Come hang out with us this Saturday from 3pm onwards for our 'Curtain Call', a celebration of Kunstverein's last hours in its current place, shape, and form—with most of your favourite characters from the show present to make their bow.

Three temporal sculptures by Ceel Mogami de Haas, Sissel Tolaas and Barbara Visser will determine how long the day lasts. All along words by Maria Barnas run along in flickering red. At 3:30pm Giovanni di Domenico will start to play the piano. Then, a piece of cake. Afterwards, Laura Pappa starts to stir bitters into your drinks, straight into the keepsakes made for us (or you) by Ola Vasiljeva and Zahar Bondar. Somewhere in between: bingo, and open mic and music.

Kunstverein would like to thank all the artists, First Choice Events and Roze Bunker for their support to these this event.

Special Event
with Deirdre O’Mahony, Kate Strain, Honey Jones-Hughes & Antonio de la Hera
Friday, May 31 (7pm)

Following the last screening of the day of The Quickening, a conversation between the artist Deirdre O’Mahony and curator Kate Strain, of Kunstverein Aughrim will be held.

Serving: kombucha and potato-tulip ice cream

Both the tulip and the potato have evolved to satisfy humankind’s most basic yearnings. Some provide sustenance for the body, some for the soul. Moreover, what binds them together is the role each played in the shaping of the countries and the cultures our Kunstverein franchise holds a foot in. Respectively, The Netherlands and Ireland. Amidst the ongoing ‘boerenprotesten’—a series of demonstrations by Dutch farmers triggered by a 2019 parliament proposal to halve the country's livestock in an attempt to limit agricultural pollution in the Netherlands—and a growing divide between the people providing our food and those consuming it, we look at how the food we share shapes our thoughts. By bringing together different voices in the field, this event aims to offer a Dutch version of O’Mahony Sustainment Experiments - which lay at the foundation of her film now shown at Kunstverein - in an attempt (however small) to bridge the gap.

This moment will be celebrated with a special serving of a potato-tulip ice cream by Honey Jones-Hughes & Antonio de la Hera (aka buurtijs) and a potato kombucha in special ceramics (for sale at the event for just €150 each) made by O’Mahony.

Kunstverein x Amsterdam Art Weekend
Deirdre O’Mahony, The Quickening
May 29—June 2, 2024
Special event: May 31, 8pm

During Amsterdam Art Weekend, as an offshoot of her major solo exhibition at The Douglas Hyde Gallery of Contemporary Art in Dublin, and in collaboration with our baby sister Kunstverein Aughrim, Kunstverein is proud to host twenty special screenings of The Quickening by Deirdre O’Mahony.

Deirdre O’Mahony’s 30+ years practice is rooted in the belief that art, as an alternate form of knowledge and a critical space to help us see things differently, is a powerful tool to bring together diverse communities. In the past, she has put it to use to investigate the political ecology of rural places through public engagement, exhibitions, critical writing, and cultural production. The Quickening too is a vehicle to discuss the contemporary issues facing farming, food production and consumption set on by one of the most urgent realities facing our time: the irreversible rise of the oceans. The film is the outcome of O’Mahony’s Sustainment Experiments—orchestrated gatherings disguised as modern lent feasts, bringing together actors that normally only sit figuratively opposite from each other at the other ends of a polarized conversation: farmers, scientists and politicians. These gatherings allowed for physical, non-hierarchical, in person, meetings where open and frank discussions about the reality of farming life and the centrality of soil to our lives could be had. As they ate and drank, the guests deliberated over sowing and harvesting techniques, discussed extreme weather, volatile demands of the market, food regulation, and the anxious, increasingly divided discourses around food. Their transcribed conversations became the building blocks for The Quickening, a new libretto that pairs human perspectives with other, non-human voices equally insistent on being heard, though they speak in a softer tongue; animals breathing in and out, the buzz of insects, the movement of soil creatures beneath our feet. And so, this polyphonic work reflects the land and its many inhabitants affected by the unseasonal droughts, floods, and erosions brought on by accelerating climate change.

Screenings of the film will start daily, on the hour during Kunstverein’s regular opening times.

Thanks

The Quickening is developed by O’Mahony and writer Joanna Walsh, and is voiced and accompanied by singers and musicians, Branwen Kavanagh, Michelle Doyle, Siobhán Kavanagh, Ultan O’ Brien and Eoghan Ó’Ceannabhan. The Quickening was commissioned by The Douglas Hyde Gallery of Contemporary Art, Dublin, and supported by The Douglas Hyde and The Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon. This offshoot-presentation of The Quickening is made in collaboration with Kunstverein Aughrim and supported by Culture Ireland and Mondriaan Fonds. For their support to Buurtijs’ new flavour we would also like to thank milk farmer Bas van den Berg and John and Johanna Huiberts, of Huiberts biologische bloembollen. Kunstverein also wishes to thank Wilder Land for providing us with a Smokey Kombucha to serve at the Special Event.

Kunstverein also wishes to thank its members and AFK for their continued support of our program.

It’s becoming our second home: New York. We’re back again on this side of the ocean for Printed Matter’s annual Art Book Fair happening at 548 W 22nd St. Come find us at table C40. This year we have five, multiple re-entry, guest access passes to give away, valid all four days of the fair. Let us hook you up! First in, best dressed.

Kunstverein is turning fifteen this year! Eyelinered and a little awkward, we’re marking the occasion with a look back at our nascent beginnings. In cooperation with the auction house Christie's, we are organizing a benefit auction to support our future programming from April 9 until April 23, 2024. Fifteen selected works by artists who have significantly influenced the history of Kunstverein over the past decade-and-a-half will be featured, while an additional five offer a glimpse of what’s up ahead.

Artists to be featured in the contemporary art auction include among others Hreinn Friðfinnsson, Joe Gibbons, GB Jones, Richard Kostelanetz, Zapp Magazine, Martin Maloney, Willem Oorebeek, Lisa Oppenheim, Adam Pendleton, TV Bar (Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff), Lucy Skaer, Cauleen Smith, Jennifer Tee, Mr. Peanut/Vincent Trasov, Nora Turato, Robert Wilhite, and Geo Wyex.

Visit the auction catalogue to place your bids. Proceeds from the auction will be shared with the participating artists and will support Kunstverein’s 2025–26 presenting season.

On Sunday, February 25, at 1pm (local time) Gideon D’Arcangelo (D’Arcangelo Family Partnership), Yana Foque (ed.), Nicholas Martin (Fales Library), Peter Nadin, Jay Sanders and Isabelle Sully (ed.) will come together at 11 Cortlandt Alley, New York—home of Artists Space—for the official launch of Christopher D’Arcangelo on hometurf. We'd like to see you there.

