiani in dialogue with scholar Genevieve Hyacinthe in week one; film historian and critic Ros Murray and a streaming of the documentary film Delphine et Carole, insoumuses (2019) by Callisto McNulty in week two; and scholar and curator Chandra Frank joined by writer and professor Gloria Wekker in week three. The series concludes with a roundtable moderated by art history scholar Elize Mazadiego in conversation with Damiani, Frank and Murray on collective strategies and performance-based research methodologies.


Acknowledgements

The Mythologies/Methodologies series is organised by the curatorial team (Frédérique Bergholtz, Sara Giannini and Megan Hoetger), and is realised in partnership with the Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture, University of Amsterdam.

 

Special thanks to Centre Audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir.

 

Live-stream concept and realisation by Lukas Heistinger with dramaturgy by Megan Hoetger and audio-visual support from Fan Liao and Temra Pavlovic. Live-stream audience moderation by Amalia Calderón and Naomi Collier Broms.

 

Edition VIII – Ritual and Display is supported by the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds

 

 

 

€2, reservations required

 

Full programme

Exhibition

Exhibition organised in the frame of Edition VIII (2019–20) – Ritual and Display

From the Volcano to the Sea: Part II. The Feminist Group Le Nemesiache in 1970s and 1980s Naples

Exhibition

30 September – 2 December 2022

Chelsea Space presents From the Volcano to the Sea: Part II, an exhibition presenting archival materials from the feminist group Le Nemesiache (1970s-1990s), for the first time in London. Based in the southern Italian city of Naples, Le Nemesiache experimented with creativity and the arts as a route towards liberation and fulfillment within their daily lives, and to oppose the exploitation of the landscape surrounding the city.


Acknowledgements

The Feminist Group Le Nemesiache in 1970s and 1980s Naples, is curated by Giulia Damiani and produced in collaboration with the Mangiacapra Archive and members of Le Nemesiache. The items on show are from the Mangiacapra Archive. The exhibition shares the title with a show curated by Giulia Damiani in collaboration with the organization If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want to be Part of Your Revolution in Amsterdam, held between 2020 and 2021 at the art space Rongwrong.

Chelsea Space
Chelsea College of Arts
16 John Islip St
London SW1P 4JU
United Kingdom

From the Volcano to the Sea: The Feminist Group Le Nemesiache in 1970s and 1980s Naples

Exhibition

23 October 2020–17 January 2021
Extended to 1 May 2021

Symbol of Le Nemesiache, Lina Mangiacapre
1/9

Founded by philosopher, artist and writer Lina Mangiacapre in 1970, Le Nemesiache was an open group of female participants who led a ‘different daily life’ in which mythology was an embodied practice of feminist transformation. For the first time, the group’s archive of documents, film, collage and much more is presented, dwelling on the way in which they blurred the line between art and politics in ritualistic practices embedded in the natural and supernatural landscape of Naples.


Acknowledgements

From the Volcano to the Sea is curated by If I Can’t Dance’s 2019–20 Research Fellow Giulia Damiani in dialogue with Sara Giannini (If I Can’t Dance) and Arnisa Zeqo (Rongwrong), with an exhibition design by Maud Vervenne. Special thanks to Le Nemesiache

 

Edition VIII – Ritual and Display is supported by the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds

Rongwrong

Binnen Bantammerstraat 2, 1011 CK Amsterdam

 

Research Visits
Saturdays, 14–18hr
Free, book here

 

Virtual Tours, Happy Hour with Le Nemesiache
16 Friday and 30 Friday April 2021, 18–19hr
Free, book here

 

Exhibition folder

Reader

Ritual and Display

Book Launch

Friday 13 May 2022, 17-19hr

Reader 'Ritual and Display', ISBN 978-94-92139-20-7, 284p, ills bw, 15 x 22 cm, pb, English, 2022 Reader 'Ritual and Display', ISBN 978-94-92139-20-7, 284p, ills bw, 15 x 22 cm, pb, English, 2022 Reader 'Ritual and Display', ISBN 978-94-92139-20-7, 284p, ills bw, 15 x 22 cm, pb, English, 2022 Reader 'Ritual and Display', ISBN 978-94-92139-20-7, 284p, ills bw, 15 x 22 cm, pb, English, 2022
1/9

Launch of our sixth reader documenting our institutional research into the field of inquiry of Ritual and Display. Edited by Giulia Damiani, the publication weaves together notions of preparation, magic, landscape, bodily writing, feminist thinking, prophecy and contemporary performance practices. Come by and join us for a toast in the presence of Damiani, artist Kent Chan who has created an artistic intervention in the publication, and Joris Kritis, designer of the reader series.

If I Can’t Dance Studio
Westerdok 606-608
1013 BV Amsterdam

 

Free, drinks

 

During the launch, the reader is available for the special Amsterdam Art Week price of €15 (from 22 May €20).

Ritual and Display
Publication

Edited by Giulia Damiani

Reader 'Ritual and Display', ISBN 978-94-92139-20-7, 284p, ills bw, 15 x 22 cm, pb, English, 2022

Ritual and Display opens up the productive tension of the terms in its title through a multitude of perspectives including anthropological, artistic, art historical, poetic, performative studies and indigenous. Part One includes texts, archival materials and original translations on feminist rituals, prophecy and magic, while Part Two relates reflections on landscape and rituals of the everyday. All texts were read by If Can’t Dance’s reading group in Amsterdam as part of the artistic programme VII – Ritual and Display (2019–21). With a commissioned interview by Genevieve Hyacinthe in which the scholar shares her in-depth angle on the thematic. Contributors: CAConrad, Steven Connor, Giulia Damiani, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Emily Dickinson, Hannah Donnelly, Silvia Federici, Simone Forti, Dorothea von Hantelmann, Genevieve Hyacinthe, Bhanu Kapil, José Leonilson, Le Nemesiache, Lucy Lippard, Audre Lorde, Ernesto de Martino, Léuli Māzyār Luna‘i Eshrāghi, Pauline Oliveros, Hestia Peppé, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, Richard Schechner, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Rebecca Tamás, Victor Turner. Artist pages by Kent Chan.

read more

€20

Design: Joris Kritis and Bernardo Rodrigues

ISBN 978-94-92139-20-7

284p, ills bw, 15 x 22 cm, pb, English, 2022


€20

add to cart
2019-20
Master course
Dutch Art Institute – COOP 19/20

Sotto Voce: Tactics, Signals and Slips of Desire

Course

2019-2020

‘Sotto voce’ is a musical term that denotes a lowering of the vocal or instrumental volume. A literal translation from Italian reads like ‘under voice’ or ‘under the voice.’ Used in daily life, ‘sotto voce’ evokes lover’s discourse, whispers, gossip, dirty talk, and gestures, as enunciations taking place below the voice. From this specific perspective, the voice operates on an official plane of communication, where transmission is regulated and exposed. Like desire lines, sotto voce cuts through the official routes of communication, to initiate new kinships, unlicensed ways of speaking, secretive passages of words, a language of touch and intimacy.

 

The COOP thinks through the languages, temporalities and relations that may emerge when the performative act is sotto voce. The participants are involved in covert communication tactics, invisible performances and strategies of disappearance.

 

Course tutors: Sara Giannini, Geo Wyeth and Arnisa Zeqo.

 

Students: Mayar Alexan, Raphael Daibert, Francesca Hawker, Risa Horn, Rong Raffia Li, Anastasia McCammon, Lea Rüegg, Lou Lou Sainsbury, Sophie de Serière, Marie Tuckova, and Matthew Wang.

 

Read full syllabus


Acknowledgements

Guest tutors: Constantina Zavistanos

Sites

 

Dance Studio Jacuzzi, Amsterdam

 

If I Can’t Dance Archive

Bachelor course
School for New Dance Development – Course 2020

The choreographic object and performative modes of writing

Course

2020

Confined to our homes during the lockdown, this year’s class centre the performative side of daily objects around us: how do they set up rituals in our daily lives, choreograph our movement through our domestic spaces? Create desire or repel us? Taking William Forsythe’s notion of the Choreographic Object as a starting point, each meeting we also look at material from the If I Can’t Dance archive related to the commissions of Every Ocean Hughes, Gregg Bordowitz, Grant Watson, Chroma Lives, and explore modes of writing in relation to the performativity of objects.

 

Teachers: Anik Fournier and Megan Hoetger

 

Students: Antonella Fittipaldi, Parisa Madani, Valeryia Le, Devika Chotoe, tim faraus, Sofia Castro Mondacca, Rūta Junevičiūtė.

Online

2018-19
Master course
Dutch Art Institute – COOP 18/19

The Immemorial Body: Betraying Carmelo Bene in Nine Acts

Course

2018-2019

This COOP study group takes as a starting point the disrupted legacy of the Italian actor, director, writer, philosopher, and pop figure Carmelo Bene. The intention is to read Bene’s complex and untranslated work vis à vis different artists and theorists that provide affine or challenging views on his practice. His philosophy of the ‘actorial machine’ is approached through lenses of performance art, opening up performance theory to an epistemology of the South. Inspired by Bene’s own definition of “reading as an act of oblivion,” the class approaches readership as a performative act of rewriting, re-gendering, remaking, and re-enacting.

 

Course tutors: Sara Giannini, Geo Wyeth and Arnisa Zeqo.

 

Students: Anastasia McCammon, Elien Ronse, Eric Peter, Joannie Baumgärtner, Julian Fricker, Karina Sarkissova, Marc Norbert Hörler, Polly Wright, Simon(e) van Saarloos, and Zachary Schoenhut.

 

Read full syllabus


Acknowledgements

Guest tutors: Barbara Casavecchia and Snejanka Mihaylova.

Bachelor course
School for New Dance Development – Course 2019

Curating and Performance

Course

2019

Curating and Performance investigates performance within the framework of its institutional history to think through its contextualization, presentation and preservation through curatorial practice and the theoretical and practical implications of this for artists, institutions and audiences alike. The course introduces students to contemporary debates surrounding the curation of performance, and to equips them with the critical and practical skills that they require in order to think through how they shape their own artistic work in relation to the curatorial structures that they chose to create, engage with, or respond to. The course is structured around key principles: Space, Time, Bodies, Props and Objects, Notation and Documentation, and Writing

 

Teachers: Anik Fournier and Giulia Damiani

 

Students: Jelle Maarten Haen, Wannes Labath, Jessica Matheson, Marina Orlova, Neda Ruzheva, Peter Scherrebeck.

Merchant House, Amsterdam

 

Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam

 

A rose is a rose is a rose, Amsterdam

 

Stederlijk Museum, Amsterdam

2017–18
Social Movement
Field of Inquiry

How can performance ontologies dedicated to embodiment, affect and the relational better the understanding of social movement? How can looking into its different forms expand the vocabularies of performance studies? These investigations are led by fellow Anik Fournier (b. 1977, Montreal. Lives in Amsterdam), a teacher, writer and archivist who holds a PhD from the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis.

Reading Group

Emerging out of a desire to create time and space for collective study, the reading group is a platform to explore methods for collaborative, embodied learning.

 

The closed reading group participants are invited based on their work’s affinity to the theme Social Movement.

Open Reading Group #2: The Book Club – A Space for Collective Study and Experimentation

Reading Group

Saturday 7 July 2018, 12–18hr

‘Open Reading Group #2: The Book Club – A Space for Collective Study and Experimentation’ (2018), Reading Group. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde. ‘Open Reading Group #2: The Book Club – A Space for Collective Study and Experimentation’ (2018), Reading Group. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde. ‘Open Reading Group #2: The Book Club – A Space for Collective Study and Experimentation’ (2018), Reading Group. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde.
1/3

Safely ensconced in an Amsterdamse Bos cabin, session leader Myriam Lefkowitz introduces her ongoing research project The Book Club developed with philosopher Cécile Lavergne to explore bodily experience in study and knowledge production. The day consists of a series of experiments on body energy and behaviour – a haptic way of reading then applied to a text by Donna Haraway. We work and read in pairs, for instance, connecting heart and hand with text.

 

Texts and materials: Donna Haraway

Visitor Report
Amsterdamse Bos
Nieuwe Meerlaan 9, 1171 NZ Amstelveen
The Netherlands

 

Free, reservations required

Bodily Movement and Cultural Idioms

Reading Group

Wednesday 13 June 2018, 16–18hr

Anna Rose Holmer, ‘The Fits’ (2016), still.

A grammar and syntax of bodily movement is developed emphasising black social dance. For example, hip-hop is encoded with bodily gestures, which, according to Thomas F. DeFrantz, have both private and public meanings: the black dancing body can simultaneously celebrate and protest. Is there a double consciousness of the black body in movement? What happens when these cultural idioms are performed for those without access to their histories of desire and pain?

 

Texts and materials: Rizvana Bradley, dolores kirton cayou, Thomas F. DeFrantz, Anna Rose Homer, Adrian Piper

If I Can’t Dance
Westerdok 606–608, 1013 BV Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

Closed session

Afro-pessimism and Social Death

Reading Group

Wednesday 16 May 2018, 16–18hr

 


Frank B. Wilderson III, ‘Law Abiding’ (2009), reading, Pomona College, 19 April 2017. Credit: Pomona College, Claremont, CA.

The violent condition that defines black bodies as non-entities does not allow for positive relationality. How then is it possible to build a movement on behalf of the black body defined as a non-entity? Can humanism be rethought to think blackness and agency together? keyon gaskin’s work is leaned on to learn how the overdetermined black body can resist capture and re-inscribe racial relations.

 

Texts and materials: keyon gaskin, Jared Sexton, Frank B. Wilderson III, Sylvia Wynter

If I Can’t Dance
Westerdok 606–608, 1013 BV Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

Closed session

The Politics of Movement

Reading Group

Wednesday 18 April 2018, 16–18hr

Ayesha Hameed, ‘A Rough History (of the destruction of fingerprints)’ (2015–16), still.

Taking up Édouard Glissant’s notions of arrow-like and circular movement, what drives people to move across social borders? What are the ethical and political repercussions – including at the molecular level of touching and hosting (Barad)? How can these narratives of self and other be read through Ayesha Hameed’s palmistry research into the violent struggle between the tracing and erasing migrants’ fingerprints amid Europe’s xenophobic fantasies?

 

Texts and materials: Karen Barad, Anne Boyer, Édouard Glissant, Ayesha Hameed, Mounira Al Solh

If I Can’t Dance
Westerdok 606–608, 1013 BV Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

Closed session

Open Reading Group #1

Reading Group

Saturday 27 January 2018, 10–13hr

‘Open Reading Group #1’ (2018), Reading Group. Photo: Michele Rizzo.

Led with artistic researcher, experimental performer and body practitioner ELLE (elke van campenhout), the day looks at ‘resistance’ in relation to Agamben’s take on ‘movement’ and Butler, Gambetti and Sabsay’s approach to vulnerability. Participants offer examples of social actions that set things in motion, also informed by Jackson’s view on the social within and outside art institutions. ELLE closes the session with exercises in response to the readings.

 

Texts and Materials: Giorgio Agamben, Judith Butler, Zeynep Gambetti, Shannon Jackson, Leticia Sabsay

Visitor Report
If I Can’t Dance
Westerdok 606–608, 1013 BV Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

and

 

Saturday 27 January 2018, 14–17hr
Jacuzzi
Ketelhuisplein 41, 1054 RD Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

Free, reservation required

Technologies of Embodiment

Reading Group

Wednesday 17 January 2018, 16–18hr

Catherine Bernheim, ‘Delphine Seyrig holding a camera during the shooting of Où est-ce qu’on se mai? [Where do we May?], shot in Paris during the May Day demonstration of 1976’ (1976) photograph. Credit: 20 minutos.

The use of early portable video technologies by 1970s French feminist video collectives reveals an embodied, dissident, performative gaze behind the camera. How is this bodily and technological bind renegotiated now? How can the senses articulate reciprocity between subjects and representation? With Charlotte Prodger’s rural queerness as case in point, how can underrepresented experiences use technologies of embodiment to inscribe their position within representation and narratives on their own terms?

 

Texts and materials: Kelly Baker, Hubert Godard, Ros Murray, Charlotte Prodger

If I Can’t Dance
Westerdok 606–608, 1013 BV Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

Closed session

Affect and Relationality

Reading Group

Wednesday 13 December 2017, 16–18hr

Rudolf Laban, ‘Choreutics’ (1966), book. Photo: Anik Fournier.

When the body, where movement takes hold, is vulnerable, this is commonly understood as passive and inactive, yet it is also a condition for action and resistance. Moving outward from Audre Lorde’s erotics – a deeply female and spiritual plane – fuels a change towards connecting to, and feeling, all aspects of life and relations with others. What, then, is a grammar of bodily movement – its outer form and inner affect?

 

Texts and materials: Judith Butler, Zeynep Gambetti, Myriam Lefkowitz, Audre Lorde, Leticia Sabsay

If I Can’t Dance
Westerdok 606–608, 1013 BV Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

Closed session

A Historiography of the Term Social Movement

Reading Group

Wednesday 15 November 2017, 16–18hr

Randy Martin, ‘Performing the Changing City: Public Space, Transformative Events and Creative Action in New York’ (2013), lecture. Credit: Movement Research.

What is meant by social movement: a mobilisation of bodies in the streets or social change that results from the demands of those bodies? Used in both progressive and conservative political projects, how do infrastructure and support structures enable or disable it? How does it exceed the political realm? In turning to performance and dance theory, movement emerges as a force, as an energy that takes root in the body.

 

Texts and materials: Giorgio Agamben, Shannon Jackson, Randy Martin

Logbook

If I Can’t Dance
Westerdok 606–608, 1013 BV Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

Closed session

Radio Emma

Three radio programmes unpack key terms from our research into Social Movement with invited local guests from various disciplines and practices.

Gathering

Radio

Wednesday 28 November 2018, 13–14hr

Left to right: Selçuk Balamir, Nagaré Willemsen, Tina Reden, Taka Taka, ‘Gathering’ (2018), Radio Emma. Photo: Susan Gibb.

Whether it be for festive, spiritual or political reasons, bodies that congregate signify in ways that extend beyond the discursive. If bodily vulnerability is part of resistance, how can this build grounds for new forms of embodied political intervention and modes of alliance that are characterized by interdependence?

 

Guests: Selçuk Balamir, graphic designer and activist; Tina Reden and Nagaré Willemsen, Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam students and usb_blackstudentunion founders; Taka Taka, visual artist and drag performer
Host: Miriam Wistreich

 


Acknowledgements

Editorial team: Anik Fournier, Miriam Wistreich
Jingle: Radna Rumping
Sound engineer: Leroy Chaar
Livestreaming, equipment and post-production: Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee

 

Radio Emma in its renewed form is developed by Miriam Wistreich with If I Can’t Dance

If I Can’t Dance
Westerdok 606–608, 1013 BV Amsterdam
The Netherlands

Free, no reservations required

 

Live broadcast

Care

Radio

Wednesday 21 November 2018, 13–14hr

Left to right: Nell Donkers, Sands Murray-Wassink, Marjan Sax, ‘Care’ (2018), Radio Emma. Photo: Susan Gibb.

Social welfare structures – diminished within neoliberalism – are less and less subject to collective responsibility. How can we (re-)build care relations? How can we perform caring sensorial gestures – feeling, touching, listening and looking – in ways that caress and seek relations? Forged at a sensorial level, can an ethics of care be grounds for an ethics of the social?

 

Guests: Nell Donkers, archivist De Appel; Sands Murray-Wassink, feminist, perfume collector and visual artist; and Marjan Sax, founder of Mama Cash and activist
Host: Miriam Wistreich

 


Acknowledgements

Editorial team: Anik Fournier, Miriam Wistreich
Jingle: Radna Rumping
Sound engineer: Leroy Chaar
Livestreaming, equipment and post-production: Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee

 

Radio Emma in its renewed form is developed by Miriam Wistreich with If I Can’t Dance

If I Can’t Dance

Westerdok 606–608, 1013 BV Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

Free, no reservations required

 

Live broadcast

Embodiment

Radio

Wednesday 14 November 2018, 13–14hr

Anti-clockwise from left to right: Gregory Lennon, Pascal Gatzen, AnnaMaria Pinaka, Miriam Wistreich, Leroy Chaar, Anik Fournier, ‘Embodiment’ (2018), Radio Emma. Photo: Susan Gibb.

When we think about social movement we tend to think of protests and manifestations, forms of collective action that aim for sociopolitical change. However, bodies also move in social ways. How does the body’s performance tie the individual to the social, the micro to the macro? And how in turn does embodiment impact social movement?

 

Guests: Pascal Gatzen, designer and head of MA Fashion Design, ArtEZ hogeschool voor de kunsten, Arnhem; Gregory Lennon, yoga teacher; and AnnaMaria Pinaka, visual artist
Host: Miriam Wistreich

 


Acknowledgements

Editorial team: Anik Fournier, Miriam Wistreich
Jingle: Radna Rumping
Sound engineer: Leroy Chaar
Livestreaming, equipment and post-production: Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee

 

Radio Emma in its renewed form is developed by Miriam Wistreich with If I Can’t Dance

If I Can’t Dance
Westerdok 606–608, 1013 BV Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

Free, no reservations required

 

Live broadcast

Lecture

Shannon Jackson: Choreographing Infrastructure

Lecture

Thursday 8 November 2018, 19.30–21.30hr

Shannon Jackson, ‘Choreographing Infrastructure’ (2018). Credit: Imagining America.

The performance scholar responds to the terms ‘social’ and ‘movement’ in recalling Progressive Era social movements – including those led by Jane Addams and Emma Goldman – and of the twenty-first century. She looks at choreography’s position on social practice discourse, drawing on her books Public Servants (2016), Social Works (2011) and Lines of Activity (2000) and the work of artists Joanna Haigood and Yve Laris Cohen.


Acknowledgements

Presented with the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis

P.C. Hoofthuis (Zaal 1.04)
University of Amsterdam
Spuistraat 134, 1012 VB Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

Free, reservations required

 

Livestreamed

Reader
Social Movement: Through the Lens of Performance and Performativity
Publication

Edited by Anik Fournier

This publication documents and shares the trajectory of If I Can’t Dance’s engagement with ‘Social Movement’ as the field of inquiry for its seventh biannual programme (2017–18). Social Movement: Through the Lens of Performance and Performativity investigates how performance ontologies around bodily experience, affect and the relational better one’s understanding of social movement – and in turn how that understanding expands performance vocabularies. Divided into three ‘directions’ of movement, ‘gathering’, ‘embodiment’ and ‘care’, the selected theoretical and artistic perspectives are culled from our Reading Group material and from guests on our Radio Emma broadcasts. A keynote lecture by performance and social practice scholar Shannon Jackson, delivered as part of the edition’s final presentations, serves as an introduction. Contributors: Giorgio Agamben, Selçuk Balamir, Anne Boyer, Judith Butler, Thomas F. DeFrantz, Nell Donkers, Pascale Gatzen, Édouard Glissant, Ayesha Hameed, Sands Joseph Horwitz-Dijks Murray-Wassink, Shannon Jackson, Rudolf Laban, Gregory Lennon, Audre Lorde, Ros Murray, AnnaMaria Pinaka, Tina Reden, Marjan Sax, Rebecca Schneider, Taka Taka, Simone Weil, Nagaré Willemsen; and postcard insert by Reza Mirabi.

read more

Design: Joris Kritis

ISBN 978-94-92139-16-0

248p, ills bw, 15 x 22 cm, pb, English, 2021


€20

add to cart
Master course
Dutch Art Institue – COOP 17/18

Opera Corruption. On Tricks, Tricksters and Charms 

Course

2017-2018

The course is conceived as a study group on corruption, a very charged word that is addressed as an ’embodied’ subject and practice. ‘Embodied’ in this particular instance means a form of corruption that is not objectified, but is a body/mind affair and as such it is approached through the body, skin, muscles and organs.

