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

Fall at If I Can’t Dance

Amsterdam, 3 November 2023

 

Dear reader,

 

Fall has arrived, and as promised in our previous letter, we are getting back to you with more details on the upcoming events in our Edition IX – Bodies and Technologies programme. Writing the words ‘bodies and technologies’ at this moment is shaking us to the core. For the last two years, we have been exploring with our artists and researchers the multiple entanglements of the two, but in the last weeks they have come to take on connotations – no, actualisations – that we could have never imagined.

 

We are grieving the immense human suffering unfolding in occupied Palestine right now, with full recognition that this violence did not begin three weeks ago. We resolutely join in the demand for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and for the upholding of international humanitarian law in protection of life and dignity. We condemn the suppression of information and censorship across Western media channels in the arts and beyond. We will continue our work of holding this space and supporting anti-colonial practices, and offer our new home in the WG terrain to any group or initiative that wants to think, converse or organise together and needs a site to gather. Please just send us an email.

 

In offering our new home we also, obliquely, announce that we’ve moved. Since the end of October, we are settling into our long desired and awaited studio space, which situates us within the WG community in Amsterdam’s Oud West neighbourhood. We are incredibly thankful to the community of people here. From the 1980s on, they have been putting in the work to ensure that the former hospital buildings of the WG remain affordable studios and houses for cultural practitioners. We are filled with gratitude to them for choosing us as their new resident. Slowly, we are discovering our new studio space and are, with growing excitement, dreaming of the various events in the offing.

 

First, a big thank you for joining us in such large numbers at the finale events so far in September and October: the conversation with Tina Campt and Rolando Vázquez convened by Devika Chotoe at SHEBANG, Amsterdam; performances conceived by Constantina Zavitsanos and realised at Splendor, Amsterdam in collaboration with Angelo Custódio and Pedro Matias, S*an D. Henry-Smith and Geo Wyex; and the opening of Samia Henni’s exhibition at Framer Framed, Amsterdam. Looking ahead, we enthusiastically share details for our events coming up this November and December:

 

— 26 November: A Lecture-Performance by Samia Henni in the context of her exhibition Performing Colonial Toxicity at Framer Framed
— 7 December: Opening of the Black Speaks Back ZWARTE IBIS installation at CBK Zuidoost, Amsterdam
— 10 December: Opening of Grant Watson’s How We Behave exhibition at the IHLIA LGTBI Heritage (OBA Oosterdok), displaying Watson’s ‘archive of radical practice’: ten years of feminist, gay and queer life interviews from San Francisco to São Paulo, Utrecht to Delhi, Athens to Amsterdam
— 15 December: Reading performance from Watson’s How We Behave archive of interviews at If I Can’t Dance, Amsterdam, with new fragments enacted by interviewees and members of our Amsterdam communities – this event marks the first public gathering in our new studio space – all are very welcome!

 

We’ll be back just before the winter break with some more updates on what you can anticipate in the coming year.

 

In closing we would like to share some links to aid organisations to help in Palestine. If you are able to consider a donation, we would like to recommend three funds. One is MAP – Medical Aid for Palestinians, for immediate medical supplies and assistance on the ground, the second is ELSC (European Legal Support Center), which provides free legal advice and assistance to associations, human rights NGOs, groups and individuals advocating for Palestinian rights in mainland Europe and the United Kingdom, and the third is the Palestinian Social Fund, which supports cooperative farms in Palestine through grass roots efforts.

 

Frédérique Bergholtz,
with all of the If I Can’t Dance team