Despite having been active for only four years before passing away at the young age of twenty-four, Christopher D’Arcangelo (1955–1979) is widely considered to be a leading figure of Institutional Critique. Even generations later, D’Arcangelo’s singular approach remains wholly unique in its radicality and generosity. The book we have edited and co-published is the first estate-approved one on this important yet understudied American artist and illuminates his momentous practice after many decades. It features materials created and compiled by Christopher D'Arcangelo over the course of his work as an artist, now housed in the Fales Library & Special Collections at New York University, and includes photographs, notes, correspondence, police reports, receipts, floorplans and sketches, arranged in chronological order. The publication also includes new contributions from figures who have punctuated D’Arcangelo’s practice—Peter Nadin, Louise Lawler, Daniel Buren, Janelle Reiring, as well as photographic contributions by artist Heji Shin and texts by Nicholas Martin (Curator of Special Collections at the Fales Library), Jay Sanders (Artists Space) and editors Yana Foqué and Isabelle Sully. The book was designed by Marc Hollenstein. It will be available at the event for 30USD.

After making a name for himself in the late 70’s Amsterdam jazz scene playing with Cascada and Ritmo Natural, keyboardist Ronald Langstraat began seeking his own musical curiosities and inspirations. Langstraat crowded his living room with electric and acoustic pianos, a Moog synthesizer, organs, drums, clarinets, saxophones, and started to record his dreamy compositions on a 4 track tape recorder. When he shared his work with his bandmates, they ridiculed him to the point where he wrote the song “You Need to Cry”. The music was left unreleased until just a few years ago when Lagstraat was 79. Now, it is here. Although these songs were written many moons ago, their interpretation is modern, full of renewed energy, with young, yet well-worn players.

This event is free for all members-who recieve priority to any event we organize- but RSVP is required. If any space is left in our tiny sake bar, we will offer tickets at the door for non-members (€15)

Salon Hang
December 13, 2023–February 2, 2024
Opening: December 9, 3–5pm

Two years have passed and it’s time, once more, for the Salon Hang: the group exhibition open to all and only our esteemed members. This time, we’ll see our space transformed into a sake bar, equipped with the perfect fully-functioning mise-en-scène for work to hang in and for you to hang out.

We warmly welcome you to join us for the opening on Saturday December 9 between 3-5pm for a matinée toast and invite you to come check out the great diversity of works from the artists, designers, writers and curators we are proud to call our members. Nearly 100 artworks will fill our space to the brim – and – they’re for sale!

When sold, 50% of the proceeds will return directly to the artists, while the other 50% will support our future programming, and you have something beautiful to take home. Double -triple- banger reward!

The show will remain up until February 2, 2024, and can be visited during regular opening hours, by appointment and during additional opening hours on Wednesdays to Fridays between 7 and 11pm—when the bar will be open (last walk in at 10pm). An opportunity for you to see the works sparkle in place, in different light, again and again.

Sake Bar

Open weekly as long as the Salon Hang lasts
wednesday to friday 7-11pm

Serving

Dec 9 — special Shōchū highball
Dec 13-15 — Kidoizumi, Ōta Shuzō, Miyoshino Jōzō
Dec 20-22 — Terada Honke, Akishika Shuzō, Chikumanishiki Shuzō
Dec 27-29 — Mukai Shuzō, Wakabayashi Shuzō, Uehara Shuzō
Jan 3-5 — Niida Honke, Mori no Kura, Kidozumi
Jan 10-12 — Kinoshita Shuzō, Akishika Shuzō, Mukai Shuzō
Jan 17-19 — Kidozumi, Terada Honke, Fukuchiyo Shuzō
Jan 24-26 — Umetsu Shuzō, Mukai Shuzō, Heiwa Shuzō
Jan 31-Feb 2 — Kinoshita Shuzō, Shinkame Shuzō, Sudō Honke

Please note that the bar is of limited capacity – 8 seats only. The last walk in is at 10pm.
Every week will highlight three changing sakes with an extended bottle list available on request. Occasionally an event will take place. If you are not a member you are encouraged to become one. We don’t take reservations, but call us during the bar opening hours, if you want to check availability (+31 616 448 998)

Christopher D’Arcangelo: A Museum for Everyone
October 6–13, 2023
With Phantom Radio, Artists Space, Annie Ochmanek, Julia Steenhuisen, and you

Radio broadcast launching October 6, 5pm
Book launching October 13, 5pm

On July 15, 1975, conceptual artist Christopher D’Arcangelo walked into the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, sat down on a bench in the lobby and proceeded to chain his ankle to it. Directly next to him he placed a stack of paper, on which he had Xeroxed his Open Museum Proposal.

Until the museum’s security department cut the chain and rushed him out, D’Arcangelo stood his ground in one of New York’s major institutions. This would be one of seven ‘unauthorized performances’ he would go on to complete between 1975–1978, all of which questioned the role of institutions and our access to them.

To celebrate the launch of the first-ever monograph on D’Arcangelo’s work—which we are excited to have published together with Artists Space, New York—Kunstverein followed D’Arcangelo’s cue and transformed into a radio station with the help of Phantom Radio, a roaming pirate radio station hosted by Ine Meganck and Valentijn Goethals. For seven consecutive days, twenty-four hours a day, we staged (at least in part) this never-realized proposal. While archival material, correspondence and people surrounding D’Arcangelo’s practice—such as Annie Ochmanek and Julia Steenhuisen—were included in the broadcast, the invitation was also been extended to you.

On October 13, during the last hour of the broadcast, we launched Christopher D’Arcangelo, the first estate-approved monograph on the artist. The book, published in collaboration with Artists Space, New York, is edited by Yana Foqué and Isabelle Sully, designed by Marc Hollenstein and includes contributions from Daniel Buren, Nicholas Martin, Peter Nadin, Janelle Reiring and Jay Sanders, Heji Shin and Cathy Weiner.

How do you like your coffee?

Alone.

On Thursday, February 29, from 5:30–7pm come meet us at the Thomaskerk (Pr. Irenestraat 36, 1077 WX Amsterdam) to celebrate the launch of Canonically Speaking by Mila Lanfermeijer.
Canonically Speaking is the second title to appear on our First Drafts imprint, a zigzag in Kunstverein Publishing’s output that’s dedicated to publishing completed manuscripts that would otherwise, for an array of reasons, not see the light of day in this rough early form. Central to Canonically Speaking is the idea that (female) life is an inherently surrealist experience. In this spirit, the ‘absurd’ is embraced as a means to speak out on themes such as self-image, spirituality, mental health and work. While slipping between poetry, comprehensive list-making, knock knock jokes and intertextual references, forms of recital and misinterpretation often take place, whereby characters quote and repeat sentences and words from a large variety of sources, jumping from the health benefits of whale blubber to court transcripts of Bill Clinton's impeachment to the plasma that is released when microwaving two grapes side by side.

To celebrate its launch, pieces from this collection of writing will be read out loud at 6pm sharp by Antonia Brown, Jacob Dwyer, Jamie Kane, Lily Lanfermeijer and Mila Lanfermeijer.

The book was designed by Marc Hollenstein and will be available at the event for a special price of €15.