 

This class is about art as a corruptive force, with the mission of making a collective film/opera on corruption and through corruption. In other words, a film corrupted with opera, or an opera corrupted with film. The Opera, a total work of art, (the Gesamtkunstwerk) in which all other art forms can be corrupted, tricked and collapsed with one another. For their final presentation at Mikrokosmos Cinema in Athens in June, the group presents the film ‘A Piece of Dada’ as a collective work.

 

Course tutors: Pauline Curnier Jardin, Sara Giannini and Frédérique Bergholtz.

 

Students: Clementine Edwards, Lukas Hoffmann, Tirza Kater, Rabea Ridlhammer, Clara Saito, Giorgos Tsiongas, Wilfred Tomescu.

 

Read full syllabus


Acknowledgements

Guest tutors: Clara Saito, Anna Pangalou, and Aaron Schuster 

Sites

 

Mikrokosmos Cinema, Athens

 

FLAM – Forum for Live Art Amsterdam at Arti et Amicitiae

Bachelor course
School for New Dance Development – Course 2018

Curating and Performance

Course

2018

Curating and Performance investigates performance within the framework of its institutional history to think through its contextualization, presentation and preservation through curatorial practice and the theoretical and practical implications of this for artists, institutions and audiences alike. The course introduces

students to contemporary debates surrounding the curation of performance, and to equips them with the critical and practical skills that they require in order to think through how they shape their own artistic work in relation to the curatorial structures that they chose to create, engage with, or respond to. The course is structured around key principles: Space, Time, Bodies, Props and Objects, Notation and Documentation, and Writing

 

Teachers: Frédérique Bergholtz and Anik Fournier

 

Students: Keerthi Basavarajaiah, Yannick Bosc, Jette Loona Hermanis, Fernanda Libman Fonseca, Ingeborg Meier Andersen, Carolina Papetti, Naomie Pieter, Johhan Rosenberg, Tamir Eting.

Sites

 

Wereld Museum, Amsterdam

 

Artis, Amsterdam

 

Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

Artist Commissions
Mounira Al Solh

(b. 1978, Beirut. Lives in Beirut and Zutphen, The Netherlands) traces the movement of stories to reflect upon her personal history and those of the people she encounters in order to consider how social and political themes are grounded in daily life. Here, she creates a new experimental documentary in collaboration with four women affected by the Syrian war.

Freedom Is a Habit I’m Trying to Learn

Exhibition

Saturday 30 November 2019 – Sunday 8 March 2020
Exhibition Opening: Saturday 30 November 2019, 15–17hr

Open daily: Tuesday – Sunday, 11–17hr

Mounira Al Solh, ‘à la santé des alliés’, (2017), screening. Photo: Silvia Ulloa Mounira Al Solh, ‘à la santé des alliés’, (2017), screening. Photo: Silvia Ulloa Mounira Al Solh, ‘à la santé des alliés’, (2017), screening. Photo: Silvia Ulloa
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This documentary follows the personal discussions, people and places related to four women originally from Lebanon and Syria: Waad, Hanin, Rogine and Zeina. In their new cities, they face questions about the meaning of their cultures, family and political visions. Is exile a choice or an accident? What is home? How do we behave in our new countries? Does the abuse of the word ‘refugee’ affect us?

 

43 min, col, Arabic with English subtitles


Acknowledgements

Featuring: Waad Amer, Hanin Ghaddar, Rogine Hassan, Zeina Mansour, with Abdallah Ali Alsayed, Ali Ali Alsayed, Fatat Ali Alsayed, Nouran Breem, Ramy Ghanem, Tone Hansen, Dalshad Hassan, Bilal Khbeiz, Nabil Mohammad, Nader Omid, Nabeeh Semaan, Mounira Al Solh, Hussein Tabarai, Siddhi Tettero, Ronald Verweij

Camera: Ben Geraerts, Frida Marzouk, Temra Pavlovic, Mounira Al Solh

Sound: Kristian Dmitri, Bodil Furu, Tumelo Maesela, Mounira Al Solh

Producer: Frédérique Bergholtz

 

The film is co-commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation and premieres as part of Positions #5 at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven

 

 

 

 

Van Abbemuseum
Bilderdijklaan 10

5611 NH Eindhoven
The Netherlands

Freedom Is a Habit I’m Trying to Learn

Screening

Tuesday 4 December 2018, 19–21.30hr

Mounira Al Solh, ‘Freedom is a Habit I’m Trying to Learn’, (2018), screening. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde. Mounira Al Solh, ‘Freedom is a Habit I’m Trying to Learn’, (2018), screening. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde. Mounira Al Solh, ‘Freedom is a Habit I’m Trying to Learn’, (2018), screening. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde. Mounira Al Solh, ‘Freedom is a Habit I’m Trying to Learn’, (2018), screening. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde. Mounira Al Solh, ‘Freedom is a Habit I’m Trying to Learn’, (2018), screening. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde. Mounira Al Solh, ‘Freedom is a Habit I’m Trying to Learn’, (2018), screening. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde. Mounira Al Solh, ‘Freedom is a Habit I’m Trying to Learn’, (2018), screening. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde. Mounira Al Solh, ‘Freedom is a Habit I’m Trying to Learn’, (2018), screening. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde.
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This documentary follows the personal discussions, people and places related to four women originally from Lebanon and Syria: Waad, Hanin, Rogine and Zeina. In their new cities, they face questions about the meaning of their cultures, family and political visions. Is exile a choice or an accident? What is home? How do we behave in our new countries? Does the abuse of the word ‘refugee’ affect us?

 

Avant-première with Syrian banquet by Aleppo Kitchen, and a music performance by Rogine Hassan.

 

43 min, col, Arabic with English subtitles


Acknowledgements

Featuring: Waad Amer, Hanin Ghaddar, Rogine Hassan, Zeina Mansour, with Abdallah Ali Alsayed, Ali Ali Alsayed, Fatat Ali Alsayed, Nouran Breem, Ramy Ghanem, Tone Hansen, Dalshad Hassan, Bilal Khbeiz, Nabil Mohammad, Nader Omid, Nabeeh Semaan, Mounira Al Solh, Hussein Tabarai, Siddhi Tettero, Ronald Verweij

Camera: Ben Geraerts, Frida Marzouk, Temra Pavlovic, Mounira Al Solh

Sound: Kristian Dmitri, Bodil Furu, Tumelo Maesela, Mounira Al Solh

Producer: Frédérique Bergholtz

 

Co-commissioned with Sharjah Art Foundation 

ZID Theatre
De Roos van Dekamaweg 1

1061 HR Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

€12,50 adults / €10 students
(includes meal)

à la santé des alliés

Screening

Friday 15 December 2017, 16hr

Mounira Al Solh, ‘à la santé des alliés’, (2017), screening. Photo: Silvia Ulloa Mounira Al Solh, ‘à la santé des alliés’, (2017), screening. Photo: Silvia Ulloa Mounira Al Solh, ‘à la santé des alliés’, (2017), screening. Photo: Silvia Ulloa Mounira Al Solh, ‘à la santé des alliés’, (2017), screening. Photo: Silvia Ulloa Mounira Al Solh, ‘à la santé des alliés’, (2017), screening. Photo: Silvia Ulloa Mounira Al Solh, ‘à la santé des alliés’, (2017), screening. Photo: Silvia Ulloa
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The film, whose title translates as ‘to the health of allies’, narrates layers of parallel events in Lebanon and Syria during the pan-Arab Nasserite movement of the 1950s and 60s. Made from 2003–16 and told from the different perspective of the artist’s relatives, opinions and recollections of the same incidents begin to contradict each other, mixing personal and political events to reveal time as three-dimensional rather than linear.

Eye Filmmuseum
IJpromenade 1

1031 KT Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

€5 

keyon gaskin

prefers not to contextualise their art with their credentials; they create a number of new performances that trouble the discipline’s form, institutions and conventions by investing in the gaps they find within these, and by pursuing the potentials of gathering.

keyon gaskin: NASHA
Publication

d.a. carter

‘When you encounter NASHA, refuse language. Be present and patient with yourself. Instead of trying to explain the work, let the performance work on you. Allow it to build memories, real and imagined. Let it hum through you.’ d.a. carter provides an account of keyon gaskin’s NASHA, presented at Bijlmer Parktheater in Amsterdam on 30 November 2018.

read more

Design: Will Holder

ISBN 9789492139139

12 p, bw, 15×10,5 cm, pb, English, 2019

 

Download


€5

add to cart

something else entirely

Performance

Friday 14 December 2018, 19–20hr

ISO Amsterdam
Isolatorweg 17
1014 AS Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Free, reservations required
keyon gaskin, ‘something else entirely’, 14 December 2018, ISO Amsterdam. Photography: Nellie de Boer. keyon gaskin, ‘something else entirely’, 14 December 2018, ISO Amsterdam. Photography: Nellie de Boer. keyon gaskin, ‘something else entirely’, 14 December 2018, ISO Amsterdam. Photography: Nellie de Boer. keyon gaskin, ‘something else entirely’, 14 December 2018, ISO Amsterdam. Photography: Nellie de Boer. keyon gaskin, ‘something else entirely’, 14 December 2018, ISO Amsterdam. Photography: Nellie de Boer. keyon gaskin, ‘something else entirely’, 14 December 2018, ISO Amsterdam. Photography: Nellie de Boer.
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This new performance engages third-year SNDO – School for New Dance Development students in a two-week workshop towards a public presentation. The artist’s solo work this is a performance. / you are a community. / you are my material. / this is a prison. / leave when you want is opened up to other bodies who conceive something else to share.


Acknowledgements

Made with and by Keerthi Basavarajaiah, Yannick Bosc, Jette Loona Hermanis, Dasom Lee, Fernanda Libman Fonseca, Ingeborg Meier Andersen, Carolina Papetti, Naomie Pieter, Johhan Rosenberg, Tamir Eting, keyon gaskin

Commissioned by the SNDO – School for New Dance Development in collaboration with If I Can’t Dance and presented with ISO Amsterdam

 

NASHA

Book Launch & Performance

Friday 30 November 2018, 18.15–22.30hr

keyon gaskin, ‘NASHA’ (2018), performance. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde keyon gaskin, ‘NASHA’ (2018), performance. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde keyon gaskin, ‘NASHA’ (2018), performance. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde keyon gaskin, ‘NASHA’ (2018), performance. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde keyon gaskin, ‘NASHA’ (2018), performance. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde keyon gaskin, ‘NASHA’ (2018), performance. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde keyon gaskin, ‘NASHA’ (2018), performance. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde keyon gaskin, ‘NASHA’ (2018), performance. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde keyon gaskin, ‘NASHA’ (2018), performance. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde keyon gaskin, ‘NASHA’ (2018), performance. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde keyon gaskin, ‘NASHA’ (2018), performance. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde keyon gaskin, ‘NASHA’ (2018), performance. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde
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In these three performances named after the artist’s little sister and done with friends, the attempt to be less lonely when travelling centres on and values black sociality. Writes d.a. carter (aka Derrais Carter) in the accompanying publication: ‘When you encounter NASHA, refuse language. Be present and patient with yourself. Instead of trying to explain the work, let the performance work on you. Allow it to build memories, real and imagined. Let it hum through you.’ 


Acknowledgements

Introduction d.a. carter

 

Dead Thoroughbred in collaboration with sidony oneal

 

the multifarious nature of care with Adee Roberson (Tropic Green)

 

[a swatch of lavender]: a self portrait performed by local artists

 

Samiya Bashir

Field Theories (2017)

6 videos, approx 1 min 30 sec each, col, English

Movement: keyon gaskin

Camera and edit: Roland Dahwen (Patua Films)

 

Presented with the support of SNDO – School for New Dance Development, Fine Arts Department Sandberg Instituut, USB Sandberg Black Student Union and Unsettling Sandberg Instituut/Gerrit Rietveld Academie, all Amsterdam

Bijlmer Parktheater

Anton de Komplein 240

1102 DR Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

€15 adults / €12,50 students

(includes meal)

King’s Day Protest

Screening

Friday 30 November 2018, 17.45hr

keyon gaskin, ‘King’s Day Protest’ (2018), screening, Amsterdam Bijlmer ArenA, Amsterdam. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde. keyon gaskin, ‘King’s Day Protest’ (2018), screening, Amsterdam Bijlmer ArenA, Amsterdam. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde. keyon gaskin, ‘King’s Day Protest’ (2018), screening, Amsterdam Bijlmer ArenA, Amsterdam. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde. keyon gaskin, ‘King’s Day Protest’ (2018), screening, Amsterdam Bijlmer ArenA, Amsterdam. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde. keyon gaskin, ‘King’s Day Protest’ (2018), screening, Amsterdam Bijlmer ArenA, Amsterdam. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde. keyon gaskin, ‘King’s Day Protest’ (2018), screening, Amsterdam Bijlmer ArenA, Amsterdam. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde.
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A new video work broadcast on the public screen at Amsterdam Bijlmer ArenA train station.

 

6 min 2 sec, col, English          


Acknowledgements

Performers: Emma Nantermoz, Neda Rujeva, Julia Sara Vavra, Karina Villafan

Camera: Temra Pavlovic

Editing: keyon gaskin, Temra Pavlovic 

 

Special thanks to SNDO – School for New Dance Development

Amsterdam Bijlmer ArenA

1101 BE Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

Free

Workshop: Writing for/with Performance

Workshop

Tuesday 27 November 2018

Talentlab

Anton de Komplein 240

1102 DR Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

Closed workshop

A night of poetry, dance, performance and music lead by the artist and Derrais Carter and facilitated by sidony o’neal and Adee Roberson (Tropic Green) for the talent development project of the Bijlmer Parktheater whereby young talent from eighteen years old with experience in performance can further deepen their competencies in poetry, photography, theatre and dance.

this is a performance.

you are a community.

you are my material.

this is a prison.

leave when you want.

Performance

Friday 28 September 2018, 19.30hr

keyon gaskin, ‘this is a performance. you are a community. you are my material. this is a prison. leave when you want.’ (2018), performance. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde keyon gaskin, ‘this is a performance. you are a community. you are my material. this is a prison. leave when you want.’ (2018), performance. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde keyon gaskin, ‘this is a performance. you are a community. you are my material. this is a prison. leave when you want.’ (2018), performance. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde keyon gaskin, ‘this is a performance. you are a community. you are my material. this is a prison. leave when you want.’ (2018), performance. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde keyon gaskin, ‘this is a performance. you are a community. you are my material. this is a prison. leave when you want.’ (2018), performance. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde keyon gaskin, ‘this is a performance. you are a community. you are my material. this is a prison. leave when you want.’ (2018), performance. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde keyon gaskin, ‘this is a performance. you are a community. you are my material. this is a prison. leave when you want.’ (2018), performance. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde keyon gaskin, ‘this is a performance. you are a community. you are my material. this is a prison. leave when you want.’ (2018), performance. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde keyon gaskin, ‘this is a performance. you are a community. you are my material. this is a prison. leave when you want.’ (2018), performance. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde keyon gaskin, ‘this is a performance. you are a community. you are my material. this is a prison. leave when you want.’ (2018), performance. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde
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In Amsterdam to further develop their commission, the artist presents a performance that, as Litia Perta writes, is ‘less about a whole picture – a total or totalizing knowledge – than it is about intimacy, failure to see, nearness that obstructs rather than clarifies … this work unsettles, undoes, asks what it means, looks like, feels like, to come undone, to see only fragments, to have little or no context.’

FLAM – Forum for Live Art Amsterdam at Arti et Amicitiae
Rokin 112

1012 LB Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

€7,50 

its not a thing

Performance

Thursday 21 and Friday 22 September 2017, 19–21hr

keyon gaskin, ‘it’s not a thing’ (2017), performance. Photo: Silvia Ulloa Marquez keyon gaskin, ‘it’s not a thing’ (2017), performance. Photo: Silvia Ulloa Marquez keyon gaskin, ‘it’s not a thing’ (2017), performance. Photo: Silvia Ulloa Marquez keyon gaskin, ‘it’s not a thing’ (2017), performance. Photo: Silvia Ulloa Marquez
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Writer Jamie Hale has reflected on this work in The Oregonian: ‘… no matter how hard keyon gaskin tries to make the performance not a thing, its not a thing is somehow the most captivating thing in town.’

Dansmakers Podium
Gedempt Hamerkanaal 203

1021 KP Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

€7,50 adults / €5 students

Myriam Lefkowitz

(b. 1980, Paris. Lives in Paris) creates conditions for augmented perceptive experiences that favour attention, trust and the negotiation of emotions and relations; she designs a new ‘choreographic tool’ over a series of workshops.

Myriam Lefkowitz: La Bibliothèque
Publication

Susan Gibb

‘Visible psychic dramas play out in their bodies. It is like witnessing someone dream, but with more consciousness. While observing, it is clear that for some people the experience is not so easy, in contrast to the open curiosity I felt.’ This essay by Susan Gibb provides an account of Myriam Lefkowitz’s La Bibliothèque, presented in the Library of the University of Amsterdam in November 2018

read more

Design: Will Holder

ISBN 9789492139146
24 p, bw, 15×10,5 cm, pb, English, 2019

 

Download


€5

add to cart

How Can One Know in Such Darkness?

Performance

Saturday 24 November 2018, 9–10.30hr, 10.30–12hr, 13.30–15hr, 15–16.30hr and 16.30–18hr

Myriam Lefkowitz, ‘How Can One Know In Such Darkness?’, (2018), performance. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde. Myriam Lefkowitz, ‘How Can One Know In Such Darkness?’, (2018), performance. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde. Myriam Lefkowitz, ‘How Can One Know In Such Darkness?’, (2018), performance. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde. Myriam Lefkowitz, ‘How Can One Know In Such Darkness?’, (2018), performance. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde.
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During library opening hours, beholders are ushered into a hall and invited to lie down, close their eyes and immerse themselves in a collective tactile experience. Surrounded by blankets, pillows, fabrics, stones and other objects, performers weave a non-verbal narrative between bodies using touch and sound. Feelings and imagination, states of sleep and wakefulness, may blur to enable a different regime of images to appear. Each session accommodates ten beholders, who may then watch the following session.


Acknowledgements

Performers: Lendl Barcelos, Alkis Hadjandreou, Annick Kleizen, Zoe Scoglio

Original concept: Jean Philippe Derail, Julie Laporte, Myriam Lefkowitz

 

Developed in partnership with La Ferme du Buisson, Noisiel through Corpus, an international network for performance-related work and La Galerie, centre d’art contemporain, Noisy-le-Sec, and presented in collaboration with the department of Art History at the University of Amsterdam Library

University of Amsterdam Library
Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

€10 

La Bibliothèque

Book Launch & Performance

Thursday 22, Friday 23, Monday 26, Tuesday 27 and Wednesday 28 November 2018, 10.30–12hr, 13–14.30hr and 15–16.30hr

Myriam Lefkowitz, ‘La Bibliothèque’, (2018), book launch & performance. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde. Myriam Lefkowitz, ‘La Bibliothèque’, (2018), book launch & performance. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde. Myriam Lefkowitz, ‘La Bibliothèque’, (2018), book launch & performance. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde. Myriam Lefkowitz, ‘La Bibliothèque’, (2018), book launch & performance. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde.
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An art project that questions the usual patterns of attention. Five performers intermingle in the daily life of a library, each guiding a single beholder at a time through a series of ‘attention devices’: a walk with closed eyes, a nap augmented by the subtle touch of objects, textiles and sounds and a reading practice that addresses the entire body as a site for understanding. A publication details the experience.


Acknowledgements

Performers: Lendl Barcelos, Alkis Hadjandreou, Annick Kleizen, Zoe Scoglio

 

Conceived in lineage with La Piscine, a project performed at a swimming pool and created by Lendl Barcelos, Jean Philippe Derail, Valentina Desideri, Ben Evans, Alkis Hadjandreou, Catalina Insignares, Julie Laporte, Géraldine Longueville, Florian Richaud, Simon Ripoll-Hurier, Clara Valière, Yasmine Youcef

 

Co-produced by Bulegoa z/b, Bilbao and La Ferme du Buisson, Noisiel in the frame of Corpus, an international network for performance-related work, and presented in collaboration with the department of Art History at the University of Amsterdam Library

University of Amsterdam Library
Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

€10 

Practising Attention

Workshop

Monday 5 February 2018, 10–18hr

Myriam Lefkowitz, ‘Practising Attention’, (2018), workshop. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde. Myriam Lefkowitz, ‘Practising Attention’, (2018), workshop. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde. Myriam Lefkowitz, ‘Practising Attention’, (2018), workshop. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde. Myriam Lefkowitz, ‘Practising Attention’, (2018), workshop. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde. Myriam Lefkowitz, ‘Practising Attention’, (2018), workshop. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde. Myriam Lefkowitz, ‘Practising Attention’, (2018), workshop. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde. Myriam Lefkowitz, ‘Practising Attention’, (2018), workshop. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde.
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An exchange of sensorial, perceptive and imaginary tools developed through her practice: touch, different modes of seeing, states between sleep and wakefulness and silent forms of communication. Collective conversations with participants about the experiences produced by these tools open up and map the issues that emerge from the modified states, addressing contemporary modes of attention and guided by the enquiry: What practice creates the conditions for our attention to shift?

 

Participants are asked to bring a text they consider feminist and an object or fabric with interesting tactile or sound properties.


Acknowledgements

Collaborator: Cécile Lavergne

Podium Mozaïek
Bos en Lommerweg 191, 1055 DT Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

Free, reservations required

(includes meal)

Practising Attention

Workshop

Wednesday 13 December 2017, 10–18hr

An exchange of sensorial, perceptive and imaginary tools developed through her practice: touch, different modes of seeing, states between sleep and wakefulness and silent forms of communication. Collective conversations with participants about the experiences produced by these tools open up and map the issues that emerge from the modified states, addressing contemporary modes of attention and guided by the enquiry: What practice creates the conditions for our attention to shift?

Centro Municipal de San Francisco
Plaza Corazón de María s/n, 48003 Bilbao
Spain

 

Free, reservations required

Practising Attention

Workshop

Friday 17 November 2017, 14–18hr

Myriam Lefkowitz, ‘Practising Attention’, (2017), workshop. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde. Myriam Lefkowitz, ‘Practising Attention’, (2017), workshop. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde. Myriam Lefkowitz, ‘Practising Attention’, (2017), workshop. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde. Myriam Lefkowitz, ‘Practising Attention’, (2017), workshop. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde. Myriam Lefkowitz, ‘Practising Attention’, (2017), workshop. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde. Myriam Lefkowitz, ‘Practising Attention’, (2017), workshop. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde.
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An exchange of sensorial, perceptive and imaginary tools developed through her practice: touch, different modes of seeing, states between sleep and wakefulness and silent forms of communication. Collective conversations with participants about the experiences produced by these tools open up and map the issues that emerge from the modified states, addressing contemporary modes of attention and guided by the enquiry: What practice creates the conditions for our attention to shift?

Huiskamer van de Buurt de Tagerijn
Balboastraat 18, 1057 VW Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

Free, reservations required

How can one know in such darkness?

Performance

Saturday 28 October 2017, 14hr

One of a series of public meetings putting into practice the research about attention, sensation and perception conducted during her three-month residency at La Ferme du Buisson. Through various immersive devices that provoke encounters between choreographic artists and spectators, Lefkowitz creates the conditions for an increased perceptual experience through the use of gaze, touch, walking and liminal states between sleep and waking.


Acknowledgements

Collaborators: Jean Philippe Derail, Ghyslaine Gau, Thierry Grapotte, Catalina Insignares, Julie Laporte, Florian Richaud, Yasmine Youcef

 

The performance and residency at La Ferme du Buisson, Noisel takes place with the support of Drac Île-de-France – Ministère de la Culture, Conseil régional d’Île-de-France and Corpus, an international network for performance-related work

La Ferme du Buisson
Allée de la Ferme, 77186 Noisiel
France

 

Free

Charlotte Prodger

(b. 1974, Bournemouth, United Kingdom. Lives in Glasgow) works with sculpture, writing and moving image of which its ever-evolving formats are inextricably bound to the autobiographical content of her work. Her recent videos set up complex tensions between the body, landscape, identity and time. The new single-channel film explores what happens to the coded signifiers of queer bodies within uninhabited wildernesses.

SaF05

Exhibition

Saturday 23 January – Sunday 5 September 2021
Open daily 10–18hr

Charlotte Prodger, SaF05, exhibition, The 58th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Arsenale Docks, Venice, 11 May – 24 November 2019

At last the Amsterdam public can view the 2019 installation that concludes the eponymous video trilogy named after the last of several maned lionesses – a cipher for queer attachment and desire – documented in the Okavango Delta, Botswana. The artist came to know about the lioness through conservationists’ camera-trap and behaviour footage. 

Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
Museumplein 10
1071 DJ Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

€20 adults / €10 students and CJP

SaF05

Exhibition

Saturday 11 May – Sunday 24 November 2019
Open daily: Tuesday – Sunday, 10–18hr

Charlotte Prodger, SaF05 (2019), video still, The 58th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Venetië, 11 May – 24 November 2019.
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This film combines archival, scientific and diaristic footage from the Scottish Highlands, the Great Basin Desert, the Okavango Delta and the Ionian Islands. SaF05 is the name of a maned lioness, a cipher for queer attachment and desire. The artist intersects a database of behaviours and camera-trap footage of SaF05, the last of several maned lionesses documented in the Okavango Delta, with autobiographical fragments that fluctuate between proximity and distance.
 
39 min, col, English


Acknowledgements

Camera: Emma Dalesman, Sarah Forrest, Susan Gibson, Rodney Knight, Charlotte Prodger

Camera trap footage of SaF05: Botswana Predator Conservation Trust

Sound recording: Joe Howe, Charlotte Prodger, Mark Vernon, Ellie Williams

Bagpipe: Isla Jane Stout

Colourist: Jason R. Moffat

Editing, voice-over, sound design, mixing: Charlotte Prodger

Additional mixing: Michael MacKinnon

Producer: Susan Gibb

Consulting producer: Mason Leaver-Yap, Casey O’Connell

Production assistance: Emilie McCluskey, Matilda Strang

Post-production assistance: Natalie McGowan, Vilté Vaikuté

 

Produced by Scotland + Venice in partnership with If I Can’t Dance, with additional support from Charlotte Prodger Supporters Circle, Elephant Trust, Hollybush Gardens, Koppe Astner, Mercer Union, Toronto and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

 

Exhibition commissioned by the Scotland + Venice partnership with funding support from the National Lottery through Creative Scotland, curated by Linsey Young with Cove Park

 

On its return to Scotland, the work tours the Highlands and Islands, while If I Can’t Dance leads an international tour to the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Mercer Union, Toronto

58th Venice Biennale, Arsenale Docks

San Pietro di Castello 40, 30122 Venice

Italy

 

Free

Passing as a Great Grey Owl

Screening

Thursday 8 November – Tuesday 4 December 2018, 14–18hr

Charlotte Prodger, Passing as a Great Grey Owl (2017), video still. Courtesy of LUX Scotland.

Found footage of a female biologist mimicking the call of the male great grey owl is counter-posed with video of women’s legs as they urinate in different wildernesses. The collision of these activities suggests exuberant queer territoriality. This video work includes a passage from ‘I am (for The Birds)’, the final text in late artist and curator Ian White’s book Here Is Information. Mobilise (2016).

 

6 min, col, English


Acknowledgements

Courtesy LUX Scotland

If I Can’t Dance

Westerdok 606–608, 1013 BV Amsterdam 

The Netherlands  

 

Free

BRIDGIT and LHB, with other videos

Screening

Saturday 14 October 2017, 14–19.30hr

Charlotte Prodger, BRIDGIT and LHB, screening, 2017. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde. Sunset walk through Bergen aan Zee’s dune landscape to the North Sea follows the screening, 2017. Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde.
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The artist’s LHB (2017) and BRIDGIT (2016) are shown alongside the films that influenced their maker’s thinking around ‘queer wildernesses’: Dani Leventhal and Jared Buckhiester’s Hard As Opal (2015) and Jonathan Rattner’s The Interior (2016). These works enquire into queer life in the densely populated urban contexts that dominate popular LGBTQI+ narratives. A sunset walk through Bergen aan Zee’s dune landscape to the North Sea follows the screening.

 

6 min, col, English


Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival and Video Data Bank

Filmtheater Cinebergen
Eeuwigelaan 7, 1861 CL Bergen
The Netherlands

 

€15 adults / students
(includes free bus service, reservations required)

Research Commissions
Rhea Anastas

(b. 1969, Gloucester. Lives in Los Angeles) is an art historian, critic and curator. She initiates a study of Some Reflective Surfaces (1975–76) by artist and philosopher Adrian Piper (b. 1948, New York City. Lives in Berlin) who appears as a disco dancer in modified Mythic Being guise with narration and film, performing for the first time in formal terms for an art audience.

Adrian Piper: Performing Objects I Have Been, 1972–2018
Publication

Rhea Anastas with contributions by RoseLee Goldberg and Adrian Piper

Adrian Piper: Performing Objects I Have Been, 1972–2018

Adrian Piper: Performing Objects I Have Been, 1972–2018 is a collection of documents from, or potentially relevant to Adrian Piper’s performance Some Reflective Surfaces (1975–76) edited by art historian and curator Rhea Anastas. In this early live piece, Piper dances under spotlights to Aretha Franklin’s ‘Respect’, additionally staging video feedback and filmed images of herself dancing, and two sound recordings – ‘Respect’ itself, and a voice-over narrative. Some Reflective Surfaces was produced in New York in the Fine Arts Building, New York University in 1975 and then at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1976. The performance has not been staged since. The documents of Some Reflective Surfaces include writings by, and audio transcripts of Piper. The publication is illustrated with photographs of Piper’s performances and other works.

read more

Design: Will Holder

ISBN 978–94-92139-12-2
112pp, ills col & bw, 21–27 cm, pb, English, 2021


€15

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‘What You Know from How I Move’: excerpts from viewing and researching Adrian Piper’s Some Reflective Surfaces (1975–76), the audience-orientated performance at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 28 February 1976 in the exhibition Adrian Piper: A Synthesis of Intuitions, 1965–2016

Lecture

Thursday 29 November 2018, 19–20.30hr

Rhea Anastas, What You Know from How I Move (...), lecture, Auditorium, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 28 November 2018.

Inviting audience discussion, Anastas reads excerpts from her research compiled between summer 2017 and autumn 2018 that explores parallels between specific intersubjective dynamics within the watching and being-watched and the spacing mechanisms (in time, context and conditions) entailed in apprehending and reflecting on Some Reflective Surfaces. Piper performed this piece on stage at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York on 28 February 1976 as part of a multi-day programme of commissioned live pieces.


Acknowledgements

Presented in collaboration with the department of Art History, University of Amsterdam

 

Special thanks to Adrian Piper Research Archive (APRA) Foundation Berlin

University of Amsterdam Auditorium

Oudemanhuispoort 4–6, 1012 CN Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

€5 adults / students

Research on Adrian Piper

Lecture

Saturday 23 September 2017, 15–16.30hr

Rhea Anastas, Research on Adrian Piper (2017), lecture. Photo: Silvia Ulloa Marquez. Rhea Anastas, Research on Adrian Piper (2017), lecture. Photo: Silvia Ulloa Marquez.
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With narration and film, Anastas introduces her study of artist and philosopher Adrian Piper’s Some Reflective Surfaces (1975–76). In this piece, Piper appears as a disco dancer in modified Mythic Being guise, performing for the first time in formal terms for an art audience. Additionally, two other works by Piper are screened: It’s Just Art (1980) and Aspects of the Liberal Dilemma (1978).


Acknowledgements

Special thanks to the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; APRA Foundation Berlin; and Lévy Gorvy, New York

If I Can’t Dance
Westerdok 606–608, 1013 BV Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

Free

Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez

(b. 1976, Ljubljana. Lives in Paris) is a writer and curator; she undertakes a study on the actress, feminist activist, and author of several videos, Delphine Seyrig (b. 1932, Beirut. d. 1990, Paris), including her unfinished film Calamity on American frontierswoman Calamity Jane’s published letters to her daughter.

Eszter Salamon: MONUMENT 0.7: M/OTHERS

Performance

Tuesday 19 and Wednesday 20 November 2019, 20–21.20hr

Image: Eszter Salamon, M/OTHERS, performance, 2019. Photo Alain Roux

In empathy with female subjectivities, several of Eszter Salamon’s works focus on feminist genealogies and transgenerational relations. M/OTHERS reconsiders the structures of generations by exploring the mother-daughter relation, aiming to move away from social norms and arrive at new modalities of action, feeling and perception.

 

If I Can’t Dance and Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez commissioned Eszter Salomon to make a new performance in the frame of the research project on Delphine Seyrig’s unrealised black-and-white silent feature film Calamity based on the correspondence between American frontierswoman Calamity Jane and her daughter.


Acknowledgements

Performers: Erzsébet Gyarmati, Eszter Salamon
Scenography: Sylvie Garot, Eszter Salamon
Lighting design: Sylvie Garot
Rehearsal assistance: Liza Baliasnaja, Boglàrka Börcsök
Costumes: Sabin Gröflin
Production: Botschaft Gbr/Alexandra Wellensiek, Studio E.S/Elodie Perrin

 

Coproduced by Project Arts Centre (Dublin) and Ménagerie de Verre (Paris).
Funded by Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa, the Regional Directory of Cultural Affairs of Paris – Ministry of Culture and Communication, and Nationales Performance Netz Coproduction Fund for Dance (NPN) which is funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. Special thanks to Susan Gibb and Ferenc Salamon, Lili Kárpáti and Uferstudios.

 

Splendor
Nieuwe Uilenburgerstraat 116, 1011 LX Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Part of Amsterdam Art Weekend

 

€15 regular / €10 students

 

Tour

 

10-12 August 2019

Tanz im August

HAU (Hebbel am Ufer)

Hallesches Ufer 34, 10963

Berlin, Germany

 

19 and 20 November 2019

If I Can’t Dance (Splendor)

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

(in the frame of the research project by Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez on actress, feminist activist and video director Delphine Seyrig (b. 1932, Beirut. d. 1990, Paris)

 

22 and 23 November 2019

Ménagerie de Verre

12 Rue Lechevin, 75011

Paris, France

(in the frame of Les Inaccoutumés)

 

18 February 2019

Museo Reina Sofía

C. de Sta. Isabel, 52, 28012

Madrid, Spain

(in the frame of the exhibition Defiant Muses Delphine Seyrig and the Feminist Video Collectives in France in the 1970s and 1980s)

 

 

Defiant Muse: Delphine Seyrig (DAY II)

Lecture

Sunday 2 December 2018, 11.30–16hr

Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez, ‘Defiant Muse: Delphine Seyrig’ (2018), lecture. Photo: Coco Duivendoorde. Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez, ‘Defiant Muse: Delphine Seyrig’ (2018), lecture. Photo: Coco Duivendoorde. Giovanna Zapperi, ‘Defiant Muse: Delphine Seyrig’ (2018), lecture. Photo: Coco Duivendoorde. Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez and Eszter Salamon, ‘Defiant Muse: Delphine Seyrig’ (2018), lecture. Photo: Coco Duivendoorde.
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An introduction, with co-curator Giovanna Zapperi, to their 2019–20 Delphine Seyrig exhibition at LaM, Lille, and Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid, which addresses Seyrig’s critical engagement with disobedience, countering normativity, transnational struggles and the anti-psychiatry movement. Petrešin-Bachelez then discusses her research into Seyrig’s unrealised film Calamity, from the late 1970s, for which she collaborated with film-maker Babette Mangolte and poet Etel Adnan. Seyrig sought to explore the mother-daughter relationship, undergirded by her long-term interest in US-American culture.

Veem House for Performance

Van Diemenstraat 408–410, 1013 CR Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

€12 adults / €7 students

Defiant Muse: Delphine Seyrig (DAY I)

Screening

Saturday 1 December 2018, 20–23hr

Sequence of the movie Miso and Maso go Boating (1976) by the collective Les Insoumuses (Carole Roussopoulos, Ioana Wieder, Delphine Seyrig, Nadja Ringart). Centre audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir, Paris.

The first of the two films shown by Delphine Seyrig and collaborators is Maso et Miso vont en bateau (1976), in which Les Insoumuses cleverly appropriate media in a scathing and parodic response to political commentary on the status of women. The second, Sois belle et tais-toi [Shut Up and Be Beautiful] (1981), includes interviews with film actresses Jenny Agutter and Jane Fonda – a video statement for #MeToo avant la lettre.

 

 

Maso et Miso vont en bateau, 55 min, bw, French with English subtitles

 

Sois belle et tais-toi, 115 min, bw, French with English subtitles


Acknowledgements

Courtesy the Centre audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir, Paris

Veem House for Performance

Van Diemenstraat 408–410, 1013 CR Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

€12 adults / €7 students

Research on Delphine Seyrig

Lecture & Screening

Friday 15 December 2017, 14–17hr

Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez, Research on Delphine Seyrig, lecture, EYE Filmmuseum, Amsterdam, 15 December 2017.

A reactivation of actress, video-maker and feminist activist Delphine Seyrig’s unrealised black and white silent feature about the letters of US-American frontierswoman Calamity Jane to her daughter. At the heart of Seyrig’s interest in the story is the relationship between mother and daughter, which she explores as an actress in Chantal Akerman’s Letters Home (1986), screened here alongside camerawoman Babette Mangolte’s Calamity rushes and Seyrig’s videos S.C.U.M. Manifesto (1976), Maso et Miso vont en bateau (1976) and Inês (1974).


Acknowledgements

Part of a larger commission, in collaboration with art historian Giovanna Zapperi, by Centre audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir, Paris

Eye Filmmuseum
IJpromenade 1, 1031 KT Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

€5 adults / students

2016-17
Master course
Dutch Art Institute – COOP 16/17

On Praxis, An Unstated Theory (Writing Out Loud)

Course

2016-2017

The course is an experimental workshop comprising exercises on scores, notations, translation, literalness and equivalences as a means to explore the production of art as a filter. Working from the idea of ‘abundance’, the workshop commences with a collective reading of one of artist Jon Mikel Euba’s texts, during which the students are asked to produce a simultaneous and a consecutive translation of the text into another medium. The process of translation between media continued throughout the course and culminates in a collective sound piece.

 

Course tutors: Jon Mikel Euba and Susan Gibb

 

Students: Astarti Athanasiadou, Avan Omar Muhammad, Despina Sevasti, Flora Woudstra, Florencia Almiron, Giulia Crispiani, Helen Zeru, Joy Mariama Smith, larose, Maike Hemmers, Nika Timashkova, Savannah Theis, Sergi Selvas, Valentina Curandi, and Zhenia Vasiliev

 

Read full syllabus

Sites

 

Espace Darja, Cassablanca, Morocco

 

Ait Ben Haddou, Atlas Mountains

 

Designhuis Eindhoven

Bachelor course
School for New Dance Development – Course 2017

Curating and Performance

Course

2017

This third-year course builds upon a nine- session theoretical course for second year students that was delivered in April and June 2015, and which is designed to introduce students to ideas and debates around curatorial practices and curating performance through case studies, field trips and reading. This course extends this by providing students with the opportunity to apply these ideas within a practical setting: the students will work in conversation with If I Can’t Dance to think through curatorial methodologies and concerns in the programming, production, presentation and communication of their public presentation in the dancetheatre of de Theaterschool, Amsterdam.
The course will unfold across numerous sessions and intensive working periods placed at selected intervals across the presentation’s development, and the two public programmes of performances in the dance theatre.

 

Teachers: Frédérique Bergholtz and Susan Gibb

2015–16
Event and Duration
Reading Group Amsterdam
Reading Group Sao Paulo
Reading Group Toronto
Reader
Event and Duration
Publication
Edited by Susan Gibb and Becket MWN

Event and Duration is a collection of texts that offer various perspectives on the notions of ‘event and duration’, and suggest ways that time can be thought and measured otherwise. The selection of texts are drawn from the field of performance studies, philosophy, psychoanalysis, science fiction and the visual arts among others, all of which were read in If I Can’t Dance’s reading groups in Amsterdam, São Paulo and Toronto as part of the artistic programme VI – Event and Duration (2015–16). Contributors: Octavia E. Butler, Paul Chan, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Elizabeth Freeman, Amelia Groom, The Invisible Committee, R.D. Laing, Henri Lefebvre, Jota Mombaça, José Esteban Muñoz, Peter Pál Pelbart, Paul B. Preciado; and artist pages by Becket MWN.

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Design: Joris Kritis

ISBN 978-94-92139-7-7

176 p, ills colour, 15 x 22 cm, pb, English, 2021


€20

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Artist Commissions
Leonor Antunes

(b. 1972, Lisbon. Lives in Berlin) creates sculptures that reflect the environment that surrounds them and make reference to the work of lesser-known figures from the history of twentieth-century architecture and design. This commission is lodged in her research into architects Aldo van Eyck and Lina Bo Bardi.

An Open House

Performance

Saturday 10 December 2016, 12–13hr

Leonor Antunes, ‘An Open House’, (2016), performance. Photo: Nick Ash. Leonor Antunes, ‘An Open House’, (2016), performance. Photo: Nick Ash. Leonor Antunes, ‘An Open House’, (2016), performance. Photo: Nick Ash. Leonor Antunes, ‘An Open House’, (2016), performance. Photo: Nick Ash.
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Twelve women dressed in as many striking colours of Aldo van Eyck’s Hubertushuis – designed in 1973 as a home for mothers in difficulty – stand on its balconies and behind its windows. The public is told nothing about what they might see, allowed access to one of the two conjoined structures, but not the one occupied by the performers.


Acknowledgements

Performers: Leonor Antunes, Frédérique Bergholtz, Sara Campos, Valentina Curandi, Tess van Eyck, Tiana Hemlock-Yensen, Iva Supic Jankovic, Laima Jaunzema, Avan Omar Muhammad, Kristel Rigaud, Helen Zeru, Elisa Zuppini

Finale

Hubertushuis

Plantage Middenlaan 33, 1018 DB Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

€5 adults / students

Introduction

Installation

Sunday 24 January 2016, 11.30–18.30hr

Leonor Antunes, ‘Introduction’, (2016), installation. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn. Leonor Antunes, ‘Introduction’, (2016), installation. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn. Leonor Antunes, ‘Introduction’, (2016), installation. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn.
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The elastic golden thread hooked over nails and stretched across the entrance windows solicits thoughts of modernist architect Eileen Gray. The opponent of Le Corbusier’s philosophy is channelled through this shimmering vector that ‘emanates to the world’ from J.B. Ingwersen’s building – inspired by Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation and its principals of living – where this edition’s artists are introduced. Also a high school, the space embraces learning, becoming and testing ideas.

Introduction

Cygnus Gymnasium

Vrolikstraat 8, 1091 VG Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

€15 adults / €10 students

(includes meal)

Alex Martinis Roe

(b. 1982 Melbourne. Lives in Berlin) is an artist with a focus on feminist genealogies fostering productive relations. The network of practitioners for this project develop and perform collective political practices as subject and methodology for a non-linear documentary film with an installation, workshops, public events and a publication.

To Become Two

Salon & Screening

Wednesday 2 May 2018, 20–22hr
Thursday 3 May 2018, 18.30–20.30hr

Alex Martinis Roe, ‘To Become Two’ (2016-2017), salon. Photo: Photo: Hervé Veronese.

In the frame of Centre Pompidou’s programme Mai 68 – Assemblée Générale, this film presentation of Our Future Network (2016) derives from a larger work that traces the genealogy of ‘feminist new materialist’ and ‘sexual difference’ theory. In addition, ten participants gather to reflect on the focus they each have on feminism today and their relationship to 1970s feminisms.

 

54 min 34 sec, col, English

 

 


Acknowledgements

Co-commissioned with ar/ge kunst, Bolzano, Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons, Utrecht and The Showroom, London

 

Workshops and performances are co-commissioned by the Keir Foundation

 

Produced with the support of the Graduiertenschule der Universität der Künste Berlin and Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts and its arts funding and advisory body

Centre Pompidou
Place Georges-Pompidou, 75004 Paris
France

 

Free

To Become Two: Propositions for Feminist Collective Practice

Book Launch

Monday 30 April 2018, 18–20hr

Accompanied by a screening of the artist’s Their desire rang through the halls and into the tower (2014) highlighting five practices developed within the Gender Studies programme at Utrecht University: double-track approach to institutional politics, international networking, pluralism, affirmative critique and transdisciplinarity. Followed by a conversation between the artist, Casco curator Staci Bu Shea and If I Can’t Dance curator and book co-editor, Susan Gibb.


Acknowledgements

Co-commissioned by ar/ge kunst, Bolzano, Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons, Utrecht and The Showroom, London

 

Workshops and performances are co-commissioned by the Keir Foundation

 

Produced with the support of the Graduiertenschule der Universität der Künste Berlin and Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts and its arts funding and advisory body

Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons
Lange Nieuwstraat 7, 3512 PA Utrecht
The Netherlands

 

Free

To Become Two

Exhibition & Book Launch

Friday 27 April – Friday 25 May 2018

The six film installation traces the stories of as many connected feminist groups since the 1970s who have built communities in Europe and Australia. Through observation, interviews and archival research the artist proposes how to grapple with contemporary society through feminist methodologies. The final film, Our Future Network (2016), offers twenty propositions for feminist collective political practices.