An Emergency Exit Sealed Shut:
Lou Hubbard and Alexis Hunter
April 22—June 3, 2023
Opening: April 21, 6–9pm
 

Fetishism and a hint of S&M lurk just beneath the surfaces of Alexis Hunter’s photographs… Her rage at capitalism is focused upon the mass media which have, as Judith Williamson puts it, been ‘selling us ourselves’ for profit.
— Lucy Lippard

The materials I am drawn towards are manufactured in global quantities and are of institutional utility. These materials are tried and tested when subjected to acts of control and duress, measure and fitness. Sometimes this process is witnessed and captured through a camera lens, resulting in documents that play on photography’s power to empirically index untenable actions.
— Lou Hubbard

This exhibition begins with a plot twist: an emergency exit, sealed shut. In the first instance, a crisis. Fashioned as a safety measure, the emergency exit should be able to be relied upon, the last resort and a first point of call wrapped up in one. But when that falters, when the structure supposedly there for your protection fails you and there is no possibility of escape, what next?

Taunt the structure, said New Zealand artist Alexis Hunter (1948–2014), whose work spanning photography, painting and organising was a key contribution to the feminist art movement of Britain in the 1970s. On show at Kunstverein are a collection of her ‘narrative photo sequences’ made between 1974 and 1978, produced in Hunter’s quintessentially serial fashion. The works forensically detail her manhandling of artifacts of patriarchal oppression. In each individual series, she serves up the objects and their accompanying contexts on a photographic platter, storyboarding her fornication with mechanical instruments, bulging crotches and domesticity as a way to subvert the dominant narrative of the male gaze, instead writing her own path to independence and sexual expression.

Due to the overtly feminist nature of Hunter’s work, it didn’t get the exposure it deserved at its time of making. This is evidenced by an incident in 1978, when a group of male museum workers busy with unpacking her works in Belfast objected so strongly to their content that they were withdrawn from the exhibition. Nor did she receive the professionalism she demanded, a request insisted upon through how she organised her practice, working four days a week on ‘creative explosions’ and managing everything else around them the other two, steadfastly intent on establishing herself and the work of other women artists, her advertising background put to use in full force. This is evidenced in her activist work with the Women’s Workshop of the Artist’s Union, for which she organised a slide night at the well-established Hayward Gallery, empowering women to show in an institution they otherwise wouldn’t have access to, as well as her friendly (though unrelenting) lobbying of the Women Artists Slide Library to include anyone she saw fit (so long as they too subscribed to a certain level to professionalism).

Twenty-eight years later we meet Lou Hubbard (b. 1957), an Australian photographer and sculptor pushing at the integrity of structures through often eerie sculptural configurations and processes, sometimes recorded on film. She uses everyday domestic objects in her work—brushes, clothes, ornamental figurines—which she submits to odd, often-violent procedures, recombining them in unexpected ways. From surgically operating on marshmallow eyeballs with dexterous precision to working en masse with comically inflatable (and therefore defunct) walking frames, Hubbard’s work is as much about the narrative absurdism of expectation and preconception as it is about an almost mundane trialling and testing of the durability of materials.

While Hubbard and Hunter coincidentally have many things in common—long periods teaching countless students, a background in commercial photography and film, a keen sense of humour, a narrative impulse, an investigation into the body’s relation to and with standardising structures and, though less overtly in the work of Hubbard, the formative context of Antipodean feminist thought—what sits central to this story is their shared enquiry into the submission of materials and structures when force is applied. For Hunter this was an unyielding reckoning with a stifling political order, for Hubbard this is a sculptural and linguistic exercise geared towards interrogating conditions of control. For both, in these narrative arcs and plot twists from the status quo, the material generated speaks for itself: resistance is waged in the fullest, sealed doors will be pushed open with force.

Kunstverein would like to thank the artists; Althea Greenan and the Women’s Art Library at Goldsmith’s University, London; Sarah Scout Presents, Melbourne; Richard Saltoun Gallery, London; and Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam. We would also like to thank our members and Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunst for their continued support as well as VCA Art Dialogues for their project specific contribution.

April 1, 2—4pm

G.B Jones will be coming to you live from KV with Radio Alhara. Jones will spinning her favorites from Fifth Column and beyond, and she’ll be answering YOUR questions.

Join us in the exhibition (on its last day!) to ask us your burning questions about Tom Girls, JDs, Fifth Column, or any of the many fascinating projects G.B. Jones has been working on. If you can’t make it person, join us in the radio chat and we’ll get your questions answered for you.

Tune in to @radioalhara or at kunstverein.nl
Saturday, April 1, 3-5pm Bethlehem Time, 2-4pm Amsterdam Time

On March 30, 7-9pm, we’re hosting a two-part event with and around what the punk polymath G.B. Jones and her Dutch counterparts have conjured into being through publishing.

The evening will begin with a conversation between graphic designer and researcher Rosen Eveleigh and Lot Oostveen, an editor of Wild Side—a magazine by and about the queer, lesbian and BDSM locale of Amsterdam and Utrecht in 1990-96.

Following this, G.B. Jones will take the stage so that we can finally—twenty-eight years after its first attempted publication and subsequent censorship—have a proper book launch for G.B. Jones, the artist’s only monograph featuring the complete raunchy collection of Tom Girls drawings. This publication is finally seeing the light of day thanks to our franchise sister Kunstverein Toronto, and will be available for sale and signing(!) on the night.

Limited spots available.
Entree: €10 (free for members).

G.B. Jones Online Film Program
10–12 March, 24 hours a day
(Viewable here at kunstverein.nl)

Featuring:

March 10: The Lollipop Generation (2008), 75min
Made over a period of fifteen years, ‘one Super-8 reel at a time’, The Lollipop Generation follows a gaggle of lollipop-licking queer kids and the fun (trouble?) they encounter in the streets of Toronto.

March 11: The Yo-Yo Gang (1992), 30min
The Yo-Yo Gang revolves around two girl gangs, their girl-on-girl intimacy, girl-on-girl violence and, occasionally, the BDSM that straddles both.

March 12: The Troublemakers (1990), 20min
The Troublemakers harks to the performativity of sex and marginality. Shot in the condemned home of G.B. Jones and her lead actors, Caroline Azar and Bruce LaBruce, the film doesn’t care to distinguish between fact and fiction—in the end, isn’t the story what matters?

In the 90s, ‘Customs’ was really on a crusade against LGBT bookstores. […] I did a drawing at that time for Kevin [Killian] and Dodie [Bellamy] of two women standing in front of a bookcase ‘Subversive Literature #4: Two Sixteen-Year-Old Girls Reading Books Seized at Canadian Customs, 1995’ that showed the spines of all the books that had been banned to date by Canada’s customs agency. I took it from a list that was made by (the anti-censorship) group called PEN international, who I unfortunately only discovered after my books had already been burned.
— GB Jones (In conversation with D St-Amour, Jun 29, 2022)

I think one of the reasons [that] G.B. Jones started J.D.s was to create a world that, sadly, didn’t exist.
— Johnny Noxzema

Kunstverein will begin the new year with the festive opening of the first European solo exhibition of punk polymath G.B. Jones (1965, Bowmanville, Canada). Please join us on January 20 between 5-8pm. Brace yourself… Here’s where we begin.