 

54 min 34 sec, col, English


Acknowledgements

Co-commissioned by ar/ge kunst, Bolzano, Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons, Utrecht and The Showroom, London

 

Workshops and performances are co-commissioned by the Keir Foundation

 

Produced with the support of the Graduiertenschule der Universität der Künste Berlin and Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts and its arts funding and advisory body        

 

The book launch is supported by the Research School of Humanities and the Arts at the Australian National University

Exhibition Opening and Book Launch: Friday 27 April, 19–23.30hr

Archive Kabinett

Müllerstraße 133, 13349 Berlin

Germany

 

Free

To Become Two: Propositions for Feminist Collective Practice
Publication

Alex Martinis Roe

To Become Two: Propositions for Feminist Collective Practice offers a narrative of artist Alex Martinis Roe’s research into a genealogy of feminist political practices in Europe and Australia since the 1970s including: Milan Women’s Bookstore co-operative; Psychanalyse et Politique, Paris; Gender Studies (formerly Women’s Studies) at Utrecht University; a network in Sydney; and Duoda – Women’s Research Centre and Ca la Dona, a women’s documentation centre and encounter space in Barcelona. Drawing from their practices and experiences, Martinis Roe’s research proposes a trans-generational approach to feminist politics. This is further developed as a handbook of twenty new propositions for feminist collective practice formed in collaboration with a network of contributors through experiments with historical practices.

read more

Illustration: Alicia Frankovich

Design: Archive Appendix

Publisher: Archive Books in partnership with arge kunst, Berlin; Casco – Office for Art, Design and Theory, Utrecht; If I Can’t Dance; and The Showroom, London

ISBN 978-94-92139-11-5

280 p, ills col, pb, 12×19 cm, English, 2018


out of stock

To Become Two

Exhibition, Salon & Workshop

Friday 8 September – Sunday 26 November 2017
Exhibition Opening: Thursday 7 – Friday 8 September 2017, 19–20hr
Public Salon: Saturday 21 October 2017, 14–16.30hr
Workshop: Saturday 7 – Sunday 8 October 2017, 10–17hr
Open daily: Tuesday – Friday, 11–19hr and Saturday / Sunday / holidays, 11–17hr

Six films trace the stories of as many feminist groups since the 1970s who have built communities in Europe and Australia. Through observation, interviews and archival research the artist proposes feminist methodologies for contemporary times. The final film, Our Future Network (2016), offers twenty related propositions. A workshop and public salon led by the artist engages with local contributors on historical feminist practices in the film to develop further political practices.

 

54 min 34 sec, col, English

 


Acknowledgements

Curators: Anja Casser, Didem Yazici

Exhibition design: Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga

Poster series design: Chiara Figone

 

Co-commissioned by ar/ge kunst, Bolzano, Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons, Utrecht and The Showroom, London

 

Workshops and performances are co-commissioned by the Keir Foundation

 

Produced with the support of the Graduiertenschule der Universität der Künste Berlin and Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts and its arts funding and advisory body

Badischer Kunstverein

Waldstraße 3, 76133 Karlsruhe

Germany

 

€ 3 adults / €1,50 reduced / Friday, 14–19hr free / Public Salon free / Workshop free with reservations, bio and statement of motivation

To Become Two

Exhibition, Salon & Workshop

Wednesday 26 April – Saturday 10 June 2017
Exhibition Opening: Tuesday 25 April 2017, 18.30hr
Public Salon: Saturday 27 May 2017, 14–18hr
Open Session: Monday 22 May 2017, 18–21hr
Workshop: Friday 19 / Saturday 20 / Tuesday 23 May 2017, 18–21hr
Introduction: Thursday 18 May 2017, 19–21hr
Open daily: Wednesday – Saturday, 12–18hr

Alex Martinis Roe, ‘Our Future Network: Workshop on Trans-generational Collective Politics’ (2016), workshop. Alex Martinis Roe, ‘Our Future Network: Workshop on Trans-generational Collective Politics’ (2016), workshop.
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Six films trace the stories of as many feminist groups since the 1970s who have built communities in Europe and Australia. The final film, Our Future Network (2016), offers twenty related propositions. A workshop programme led by the artist extends on Our Future Network propositions for feminist practices according to participants including Helena Reckitt, Senior Lecturer in Curating at Goldsmiths, University of London, featured in the film. Findings are presented in a public salon.

 

54 min 34 sec, col, English


Acknowledgements

Curators: Anja Casser, Didem Yazici

Exhibition design: Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga

Poster series design: Chiara Figone

 

Co-commissioned by ar/ge kunst, Bolzano, Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons, Utrecht and The Showroom, London

 

Workshops and performances are co-commissioned by the Keir Foundation

 

Produced with the support of the Graduiertenschule der Universität der Künste Berlin and Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts and its arts funding and advisory body        

 

Each film is produced with additional support from the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; BAR Project, Barcelona; The Blank Residency, Bergamo; Centre Intermondes, La Rochelle; Cross Art Projects, Sydney; Gender Studies, Utrecht University, Utrecht; the Samstag Program, Adelaide; and Viafarini-in-Residence, Milan

The Showroom

63 Penfold St, Marylebone, London NW8 8PQ

United Kingdom

 

Free, reservations for events only

To Become Two

Exhibition

Saturday 25 February – Saturday 6 May 2017
Exhibition Opening: Friday 24 February, 19hr
Artist Talk: Thursday 27 April 2017, 19hr
Open daily: Tuesday – Friday 10–13hr and 15–19hr, Saturday 10–13hr

Alex Martinis Roe, ‘To Become Two’, (2017), exhibition. Photo: Tiberio Sorvillo. Alex Martinis Roe, ‘To Become Two’, (2017), exhibition. Photo: Tiberio Sorvillo. Alex Martinis Roe, ‘To Become Two’, (2017), exhibition. Photo: Tiberio Sorvillo. Alex Martinis Roe, ‘To Become Two’, (2017), exhibition. Photo: Tiberio Sorvillo. Alex Martinis Roe, ‘To Become Two’, (2017), exhibition. Photo: Tiberio Sorvillo.
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Six films trace the stories of as many feminist groups since the 1970s who have built communities in Europe and Australia. Through observation, interviews and archival research the artist proposes feminist methodologies for contemporary times. The final film, Our Future Network (2016), offers twenty related propositions. Martinis Roe responds to questions gathered from viewers using storytelling, political theory and diagrams considering possible futures that open out from the project.

 

54 min 34 sec, col, English


Acknowledgements

Curator: Emanuele Guidi

Exhibition design: Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga

Poster series design: Chiara Figone

 

Co-commissioned by ar/ge kunst, Bolzano, Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons, Utrecht and The Showroom, London

 

Workshops and performances are co-commissioned by the Keir Foundation

 

Produced with the support of the Graduiertenschule der Universität der Künste Berlin and Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts and its arts funding and advisory body        

 

Each film is produced with additional support from the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; BAR Project, Barcelona; The Blank Residency, Bergamo; Centre Intermondes, La Rochelle; Cross Art Projects, Sydney; Gender Studies, Utrecht University, Utrecht; the Samstag Program, Adelaide; and Viafarini-in-Residence, Milan

 

The exhibition is supported by the Autonomous Province of South Tyrol, Department of Culture; Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio, Bolzano; and City of Bolzano, Department of Culture

ar/ge kunst
Via Museo, 29, 39100 Bolzano BZ

Italy

 

Free

Our Future Network: Historiography, Public Speaking and Collective Difference

Salon

Sunday 11 December 2016, 13–18.30hr

Alex Martinis Roe, ‘Evolutions of Collective Desire’, (2016), conversation, installation & screening. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn. Alex Martinis Roe, ‘Evolutions of Collective Desire’, (2016), conversation, installation & screening. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn.
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Invited guests pose strategies for engaging with and constructing feminist histories, in dialogue with contemporary needs, desires and practices hosted by the artist in response to a screening of the film, with comments from Deborah Withers, Ana Teixeira Pinto, choreographer Cécile Bally and Vasso Belia with fellow members of the Gender Studies community at Utrecht University.

 

54 min 34 sec, col, English


Acknowledgements

Our Future Network: Historiography, Public Speaking and Collective Difference is curated for the Dutch Art Institute as Roaming Assembly #9 and part of To Become Two, co-presented with Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons, Utrecht with the support of the Keir Foundation

Finale

Dokzaal

Plantage Doklaan 8, 1018 CM Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

€10 adults / €7,50 students

(€10 for meal and drinks)

To Become Two

Exhibition & Salon

Sunday 20 November 2016 – Sunday 29 January 2017
Exhibition Opening: Saturday 19 November 2016, 15hr
Exhibition Tour: Saturday 19 November 2016, 16hr
Salon: Sunday 11 December 2016, 13–18hr
Open daily: Tuesday – Sunday 12–18hr

Alex Martinis Roe, ‘To Become Two’, (2016), exhibition. Photo: Niels Moolenaar. Alex Martinis Roe, ‘To Become Two’, (2016), exhibition. Photo: Niels Moolenaar. Alex Martinis Roe, ‘To Become Two’, (2016), exhibition. Photo: Niels Moolenaar.
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Six films trace the stories of as many feminist groups since the 1970s who have built communities in Europe and Australia. Through observation, interviews and archival research the artist proposes feminist methodologies for contemporary times. The final film, Our Future Network (2016), offers twenty related propositions. With a tour by the artist and day-long salon, ‘Our Future Network: Historiography, Public Speaking, and Collective Difference’.

 

54 min 34 sec, col, English


Acknowledgements

Curator: Emanuele Guidi

Exhibition design: Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga

Poster series design: Chiara Figone

 

Co-commissioned by ar/ge kunst, Bolzano, Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons, Utrecht and The Showroom, London

 

Workshops and performances are co-commissioned by the Keir Foundation

 

Produced with the support of the Graduiertenschule der Universität der Künste Berlin and Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts and its arts funding and advisory body        

 

Each film is produced with additional support from the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; BAR Project, Barcelona; The Blank Residency, Bergamo; Centre Intermondes, La Rochelle; Cross Art Projects, Sydney; Gender Studies, Utrecht University, Utrecht; the Samstag Program, Adelaide; and Viafarini-in-Residence, Milan

 

The exhibition is supported by The Autonomous Province of South Tyrol, Department of Culture; Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio, Bolzano; City of Bolzano, Department of Culture

 

The exhibition in Utrecht is financially supported by K.F Hein Fund, Fentener van Vlissingen Fund

Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons 
Lange Nieuwstraat 7, 3512 PA Utrecht
The Netherlands 

 

Free

Our Future Network: Workshop on Trans-generational Collective Politics

Workshop

Friday 3 June 2016, 10–16hr

Alex Martinis Roe, ‘Our Future Network: Workshop on Trans-generational Collective Politics’ (2016), workshop. Alex Martinis Roe, ‘Our Future Network: Workshop on Trans-generational Collective Politics’ (2016), workshop. Alex Martinis Roe, ‘Our Future Network: Workshop on Trans-generational Collective Politics’ (2016), workshop. Alex Martinis Roe, ‘Our Future Network: Workshop on Trans-generational Collective Politics’ (2016), workshop. Alex Martinis Roe, ‘Our Future Network: Workshop on Trans-generational Collective Politics’ (2016), workshop.
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Considering trans-generational collective politics as part of the programme, Priorities: The Talk Show provides participants with the chance to undertake exercises based on collective political practices developed by the Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective from the 1970s to today, drawing on and part of the research and methodologies of the artist’s project.

Piet Zwart Institute

Karel Doormanhof 45, 3012 GC Rotterdam

The Netherlands

 

Free, reservations required

Our Future Network

Workshop

Monday 2 – Thursday 5 May 2016

Twenty-seven women meet for programmed activities in a large guesthouse in the Brandenburg countryside outside Berlin, expanding on the workshop series over the past eighteen months with prepared contributions – discussions, group tasks, etc. – the artist terms ‘propositions for feminist collective practice’. The meeting provides the action for the development of the last film.


Acknowledgements

Contributors: Alejandra Avilés, Cécile Bally, Vasso Belia, Elena Betros, Federica Bueti, Åsa Elzén, Svenja Engels, Lucia Farinati, Julia Gorostidi, Janneke Koers, Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga, Deborah Ligorio, Sara Paiola, Helena Pérez, Helena Reckitt, Juliette Sanchez-Lambert, Valerie Terwei, Veronica Valentini, Evelyn Wan, Lindsay Grace Weber, Lea von Witzingerode

Producer: Susan Gibb

Director of photography: Smina Bluth

Second camera: Nadja Krüger

Sound: Birte Gerstenkorn

Production assistant: Ying Que

 

Co-commissioned by ar/ge kunst, Bolzano, Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons, Utrecht and The Showroom, London

Gutshof Sauen  

Herrn Jörn Geffers  

Zum Anger 8, D–15848 Rietz-Neuendorf  

Ortsteil Sauen  

Germany

 

Closed set

Evolutions of Collective Desire

Conversation, Installation & Screening

Sunday 24 January 2016, 11.30–18.30hr

Alex Martinis Roe, ‘Evolutions of Collective Desire’, (2016), conversation, installation & screening. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn.

Field notes from To Become Two mapping feminist collectives and a screening of It was an unusual way of doing politics: there were friendships, loves, gossip, tears flowers (2014) on a meeting of 300 women are presented alongside edition introductions in a J.B. Ingwersen-designed building inspired by Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation and its principals of living. As a functioning high school, the space encourages learning, becoming and testing ideas.

 

10 min 34 sec, Super 8, col, English

Introduction

Cygnus Gymnasium

Vrolikstraat 8, 1091 VG Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

€15 adults / €10 students

(includes meal)

Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa

(b. 1978, Guatemala City. Lives in Guatemala City) conjures live and sculptural representations that explore themes of loss, identity and displacement by using theatre, drawing, literature and sculpture. The artist develops a cycle of new performances that attempt to exhaust his interest in the Guatemalan Civil War as the recurring subject of his work.

Requiem for Mirrors and Tigers

Book Launch

Thursday 5 April 2018, 19hr

Charting his attempt to exhaust his interest in the Guatemalan Civil War, the publication is launched with the artist and If I Can’t Dance’s Frédérique Bergholtz and Susan Gibb alongside an exhibition of the complete collection of video works documenting the performance cycle.

grunt gallery

50 E 2nd Ave, Vancouver, BC V5T 4R8 

Canada

 

Free

Requiem for Mirrors and Tigers

Exhibition

Thursday 22 February – Saturday 21 April 2018
Exhibition Opening: Thursday 5 April 2018, 19hr
Open daily: Tuesday – Saturday, 12–17hr

This solo presentation debuts the complete collection of video works documenting a three-year performance cycle. The artist uses his body and direct action to perform six images related to the Guatemalan Civil War, his personal position softening images through abstraction and humour while the intense performance schedule pushes beyond the immense force of the collective and inscribed memory of the war’s history. Here videos are featured as part of Capture Photography Festival.


Acknowledgements

Curator: Glenn Alteen

 

Produced as part of Ramírez-Figueroa’s commission with Corpus, an international network for commissioning performance-related work. Corpus is Bulegoa z/b (Bilbao), CAC (Vilnius), KW (Berlin), If I Can’t Dance (Amsterdam), Playground (STUK & M, Louvain) and Tate Modern (London) and is co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union

grunt gallery

50 E 2nd Ave, Vancouver, BC V5T 4R8 

Canada

 

Free

Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa: Requiem for Mirrors and Tigers
Publication

With a contribution by Frédérique Bergholtz and Susan Gibb

Requiem for Mirrors and Tigers catalogues the trajectory of a cycle of performances of the same name, through which artist Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa attempts to exhaust his interest in the Guatemalan Civil War as a recurring subject of his work. The publication documents the six performances in the cycle via foldout colour posters of each work and an essay by Frédérique Bergholtz and Susan Gibb that describes each performance alongside a reflection on the cycle as a whole.

read more

Design: Studio Manuel Raeder
Publisher: If I Can’t Dance in partnership with Bom Dia Books, Berlin
ISBN 978-94-92139-11-5
56 p, ills col, pb, 29.7x 21 cm, English, 2018


€19

add to cart

Illusion of Matter, The Print of Sleep, Mimesis of Mimesis and Linnæus in Tenebris

Exhibition

Thursday 16 November, 17–20hr and Friday 17 – Sunday 19 November 2017, 11–18hr

Four video works see the artist use his body and direct action to perform a series of images related to the history of the Guatemalan Civil War at punctuated moments and locations across a three-year period. The personal approach soften images of the war through abstraction and humour, while the intensity of the performance schedule is used to push beyond the immense force of the collective and inscribed memory of the war’s history.


Acknowledgements

Produced as part of Ramírez-Figueroa commission with Corpus, an international network for commissioning performance-related work. Corpus is Bulegoa z/b (Bilbao), CAC (Vilnius), KW (Berlin), If I Can’t Dance (Amsterdam), Playground (STUK & M, Louvain) and Tate Modern (London) and is co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union

 

Illusion of Matter is produced by Tate Modern

 

Linnæus in Tenebris is produced by CAPC Bordeaux as part of the artist’s eponymous solo exhibition

Playground, Leuven

Leopold Vanderkelenstraat 28, 3000 Leuven

Belgium

 

€12 adults / €5 youth

Fino Fantasma

Performance

Wednesday 12 July 2017, 20hr

Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, ‘Fino Fantasma’ (2017), videostill. Video: Temra Pavlovic.

Fluorescent lights are arranged across modernist open-planned floors and surrounded by ceremonial objects – candles, cigars, bowls of honey and perfume, roses from the sellers at the city’s cemetery – selected for their ties to Spiritsm, ‘dedicated to the relationship between incorporeal beings and human beings’. Performers communicate from their stations by using the objects, at times setting fire to patterns left over from their intuitively sewn together white-gauze shirts.


Acknowledgements

Performers: Ricardo Januário, Natália Mendonça, Martha Kiss Perrone, Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa

 

Commissioned and produced by Corpus, an international network for commissioning performance-related work. Corpus is Bulegoa z/b (Bilbao), CAC (Vilnius), KW (Berlin), If I Can’t Dance (Amsterdam), Playground (STUK & M, Louvain) and Tate Modern (London) and is co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union

 

The Brazilian Tour of Edition VI – Event And Duration (2015–16) is generously supported by the Mondriaan Fund through the Brazil intensification programme financed by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Brazilian Tour

Casa do Povo

Rua Três Rios, 252 – Bom Retiro, São Paulo 01123-000

Brazil

 

Free

Linnæus in Tenebris

Exhibition & Performance

Thursday 18 May – Sunday 24 September 2017
Performance: Thursday 18 and Saturday 20 May, 19.30 and 20hr
Open daily: Tuesday – Sunday, 11–18hr

Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, ‘Linnæus in Tenebris’, (2017), exhibition & performance. Photo: CAPC. Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, ‘Linnæus in Tenebris’, (2017), exhibition & performance. Photo: CAPC. Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, ‘Linnæus in Tenebris’, (2017), exhibition & performance. Photo: CAPC.
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The site-specific installation is presented with the fifth and final performance in this cycle along with the four previous videos. Focusing on eighteenth-century Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus who created a nomenclature to classify living species, a cold and bleak atmosphere of a farm emerges where hybrid species are grown on an industrial scale, addressing a recurrent theme in the artist’s work: the suffering of land and the people who farm it.


Acknowledgements

Curator: Alice Motard

Performers: Wingston González, Juan Malonado

 

Commissioned and produced as part of Corpus, an international network for commissioning performance-related work. Corpus is Bulegoa z/b (Bilbao), CAC (Vilnius), KW (Berlin), If I Can’t Dance (Amsterdam), Playground (STUK & M, Louvain) and Tate Modern (London) and is co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union

CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux

7 Rue Ferrere, 33000 Bordeaux

France

 

€7 adults / €4 reduced rate

Finale: Mimesis of Mimesis

Performance

Thursday 24 November 2016, 21.30hr

Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, ‘Finale: Mimesis of Mimesis’, (2016), performance. Photo: Florian Braakman. Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, ‘Finale: Mimesis of Mimesis’, (2016), performance. Photo: Florian Braakman. Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, ‘Finale: Mimesis of Mimesis’, (2016), performance. Photo: Florian Braakman. Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, ‘Finale: Mimesis of Mimesis’, (2016), performance. Photo: Florian Braakman.
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Through a string of rooms established to study tropical cultures, the viewer passes embroidered silk wallpaper, colonial artefacts, a sofa with its springs revealed, a pile of chairs denuded of seats, and then the artist, atop decaying pillows, a Venus, string twined around buttons stitched into their skin – a piece of furniture, a mediation on the body, scars and mimicry. Accompanied by video works of the two other performances.


Acknowledgements

Commissioned and produced by Corpus, an international network for commissioning performance-related work. Corpus is Bulegoa z/b (Bilbao), CAC (Vilnius), KW (Berlin), If I Can’t Dance (Amsterdam), Playground (STUK & M, Louvain) and Tate Modern (London) and is co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union

Royal Tropical Institute

Mauritskade 63, 1092 AD Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

Free

 

The Print of Sleep

Performance

Saturday 30 April 2016, 21.15hr

Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, ‘The Print of Sleep’, (2016), performance. Photo: Frank Sterling. Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, ‘The Print of Sleep’, (2016), performance. Photo: Frank Sterling. Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, ‘The Print of Sleep’, (2016), performance. Photo: Frank Sterling. Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, ‘The Print of Sleep’, (2016), performance. Photo: Frank Sterling. Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, ‘The Print of Sleep’, (2016), performance. Photo: Frank Sterling. Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, ‘The Print of Sleep’, (2016), performance. Photo: Frank Sterling. Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, ‘The Print of Sleep’, (2016), performance. Photo: Frank Sterling. Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, ‘The Print of Sleep’, (2016), performance. Photo: Frank Sterling. Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, ‘The Print of Sleep’, (2016), performance. Photo: Frank Sterling.
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This meditative dreamlike scene recalls an emergency response shelter, combining printmaking with human surfaces and bedtime rituals. The artist paints metal bedframes, guiding performers to be imprinted by them; the bed’s tattooed pattern connotes ‘parrilla’, where victims of the Guatemalan Civil War were strapped to metal frames and given electric shocks. Presented at the conclusion of performance programme Sunrise Sunset at KW Institute for Contemporary Art.


Acknowledgements

Performers: André Pires Sequeira de Abreu, Sarah Bungarz, Roni Katz, Adalisa Menghini, Nasheeka Nedsreal Netter, Lukas Olfe, Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, Lia Ur, Martin Weller

 

Curators of Sunrise Sunset: Catherine Wood, Adela Yawitz

 

Commissioned and produced by Corpus, an international network for commissioning performance-related work. Corpus is Bulegoa z/b (Bilbao), CAC (Vilnius), KW (Berlin), If I Can’t Dance (Amsterdam), Playground (STUK & M, Louvain) and Tate Modern (London) and is co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union

KW Institute for Contemporary Art

Auguststraße 69, 10117 Berlin

Germany

 

€8 adults / €6 reduced

Life in His Mouth, Death Cradles Her Arm

Film

2016

Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, ‘Life in His Mouth, Death Cradles Her Arm’, (2016), film. Video: Amenotep Cordova, Jose Miguel Orozco, Robert Breske.

A work originally presented in a gallery is staged at the Guatemala City General Cemetery, which, following the 1917 earthquake, became home to high-rise grave complexes for those unable to afford burial. From 5 to 9 am, the artist holds an ice slab in a blanket like a baby. He wavers under its weight as it melts – the closest we come in these works to realism, to the trauma that inspires them.