In 1994, Feature Inc., a gallery in New York run by the gallerist known simply as “Hudson,” released G.B. Jones. This monograph of G.B. Jones’ work was doing triple duty as the 7th issue of Farm (Hudson’s publication for Feature) and the 8th issue of The Gentlewomen of California (Steve Lafreniere, the resident designer and collaborator at Feature Inc, his own publishing project). The monograph presented an extensive reproduction of her well known series of drawings collectively referred to as “Tom Girls”: originally published in Jones’ and Bruce LaBruce’s infamous zine J.D.s, (1985–1991). In these graphite drawings, Jones replaced Tom of Finland’s iconic, “hyper-virile studs,” with equally horny, unrepentant leather dykes.Co-opting Finland’s objectified, male-on-male erotica, she presented a freeing world of sexually empowered female role models.

During that era (and more or less still to this day), under Tariff Code 9956 and Memorandum D9-1-1, Canadian customs officials held the power to exercise “prior restraint” of any book, magazine or picture they believed to be obscene. What constituted obscenity was ascertained through a quagmire of perplexing and recursive attributions that left Border Services agents primarily reliant on a system that was open to highly subjective interpretation—in short, Border Services agents were permitted to “use their own judgment”. As a result, anything attached to the LGBT community, regardless of their content, was targeted. So, when a short year later copies of G.B. Jones rocked up at a Canadian checkpoint, the artist received a notice from Canada’s Border Security Agency that the publication had been seized by customs officials and barred from entering the country. Finding herself already operating on a no-budget as filmmaker and with not a dime to spare, she was unable to secure legal counsel for the retrieval of the seized books, which consequently were burned by Customs agents. Despite tariff and language revisions, Canadian Border Services still retains many of the same rights as it did at the time, and Canada’s determination of “obscenity” remains just as ambiguous and subjective. The subjectivity of perversion doubled, the fantasy of power-play stripped to its very real reference point in this violent encounter with the state.

Drawing out the moment around the publication of G.B. Jones’ monograph and its censorship in the mid-1990s, this exhibition will be both an earnest, admiring fan letter to G.B. Jones’ practice, and an homage to the perfectly vixen, queer world that Jones and her network conjured into being, via film, sound and Xerox. Importantly, it will also mark the belated, though no less significant, republishing and European launch of the censored monograph G.B. Jones.

Within the framework of Jones’ exhibition, Kunstverein is happy to announce a series of events expanding on her practice. Jones is known for a variety of achievements, including the popularity of her post-punk band Fifth Column (1981-2002), the wide influence of the queer punk zines she co-authored, such as J.D.s, Double Bill, and Hide, the creation of the term “queercore,” and her prolific work as a “no-budget” filmmaker, scene photographer, and visual artist. As such, the public program will feature events that show the scope and influence of Jones’ varied practice both then and now.

 
Kunstverein would like to thank the artist, Cooper Cole as well as Kara Hamilton and Kari Cwynar of Kunstverein Toronto who, in collaboration with D St-Amour, initiated this important retrospective of Jones’ art practice and the reprint. An additional thank you to Olivier Goethals for working with us on the scenography. We would also like to thank our members and Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunst for their continued support, as well as Stadsdeel Zuid for their project specific contribution to this exhibition.

Alex Balgiu, co-editor of the anthology Women in Concrete Poetry: 1959-1979 (primary Information, 2020), joins us in the exhibition space for a deep dive into Kozłowska’s use of concrete poetry. Durring this talk he will touch upon other constellations of women artists working at the intersection of the verbal and visual who sought to liberate words from the conventions of genre, gender, and normative syntax.

Serving: vodka shots and pickles!

Limited spots available.
Entree: €10 (free for members).

Barbara Kozłowska
From East to West, Through the Globe, Towards the Moon
30 September—17 December, 2022

Opening: September 30, 8pm
Followed by an After Party at Butchers Tears from 10pm

While in Prague Jiří Kovanda took to the streets and the Slovenian OHO Group resettled to the Vipava Valley, Barbara Kozłowska left her Wrocław studio and hit the beach. Like many other artists working within the geopolitical region now commonly referred to as the misnomer “Eastern Europe” they were constructing work “within nature.” And yeah, given this and the poetics that many of their oeuvres share, the assumption could quickly be made that at the time a cultural movement was brewing throughout “Eastern Europe” which held a pioneering focus on the interconnectedness of art and ecology. Still, while this isn’t necessarily untrue, what shouldn’t be overlooked is the context in which these artists operated. In this reality, each of their works inherently took on a—however subtle—political stance against the institutional structures (of art) surrounding them. The location in which they were made played a role in that too.

Enter Barbara Kozłowska (1940–2008): a painter who abandoned painting for sculpture, a sculptor who did not stay faithful to any of the accepted schools, a concrete poet, installation artist and para-theatrical performer without métier, an oddball even amongst oddballs and, the centre of attention in our forthcoming exhibition From East to West, Through the Globe, Towards the Moon, which will open at Kunstverein on September 30. This exhibition marks the late artist’s first institutional solo show outside of Poland and celebrates an under-appreciated proponent of the Polish neo-avantgarde who actively committed to interrogating space and its organising principles. It brings together Kozłowska’s plural practice through concrete poetry, ephemera and publications, sculpture and correspondence, a restaging of two early sculptural installations as well as documentation of her performances—designed for various places around the world, even if realised in only a few.

Within the framework of Kozłowska’s exhibition, Kunstverein is happy to announce a series of events that will expand on Kozłowska’s practice.

Talking points and framework: October 1, 4–5pm
A talk by Marika Kuźmicz/ Fundacja Arton on Barbara and her peers (free)

Show and Tell: December 10, 2pm
Alex Balgiu (US/FR), co-editor of the anthology Women in Concrete Poetry: 1959-1979, joins us for a deep dive into Kozłowska’s use of concrete poetry while touching upon other constellations of women artists working at the intersection of the verbal and visual who sought to liberate words from the conventions of genre, gender, and the strictures of the patriarchy and normative syntax. Limited spots available. Entree: €10 (free for members).

Kunstverein thanks Marika Kuźmicz, Fundacja Arton, Zbiegniew Makarewicz and the Adam Mickiewicz Institute for their support of this exhibition. We would also like to thank our members, our supporters, Reform, Senso, and Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunst for their continued support.

After fourteen years of running around all over town, Kunstverein is moving to a bigger and brighter place! ⁠But first, we need your help to raise (at least) €20,000 to cover some of the costs that are required to renovate it. And, we’ve come up with a fun, mutually beneficial way in which you could help us sholder these costs. Here’s what we had in mind: from today onwards you can adopt 1m2 (or more) of Kunstverein’s floor for just €175 per m2.

Go here to pick your spot!

In return for your contribution, you will receive a unique edition (featured above) by Mierle Laderman Ukeles, author of the groundbreaking ‘Manifesto For Maintenance Art’. To us, it feels extra befitting that an artist who—since the 1960s—has been committed to rethinking how institutions are organised and maintained, and who has contributed to our programming in the past is helping us lay (quite literally) the groundwork for our programming in the future.

But, even the smallest donation can make a difference! That’s why you can also donate any amount by pressing the button above. A donation of any scale will be honored with a limited edition button badge designed by the wonderful Experimental Jetset, allowing you to wear your support on your sleeve.

It’s extremely rare for us to make this kind of direct crowdfunding appeal, but if you have appreciated our work and if you have the means, we kindly as you to consider contributing in any way you can. If it wasn’t crucial, we wouldn’t ask.

There is something exciting about a first draft – anarchic, scrappy, full of life, flawed. There is something in a first draft that a second does not. Our lives are full of misery, but what about the thrill of being here together, in this terrible time, knowing that life will not be so terrible once the next draft comes? – Sheila Heti, Pure Colour

Please join us at the bottom of a glass in celebration of Samantha McCulloch’s Lagoon: the first title of Kunstverein Publishing’s new series First Drafts. The launch will take place at lakeside distillery ’t Nieuwe Diep (Flevopark 13a, 1095 KE Amsterdam) on Wednesday June 29, from 6pm. McCulloch will give a reading from the book at 6:30 sharp and will take the form of a guided walk around the lake, through the bushes and in the grass.

Part prose poem, part reflection on the relations between writing and place, Lagoontells the story of the slow undoing of an idyll. In it the narrator walks for hours during long summer nights, gazing through the windows that line the streets. In between, she reflects on how she might write about the shifting space of the lagoon, where she spent summer holidays with her family years ago. In adolescence, the narrator watches quietly as her mother, father and sister go about building their holiday home. But she can sense something is awry, she just does not fully understand what.

It’s the perfect pocket sized book to grab before leaving town to various bodies of water, at just €18 (members enjoy a 50% discount).

Backing Vocals: Anna Daučíková
6, 7 June, 2022
Member programming
Online – sign up via the member calendar

In June, for Backing Vocals, we have the unspeakable pleasure to welcome Anna Daučíková as a conversation partner.

After graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava in 1978, artist Anna Daučíková immigrated to Moscow (then USSR) where she lived and worked until 1991. Her extensive painting practice and interest in photography triggered by her encounter with feminist thought is related to this period. Returning to Bratislava in the 1990s, her artistic practice went towards video art and performance events, then widely organised in the Slovak art scene. In her video art the engagement of artist’s body and bodily action became her main concern in presenting her queer statements. Despite working consistently for decades and at the forefront of deeply relevant conversations—as Paul B. Preciado notes, ‘One could say that Anna/Anča Daučíková is the first Czech/Slovak feminist female artist—except that Daučíková’s work problematizes the terms of this seemingly simple enunciation’—Daučíková’s work has only recently begun to receive the recognition it deserves. Therefore, she’s perfectly poised to answer any questions around sustaining a career and going up against the dominant narratives that determine who gets space and when, while her years of teaching experience and dexterity across mediums can also shed light on the more material aspects of working as an artist.

Anna will be taking your calls June 6 and 7.

Signing up by filling in your name behind an available slot in the member’s calendar.

If you do not yet have access to the calendar, don’t know how to sign yourself up, or would like to sign up to become a member in order to join, contact us via mail and we’ll help you out.

Sipping Dirty Feminist Martinis
May 13, 2022, 9pm–2am
On location: Het Hem

When our speakeasy bar, Bob’s Your Uncle, opened in the back of our exhibition space back in 2015, the first drink we served in it was a Dirty Feminist Martini – a recipe by the virtue of Melissa Gordon served in conjunction with the launch of PERSONA, an artist-led magazine which she co-edits. Since the drink still very much echoes in our activities, we invite you to come taste a serving of this resurrected beauty on May 13 during Amsterdam Art Weekend’s party at Het Hem. While you sip your drink, our director Yana Foque and our former colleague Reinier Klok will browse through their collection of MP3s between 11pm and 2am.

Tickets for the event cost €7,50 and can be purchased here. Members of Kunstverein can come for free. RSVP if you would like to attend.

Also, since part of the initiative at Het Hem is to highlight ​​Amsterdam’s project spaces, Kunstverein will be selling some of its editions and March Merch. What will we have in store? A bag by Rudy Guedj, an ashtray by Sarah Crowner and a keychain by Sabo Day.

Mariavittoria Campodonico, Jungmyung Lee, Linda van Deursen
Kunstverein’s Mobile Merch Shop
May 12–15, 2022
Various locations: pick-up points

As part of Amsterdam Art Weekend 2022, and with our own space still under construction, Kunstverein will be roaming around all across town. We will be selling a fresh batch of March Merch goodies at our mobile merch shop: socks by type designer Jungmyung Lee, pins by artist-designer Mariavittoria Campodonico and stickers by designer Linda van Deursen. Come and get them while they are not yet hot.

Here’s when and where to find us:

Thursday May 12, 2022:
6–8pm: Opposite Annet Gelink Gallery (Laurierstraat 189, 1016PL, Amsterdam). This stop will mark the launch of the *new* merch in the presence of Jungmyung Lee and Mariavittoria Campodonico.

Friday May 13, 2022:
12–4pm: Opposite Rijksakademie voor Beeldende Kunsten (Sarphatistraat 470, 1018GW, Amsterdam)
5–7pm: Museumplein Basketball Court (between Rijksmuseum and Stedelijk Museum)

Saturday May 14, 2022:
12–4pm: Opposite Rijksakademie voor Beeldende Kunsten (Sarphatistraat 470, 1018GW, Amsterdam)
5–9pm: IJpromenade, in front of Eye Film Museum

Sunday May 15, 2022:
12–4pm: Opposite Rijksakademie voor Beeldende Kunsten (Sarphatistraat 470, 1018GW, Amsterdam)
5–7pm: Opposite P/////AKT (Zeeburgerpad 53, 1019AB, Amsterdam)

Lucy Lippard & Jerry Kearns
Tense (again)
April 28, 5–7pm
On Location: Printed Matter, New York

Tense, the never-released publication by Lucy Lippard and Jerry Kearns that was sent to print for the first time as part of the exhibition Top Stories by Anne Turyn. On April 28, 2022—at long last—it is being launched in New York, the cradle of its inception.

Together with New Documents we are pleased to announce a special event with the writers and their original commissioner, Anne Turyn, at Printed Matter. The launch will take the shape of a conversation, centered around the release of Tense (2021) and the re-release of I See / You Mean (1979 / 2021). The guests are joined by our director Yana Foqué and New Document’s founder Jeff Khonsary.

Together we will focus on introducing the publication’s content and context, and touch on the reasons why the project did not materialise back in the 1980s, the problems they faced and legal concerns they had as authors. The conversation also focuses on which value is created when producing a project that was forgotten in the now.

As we’ve nearly run out of copies from the first run, by popular demand, the chapbook has been reprinted as a second silver edition. Both versions will be available at the event.

Clara Amaral
She gave it to me I got it from her
On Location: Huis de Pinto (Sint Antoniesbreestraat 69, Amsterdam)
Launch: March 1, 7—9pm (free)
Performances: March 4—6, daily at 6pm, 7.30pm, 9pm (€12.5/ €8 for members)

She gave it to me I got it from her is a dormant performance in book form that skips through five generations of women in Clara Amaral’s family and hinges on the one in the middle—the last one in the sequence to not have been taught how to read or write. What at first sounds like some family trivia in actuality offers a glimpse into a deeply rooted sociocultural obstacle that many women in Portugal faced up until the 1950s, before the reform of the education system—which until then often excluded women on the basis of their gender or economic status.