Acknowledgements

Performer: Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa
Camera: Amenotep Córdova, José Miguel Orozco
Editor: Robert Beske, Shrine Production

 

Commissioned and produced by Corpus, an international network for commissioning performance-related work. Corpus is Bulegoa z/b (Bilbao), CAC (Vilnius), KW (Berlin), If I Can’t Dance (Amsterdam), Playground (STUK & M, Louvain) and Tate Modern (London) and is co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union

Guatemala City

Guatemala

 

Closed set

The Print of Sleep

Performance

Sunday 24 January 2016, 11.30–18.30hr

Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, ‘The Print of Sleep’, (2016), performance. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn. Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, ‘The Print of Sleep’, (2016), performance. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn. Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, ‘The Print of Sleep’, (2016), performance. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn.
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Six dormitory-style bedframes make an emergency response shelter out of a high school gym. The artist paints each cot, guiding performers to be imprinted; the bed’s tattooed pattern connotes ‘parrilla’, where victims of the Guatemalan Civil War were strapped to metal frames and given electric shocks. Presented with other introductions to this edition in a J.B. Ingwersen-designed building inspired by Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation and its principals of living.


Acknowledgements

Performers: Peter Baeyens, André van Bergen, Tara-Jay van Bergen, Ivan Cheng, Yael Davids, Laima Jaunzema, Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, Rik Schlamé, Joy M. Smith, Maya Tamir

 

Produced by Corpus,
an international network for commissioning performance-related work. Corpus is Bulegoa z/b (Bilbao), CAC (Vilnius), KW (Berlin), If I Can’t Dance (Amsterdam), Playground (STUK & M, Louvain) and Tate Modern (London) and is co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union

 

Special thanks to Cygnus Gymnasium

Introduction

Cygnus Gymnasium

Vrolikstraat 8, 1091 VG Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

€15 adults / €10 students

(includes meal)

Premiere

Illusion of Matter

Performance

First Performance: Thursday 3 December 2015, 20hr

Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, ‘Illusion of Matter’ (2015), live-streamed performance.

This new commission from If I Can’t Dance presented within BMW Tate Live: Performance Room comprises a corridor of brightly hued sheets hung like theatre wings, swiftly crowded by children carrying oversized props – a claw, twigs – switched out on the artist’s command for animals and fruit, and then, at their behest once more, destroyed, after which the artist approaches the camera. Followed by Q&A with curator Catherine Wood.

 

Video, 4 min 55 sec, col, sound


Acknowledgements

Performers: Augustine, Harriet, Miley, Nina, Otis, Sonny, Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa

 

Produced by Corpus,
an international network for commissioning performance-related work. Corpus is Bulegoa z/b (Bilbao), CAC (Vilnius), KW (Berlin), If I Can’t Dance (Amsterdam), Playground (STUK & M, Louvain) and Tate Modern (London) and is co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union

Tate Modern

Bankside, London SE1 9TG

United Kingdom

 

Available online here

Joke Robaard

(b. 1953, Meppel, The Netherlands. Lives in Amsterdam) connects social research, material culture and photography with philosophy, textile and fashion theory. For the commission she performs her archive of photographs and related texts from fashion magazines and other media over a 38-year period through workshops and a video on assemblages of images with captions and texts.

Small Things That Can Be Lined Up

Lecture, Screening & Workshop

Wednesday 12 July 2017, 16.30hr 

Joke Robaard, ‘Small Things That Can Be Lined Up’ (2016), workshop. Photo: Temra Pavlovic.

The video on the artist’s reorganised archive – drawn from fashion magazines and other media sources with eight teenage students from Amsterdam – is overlaid with passages from philosophers Plato and Vilém Flusser addressing images, text and textiles. Accompanied by a lecture on Flusser’s essay ‘Our Clothes’ by artist, editor and translator Rodrigo Maltez Novaes and a performative workshop in which Robaard invites different practitioners to make configurations with the fashion photographs.

 

45 min, col, English


Acknowledgements

Workshop contributors: Frédérique Bergholtz, Lot Meijers, Rodrigo Maltez Novaes, Maurítizo Îane, Ateliê Vivo members, Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo students, São Paulo Reading Group

 

The Brazilian Tour is generously supported by the Mondriaan Fund through the Brazil intensification programme financed by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Brazilian Tour

Casa do Povo

Rua Três Rios, 252 – Bom Retiro, São Paulo 01123-000

Brazil

 

Free

Joke Robaard: Small Things That Can Be Lined Up
Publication

With a contribution by Amelia Groom

This brochure provides an introduction to Joke Robaard’s Small Things That Can Be Lined Up, commissioned by If I Can’t Dance, and includes images and scripts from the work’s production and a new essay on Robaard’s practice by art writer Amelia Groom.

read more

Design: Maureen Mooren

ISBN 978-94-92139-09-2

20 p, ills bw, 21×27 cm, pb, English, 2016


€5

add to cart

Small Things Can Be Lined Up, Premiere

Book Launch & Screening

Friday 25 November 2016, 17hr

Joke Robaard, ‘Small Things That Can Be Lined Up’ (2016), video. Joke Robaard, ‘Small Things That Can Be Lined Up’ (2016), video.
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The artist’s reorganised archive of photographs and related texts drawn from fashion magazines and other media sources is in part performed with eight students through text rehearsals and discussions. Images are intersected accompanied by passages from Plato and Vilém Flusser, evolving a game-like structure in which latent historical, political and social information is embedded within the archive. Hosted in the artist’s studio, and with a publication detailing the exercise.

 

45 min, col, English

Finale

Wittenburg Studios

Derde Wittenburgerdwarsstraat 1, 1018 KR Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

Free

(meal included)

 

Small Things That Can Be Lined Up

Workshop

Sunday 24 January 2016, 11.30–18.30hr

Joke Robaard, ‘Small Things That Can Be Lined Up’, (2016), workshop. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn. Joke Robaard, ‘Small Things That Can Be Lined Up’, (2016), workshop. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn.
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Cygnus Gymnasium students perform ‘an access’ to the artist’s image archive garnered from fashion magazines in an exploratory workshop that guides their selections for texts as foci across the project. Presented with other introductions to this edition in a J.B. Ingwersen-designed building inspired by Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation and its principals of living that is also a functioning high school, encouraging learning, becoming and testing ideas.


Acknowledgements

Students: Sarah Ashworth, Luca Bonsangue, Jacquy Chellit, Noah Claassen, Milo Fordham, Marijn Huijers, Eva Vlasblom, Jona Wolff

 

Introduction

Cygnus Gymnasium

Vrolikstraat 8, 1091 VG Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

€15 adults / €10 students

(includes meal)

Research Commissions
Erin Alexa Freedman and Lili Huston-Herterich

Erin Alexa Freedman (b. 1988, Toronto. Lives in New York) is a curator and writer who approaches textiles as starting points for research into colonial contact and indigenous agency. Lili Huston-Herterich (b. 1988, Toronto. Lives in Toronto) is an artist and curator with a focus on multidisciplinary installation whose studio practice considers how space affects the choreography of bodies. Their performative archive project on Chromaliving: New Designs for Living (1983) – a sprawling exhibition in a former Toronto department store replete with furniture and dressed mannequins – reanimates this vanguard art and design show in suturing it to contemporary practices.

Chroma Lives
Publication

Erin Alexa Freedman and Lili Huston-Herterich with a contribution by Rosemary Donegan

Chroma Lives comprises research of a performative archive project by Erin Alexa Freedman and Lili Huston-Herterich into the group exhibition Chromaliving: New Designs for Living. Taking place in Toronto in 1983, Chromaliving occupied the disused architecture of a former department store and offered audiences a theatricalized vision of contemporary living through a labyrinth-like setting of domestic room displays of artist-made furniture, dressed mannequins, appliances, and interior decoration. Chroma Lives asks how one might reanimate this large-scale exhibition from Toronto’s recent art historical past and suture it to contemporary practices within the city. The publication includes essays by Freedman and Huston-Herterich that provide a history of Chromaliving and of the contemporary exhibition and oral history project they staged to archive this past event. These texts are accompanied by a previously unpublished essay by art historian Rosemary Donegan, which tells the history of Toronto’s vibrant downtown art scene in the early eighties; and generous photographic documentation of Chromaliving and its contemporary restaging Chroma Lives.

read more

Design: Will Holder

ISBN: 978-94-92139-10-8

64 p, ills col & bw, 21×27 cm, pb, English, 2018


€15

add to cart

Chroma Lives

Book Launch & Conversation

Saturday 3 December 2016, 15–16.30hr

Erin Alexa Freedman and Lili Huston-Herterich, ‘Chroma Lives’, (2016), book launch & conversation. Photo: Florian Braakman. Erin Alexa Freedman and Lili Huston-Herterich, ‘Chroma Lives’, (2016), book launch & conversation. Photo: Florian Braakman.
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A discussion between curator Grant Watson and the researchers on restaging a historical exhibition with contemporary works motivated by art, design and collaborative practices. Works from the original exhibition as well as its restaging by contemporary Toronto artists appear within a mise en scène by Amsterdam-based art and design practitioners. The publication offers new essays and expands on the above analysis.


Image description

Grant Watson (lives in London) is a curator and researcher who previously developed the interview project How We Behave with If I Can’t Dance and is well known for his curatorial work on textiles and textile histories.


Acknowledgements

Moderator: Grant Watson

Contributors to mise en scène: Frédérique Bergholtz, Lot Meijers, Maria Pask, Physical Culture (Julie Héneault, Margaux Parillaud, Ursula Marcussen and Line-Gry Hørup), Anna Reutinger, Simon Skatka Lindell and more

 

Chroma Lives is supported by Camrost Felcorp and the Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts

Dokzaal

Plantage Doklaan 8–12, 1018 CM Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

Free, reservations required

Chroma Lives

Exhibition

Wednesday 1 – Thursday 30 June 2016
Exhibition Opening: Friday 3 June 2016, 18–21hr
Artist Talk: Friday 3 June 2016, 18.30–17.30hr
Open daily: Saturday – Thursday, 12–18hr

Erin Alexa Freedman and Lili Huston-Herterich, ‘Chroma Lives’, (2016), exhibition. Photo: Lili Huston-Herterich. Erin Alexa Freedman and Lili Huston-Herterich, ‘Chroma Lives’, (2016), exhibition. Photo: Lili Huston-Herterich. Erin Alexa Freedman and Lili Huston-Herterich, ‘Chroma Lives’, (2016), exhibition. Photo: Lili Huston-Herterich.
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Chromaliving occupied a former department store with a theatricalised vision of contemporary living through domestic room displays outfitted with artist-made furniture, dressed mannequins, appliances and interior decoration. Chroma Lives as rejoinder exhibition takes over a condominium presentation centre in Toronto. Works by contemporary artists in remarkable affinity with the art and design practices advanced nearly 40 years before stand alongside an archive of ephemera and oral histories documenting the original event.


Acknowledgements

Works by Joshua Brolly, Connor Crawford, Laura Dawe, Mike Goldby, Heather Goodchild, Oliver Husain, Tim Jocelyn, Laurie Kang, Jeremy Laing, Brittany MacDougall, Tammy McClennan, Pasha Moezzi, Manden Murphy, Roula Partheniou, Shakeel Rehemtulla and Dynasty, Wanze Song, Kristian Spreen and Brad Tinmouth; ‘Artists Collectives and Site-Specificity’, a talk by ChromaZone members Andy Fabo, Oliver Girling and Rae Johnson; Toronto Reading Group session led by Jacob Korczynski; and performances by Zeesy Powers and Andrea Spaziani

 

Produced with the additional support of Camrost Felcorp and the Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts

 

Special thanks to oral history archive participants John Adams, Jane Buyers, Andy Fabo, Elinor Rose Galbraith, Erella Ganon, Carla Garnet, Eldon Garnet, Oliver Girling, Rae Johnson, Stella Melchiori-Malouf, Natalie Olanick, Andrew James Paterson, Emily Smit-Dicks and Dot Tuer; all exhibiting artists for furnishing the room hosting the many June activities; and mentors, friends and supporters: Chris Barless, Andy Fabo, Mimi Fullerton, Martha Jocelyn, Matthew Jocelyn, Parker Kay, Sue Kidd, Tanner Kidd, Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts, Carol Weinbaum and the artists and craftspeople of Chromaliving

Camrost Felcorp Yorkville Plaza Sales Centre

21 Avenue Road, Toronto, ON M5R 1A8

Canada

 

Free

Chroma Lives

Lecture

Sunday 24 January 2016, 11.30–18.30hr

Erin Alexa Freedman and Lili Huston-Herterich, ‘Chroma Lives’, (2016), lecture. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn. Erin Alexa Freedman and Lili Huston-Herterich, ‘Chroma Lives’, (2016), lecture. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn. Erin Alexa Freedman and Lili Huston-Herterich, ‘Chroma Lives’, (2016), lecture. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn.
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The archive as performative medium – with respect to Toronto-based artist collective Chromazone’s 1983 show Chromaliving – in relation to contemporary work poses challenges, in addition to that of making a uniquely ‘liveable’ exhibition. This discussion coincides with other edition introductions in a J.B. Ingwersen-designed building inspired by Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation and its principals of living. Also a functioning high school, the space encourages learning, becoming and testing ideas.

Introduction

Cygnus Gymnasium

Vrolikstraat 8, 1091 VG Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

€15 adults / €10 students

(includes meal)

Fred Moten and Wu Tsang

Fred Moten (b. 1962, Las Vegas. Lives in Los Angeles) is a poet and scholar whose work explores black studies, performance studies, poetry and critical theory. Wu Tsang (b. 1982. Lives in Los Angeles) is an artist, performer and film-maker whose work is concerned with hidden histories, marginalised narratives and the act of performing itself. Their sculptural performance uses fabric and sound to produce ‘chance events’ relating the social and physical significance of touch and voice, space and time, while maintaining mystery of who we are and what we know.

Gravitational Feel

Installation & Performance

Thursday 21 November 2019, 19–20hr

Fred Moten and Wu Tsang, ‘Gravitational Feel,’ (2016), installation & performance. Photo: Florian Braakman.

Making use of fabric and sound, ‘chance events’ are produced that relate to the social and physical significance of touch and voice, space and time, while maintaining the mystery of who we are and what we know. Presented as part of five performance days put on by Arika and Tramway titled Episode 10: A Means Without End.

Tramway

25 Albert Drive, G41 2PE Glasgow

Scotland

 

Pay what you can

Who Touched Me?
Publication

Fred Moten and Wu Tsang with a contribution by Denise Ferreira da Silva

Who Touched Me? is a compilation of research by Fred Moten and Wu Tsang, who together cohabit the roles of poet and performance artist. It traces the development of their sculptural performance Gravitational Feel, which was yet to be realized at the time the book went to print. This book introduces the reader to this work in its virtual state, while tracing Moten and Tsang’s lived experience of collaboration through a body of text composed of email correspondence, notes, poetry, fragments of essays, and transcriptions of earlier collaborative work. Together these entwined texts create a new socio-poetic form. To quote from the book’s pages: “The research/experiment is in how to sense entanglement.”

read more

Design: Will Holder

ISBN 978-94-92139-06-1

64 p, ills col, 21×27 cm, pb, English, 2018


out of stock

Gravitational Feel

Installation & Performance

Friday 25 March 2017, 21–22hr

Fred Moten and Wu Tsang, ‘‘Gravitational Feel’ (2017), installation and performance. Photo: Tate.

Making use of fabric and sound, ‘chance events’ are produced that relate to the social and physical significance of touch and voice, space and time, while maintaining the mystery of who we are and what we know. Presented as part of Ten Days Six Nights at the BMW Tate Live Exhibition.


Acknowledgements

Curators: Catherine Wood and Andrea Lissoni with Isabella Maidment and Carly Whitefield

 

Commissioned and produced as part of Corpus,
an international network for commissioning performance-related work. Corpus is Bulegoa z/b (Bilbao), CAC (Vilnius), KW (Berlin), If I Can’t Dance (Amsterdam), Playground (STUK & M, Louvain) and Tate Modern (London) and is co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union

Tate Modern

Bankside, SE1 9TG London

United Kingdom

Who touched me?

Book Launch

Sunday 27 November 2016, 19–21hr

Fred Moten and Wu Tsang, ‘Who touched me?’, (2016), book launch. Photo: Florian Braakman. Fred Moten and Wu Tsang, ‘Who touched me?’, (2016), book launch. Photo: Florian Braakman.
1/2

The companion to sculptural performance Gravitational Feel is launched with the authors and the publication designer Will Holder. Audience ask questions to which Moten responds with songs from his laptop.

San Serriffe

Sint Annenstraat 30, 1012 HE Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

Free

Gravitational Feel

Installation & Performance

Saturday 26 November 2016, 10.30hr, installation accessible 12–16hr
Sunday 27 November 2016, 16hr, installation accessible 13–16hr

Fred Moten and Wu Tsang, ‘Gravitational Feel’ (2016), installation and performance. Photo: Florian Braakman. Fred Moten and Wu Tsang, ‘Gravitational Feel,’ (2016), installation & performance. Photo: Florian Braakman. Fred Moten and Wu Tsang, ‘Gravitational Feel,’ (2016), installation & performance. Photo: Florian Braakman. Fred Moten and Wu Tsang, ‘Gravitational Feel,’ (2016), installation & performance. Photo: Florian Braakman. Fred Moten and Wu Tsang, ‘Gravitational Feel,’ (2016), installation & performance. Photo: Florian Braakman.
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Fabric and sound are used to produce ‘chance events’ relating the social and physical significance of touch and voice, space and time, while maintaining mystery of who we are and what we know. The sculpture performance sees its makers cohabit the roles of poet and performance artist.


Acknowledgements

Commissioned and produced as part of Corpus,
an international network for commissioning performance-related work. Corpus is Bulegoa z/b (Bilbao), CAC (Vilnius), KW (Berlin), If I Can’t Dance (Amsterdam), Playground (STUK & M, Louvain) and Tate Modern (London) and is co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union

Finale

Splendor

Nieuwe Uilenburgerstraat 116, 1011 LX Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

Free, reservations recommended

Premiere

Girl Talk

Screening

Sunday 24 January 2016, 11.30hr

Fred Moten and Wu Tsang, ‘Girl Talk’ (2015), video. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn.

Moten moves in a sunny backyard wearing a cape with crystal-decorated lapels before Tsang’s camera in this 2015 work. Experimental musician Josiah Wise’s rendition of the eponymous jazz standard is soundtrack to this humble, sometimes slow motion, example of the attuned collaboration. Presented with other edition introductions in a J.B. Ingwersen-designed building – inspired by Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation and its principals of living – and operational high school to engender learning, becoming and testing ideas.

 

4 min, col, sound

Introduction

Cygnus Gymnasium

Vrolikstraat 8, 1091 VG Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

€15 adults / €10 students

(includes meal)

Peter Pál Pelbart

(b. 1956, Budapest. Lives in São Paulo) is a philosopher interested in the relationships between madness, literature, politics and subjectivity. He is a member of Ueinzz Theatre Company (est. 1997, São Paulo. Based in São Paulo) whose schizoscenic practice crosses art, madness and subjectivity. Inspired by Fernand Deligny’s forays into autism education, Pál Pelbart and Ueinzz interfere in normopathy and confront different modes – or forms – of life.

Ueinzz Theatre Company: Cosmopolitical Delay
Publication

Peter Pál Pelbart with contributions by Iza Cremonine and Paula Francisquetti

Ueinzz Theatre Company: Cosmopolitical Delay brings together a major new essay by philosopher Peter Pál Pelbart—a member of Ueinzz since its inception twenty years ago—and experiential contributions by other core members of the Brazilian theatre company. The thinkers, actors, philosophers, users of psychiatry, and therapists who make up Ueinzz adopt the theatre as a device “for changing power over life into power for life”. Self-described as a “community of those with no community, for a community to come”, Ueinzz proposes a territory of performance “for all those who feel the world around them is crumbling”. Through personal recollections, fragments of scripts, and philosophical musings, Pelbart rounds out the significance of Ueinzz’s “way of life”. Complementary contributions are by fellow Ueinzz members, including Paula Francisquetti, Leonardo Lui Cavalcanti, Amélia Monteiro de Melo, and the late Iza Cremonine.

read more

Design: Will Holder

ISBN 978-94-92139-07-8

64 p, ills col, 21×27 cm, pb, English, 2018


€15

add to cart

Alejandra Riera: … – OHPERA – MUET – … [… – MUTE – OHPERA – …]

Screening

Thursday 13 July 2017, 20hr

Alejandra Riera, .. ‘– OHPERA – MUET – ... [... – MUTE – OHPERA – ...]’ (2017), videostill.

This 2016 film by Alejandra Riera realised with Ueinzz revolves around spaces of history, constructions and demolitions, such as the 2014 removal of a Columbus statue in Buenos Aires. It engages stories and storytellers, female narrators for whom there is often no space, so that space has to be produced.

 

105 min, col, Portuguese


Acknowledgements

The Brazilian tour of Edition VI – Event And Duration (2015—16) is generously supported by the Mondriaan Fund through the Brazil intensification programme financed by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Brazilian Tour

Fundação Joaquim Nabuco – Cinema do Museu

Av. 17 de Agosto, 2187 – Casa Forte, 52061–540 Recife

Brazil

 

Free

Alejandra Riera: … – OHPERA – MUET – … [… – MUTE – OHPERA – …]

Book Launch & Screening

Sunday 9 July 2017, 11hr

Peter Pál Pelbart and Alejandra Riera, ‘…- OPHERA – MUET -… […- OPHERA – MUET -…]’, (2017), screening and book launch. Photo: Temra Pavlovic.

This 2016 film by Alejandra Riera realised with Ueinzz revolves around spaces of history, constructions and demolitions, such as the 2014 removal of a Columbus statue in Buenos Aires. It engages stories and storytellers, female narrators for whom there is often no space, so that space has to be produced. Accompanied by a talk by the film-maker and launch of the Performance in Residence book for this research project.

 

105 min, col, Portuguese


Acknowledgements

The Brazilian Tour of Edition VI – Event And Duration (2015—16) is generously supported by the Mondriaan Fund through the Brazil intensification programme financed by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Brazilian Tour

Espaço Itaú de Cinema Augusta

  1. Augusta, 1475 – Cerqueira César, 01305–100 São Paulo

Brazil

 

Free, reservations recommended

Zero Gravity, Episode V: Spaces

Performance

Open Rehearsal: Wednesday 7 December 2016, 20hr
Performance and Artist Talk: Thursday 8 December 2016, 20hr

Peter Pál Pelbart, ‘Zero Gravity, Episode V: Spaces’, (2016), performance. Peter Pál Pelbart, ‘Zero Gravity, Episode V: Spaces’, (2016), performance. Peter Pál Pelbart, ‘Zero Gravity, Episode V: Spaces’, (2016), performance.
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Ueinzz members present the latest episode in an ongoing series inspired by experimental French educator Fernand Deligny and his unrealised idea for a play or a film in which there are more actors than roles in a troupe. The piece is the result of a collective creation inspired by the work of Deligny, known for his pioneering and alternative approach to education for children and adolescents with autism.