She gave it to me I got it from her is more than the sum of its pages. Of course, it can be read according to convention, from front to back, left to right, page one to page two, and so on. Most probably, in this case, the text will appear to be nonsensical. This stratagem is employed to underline the notion that the conventional isn’t necessarily right, while also emulating the frustration experienced by someone who is excluded from cracking the code of language. Alternatively, you can read the publication according to its score, which will reveal the path hidden in its pages. Better yet! You can let the author take you by the hand and lead you along this route with manual dexterity, ultimately ripping the structures it’s bound together by apart.

Attend the launch
For the occasion we have organised a rare screening of Guy Sherwin’s film Messages (16mm, 35min), a diary-essay recording the development of language, in words and drawings, of his young daughter Maya which sits nicely in parallel to Amaral’s own practice. You’ll also have a chance to flip through the book, buy it on the spot and talk to Amaral in person. Please note that the launch on the 1st of March doesn’t include the performance by Amaral.

To join, simply show up. When we’ve reached full capacity we will adhere to a one-in, one-out policy. Please note that you will be asked to show your proof of vaccination, recovery certificate or a negative test when entering.

Attend a performance
Later that same week Amaral will activate the performance (60min) daily at 6, 7.30 and 9pm. Tickets to attend one of these moments on either March 4, 5 or 6 can be purchased via the website of our co-hosts Veem House for Performance. The audience for each performance is limited to a maximum of five.

Peggy Ahwesh
Backing Vocals
28—29 Jan, 2022
Online, for members

In 2022 our members-exclusive Backing Vocals program continues. Over the past year we were thrilled to hear that some of these one-on-one conversations brought about new friendships, new collaborations or a nudge in the right direction. Such an outcome was beyond our biggest hopes for what this thing could be and do, so, onwards!

As a first guest to the 2022 choir we welcome experimental filmmaker and teacher Peggy Ahwesh, an artist whose practice spans over four decades and continues to evolve in the present in response to new modes of image production and circulation, and the political urgencies entangled to them.Erika Balsom took the word out of our mouths when she described Ahwesh’s practice in the article No Masters: The Cinema of Peggy Ahwesh when she wrote: ‘Ahwesh formed part of an emerging generation of feminist filmmakers who placed subjectivity and sexuality at the heart of their work. In place of the pared-down, reflexive interrogation of the apparatus that had marked the practices of structural filmmakers such as Hollis Frampton and Paul Sharits, Ahwesh joined artists such as Abigail Child and Leslie Thornton in pioneering a playfully anarchic sensibility characterized by fragmented narratives, improvised performances, and joyfully impure formal vocabularies. With one eye to the underground and the other to debates in feminist theory(…).’

We first encountered Peggy and her methodologie through the back door when she helped us document the unpacking of the archive of her friend Anne Turyn. And let us tell you this: She is not only a great conversation partner, she is also a source of inspiration. So go ahead, book that time slot. This is a rare opportunity, don’t miss out.

Image 1: Peggy Ahwesh, Tears of Eros, a lexicon in the style of Georges Bataille, video still.
Image 2: Peggy Ahwesh, The Color of Love, 1994, video still.

Lucy Lippard & Jerry Kearns
Tense (Book launch)
June 25, 8–9pm

Tense is a never-realised publication by Lucy Lippard and Jerry Kearns from 1984 that we’ve now released on our imprint Kunstverein Publishing in a very limited run. The release accompanies our current exhibition Top Stories by Anne Turyn, as it was originally intended to become a Top Stories issue of its own. It was only recently—during the making of our show—that it was retrieved from the editor’s archives and finally sent off to the printer. On June 25 between 8pm and 9pm we will celebrate the fruition of an old idea in a new jacket alongside a talk and a drink with the authors and editor.

Salon Hang 24/7
June 19–28
On location: Hortusbrug—Dr. D.M. Sluyspad 6, 1018 DH Amsterdam
Open daily between 1–5pm, AND at night between 7pm–11am

Opening: Friday 18 June, 6–8pm. Exclusively for members of Kunstverein and professional guests of Amsterdam Art.

Overnight stays: Available from Saturday June 19 till June 29. Overnight stays, including breakfast, come at the rate of € 190, €130 for members, or free for gold members!

For the fourth time in our twelve-year history we are happy to host our biennial Salon Hang, an exuberant, sensory-overloading group exhibition showcasing the abundance of local and international talent we’re happy to call our members.

For this edition we’ll take up residence in a former bridge house-turned-hotel suite adjoining the Botanical Garden in Amsterdam. Fancy! Because it’s special! It’s time to rekindle! Don’t you think? For ten days and ten nights we will highlight the practices of the individuals who back us—a multi-voiced community of thinkers and makers. Expect the lofty and the low, the known and the obscure all sharing a figurative bed.

With work by, among others:

Adam Pendleton
Alexis Blake
  Alina Lupu
  Andrea Di Serego Alighieri, with Paloma Bouhana
        Anne de Vries
Ansuya Blom
   Artun Alaska Arasli
     Axel Wilhite
  Baha Görkem Yalım
Barbara Visser
     Bart de Baets
        Bas Hendrikx
   Ben Kinmont
    Bruno Zhu
 Carl Johan Högberg
Carlotta Guerra
      Charlott Markus
  Chris Evans
    Christine van Litsenburg
  Claes Storm
Clara Amaral
      David Bernstein
 Dean Spunt
  Denise Scott Brown
Ebele Wybenga
 Emma Gregoline
     Felix Salut
 Gabriele Götz
    gerlach en koop
          Germaine Kruip
  Hrafnhildur Helgadóttir
    Hreinn Friðfinnsson
     Ian Svenonius
  Ilke Gers
        Jacob Dwyer, from the collection of Frits Bergsma
      Jennifer Tee
   Jessica Warboys
 Jungmyung Lee
Josefina Anjou (presented by Julia Mullié)
   Justina Nekrašaitė
        Kara Hamilton
  Kasper Bosmans
 Laura Pappa
  Katja Mater
   Laurent-David Garnier
       Lieven Lahaye
  Liliane Lijn (presented by Alex Balgiu/Women in Concrete poetry)
      Linda van Deursen
          Lisa Oppenheim
  Lotte Lara Schröder
     Maartje Fliervoet
       Mai Spring
 Maria Barnas
Marja Bloem / Berend Strik
    Marja van Putten
        Mathew Kneebone
      Matt Hinkley
 Matthew Lutz-Kinoy
Melissa Gordon
 Michel Cardena presented by Zapp Magazine/Corinne Groot
       Niels Staal
    Nerijus Rimkus
         Nora Turato
 Ola Vasiljeva
  Olivier Lebrun
 Pilar Mata Dupont
      Riet Wijnen
  Richard Niessen
       Robert Milne
    Robert Wilhite
      Robertas Narkus
 Ronja Andersen
      Rudy Guedj
   Scott Rogers
     Severin Bunse
          Voebe De Gruyter
         Will Holder
       Will Pollard
   Youngeun Sohn

Anne Turyn
Top Stories
April 2 – June 26, 2021

Too Good To Be Entirely True
Words In Reverse
3 Stories
Agent Pink
Foot Facts
This is My Mother. This is my Father.
Eating Friends
Transcript
New York City in 1979
Living with Contradictions
Marie
Shattered Romance
Real Family Stories
95 Essential Facts
I.T.I. L.O.E
Analects of Self-Contempt/Sweet Cheat of Freedom
The Human Heart
Forget About Your Father
How To Get Rid Of Pimples
Red Moon/Red Lake
The Colorist
FIVE
Tourist Attractions
Extremes Of High and Low Regard
War Comics
Pecunia Olet

Well now.

Kunstverein is thrilled to –finally– welcome you to Top Stories, the first exhibition in The Netherlands to give full attention to the identically titled prose periodical set-up, edited, designed and distributed by Anne Turyn between 1978 and 1991.

Top Stories started in the late 1970s under the auspices of the venue Hallwalls (Buffalo, New York) where, at the time, Turyn was co-programming performances and readings. It later moved to New York in the early 1980s along with its founder. With these publications Turyn specialised in giving space to the writing of one young female author (and those who identify themselves as such) in her network, forecasting some of the most progressive writers of the 80s and 90s such as Kathy Acker, Laurie Anderson, Constance DeJong, Jane Dickson, Pati Hill, Jenny Holzer, Mary Kelly, Cookie Mueller, Linda Neaman, Lynne Tillman and Gail Vachon, and often featured visual contributions by artists such as David Armstrong, Joe Gibbons, Nan Goldin, Peter Hujar, Gary Indiana, Richard Prince and Leslie Thornton.

Since many of the stories are of an auto-fictional nature, the twenty-nine-odd issues function today as a direct gateway into the mood and network of the New York scene at the time. They give us a glimpse into the cradle of the writers’ later careers as well as a direct take on how second-wave feminism and the fight for equal rights and social equality—regardless of sex—impacted their daily life and thoughts. Cumulatively, the issues shine a light on how important it is—still—for independent chapbooks, small presses and spaces to exist. They are a beacon for fostering and developing legroom for voices that are left unheard on the main stage and propel change.

We are proud to share that we have acquired a rare, complete, first edition set of the Top Stories series for Kunstverein’s collection, and you are invited to come and browse, smell, read and touch the material for yourself. Accompanying the shelved Top Stories is a newly commissioned two-channel film by experimental filmmaker—and longtime friend of Turyn—Peggy Ahwesh. The film unpacks Turyn’s extensive archive and leads us past ephemera and long forgotten notes that serve as time stamps for the relationships and know-how that were there to make the series work.

Parallel to the show we will also be publishing a very limited number of copies of Tense, a never realized publication by Lucy Lippard and Jerry Kearns from 1984. This issue was originally intended to become a Top Stories but never was. It will be launched now during Amsterdam Art Weekend, near the end of the show.

Photo credit group portret: May 13, 1983, Artists Space, NYC by Laurie Neaman

The second part of our film program The Distance Between Slits and Screen – which runs parallel to Cauleen Smith’s solo exhibition, Bronze Icebergs – is now live and online until December 23.

With it we dive deeper into Cauleen Smith’s use of Afrofuturism and the artists’ interest in both real and imagined spaces and territories that transcend the everyday. The program centers around her rarely screened film, The Fullness of Time, made in 2008 in New Orleans’ post-Katrina landscape. It was produced by Creative Time and Paul Chan in collaboration with Kalamu ya Salaam. In this work, Smith used the boundless terrain of science fiction to focus on resistance to historical erasure and a post-traumatic stress disorder rumination. Considering a similar lens, Smith and Kunstverein selected a number of other films, shorts, and archival materials that go into conversation with her own work, leading us on a journey past black caves, crystallization processes, African and indigenous spiritual dance practices, darkly comedic shorts in the style of a public access TV show, Yemaya – the goddess of the sea – and a group of dancers sprouting from the earth, marching joyfully, to the rhythm of a song.

The program includes, in order of appearance, Grondslag by René Hazekamp and Ari Versluis, Pattaki by Everlane Moraes, Children Inhale by Tina Schott, Everybody Dies! by Nuotama Bodomo, The Fullness of Time by Cauleen Smith, Apariciones/Apparitions by Carolina Caycedo, Uit het Rijk der Kristallen by J.C. Mol, and La Cueva Negra by Beatriz Santiago Muñoz.

Please note that some of the material in the film program can be triggering.

For their support to The Distance Between Slits and Screen we wish to thank all the artists, Simona Monizza, Leenke Ripmeester, Marente Bloemheuvel and the team of the Eye Filmmuseum collection, who kindly co-organised this with us.

Ginger&Piss#5: Audience
From Saturday November 28, 1pm onwards
Kunstverein, Hazenstraat 28, 1016SR Amsterdam

Usually, for Kunstverein’s sporadic in-house magazine Ginger&Piss, five specific people are invited to speak their mind or provide candid critique on art world customs and traditions under the somewhat-cowardice disguise of a nom de plume. However, for this fifth issue, guest editors Reinier Klok and Isabelle Sully took a slightly different approach and extended that invitation to you as well, our audience. Split across two formats—a preliminary online magazine-cum-survey and the usual printed one—this Ginger&Piss serves two aimes. On the one hand it provides unfabricated answers to questions about who Kunstverein’s audience really is (or is not, yet!) and on the other it attempts to bring to the surface the many factors that can complicate statistical reasoning in the first place—the very reasoning that is insisted upon by funding bodies and boards alike in order to measure the levels of engagement at various institutions.

As is customary, a new issue is supposed to be combined with a performance and a crowd, but with the absence of that for the foreseeable future we decided to circumvent the limits of our space by stretching out the launch itself, like a rubber band in time. Instead, we would like to offer you a drink on the house when you have the time. That can be next Saturday at 1pm, but it might also be in a month from now, or a year. While you serve us by continuing to show up in support of our program, we’ll thankfully serve you a liquid translation of the answers given to the survey question: ‘What type of audience member do you consider yourself to be in relation to us?’ It’s an interesting mix!

Ginger&Piss #5: Audience is for sale for €15. Members get 50% off!

Seth’s Books Bookshop
November 26 – December 23
Laughter, Columbusplein 233, 1057 TP Amsterdam
Open: Tue–Sat, 11am–5.30pm

Duane Michals, “Photograph of Seth Siegelaub,” (1969) Courtesy of the Artist and the Siegelaub Collection & Archives at the Stichting Egress Foundation, Amsterdam.

In 1969, when Seth Siegelaub set up the exhibition January 5–31, 1969 he left these typewritten instructions for his then secretary Adrian Piper:

1. Get keys
2. Answer phone “Seth Siegelaub”
3. Catalogs are available only at gallery – if any one wants extras we will mail them. (except for the press)
4. If someone is interested in purchasing work, call me.
5. My other phone is 288-5031.
6. Gallery hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 11 – 5:30.
7. Gallery will exist for this month only.
8. Every morning turn on both Robert Barry pieces.
9. Lawrence Weiner has one freehold piece (see catalog) – if anyone inquires about this – tell them they can own the piece by making arrangements with Mr. Weiner at GR7-4113.
10. Haved people sign guest book.
11. The tpyewritten Information sheet is for press only.
12. For the first six hours of the exhibition (sat.) take a polaroid photo every 1/2 hour of the Huebler sawdust (looking into the hall) and then place it on the wall (with scotch tape) near the type-written document. At the end of the 6 hours (5 PM Sat.) remove the sawdust and throw it away.