Acknowledgements

Performers: Arthur Amadore, Carlos André Balthazar, Alexandre Bernardes, Onés António Cervelin, Ana Carmen del Collado, Adélia Faustino, Pedro França, Paula Francisquetti, Ana Goldenstein, Erika Inforsato, Eduardo Lettiere, Leo Lui Cavalcanti, Valéria Manzalli, Simone Mina, Amélia Monteiro de Melo, Luiz Felipe Oliveira, Peter Pál Pelbert, Luiz Guilherme Ribeiro Cunha, Rodrigo Rano Calazans, Jayme Valarelli Menezes

Sound: Pontogor

Lights and shadows: Leiza Menagassi

From other galaxies: Luiz Augusto Colazzi, Iza Cremonine, Yoshiko Mine

Finale

Badhuistheater

Boerhaaveplein 28, 1091 AT Amsterdam

The Netherlands

Performance: Saturday 10 December 2016, 20hr

Dokzaal

Plantage Doklaan 8, 1018 CM Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

Free, reservations recommended

 

Sunday 4 December 2016, 11hr

Filmtheater Kriterion

Roetersstraat 170, 1018 WE Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

Free

(includes meal)

Modes of Existence, Modes of Resistance

Lecture

Sunday 24 January 2016, 11.30–18.30hr

Peter Pál Pelbart, ‘Modes of Existence, Modes of Resistance’, (2016), lecture. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn. Peter Pál Pelbart, ‘Modes of Existence, Modes of Resistance’, (2016), lecture. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn.
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Reflecting on Ueinzz, the philosopher suggests rethinking time as not linear or circular but as a ‘crumbled handkerchief’ with events spread out on it unpredictably, pointing to multiple histories. Presented with other introductions to this edition in a J.B. Ingwersen-designed building inspired by Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation and its principals of living that is also a functioning high school, encouraging learning, becoming and testing ideas.

Introduction

Cygnus Gymnasium

Vrolikstraat 8, 1091 VG Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

€15 adults / €10 students

(includes meal)

Master course
Dutch Art Institute – COOP 15/16

Action Unites, Words Divide (On Praxis, An Unstated Theory) II

Course

2015-2016

‘Action Unites, Words Divide (On Praxis, An Unstated Theory) II’ is an experimental workshop that resists setting or defining exercises that are consumed in their execution as a presumed educational experience; but rather in tutor Jon Mikel Euba’s intent to share with other agents the real artistic process and problems that he is immersed in. It continues the writing project started in the previous year and analyzes technical questions that refer to artistic practice with an apparent focus on the idea of method. The intention is to help participants to develop and reflect on their own work, by exploring strategies which simultaneously stimulate reflection and self-critique, but also allow for the empowerment of individual subjectivity, increasing the levels of freedom of the participants.

 

Course tutors: Jon Mikel Euba and Susan Gibb

 

Students: Astarti Athanasiadou, Giulia Crispiani, Kristinn Guðmundsson, Maike Hemmers, Martha Jager, Hannah Kindler, Dimitra Kondylatou, Malcolm Kratz, larose, Jammie Nicholas, Panagiotis Panagiotakopoulos, Mathilde Sauzet, Joy M. Smith, and Melissa Tun Tu

 

Read full syllabus


Acknowledgements

Guest tutors: Itziar Okariz

Sites

 

Tanakita Campsite, Sukabumi, Indonesia

 

Maju Kena Mundur Kena (MKMK). Jakarta Biennale and Institut ruangrupa

 

Sonsbeek Park, Arnhem

Bachelor course
School for New Dance Development – Course 2016

Curating and Performance

Course

2016

This fourth-year course invites students to think through curatorial methodologies and concerns in the programming, production, presentation and communication of their first public presentation of graduation works. These presentations took place across two programmes at two venues in Amsterdam, which are located outside of the Theaterschool in order to provide the students with professional working conditions and artistic contexts.  The first programme of graduation works was presented at Frascati Theater and the second at Veem House for Performance in Amsterdam. Each programme toured to Uferstudios, Berlin later in April as part of an ongoing exchange between SNDO and the Berlin based bachelor programme of Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum Tanz (HZT).

 

Teachers: Frédérique Bergholtz and Susan Gibb

Sites 

 

Frascati Theater, Amsterdam

 

Veem House for Performance, Amsterdam

 

Uferstudios, Berlin

2014-2015
Master course
Dutch Art Institute – COOP 14/15

Action Unites, Words Divide (On Praxis, An Unstated Theory)

Course

2014-2015

‘Action Unites, Words Divide (On Praxis, An Unstated Theory)’ consists of monthly workshop sessions with tutor Jon Mikel Euba. For each new workshop session Euba writes a new text. He delivers these texts as lectures that are translated live from Spanish to English while the students engage in ‘active listening’ by simultaneously translating the text into other media. The first part of the course involves an explanation of production conditions, where participants look at other works that became pre-production material, gradually contextualizing their approach to the subsequent practical exercise. During the subsequent collective production/practical working phase, an exercise or set of exercises is defined in connection to questions regarding performance, production and dissemination, with a particular focus on issues related to recording.

 

Course tutors: Jon Mikel Euba

 

Students: Maria Barlasov, Michelle Browne, Charlie Dance, Martha Jager, Jammie Nicholas, Panagiotis Panagiotakopoulos, Marie-Andree Pellerin, Mathilde Sauzet, Malina Suliman, and Melissa Tun Tun.

 

Read full syllabus


Acknowledgements

Guest tutor: Itziar Okariz

 

Coordination: Tanja Baudoin and Susan Gibb

Sites

 

Marfa, Texas

Bachelor course
School for New Dance Development – Course 2015

Curating Performance

Course

2015

This course considers performance within the framework of its institutional history to think through its contextualisation, presentation and preservation through curatorial practice, and the theoretical and practical implications of this for artists, institutions and audiences alike. The curatorial practices covered in the course included the presentation and collection of historic performance work, and the development of curatorial frameworks for the production and presentation of new works by artists, through methodologies such as curating performance in exhibitions and public programming, collecting performance, performance documentation, re- performance and commissioning. The course also considered examples of curatorial practice that engage with performance works by artists beyond a Western canon to consider what is at stake not only when disciplines intersect, but cultures as well.

 

Teachers: Frédérique Bergholtz and Susan Gibb

Sites

 

Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

 

Wereld Museum, Amsterdam

2013–14
Appropriation and Dedication
Reading Group Amsterdam
Reading Group New York
Reading Group Sao Paulo
Reading Group Toronto
Radio Emma
Symposium
Reader
Artist Commissions
Gerry Bibby

(b. 1977, Melbourne. Lives in Berlin) has a background in activism and social practice. Their texts and sculptural interventions divert, mis-use and retreat, dealing roughly with the tender stuff that smooths what it is to be in a body, while being estranged as a subject. This first publishing project enacts an interdisciplinary queer tendency to in-discipline in exploring poetry, fiction and performance from ‘backstage’.

The Drumhead

Publication & Residency

A. The Drumhead – A series of readings
Part I: Tuesday 10 November 2015, 19hr
Part II: Sunday 15 November 2015, 19hr
Part III: Friday 27 November 2015, 19hr

On three occasions during their residency in Cyprus, the artist reads their novel – and first fiction work – aloud to an audience. Written in six months in six cities, the text conveys institutional encounters and features a performance artist and secret service agent besieged by exhaustion.


Acknowledgements

The Drumhead is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance and follows a two-year collaboration with KUB Arena at Kunsthaus Bregenz, CCA Glasgow, The Showroom, London and Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane

Megaro Hadjisavva, Evagorou 2, Nicosia 1097

Cyprus

The Drumhead
Publication

By Gerry Bibby

Gerry Bibby’s first publication is a work of fiction that expands on the use of text in his sculpture, performance, and image work. Evoking William Burroughs’s The Wild Boys and Robert Walser’s The Walk, these “language costumes” pay homage to an unruly tradition of radical and queer literary presences over the last century. Their captivating passages brim with wit, wry observation, and (occasional) disgust, offering viewers “ways out,” even if only while reading. Commissioned by If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want to Be Part of Your Revolution, The Drumhead follows a two-year collaboration with KUB Arena of the Kunsthaus Bregenz, The Showroom London, CCA Glasgow, and the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane. The book immodestly distills these institutional encounters into a multipart narrative that delves into the lives and psyches of those in the service industry. Exhaustion and frustration besiege a set of characters and the architecture that barely contains them, all of which are cipher-like in their multiplicity (and duplicity).

read more

Design: HIT

Publishers: If I Can’t Dance and Sternberg Press, Berlin

ISBN 978-3-95679-065-2

118 p, bw, 13.2×20 cm, pb, English, 2014


€18

add to cart

The Drumhead

Book Launch & Performance

Performance Days
Thursday 27 November 2014, 21–22hr

The artist’s first published book – celebrated with a presentation and drinks – sees a secret service agent and performance artist, among other characters, besieged by exhaustion and frustration. The carefully described architectures in which they find themselves are barely able to contain their big personalities. Bibby relays intrigue in passages brimming with wit, acute observation and occasional disgust, offering viewers ‘ways out’ even if only for the time of reading.


Acknowledgements

The Drumhead (And Other Language Costumes) is a commission initiated by If I Can’t Dance in partnership with KUB Arena at Kunsthaus Bregenz, CCA Glasgow, The Showroom, London and Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, with additional support from

the Mondriaan Fund, Arts Council England, Outset, Bloomberg and the Australia Council for the Arts

 

Performance Days is supported by the Mondriaan Fund, the Creative Europe programme of the European Union, the municipality of Amsterdam, Ammodo, VSB Fonds, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst and Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds

 

Special thanks to SKOR | Foundation for Art and Public Domain and SONSBEEK International Foundation

If I Can’t Dance

Ruysdaelkade 2, 1072 AG Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

Free

  

Combination Boiler

Exhibition & Residency

Wednesday 30 April – Sunday 22 June 2014
Exhibition Opening: Tuesday 29 April 2014, 18.30–20.30hr
Artist Talk: Tuesday 17 June 2014, 18.30hr
Open daily: Wednesday – Saturday, 12–18hr

Gerry Bibby, ‘Combination Boiler’, (2014), exhibition and residency. Photo: Daniel Brooke. Gerry Bibby, ‘Combination Boiler’, (2014), exhibition and residency. Photo: Daniel Brooke. Gerry Bibby, ‘Combination Boiler’, (2014), exhibition and residency. Photo: Daniel Brooke.
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Over six weeks, the artist investigates the venue’s operations, especially its heating system. The study of these functions informs the writing of their novel The Drumhead (And Other Language Costumes), and exposes the alternately intimate and estranged relationship between artist and organisation. Featuring a conversation with David Bussel, Celine Condorelli and Jessica Vaughan.


Acknowledgements

The Drumhead (And Other Language Costumes) is a commission initiated by If I Can’t Dance in partnership with KUB Arena at Kunsthaus Bregenz, CCA Glasgow, The Showroom, London and Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, with additional support from the Mondriaan Fund, Arts Council England, Outset, Bloomberg and the Australia Council for the Arts

 

Presented as part of ‘How to work together’ organised by London venues Chisenhale Gallery, The Showroom and Studio Voltaire and supported by the Arts Council England through Catalyst Arts, with additional funding in the first year from Bloomberg, Jerwood Charitable Foundation and Outset Contemporary Art Fund

 

Special thanks to Biennale de Lyon and Frieze Art Fair

The Showroom

63 Penfold Street

London NW8 8PQ
United Kingdom

 

Free

Office Service

Performance

Emma’s
Thursday 13 March 2014, 21hr

Gerry Bibby, ‘Office Service’, (2014), performance. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn Gerry Bibby, ‘Office Service’, (2014), performance. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn Gerry Bibby, ‘Office Service’, (2014), performance. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn Gerry Bibby, ‘Office Service’, (2014), performance. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn
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Full table service is provided during this intermediary look into the artist’s book in progress and ‘working’ characters, both on and off stage. Rectangular surfaces decompose and relax into tables; keyboards and chords become napkins; mouse pads become table cloths. Visitors are encouraged to bring excerpts from prose or poems in which favourite characters punch-in, log-on, take a smoke-break or otherwise dance against the rhythms of the daily grind.


Acknowledgements

The Drumhead (And Other Language Costumes) is a commission initiated by If I Can’t Dance in partnership with KUB Arena at Kunsthaus Bregenz, CCA Glasgow, The Showroom, London and Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, with additional support from the Mondriaan Fund, Arts Council England, Outset, Bloomberg and the Australia Council for the Arts

 

Special thanks to Biennale de Lyon and Frieze Art Fair

If I Can’t Dance

Westerdok 606–608, 1013 BV Amsterdam 

The Netherlands

 

Free

Appropriation and Dedication 5

Workshop

Monday 10 March 2014

Dutch Art Institute students meet with the artist in Amsterdam to take a wandering tour back to school in Arnhem. Meandering and experiential, the trek is intended to be experienced alone, with participants provided an ‘action score’ in advance. The experience of the wander and the ‘work of not working’ is then reflected on when everyone is back in the same environment.


Acknowledgements

Part of If I Can’t Dance’s course at the Dutch Art Institute

Dutch Art Institute

Kortestraat 27, 6811 EP Arnhem

The Netherlands

 

Closed seminar

Bibby/Blightman Weekend

Conversation, Lecture & Screening

Friday 7 – Sunday 9 March 2014

The artist reads their manuscript in development while in residency at KUB Arena, followed by a discussion with If I Can’t Dance director Frédérique Bergholtz and curator Vivian Ziherl on the commissioning institution’s unique structure, with Scott Cameron Weaver. The next two days see many guests of the artist give provocative related presentations alongside those of fellow artist in residence Juliette Blightman.

KUB Arena – Kunsthaus Bregenz

Karl-Tizian-Platz, 6900 Bregenz

Austria

 

Free

KUB Arena

Conversation & Residency

Saturday 25 January – Sunday 27 April 2014
Reading: Friday 7 March 2014, 18–21hr
Open daily: Tuesday – Sunday, 10–18hr and Thursday, 10–20hr

Gerry Bibby, ‘KUB Arena’, (2014), conversation and residency. Photo: Gabriel Orozco Gerry Bibby, ‘KUB Arena’, (2014), conversation and residency. Photo: Gabriel Orozco Gerry Bibby, ‘KUB Arena’, (2014), conversation and residency. Photo: Gabriel Orozco Gerry Bibby, ‘KUB Arena’, (2014), conversation and residency. Photo: Gabriel Orozco
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Concentrating on the writing at the root of their practice, the artist takes a hiatus from sculpture and performance. They use the institutional space provided as reading room in which to write a lengthy manuscript. Events including a reading with Vivian Ziherl are also organised, featuring international guests from different fields of cultural production.


Acknowledgements

The Drumhead (And Other Language Costumes) is a commission initiated by If I Can’t Dance in partnership with KUB Arena at Kunsthaus Bregenz, CCA Glasgow, The Showroom, London and Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, with additional support from

the Mondriaan Fund, Arts Council England, Outset, Bloomberg and the Australia Council for the Arts

 

Special thanks to Biennale de Lyon and Frieze Art Fair

KUB ArenaKunsthaus Bregenz

Karl-Tizian-Platz, 6900 Bregenz

Austria

 

€11 adults / €9 concessions / €7 20–27 years old / Free first Friday of the month

I am a receptacle for your extremities

Conversation & Performance

Thursday 17 – Sunday 20 October 2013
Performance: Saturday 19 October 2013, 15.15hr

Gerry Bibby, ‘I am a receptacle for you extremities’, (2013), conversation and performance. Photo: Polly Braden Gerry Bibby, ‘I am a receptacle for you extremities’, (2013), conversation and performance. Photo: Polly Braden Gerry Bibby, ‘I am a receptacle for you extremities’, (2013), conversation and performance. Photo: Polly Braden Gerry Bibby, ‘I am a receptacle for you extremities’, (2013), conversation and performance. Photo: Polly Braden
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Taking up the role of production assistant on an If I Can’t Dance project, the artist serves oysters to Frieze Fair workers, the left-over shells becoming performative fragments. Some years before, while working at the fair, the artist discovered relics of the now extinct Thames Oyster buried on site. The work is also a window into the oyster’s economic history in London.


Acknowledgements

Produced with Adrian Rifkin

Frieze London

The Regent’s Park, London NW1 4NR

United Kingdom

 

£32

The Black Box Penny Arcade Peep Show / The Drumhead

Installation

Thursday 12 September 2013 – Sunday 5 January 2014

Gerry Bibby, ‘The Black Box Penny Arcade Peep Show / The Drumhead’, (2013), installation. Gerry Bibby, ‘The Black Box Penny Arcade Peep Show / The Drumhead’, (2013), installation.
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The artist’s position as ‘backstage’ worker on select If I Can’t Dance productions issues a Frankenstinean cast of characters that make their appearance through reassembled emoticon punctuations, jerry-rigged silk banners and Crowd Control Barriers. This work joins an eccentric series that leads towards the ultimate project of a novel.

12th Biennale de Lyon

65 rue Challemel Lacour
69007 Lyon

France

Roadie (Voice Throwing)

Performance

Seminar: Appropriation and Dedication
Sunday 20 January 2013, 17.15–.45hr

The notion of throwing the voice in public speaking – as in acting and ventriloquism – involves the mediation of an appropriated body, be it a mechanised doll or a space. The artist is interested in the seminar’s temporal and spatial parameters, its visual and sonic qualities, and how it stages presenters and audience. They use these aspects as material to address the social, technical and spatial aspects of the seminar.


Acknowledgements

Seminar: Appropriation and Dedication is supported by the European Union and the Mondriaan Fund

 

Special thanks to the Dutch Art Institute/MFA ArtEZ Arnhem and the Goethe-Institut Niederlande

Goethe-Institut Niederlande

Herengracht 470, 1017 CA Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

€30, reservations required

(includes breakfast, lunch and the publication Reading/Feeling)

Snejanka Mihaylova

(b. 1978, Sofia. Lives in Sofia) locates her work at the intersection of philosophy and performance, thinking and theatre. She holds degrees in the philosophy of language, and hermeneutics and theatre. Through publication and song, the artist looks into the aural aspect of the thinking process, underscoring the relational dimension of thought and the necessary predisposition to listening and receiving that is part of any thinking act.

Acoustic Thought

Performance

Sunday 6 July 2016

Snejanka Mihaylova, ‘Acoustic Thought’, July 2016, Performance Biennial, Mylopotamos, Cythera Diakoft. Snejanka Mihaylova, ‘Acoustic Thought’, July 2016, Performance Biennial, Mylopotamos, Cythera Diakoft. Snejanka Mihaylova, ‘Acoustic Thought’, July 2016, Performance Biennial, Mylopotamos, Cythera Diakoft.
1/3

In a small Greek church, the artist reads from her poetic interpretation of the Gospel of Thomas. Found at Nag Hammadi, Upper Egypt in 1945, and made up of 114 sayings by Jesus, the artist says the gospel ‘listens, where the written is not simply the record of a voice but a radically different dimension of cognition that emerges as an acoustic realm.’ Followed by a conversation with Susan Gibb.


Acknowledgements

Originally commissioned by If I Can’t Dance, and presented as art of Performance Biennial, initiated and organised by Gigi Argyropoulou, Vassilis Noulas and Kostas Tzimoulis

Performance Biennial, Mylopotamos, Cythera

Diakofti

Greece

 

Free

Acoustic Thought
Publication

By Snejanka Mihyalova

Snejanka Mihaylova’s book Acoustic Thought is a poetic exegesis of the Gospel of Thomas: an apocryphal gospel found at Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt in 1945, containing 114 sayings of Jesus. According to Mihaylova, the Gospel of Thomas “is a poem that listens, where the written is not simply the record of a voice but a radically different dimension of cognition that emerges as an acoustic realm in the formation of thoughts”. The book includes new texts written by Snejanka Mihaylova, “A Score for Six Voices” by Lisa Holmqvist, and is illustrated with photographs by Jeff Weber made during a research period at the project space Beirut, Cairo. The English manuscript was first edited by Joe Kelleher.

read more

Editor and designer: Philip Baber

Publisher: If I Can’t Dance in collaboration with The Last Books, Amsterdam and Sofia

ISBN 978-94-92139-05-4

64 p, bw ills, 19×26 cm, hc, English, 2015


€20

add to cart

Acoustic Thought

Book Launch

Tuesday 29 December 2015, 17–20hr

Book Launch of Snejanka Mihaylova’s 'Acoustic Thought’, 29 December 2015, If I Can’t Dance offices, Amsterdam. Photography: Maria Barlasov. Book Launch of Snejanka Mihaylova’s 'Acoustic Thought’, 29 December 2015, If I Can’t Dance offices, Amsterdam. Photography: Maria Barlasov. Book Launch of Snejanka Mihaylova’s 'Acoustic Thought’, 29 December 2015, If I Can’t Dance offices, Amsterdam. Photography: Maria Barlasov.
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The author introduces and reads from her poetic interpretation of the Gospel of Thomas, found at Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt in 1945, with 114 of Jesus’ sayings. According to Mihaylova, the gospel ‘is a poem that listens, where the written is not simply the record of a voice but a radically different dimension of cognition that emerges as an acoustic realm in the formation of thoughts.’

If I Can’t Dance

Westerdok 606–608

1013 BV Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

Publication available for the special launch price of €15

Acoustic Thought and A Prayer

Exhibition, Performance & Workshop

Saturday 3 October – Sunday 20 December 2015
Exhibition Opening: Saturday 3 October 2015, 18–21hr
Performance: Saturday 7 November 2015, 14hr
Open daily: Tuesday – Sunday, 12–18hr

Following the artist’s reading of her poetic interpretation of the Gospel of Thomas, which includes 114 of Jesus’ sayings, composer Lisa Holmqvist gives a performance of a prayer featuring six singers and recorder players. Before starting, they rehearse in the gallery to reflect on the acoustic dimension of cognitive experience.


Acknowledgements

Acoustic Thought is made possible with support from the Creative Industries Fund and the Mondriaan Fund

 

Originally commissioned by If I Can’t Dance, presented as part of ‘Hotel Theory’, curated by Sohrab Mohebbi in collaboration with Ruth Estévez

REDCAT

631 W 2nd St, Los Angeles, CA 90012

United States

 

Free

A Song

Performance

Performance Days
Friday 28 November 2014, 18.30–20hr

 

€17.50

1/3

An introduction to and reading by the artist of her book on the Gospel of Thomas moves through her interpretations and expansions – including her philosophy on time and singing. Initially seated, the artist moves to the floor, relishing the awkward silence or pause when the end is not yet known. Then a horn begins being played, and five women in concert with the artist layer harmonies. With a reading by Gregg Bordowitz.

Ruysdaelkade 1072 AG Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

Vondelkerk

Vondelstraat 120, 1054 GS Amsterdam

The Netherlands

A Song

Workshop

Sunday 18 May 2014, 18hr

With composer Lisa Holmqvist, the artist performs a song in relation to the research material on Gospel of Thomas, and the technique of exegesis (commentary on sacred texts). This pre-performance lights upon the artist’s interest in how listening and receiving are necessary predispositions to thinking.

If I Can’t Dance

Westerdok 606–608 1013 BV Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

Semi-public

Inner Stage

Exhibition & Performance

Poster Display: Tuesday 28 January – Saturday 22 February 2014
Performance: Friday 14 February 2014, 18hr

Snejanka Mihaylova, ‘Inner Stage’ poster display, Jan. – Feb. 2014, Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam. Gertjan Franciscus, performance for ‘Inner Stage’ exhibition, February 2014, Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam. Gertjan Franciscus, performance for ‘Inner Stage’ exhibition, February 2014, Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam. Gertjan Franciscus, performance for ‘Inner Stage’ exhibition, February 2014, Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam.
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Artist Gertjan Franciscus’ texts and performances give life to prophetic half-divine, half-animal figures that inhabit the space of revelation. Here they are linked to Mihaylova’s own reflections and poster display, which rethinks the boundaries between economy and art.

Ellen de Bruijne Projects

Rozengracht 207a, 1016 LZ Amsterdam (now Singel 372, 1016 AH Amsterdam)

The Netherlands

 

Free, first come, first served, 50 capacity

Inner Stage

Performance & Publication

Emma’s
Sunday 26 January 2014, 17hr

Snejanka Mihaylova, ‘Inner Stage’ poster launch, January 2014, If I Can’t Dance Office, Amsterdam. Snejanka Mihaylova, ‘Inner Stage’ poster launch, January 2014, If I Can’t Dance Office, Amsterdam.
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The poster presents the introductory chapter of the artist’s forthcoming publication in a signature print of 100 copies. The development of her publication takes place across the various stages of the project to forge a closer bond between publishing and performance.


Acknowledgements

Produced in collaboration with graphic designer Phil Baber and artist Jeff Weber

If I Can’t Dance

Westerdok 606–608 1013 BV Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

Poster: 30

(also on display and for sale at Ellen de Bruijne Projects from 28 January – 22 February 2014)

Appropriation and Dedication 3

Workshop

Monday 6 – Tuesday 7 January 2014, 17hr

Continuing series of workshops at the Dutch Art Institute with the artists.

Dutch Art Institute

Kortestraat 27, 6811 EP Arnhem

The Netherlands

 

Closed seminar

Appropriation and Dedication 3

Conversation, Residency & Workshop

Artist Talk: Thursday 28 November
Seminar: Monday 2 – Wednesday 4 December 2013

The artist gives a seminar in relation to Egypt’s Nag Hammadi library and its collection of Gnostic texts discovered in 1945, which record ideas circulating among early Christians. Reading and commenting on sacred texts, the group focusses on the artist’s core research text, the Gospel of Thomas, composed entirely of Jesus’ sayings. The artist also gives a talk on her work.


Acknowledgements

Part of If I Can’t Dance’s course at the Dutch Art Institute

Beirut

11 Mahmoud Sedky 
off Shaheen St.

Agouza, Cairo

Egypt

 

Free, reservations required

Emily Roysdon (Every Ocean Hughes)

(b. 1977, Easton, MD. Lives in New York City and Stockholm) is an interdisciplinary artist and writer working with performance, photographic installations, print making, text, video and curating. She developed the concept ‘ecstatic resistance’ to talk about the impossible and imaginary in politics. Her episodic performance explores ‘discomposition’ and ‘transition’ in accumulating movement vocabularies layered through script and score and involving choreographers, writers, artists, musicians and composers.

Emily Roysdon: By Any Other Name / *Uncounted
Publication

By Emily Roysdon with a contribution by Babi Badalov

In this brochure, the project is introduced and its chapters laid out with performance images and commissioned images by artist Babi Badalov, along with the original textual score for *Uncounted by Emily Roysdon.

read more

Design: Maureen Mooren

ISBN 978-94-92139-03-0

12 p, ills col & bw, 21×27 cm, pb, English, 2014


€5

add to cart

Uncounted*

Book Launch & Performance

Performance Days
Thursday 27 November – Wednesday 3 December 2014

Emily Roysdon (Every Ocean Hughes), ‘Uncounted*’, (2014), book launch and performance. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn Emily Roysdon (Every Ocean Hughes), ‘Uncounted*’, (2014), book launch and performance. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn Emily Roysdon (Every Ocean Hughes), ‘Uncounted*’, (2014), book launch and performance. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn Emily Roysdon (Every Ocean Hughes), ‘Uncounted*’, (2014), book launch and performance. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn
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Humorous and playful performance-based interventions convey a two-year exploration of temporality, aliveness, periphery and ‘discomposition’ – and their potential for instituting moments of political transition. The words of Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, David Hammons, Lucinda Childs and Jack Smith are spoken by the artist and collaborators who bob up and down holding wave crests outside the windows and wandering about the audience. The book captures images and text from the project.


Acknowledgements

Contributors: Frédérique Bergholtz, Gregg Bordowitz, Katinka Marac, MPA, Rory Pilgrim

If I Can’t Dance

Westerdok 606–608 1013 BV Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

Entry cost varies


Acknowledgements

Performance Days is supported by the Mondriaan Fund, the Creative Europe programme of the European Union, the municipality of Amsterdam, Ammodo, VSB Fonds, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst and Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds

By Any Other Name

Performance

Sunday 9 – Monday 10 November 2014

Emily Roysdon (Every Ocean Hughes), ‘By Any Other Name’, (2014), performance. Photo: Sal Kroonenberg Emily Roysdon (Every Ocean Hughes), ‘By Any Other Name’, (2014), performance. Photo: Sal Kroonenberg Emily Roysdon (Every Ocean Hughes), ‘By Any Other Name’, (2014), performance. Photo: Sal Kroonenberg
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Within a theatre setting, ‘to discompose’ – working through in relation to site and performance, social spaces, institutions and collaboration – articulates an environment of observation and response, framed by text and tableau. A dramaturgy of darkness is punctuated by contributions, from drawings to choreography, by invited artists who ultimately become a troupe of players.


Acknowledgements

Drawings: Babi Badalov

Choreography: Eleanor Bauer

Costumes: Jesper Stromback Eklund

Lighting design: Katinka Marac


Commissioned with partners the Playground Festival Leuven (STUK/Museum M), the TBA festival of the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and supported by Corpus, European Network For Performance Art, funded through the European Union

Playground Leuven

3010 Leuven

Belgium

 

Adults €10 / reduced €6, reservations required

Emily Roysdon in Conversation

Conversation

Emma’s
Sunday 16 February 2014, 17hr

‘Emily Roysdon in Conversation’, (2014), conversation ‘Emily Roysdon in Conversation’, (2014), conversation ‘Emily Roysdon in Conversation’, (2014), conversation
1/3

With Vivian Ziherl, the artist discusses her concept of ‘discompose’: a field of inquiry, a speculation on ordering theatrical space, audience orientation and institutional structures. The tool is worked through in relation to site and performance, social spaces and collaboration. In addition, her ‘minor theatre’ pursues an invested staging of audience and text, while trying to ‘build a structure for people to be alive inside’.

If I Can’t Dance

Westerdok 606–608 1013 BV Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

Free

By Any Other Name

Performance

Thursday 13 February 2014, 17hr and 20hr, limited to 30 ppl each

Emily Roysdon (Every Ocean Hughes), ‘By Any Other Name’, (2014), performance. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn Emily Roysdon (Every Ocean Hughes), ‘By Any Other Name’, (2014), performance. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn Emily Roysdon (Every Ocean Hughes), ‘By Any Other Name’, (2014), performance. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn Emily Roysdon (Every Ocean Hughes), ‘By Any Other Name’, (2014), performance. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn Emily Roysdon (Every Ocean Hughes), ‘By Any Other Name’, (2014), performance. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn Emily Roysdon (Every Ocean Hughes), ‘By Any Other Name’, (2014), performance. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn
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‘The stage’ is punctuated with interventions and texts. Performers, shirts over coats, look like bloated interlopers with a queer way of walking. Celestial photogram images adorn the floor on which the audience is asked to lie down. They are surrounded by projections of artist Babi Badalov’s drawings. The performers weave through the audience repeating: ‘Works or doesn’t.’


Acknowledgements

Drawings: Babi Badalov

Choreography: Eleanor Bauer

Costumes: Jesper Stromback Eklund

Lighting design: Katinka Marac

Dutch Art Institute participants: Jan Adriaans, Maria Barlasov, Coco Duivenvoorde, Bryony Gillard, Monique Hendriksen, Bonbon Juan, Alireza Keymanesh, Constanza Puente, Kaste Seskeviciute, Celia Shomal, Aarti Sunder


Commissioned with partners the Playground Festival Leuven (STUK/Museum M), the TBA festival of the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, and supported by Corpus, European Network For Performance Art, funded through the Culture Program of the European Union

Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

Museumplein 10, 1071 DJ Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

Reservations required

Appropriation and Dedication 4

Workshop

Sunday 9 February 2014

The artist discusses and works on a new element of her performance By Any Other Name. Group movement is rehearsed for a performance outside the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, which will take place at a distance from the audience. Participants work with choreographer Eleanor Bauer on developing this particular movement.


Acknowledgements

Part of If I Can’t Dance’s course at the Dutch Art Institute

Dutch Art Institute

Kortestraat 27, 6811 EP Arnhem

The Netherlands

 

Closed seminar

 

Sara van der Heide (Sara Sejin Chang)

(b. 1977, Busan, South Korea. Lives in Amsterdam and Brussels) attended De Ateliers in Amsterdam. Her interest in the affective, formal and linguistic qualities of colour result in works on paper, performances and interventions. Here, she acknowledges the processes outside systems focussed on linear growth and material gain, motivated by a commitment towards the enactment of a paradigm shift.

Mother Earth Breathing: The Garden

Screening

24 January 2015, 19.15hr

The rhythmic montage illustrates one year of growth and decomposition in the artist’s garden, confronting value, decay, death and stillness – processes beyond growth – in the space of nature according to our biological clock.

 

56 min, col


Acknowledgements

Camera and montage: Sara van der Heide

Colour correction: Sara van der Heide, Guy Molin

Technical guidance: Guy Molin

Camera stand-in: Kyle Tryhorn

 

Mother Earth Breathing is supported by the Mondriaan Fund

 

Part of ‘Signals: 24/7’ curated by Edwin Carels

 

Special thank you to Nelly Voorhuis

44th International Film Festival Rotterdam

Lantaren Venster 6

Otto Reuchlinweg 996, 3072 MD Rotterdam

The Netherlands

Sara van der Heide: Mother Earth Breathing
Publication

By Sara van der Heide with a contribution by Nikos Papastergiadis

With an outline of this new commission, and trajectory of its instalments, this brochure offers a rich selection of images and texts on this artist’s work and a comprehensive essay by theorist Nikos Papastergiadis.

read more

Design: Maureen Mooren

ISBN 978-94-92139-03-0

12 p, ills col & bw, 21×27 cm, pb, English, 2014


€5

add to cart

Mother Earth Breathing

Book Launch & Performance

Performance Days
Saturday 29 November 2014, 16.33–18hr (sunset) and Sunday 30 November 2014, 8.24–10hr (sunrise)

Sara van der Heide (Sara Sejin Chang), ‘Mother Earth Breathing’, (2014), book launch & performance. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn Sara van der Heide (Sara Sejin Chang), ‘Mother Earth Breathing’, (2014), book launch & performance. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn Sara van der Heide (Sara Sejin Chang), ‘Mother Earth Breathing’, (2014), book launch & performance. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn
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Images projected in a darkened room show geometric figures flowing into one another. Trained in meditation, the artist lies down beneath the screen and breathes. When she gets up, the blinds are lifted to reveal first light. Exploring the transitory time of day, the work is also performed at sunset. Installation diagrams and a new essay appear in the publication.


Acknowledgements

Camera and montage: Sara van der Heide

Colour correction: Sara van der Heide, Guy Molin

Technical guidance: Guy Molin

Camera stand-in: Kyle Tryhorn

 

Mother Earth Breathing is supported by the Mondriaan Fund

 

Performance Days is supported by the Mondriaan Fund, the Creative Europe programme of the European Union, the municipality of Amsterdam, Ammodo, VSB Fonds, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst and Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds

 

Special thanks to Nelly Voorhuis, SKOR | Foundation for Art and Public Domain and SONSBEEK International Foundation

If I Can’t Dance

Ruysdaelkade 2, 1072 AG Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

€17,50 afternoon / morning and afternoon programme

(includes one free publication)

Midsummer Night

Performance

Emma’s
Saturday 21 – Sunday 22 June 2014, 20.33–00.53hr

Sara van der Heide (Sara Sejin Chang), ‘Midsummer Night’, (2014), performance. Sara van der Heide (Sara Sejin Chang), ‘Midsummer Night’, (2014), performance. Sara van der Heide (Sara Sejin Chang), ‘Midsummer Night’, (2014), performance. Sara van der Heide (Sara Sejin Chang), ‘Midsummer Night’, (2014), performance.
1/4

From 20.33 to 00.53, artists, writers and curators give five-minute summer-solstice presentations in affinity with the artist’s research into time, the Earth and metabolising processes, including breathing and photosynthesis. Dotted around the biggest cacti and succulents collection in the Netherlands – a secluded safe haven, an unfixed utopia – presentations situated by different plants involve music, readings, mirrors, botanical history, spitting, gold and silver tuning forks, and magical projected shapes.


Acknowledgements

Contributors: Tanja Baudoin, Marcel van den Berg, Frédérique Bergholtz, Maarten van Bodegraven, Nathalie Bruys, Laurie Cluitmans, Susan Gibb, Moosje Goosen, Irene Kopelman, Jacob Korczynski, Eva-Fiore Kovacovsky, Katja Mater, Sands Murray-Wassink, Maria Pask, Rory Pilgrim, Agnieszka Polska, Kyle Tryhorn, Nora Turato, Nelly Voorhuis, Riet Wijnen, Arnisa Zeqo, Vivian Ziherl

 

Special thanks to the Vrienden van VU Hortus and Clivia Festival

VU Hortus, Van der Boechorststraat 8, Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

Free, reservations required

Appropriation and Dedication 2

Workshop

Monday 25 – Tuesday 26 November 2013

The 1913 opera Victory Over the Sun – a collaboration between Aleksei Kruchenykh, Velimir Khlebnikov and Kazimir Malevich (who designed the costumes and set) – proposed capturing and destroying the ‘sun’ as symbol of rationality. Students’ considerations of what the sun represents become five-minute performances with self-made backgrounds.


Acknowledgements

Part of If I Can’t Dance’s course at the Dutch Art Institute

Dutch Art Institute

Kortestraat 27, 6811 EP Arnhem

The Netherlands

 

Closed seminar

Research Commissions
Gregg Bordowitz

(b. 1964, Brooklyn, NY. Lives in New York City) is a major figure in AIDS activism and was a member of ACT UP. In his long career as a writer and visual artist, his attention more recently turned to performance – including improvisational lectures and opera – plotting a personal trajectory across diverse North American poet communities, smoking out ethical and political complexities and alliances of poetic expression.

Taking Voice Lessons
Publication

Gregg Bordowitz

Invited as a researcher, Gregg Bordowitz posed himself a guiding question: “Is poetics a relevant term for current art-making, and if so how?” With this incisive query, Bordowitz brings to light insights gleaned over three decades of work across video media, art criticism, coalition-based AIDS activism, poetry, and pedagogic practice, while revisiting the concerns in his own work for freedom, autonomy, and self-determination. The publication assembles poetry, epistolary, and critical texts written by Bordowitz from 2013–14. In addition, it includes poetry and essays by Robert Duncan, a psychoanalytic text by Wilfred Bion, and poetry by Essex Hemphill and Ari Banias.

read more

Design: Will Holder

ISBN: 978-90-814471-8-8

64 p, 21×27 cm, pb, English, 2014


out of stock

Poets Don’t Lie: Appropriation and the Proper Power of the Voice

Book Launch & Conversation

Performance Days
Sunday 30 November 2014, 18–21hr

Gregg Bordowitz, ‘Poets Don’t Lie: Appropriation and the Proper Power of the Voice’, (2014), book launch & conversation. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn Gregg Bordowitz, ‘Poets Don’t Lie: Appropriation and the Proper Power of the Voice’, (2014), book launch & conversation. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn Gregg Bordowitz, ‘Poets Don’t Lie: Appropriation and the Proper Power of the Voice’, (2014), book launch & conversation. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn
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The artist addresses biopower and remaining faithful to past work through radical queer activism with critic Rachel O’Reilly who brings in a feminist and environmental perspective and poet Fred Moten who speaks from the Black radical tradition. Poetry is read. The politics and aesthetics of appropriation and dedication is discussed. Open to all types. A fascinating archive of Bordowitz’s material and allies is launched.


Acknowledgements

Performance Days is supported by the Mondriaan Fund, the Creative Europe programme of the European Union, the municipality of Amsterdam, Ammodo, VSB Fonds, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst and Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds

 

Special thanks to SKOR | Foundation for Art and Public Domain and SONSBEEK International Foundation

Ruysdaelkade 1072 AG Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

€17,50 evening programme

(includes one free publication)

Seminar

Seminar

Performance Days
Friday 28 November 2014, 14–16hr

With Sven Lütticken, Tom Vandeputte, and students of the VU University Amsterdam and Sandberg Instituut MFA Critical Studies programme.


Acknowledgements

Performance Days is supported by the Mondriaan Fund, the Creative Europe programme of the European Union, the municipality of Amsterdam, Ammodo, VSB Fonds, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst and Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds

Special thanks to SKOR | Foundation for Art and Public Domain and SONSBEEK International Foundation

Ruysdaelkade 1072 AG Amsterdam
The Netherlands

 

Closed seminar

Materialist Geography and the Knight’s Move

Lecture

Sunday 9 February 2014, 14–16hr

This keynote touches on experiences in the 1980s with fellow creatives the artist refers to as ‘disgusted by the alignment of regressive politics in the White House with politics in the art world’ when the ‘federal government to museums and galleries were perceived to be driven by national interests, imperialist expansion, profit motive, male supremacy, white supremacy and heteronormativity.’ The artist notes their analysis ‘led to tactics of subterfuge and refusal. Still, we were not resigned.’


Acknowledgements

Part of the exhibition ‘Take It or Leave It: Institution, Image, Ideology’, curated by Johanna Burton

Hammer Museum

10899 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90024

United States

 

Free, first come, first served

Gregg Bordowitz & Maggie Nelson

Lecture

Wednesday 5 February 2014

‘Identity is a form of repetition.’ Letting a line like this hang there can be likened to speech bubbles from a state of the union address: uttered to loud applause, urgency is weaponised through quotable phrases. The artist’s phrases are also crafted to be quoted, but this is because of their poetry, not their bombast. This kind of writing process stops only after the last question is asked.


Acknowledgements

Part of ‘Gregg Bordowitz & Maggie Nelson’ organised by The Poetry Project, New York

The Poetry Project

131 East 10th Street, New York NY 10003

United States

 

Free

Testing Some Beliefs

Lecture

Seminar: Appropriation and Dedication
Sunday 20 January 2013, 14.45–15.45hr

Gregg Bordowitz, ‘Testing Some Beliefs’, (2013), lecture. Photo: Sal Kroonenberg Gregg Bordowitz, ‘Testing Some Beliefs’, (2013), lecture. Photo: Sal Kroonenberg
1/2

The artist considers what he has to gain from his continued belief that art can change the world. And further, that art is necessarily related to freedom. Even though there are no facts supporting this, he continues to hold onto these ideas, and wonders why they remain. To the visitor he writes: ‘At risk of sounding ridiculous, I will try to explain.’


Acknowledgements

Seminar: Appropriation and Dedication is supported by the European Union and the Mondriaan Fund

 

Special thanks to the Dutch Art Institute/MFA ArtEZ Arnhem and the Goethe-Institut Niederlande

Goethe-Institut Niederlande

Herengracht 470, 1017 CA Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

€30, reservations required

(includes breakfast, lunch and the publication Reading/Feeling)

Jacob Korczynski

(b. 1979, Canada. Lives in Toronto) is a curator and writer. His reading of I See/You Mean (1979) by critic Lucy R. Lippard (b. 1937, New York City. Lives in Galisteo, New Mexico) situates his project within a feminist aesthetic connected to contemporaneous practices in experimental film – specifically the subjective camera eye in The Camera: Je/La Camera: I (1977) by Babette Mangolte (b. 1941, Montmorot, France. Lives in New York City).

I See/La Camera: I

Book Launch

Saturday 10 January 2015, 15–17hr

The author and editor introduces the outcome of an extensive research project into the subjective role of the camera in Babette Mangolte’s film The Camera: Je/La Camera: I (1977) and in text and image in Lucy R. Lippard’s novel I See/You Mean (1979). He situates both works within the context of feminist strategies of self-portraiture.

Art Metropole

158 Sterling Road

Toronto, ON M6R 2B2

Canada

 

Free

I See/La Camera: I
Publication

By Jacob Korczynski with contributions by Lucy Lippard and Babette Mangolte

For I See/La Camera: I, Korczynski took Babette Mangolte’s film The Camera: Je, La Camera: I (1977), and Lucy Lippard’s novel I See/You Mean (1979) as starting points for his research into the relationship between the subjective role of the camera in Mangolte’s film and the simultaneous exploration of text and image in Lippard’s novel. I See/You Mean and The Camera: Je, La Camera: I are situated in the context of feminist strategies of self-portraiture. The publication includes a research essay by Korczynski, a visual essay by Babette Mangolte, and a collaborative text/drawing by Lucy Lippard and Sol LeWitt produced during the development of Mangolte’s novel.

read more

Design: Will Holder

ISBN 978-90-814471-5-7

64 p, ills col, 21×27 cm, pb, English, 2014


out of stock

I See/La Camera: I and premiere of new film by Babette Mangolte

Conversation & Screening

Performance Days
Sunday 30 November 2014, 14–16hr

Jacob Korczynski, ‘I See/La Camera: I and premiere of new film by Babette Mangolte’, (2014), conversation & screening. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn Jacob Korczynski, ‘I See/La Camera: I and premiere of new film by Babette Mangolte’, (2014), conversation & screening. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn
1/2

The curator discusses The Camera: Je/La Camera: I (1977) with its film-maker Babette Mangolte, who premieres a new film. Supporting texts and films are also put forward to help frame the withdrawal of the author’s body from the fictional and documentary image as a strategy of self-portraiture.


Acknowledgements

Performance Days is supported by the Mondriaan Fund, the Creative Europe programme of the European Union, the municipality of Amsterdam, Ammodo, VSB Fonds, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst and Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds

 

Special thanks to SKOR | Foundation for Art and Public Domain and SONSBEEK International Foundation

Ruysdaelkade 1072 AG Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

€17,50 morning and afternoon programme

(Includes one free publication)

A Point in the Making: Three Days with Babette Mangolte

Conversation & Screening

Wednesday 21 May 2014, 19hr

Jacob Korczynski, ‘A Point in the Making: Three Days with Babette Mangolte’, (2014), conversation & screening. Photo: Sal Kroonenberg Jacob Korczynski, ‘A Point in the Making: Three Days with Babette Mangolte’, (2014), conversation & screening. Photo: Sal Kroonenberg Jacob Korczynski, ‘A Point in the Making: Three Days with Babette Mangolte’, (2014), conversation & screening. Photo: Sal Kroonenberg Jacob Korczynski, ‘A Point in the Making: Three Days with Babette Mangolte’, (2014), conversation & screening. Photo: Sal Kroonenberg Jacob Korczynski, ‘A Point in the Making: Three Days with Babette Mangolte’, (2014), conversation & screening. Photo: Sal Kroonenberg
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This programme around Mangolte’s work includes a day of talks where she speaks with curator Fleur van Muiswinkel on the documentation of performance and feminist aesthetics, and with Korczynski on the subjective role of the camera in film. In addition to a rich screening programme that includes legendary images of Trisha Brown’s dancers on rooftops and a masterclass, there is a screening of The Sky on Location with a Q&A by art critic Bianca Stigter in Eye Filmmuseum.


Acknowledgements

Produced and curated with Fleur van Muiswinkel and Het Veem Theater, in collaboration with Eye Filmmuseum and supported by Amsterdam Fund for the Arts and Fonds Podiumkunsten

 

Part of the Life Long Burning project and supported by the Cultural Programme of the European Union

Eye Filmmuseum

IJpromenade 1, 1031 KT Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

Conversation: Saturday 24 May 2014, 11–13hr

Veem House for Performance

Van Diemenstraat 408–410, 1013 CR Amsterdam

The Netherlands

A Project by Lucy R. Lippard Submitted to the Projects Class, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Fall 1969

Screening

Thursday 31 January 2013, 21hr

Jacob Korczynski, ‘A Project by Lucy R. Lippard Submitted to the Projects Class. Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Fall 1969’, (2013), screening. Photo: Sal Kroonenberg

On view are the results of a two-week exercise following Lippard’s 1969 instructional work on image and writing that informed her novel I See/You Mean (1979). Daily photographs are taken at the same place and time, with participants in approximately the same positions, and then described in writing. The final outcome shows these texts and images rearranged in different ways. The Camera: Je/La Camera: I is screened on 16mm.

 

88 min, bw and col, English and French


Acknowledgements

Co-organiser: Kyle Tryhorn

Cinema de Uitkijk

Prinsengracht 452, 1017 KE Amsterdam

The Netherlands

I See/You Mean

Lecture

Seminar: Appropriation and Dedication
Sunday 20 January 2013, 11.45–12.30hr

Jacob Korczynski, ‘I See/You Mean’, (2013), lecture. Photo: Sal Kroonenberg

In the late 1970s critic Lucy R. Lippard and film-maker Babette Mangolte drew on landscape and friends to assemble an image of the lives of artists mediated by their seeing I/eye. The former, in text: Lippard’s novel I See/You Mean is anchored by descriptions of fictional photographs of its characters


Acknowledgements

Seminar: Appropriation and Dedication is supported by the European Union and Mondriaan Fund

 

Specials thanks to the Dutch Art Institute/MFA ArtEZ Arnhem and the Goethe-Institut Niederlande

Goethe-Institut Niederlande

Herengracht 470, 1017 CA Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

€30, reservations required (includes breakfast, lunch and publication Reading/Feeling)

Sven Lütticken

(b. 1971, Kempen, Germany. Lives in Amsterdam) teaches art history at VU University Amsterdam. His books include Idols of the Market: Modern Iconoclasm and the Fundamentalist Spectacle (2009). In looking at A Movie Will Be Shown Without the Picture (1979/2012) by Louise Lawler (b. 1947, Bronxville, NY. Lives in Brooklyn) as a case study around showing a film chosen by the artist, the movie-going experience is accentuated.

Lousie Lawler: A Movie Will Be Shown Without The Picture
Publication

By Sven Lütticken with contributions by Debbie Boekers, Eve Dullaart, and Daniël van der Poel

Louise Lawler’s A Movie Will Be Shown Without the Picture (1979) presents a movie in a regular cinema environment, but without any moving images. The movie accentuates the experience of watching a movie and foregrounds the performative aspects of the practice of an artist who is perhaps best known for her photographs of “arranged” artworks and objects. This publication is the result of extensive research project on A Movie and its 2012 iteration, undertaken by researcher Sven Lütticken and Louise Lawler for If I Can’t Dance. The publication includes a research essay by Lütticken that places A Movie in the context of cultural developments in the 1970s and contemporaneous works by the Pictures Generation, a sequence of images selected by Lütticken from Lawler’s archive, and contributions by art historians Debbie Broekers, Eve Dullaart, and Daniël van der Poel.

read more

Design: Will Holder

ISBN 978-90-814471-6-4

64 p, ills col & bw, 21×27 cm, pb, English, 2014


out of stock

The V-Conspiracy – Refunctioning Authorship or, After Appropriation and Institutional Critique

Conversation & Screening

Performance Days
29 November 2014, 13.30–15.30hr

Sven Lütticken, ‘The V-Conspiracy – Refunctioning Authorship or, After Appropriation and Institutional Critique’, (2014), conversation & screening. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn Sven Lütticken, ‘The V-Conspiracy – Refunctioning Authorship or, After Appropriation and Institutional Critique’, (2014), conversation & screening. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn Sven Lütticken, ‘The V-Conspiracy – Refunctioning Authorship or, After Appropriation and Institutional Critique’, (2014), conversation & screening. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn Sven Lütticken, ‘The V-Conspiracy – Refunctioning Authorship or, After Appropriation and Institutional Critique’, (2014), conversation & screening. Photo: Kyle Tryhorn
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The Question of Manet’s ‘Olympia’: Posed and Skirted by The V-Girls mocks male academic authority on a panel. After it is shown, the researcher, with co-panellists Sidsel Meineche Hansen and Fatima Hellberg, addresses patriarchal elements in art history. In thinking through what it means to return to 1970s and 1980s practices through a feminist lens, he looks into the V-Girls’ performativity, and how it expands traditional art forms.

 

64 min, col, English


Acknowledgements

Performance Days is supported by the Mondriaan Fund, the Creative Europe programme of the European Union, the municipality of Amsterdam, Ammodo, VSB Fonds, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst and Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds

 

Special thanks to SKOR | Foundation for Art and Public Domain and SONSBEEK International Foundation

If I Can’t Dance

Ruysdaelkade 2, 1072 AG Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

€17,50 afternoon programme

(includes one free publication)

Seminar

Book Launch & Seminar

Performance Days
Friday 28 November 2014, 14–16hr

With Gregg Bordowitz, Tom Vandeputte, and students of the VU University Amsterdam and Sandberg Instituut MFA Critical Studies programme. Lütticken’s book on Lawler with essays by collaborators is available.


Acknowledgements

Performance Days is supported by the Mondriaan Fund, the Creative Europe programme of the European Union, the municipality of Amsterdam, Ammodo, VSB Fonds, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst and Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds

 

Special thanks to SKOR | Foundation for Art and Public Domain and SONSBEEK International Foundation

Ruysdaelkade 1072 AG Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

Closed seminar

Appropriation and the Shipwreck of Critical Intentions

Lecture

Seminar: Appropriation and Dedication
Sunday 20 January 2013, 11–11.45hr

Louise Lawler’s work is a springboard for a discussion on widening the parameters of appropriation theory ca. 1980, which often presupposes a work’s meaning depends on critical intentions shared by artist and critic. A specific model of authorship has thereby tacitly been (re)established: the artist, mirrored by the writer, as a critical subject engaging with media images.


Acknowledgements

Seminar: Appropriation and Dedication is supported by the European Union and the Mondriaan Fund

 

Specials thanks to the Dutch Art Institute/MFA ArtEZ Arnhem, and the Goethe-Institut Niederlande

Goethe-Institut Niederlande

Herengracht 470, 1017 CA Amsterdam

The Netherlands

 

€30, reservations required (includes breakfast, lunch and publication Reading/Feeling)

Louise Lawler: A Movie Will Be Shown Without the Picture

Conversation & Screening

Tuesday 12 June 2012

Sven Lütticken, ‘Louise Lawler: A Movie Will Be Shown Without the Picture’, (2012), conversation & screening. Photo: Sal Kroonenberg Sven Lütticken, ‘Louise Lawler: A Movie Will Be Shown Without the Picture’, (2012), conversation & screening. Photo: Sal Kroonenberg Sven Lütticken, ‘Louise Lawler: A Movie Will Be Shown Without the Picture’, (2012), conversation & screening. Photo: Sal Kroonenberg Sven Lütticken, ‘Louise Lawler: A Movie Will Be Shown Without the Picture’, (2012), conversation & screening. Photo: Sal Kroonenberg Sven Lütticken, ‘Louise Lawler: A Movie Will Be Shown Without the Picture’, (2012), conversation & screening. Photo: Sal Kroonenberg Sven Lütticken, ‘Louise Lawler: A Movie Will Be Shown Without the Picture’, (2012), conversation & screening. Photo: Sal Kroonenberg
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A new edition of Louise Lawler’s 1979 work A Movie Will Be Shown Without the Picture revolves around the announcement and screening of a film chosen by the artist, accentuating the operation of the screening and moviegoing. Followed by a talk in the presence of the artist, with Sven Lütticken, Andrea Fraser and Eric C. H. de Bruyn around the work’s actual and potential consequences for contemporary art and theory.


Acknowledgements

Evening co-produced with Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

 

Special thanks to PhDArts, doctoral programme for visual artists and designers, Leiden University / University of the Arts, The Hague

The Movies

Haarlemmerdijk 161, 1013 KH Amsterdam

The Netherlands

Grant Watson

(Lives in London) is a curator with an interest in questions around the transnational through art. His research spans subjects including modern and contemporary Indian art. This itinerant interview project departs from Michel Foucault’s provocation in a 1983 Vanity Fair interview that ‘bios could be the material for a work of art’, and takes form in presentations relating individual testimony to broader narratives of contemporary subjectivity.

Elioa Steffen on the reading performance of How We Behave

Visitor report

Spring 2024

Portrait: Elioa Steffen, photo by Maarten Nauw.
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At If I Can’t Dance we see the visitor report as a method of documentation. The affectual, relational and embodied nature of performance work is not always easily captured in audio-visual formats. To supplement such formats, If I Can’t Dance commissions written visitor reports, which offer subjective responses to a lived experience of a work and its context. The visitor report is, therefore, not to be confused with a critical review. It is first and foremost a form of witnessing. The people commissioned to write the report span a range of positions and practices within and outside the field of art. For the reading performance that was part of the archive activation of How We Behave / An Archive of Radical Practice we invited artist Elioa Steffen.

Read the visitor report

How We Behave / An Archive of Radical Practice

Reading performance

Friday 15 December 2023, 18-19hr

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In conjunction with the exhibition How We Behave / An Archive of Radical Practice at IHLIA LGTBI Heritage, a reading performance will take place, including the participation of interviewees and members of our Amsterdam communities, a.o. Szymon Adamczak, Sher Doruff, Megan Hoetger, and Joy Mariama Smith.


Image description

Photo of a group of people, seated on chairs that are put in a circle, situated in a theatre space. In the middle, two people are directed towards each other and to a microphone, reading from paper.


Accessibility information

– Seated event
– Second floor, no elevator
– No wheelchair accessible WC; gender neutral WC
– Language: English


Acknowledgements

Concept and script: Grant Watson; Post-script remarks: Frédérique Bergholtz and Anik Fournier; Performers: Szymon Adamczak, Sher Doruff, Megan Hoetger, Joy Mariama Smith; Sound: Leroy Chaar; AV and documentation: Maarten Nauw; Front of house team: Naomi Collier Broms and Sancha Meca Castro.

 

If I Can’t Dance is structurally supported by the Mondriaan Fund and the AFK (Amsterdam Fund for the Arts); the productions in Edition IX are realized with financial support of Ammodo and Cultuurfonds.

If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution
WG-Plein 881
1054 SM Amsterdam

 

€7,50 regular / €5 students
Purchase your ticket here

How We Behave / An Archive of Radical Practice

Exhibition

Monday 11 December 2023 – Sunday 4 February 2024

 

Grant Watson, HWB collages (2019), paper textile collage. Carried out within the framework of the 2019-2020 BAK Fellowship Programme.
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IHLIA LGTBI Heritage hosts the presentation of archival material from Watson’s How We Behave (2013–ongoing), giving access to transcripts, audio recordings and video portraits of the radical life stories and practices of a selection of interviewees. IHLIA contributes with material from its collection dedicated to the LGBTI communities and histories in the Netherlands.


Image description

About twenty rectangular cut-outs from lined writing paper, with text fragments (b/w) in different fonts, laid out loosely on a sheet of textile with a colored pattern. On snippets one can read a.o. “ecriture feminine”; “Herbert Marcuse – social movements become agents in societies of relative affluence”; “Sylvia Winter – On being human as a practice”.


Accessibility information

– Seats available

– Third Floor, wheelchair accessible via elevator

– Wheelchair accessible WC; gender-neutral WC

– Language: English


Acknowledgements

Concept: Grant Watson; Curators and production coordinators: Anik Fournier and Megan Hoetger; Conversation partner: Frédérique Bergholtz; Exhibition design: Grant Watson; Design development: Tanad Aaron; Production manager: Annick Kleizen; Production crew: Mika Perlmutter, Ruben Janssen, Michael Klinkenberg, Niklas van Woerden, Stefan Blumenschein; Graphic design (online studio and exhibition): Kommerz; Coordination exhibition in IHLIA/OBA: Fleur Jacobs; Accessibility advisor: Annick Kleizen; Copy editor: Janine Armin.

 

The exhibition is commissioned and developed by If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution and co-presented with IHLIA LGTBI Heritage. Special thanks to all the interviewees.

 

If I Can’t Dance is supported by the Mondriaan Fund and the AFK (Amsterdam Fund for the Arts); Edition IX is supported by Cultuursfonds.

Opening: 10 December, 16-18hr
Tour by Grant Watson: 13 December, 18-19hr

 

IHLIA/OBA
Oosterdokskade 143
1011 DL Amsterdam

Open daily: Monday – Friday 8–22hr and Saturday and Sunday 10–20hr

 

Free

How We Behave: An Archive of Radical Practice

Archival Activation

From December 2020

Grant Watson, HWB (fabindia), 2019, paper textile collage. Carried out within the framework of the 2019–20 BAK Fellowship Programme.

A dialogue to update our archives transformed into an ongoing conversation about research-as-performance through this ‘unfinished’ interview series. In reconfiguring the ‘pastness’ of documents as ‘liveliness’, we dig into the material and think through its past archival activations and what form resonates today. The curator and researcher gives an audio introduction to each new upload, weaving across interviews to connect their words, positions and stories.


Image description

Rectangular snippets of cut-out black-on-white texts, in sans serif type of syllables, words, and fragments of sentences, like ‘er’, ‘u’, ‘character’, ‘non’, ‘routine’, ‘queering’, ‘emergent’ and ‘narrative script rehearsal’. They are organised in vertical and horizontal, upward and downward reading directions, along a double-striped black cross, dividing a light-brown background with a textile feel into four parts, and overlapping or interspersing a collection of nine medium-sized brown circles in the right below part, one big red circle in the upper right part, and two small black circles, cut off at the halfway point on the upper and downward left.


Acknowledgements

Curators and initiators archive activation: Anik Fournier and Megan Hoetger; Graphic design (online studio and exhibition): Kommerz. Special thanks to all the interviewees.

If I Can’t Dance Studio

How We Behave: In Memory of Sylvère Lotringer

Screening

23 December 2021 – 31 January 2022

‘(Mis) Reading Masquerades’ (2010), book launch and lecture. Sylvère Lotringer and Frédérique Bergholtz, ‘(Mis) Reading Masquerades’ (2010), book launch and lecture. Sylvère Lotringer and Steven ten Thije, ‘(Mis) Reading Masquerades’ (2010), book launch and lecture. ‘(Mis) Reading Masquerades’ (2010), book launch and lecture. Sylvère Lotringer, ‘(Mis) Reading Masquerades’ (2010), book launch and lecture. . ‘(Mis) Reading Masquerades’ (2010), book launch and lecture. Sylvère Lotringer, ‘(Mis) Reading Masquerades’ (2010), book launch and lecture. Sylvère Lotringer, ‘(Mis) Reading Masquerades’ (2010), book launch and lecture. Sylvère Lotringer, ‘(Mis) Reading Masquerades’ (2010), book launch and lecture.
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To celebrate the life of Sylvère Lotringer (1938–2021) whose work as a literary critic, editor, publisher and educator helped to shape the course of contemporary cultural theory, we share this interview that was recorded in Los Angeles, California, in 2014.

 

How We Behave (2013–ongoing) is an interview project by Grant Watson departing from a 1983 provocation by Michel Foucault that life practice can be the material for a work of art. Over the past years, Watson has begun re-opening up this project to new forms and constellations. In conversation with If I Can’t Dance’s Anik Fournier and Megan Hoetger, How We Behave/An Archive of Radical Practice has emerged in the ificantdance.studio, putting new emphases on how “unfinished” work can yield valuable moments for understanding research-as-performance and for reconfiguring the assumed ‘pastness’ of documents as ‘liveliness.’ More coming in the .studio next year; and, for now, we leave you with Sylvère.

 


Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Grant Watson for allowing us to share this video work.

How We Behave

Exhibition

Saturday 9 September – Sunday 10 December 2017
Opening Weekend: Friday 8 September – Tuesday 11 September
Open daily: Thursday – Saturday 13–18hr and Sunday 11–18hr

Grant Watson, ‘How We Behave’, (2017), exhibition. Photo: Grant Watson.

These three interviews with Brussels- and Antwerp-based artists – feminist project Just for the Record, Anne-Mie van Kerckhoven and Elke van Campenhout – are inspired by Michel Foucault’s question: why can’t life be ‘the material for a work of art?’ The interviews’ focus on how people work on themselves and reflect on their lives and relationships appears in the context of similar reflections from other artists on citizenship in cities urged to adapt to diverse inhabitants.


Acknowledgements

Concept and interviews: Grant Watson

Director of photography: Kate McDonough

Curator: Frédérique Bergholtz

 

Originally commissioned by If I Can’t Dance and funded by the Mondriaan Fund and the Arts Council of England, the latter in partnership with Nottingham Contemporary and The Showroom, London

 

Part of ‘Extra Citizen’ curated by Antonia Alampi and iLiana Fokianaki

Kunsthal Extra City

Eikelstraat 29, 2600 Antwerp

Belgium

 

€10 voluntary / €5 standard / € 3,60+, groups of 10 or more persons, teachers’ card, oKo / €1 -26s, NICC members, persons with a disability and their guides, unemployed / €0 -13s, ICOM, persons with Omnio status, press

How We Behave

Exhibition

Friday 5 February – Saturday 2 April 2016
Exhibition Opening: Friday 5 February 2016, 20hr
Open daily: Wednesday – Friday 16.30–20.30hr and Saturday 12–17hr

Grant Watson, ‘How We Behave’, exhibition, 2016, State of Concept. Grant Watson, ‘How We Behave’, exhibition, 2016, State of Concept. Grant Watson, ‘How We Behave’, exhibition, 2016, State of Concept. Grant Watson, ‘How We Behave’, exhibition, 2016, State of Concept. Grant Watson, ‘How We Behave’, exhibition, 2016, State of Concept.
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These three interviews with Athens-based artists and activists Sotirias Bahtsetzis, Kiriakos Spirou and Kostas Tzimoulis are inspired by Michel Foucault’s question: why can’t life be ‘the material for a work of art?’ The focus on how people work on themselves and reflect on their lives and relationships merges here into a foreboding fog in times of crisis and transition and how we politically articulate ourselves within and out of it.


Acknowledgements

Concept and interviews: Grant Watson

Director of photography: Kate McDonough

Curator: Frédérique Bergholtz

 

Originally commissioned by If I Can’t Dance and funded by the Mondriaan Fund and the Arts Council of England, the latter in partnership with Nottingham Contemporary and The Showroom, London

 

Part of ‘Through the Fog: Descripting the Present’ curated by Nick Aikens

 

Special thanks to State of Concept and iLiana Fokianaki

State of Concept

Mpotsari Tousa 19, Athens 117 41

Greece

 

Free

How We Behave

Exhibition

Wednesday 1 – Saturday 18 July 2015
Exhibition Opening: Tuesday 30 June 2015, 18.30–20.30hr
Researcher Talk: Saturday 11 July 2015, 1416hr
Open daily: Wednesday – Saturday 12–18hr

Grant Watson, ‘How We Behave’, (2015), exhibition. Photo: Grant Watson.

Inspired by a 1983 Vanity Fair interview of the same name with Michel Foucault, who asked, why can’t life be ‘the material for a work of art?’, Watson conducted over 50 interviews in myriad cities. Several of the filmed portraits on how people work on themselves, and reflect on life and relationships, appear with research material as setting for a discussion on Foucault’s concept of life as work of art.


Acknowledgements

Concept and interviews: Grant Watson

Director of photography: Kate McDonough

Curator: Frédérique Bergholtz

 

Originally commissioned by If I Can’t Dance and funded by the Mondriaan Fund and the Arts Council of England, the latter in partnership with Nottingham Contemporary and The Showroom, London

 

Part of ‘How We Behave’ curated by Emily Pethick

The Showroom

63 Penfold St, Marylebone, London NW8 8PQ

United Kingdom

 

Free

How We Behave

Exhibition & Seminar

Saturday 10 – Saturday 17 January 2015
Exhibition Opening: Friday 9 January 2015, 18hr
Seminar: Saturday 10 January 2015, afternoon
Open daily: Tuesday – Thursday and Saturday, 10–18hr, Friday 10–21hr, Sunday, 11–17hr

Grant Watson, ‘How We Behave’, exhibition, January 2015, Nottingham Contemporary. Grant Watson, ‘How We Behave’, exhibition, January 2015, Nottingham Contemporary. Grant Watson, ‘How We Behave’, exhibition, January 2015, Nottingham Contemporary. Grant Watson, ‘How We Behave’, exhibition, January 2015, Nottingham Contemporary. Grant Watson, ‘How We Behave’, exhibition, January 2015, Nottingham Contemporary.
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Inspired by an interview with Michel Foucault who asked, why can’t life be ‘the material for a work of art?’, Watson conducted over 50 interviews in myriad cities. Several of the filmed portraits on how people work on themselves, life and relationships appear with research material as setting for a discussion on Foucault’s concept of life as work of art.

 

Accompanied by a seminar with guests involved in the project.


Acknowledgements

Seminar: Frédérique Bergholtz, David Dibosa, Jean Matthee, Dr Massimiliano Mollona, Christian Nyampeta, Emily Pethick

 

Originally commissioned by If I Can’t Dance and funded by the Mondriaan Fund and the Arts Council of England, the latter in partnership with Nottingham Contemporary and The Showroom, London

Nottingham Contemporary

Weekday Cross, Nottingham NG1 2GB

United Kingdom

 

Free, reservations required

How We Behave
Publication

Grant Watson

Grant Watson’s How We Behave was inspired by an interview of the same title with Michel Foucault, published in Vanity Fair in 1983, in which Foucault asked, why can’t life be the “material for a work of art?” The project by Watson extends this provocation by asking: “If art is expanded to include life practice, then how does the curatorial intervene?” In more than fifty interviews, conducted in New York, São Paulo, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, and Amsterdam, the project explores how people shape their lives. This publication includes stills of the video portraits, an essay by Watson introducing the notion of the “care of the self”, the original Vanity Fair interview, and interviews with Leo Bersani and Paul Rabinow.

read more

Design: Will Holder

ISBN 978-90-814471-7-1

64 p, ills col, 21×27 cm, pb, English, 2014


out of stock

How We Behave

Book Launch & Exhibition

Performance Days
Friday 28 November