To celebrate the launch of Seth Siegelaub “Better Read than Dead”: Writings and Interviews 1964–2013 (in which the above note is included) Kunstverein will take a cue from Seth’s instructions and transform our second space, located at Columbusplein 233, into a Seth’s Books Bookshop for one month only. The arrival of this new publication, modestly financially supported by Kunstverein, is especially exciting for us since it marks the important moment that this inspirational material by the hand of our dear friend and former board member Seth Siegelaub is made available to a larger audience in one concise volume, a wonderful initiative from our current board member Marja Bloem. The Seth’s Books Bookshop set-up in celebration of this occasion will be exclusively devoted to selling books by and about Seth Siegelaub, all of which make for perfect Christmas presents. The shelves will be stocked with, among others: How To Read Donald Duck, rare books on the history of textiles, The Joke Book and of course this newest publication.

In parallel to the exhibition Bronze Icebergs, Cauleen Smith and Kunstverein bring you The Distance Between Slits and Screen. This two-part, online only film program expands on Smith’s own interests and filmic oeuvre, touching upon topics and methodologies used by kindred-spirited filmmakers and finding itself in latent friction with archival material from the collection of the EYE Filmmuseum.

Running on an endless loop on Kunstverein’s website from today onwards, this first part takes up the suggestion Smith proposes in her new series of drawings currently on display at Kunstverein and rhetorically wonders: What if we collectively redirected our focus and put the revenant energy applied to the monumentalisation of small and foolish men towards the truly monumental, the features of this planet both grand and mundane, from microbes to crystals and volcanic outbursts. It features works by, in order of appearance: J.C. Mol, Cauleen Smith, H. Bekker, Basim Magdy, Huzel and Deimantas Narkevičius.

Cauleen Smith
Bronze Icebergs
10 October – 23 December 2020
Opening Saturday, October 10, 5–9pm
‘The possible has been tried and failed. Now it’s time to try the impossible.’ – Sun Ra

Please join us on October 10, between 5 and 9pm, for the soft opening of Bronze Icebergs, an exhibition by artist and filmmaker Cauleen Smith. This show marks the Los Angeles-based artist’s first solo exhibition in the Netherlands and brings together a new series of drawings, a film and a flag designed especially for the occasion.

On Friday, July 3, at the *very* precarious moment in which the Covid-19 death toll in the US had recently surpassed one hundred thousand people and when millions, despite the dangers, were taking to the streets enraged by the relentless (police) brutality and injustice against people of colour, a news notification popped up on screens across the globe. It announced that a presidential executive order had just been signed by the US president that condemned the destruction of monuments and called for the building of a national garden that would feature the statues of ‘Our American Heroes’. The definition of ‘our’ couldn’t be more at stake. The executive order came as yet another sadly unsurprising and vile response from Trump to the toppling of monuments across countries.

Such an action has, at different moments, served as a physical and symbolic public exfoliation ritual for many when distancing themselves from ideas and individuals that they no longer want to be associated with (or never even identified with in the first place). The most recent toppling of bronze was a long-overdue reminder that it is truly time we reckon with our colonial pasts and rise up to the demand to acknowledge the existing conditions of inequity within our societies, and to do so as a community.

Smith’s work, which often takes shape across various forms, is grounded in the imaginary possibilities of the moving image and seeks to propose an alternate future through speculative narratives. And this moment we are living through calls for just that: the healing power of reimagining.
In the forty-six drawings on display at Kunstverein, Smith manipulated the official announcement by inserting the names of significant Black female activists and cultural figures as well as moments of insurgent uprisings that are commonly written out of history.
By repeating, revising, filling in and marking language from the executive order document—and pairing it with images and names of various violently extracted and mined mountains, icebergs, prairies and rivers—Smith lays bare the harmful practice of erasure in relation to cultural significance and the standards of who, or what, is deemed as such. But in doing so, she also points to the transformative potential of rewriting collective memory through the work of revolutionary thinkers and events—ones that have changed our political realities yet have been unjustifiably overlooked.

Juxtaposed with a flag affixed to the exterior of Kunstverein and the film Lessons in Semaphore (which captures a choreographed movement with flags whereby a performer communicates through visual signals), this new series asks how these acts of revisioning help refigure our relationship to threatened environments and undo the destructive heroisation of figures who too quickly have been cast in bronze.

Kunstverein would like to thank AFK and its members for their continued support.

Saturday, September 19, 7pm
Closing Event Summer Res(t)idency: Making Bread into Dough

As we are nearing the end of summer and slipping into fall, please join us on Saturday September 19 at 7pm at Hazenstraat 28 for the final event of this year’s Summer Res(t)idency, for which we have hosted the Swedish, Amsterdam-based textile artist Matilda Kenttä.

Since the start of summer, under the title Making Bread into Dough, Kenttä has explored the importance of valuing laziness over constant productivity during the time when most of us were enjoying ‘time off’. Kenttä has been toiling away at odd hours of the day on a vertical loom she installed in Kunstverein’s front space, weaving thoughts and conversations on gossip, the gendered history of labour and the development of the loom itself into the fabric of the very works she was making. With the space being open to visitors while Kenttä worked, the social and performative element of weaving also became central to her process. This aspect has been literally logged in the four works that were produced, as Kenttä noted the visitors she received alongside a list of recycled items she used (as well as their previous owners) to make the new pieces. To celebrate the four site-specific textile works that resulted from Kenttä’s res(t)idency—such as a towel for Kunstverein’s soon-to-be-renovated kitchen—we have invited Elina Birkehag, Amelia Groom, Adelheid Smit and Elaine Wing-Ah Ho to each write a short reflection on one of the four works. These texts will be made available as a collection on the 19th. We invite you to come and read them up close, right at home in their intended setting.

See you then!

Ah! All of a sudden it’s ten o’clock and still light, still hot and, well, summer. And we were wondering: Does this really count as a season in a year that has already skipped one? Are we allowed, as a cultural body, to slow down in the heat of this specific moment? To rub our physical bodies with SPF20 and protect them (more) just because we are in the luxurious position to do so?

These questions form the central axis for this year’s annual Summer Res(t)idency which recommences on August 1. This third edition welcomes Matilda Kenttä who will be toiling away while the rest of us aren’t. Kenttä, a very *very* recent graduate from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie’s textile department will install a loom in the frame of Kunstverein’s window. While the days grow shorter again Kenttä will be reshuffling the silver curtain currently casting shade on our space into rags. Although her labour is hers, it will not be solitary. Until August 31 Kunstverein’s physical space will turn into an occasional meeting place (call it a bar) for friendly gossip (as the term was understood in the eleventh century, then meaning friend), questioning who, really, has the right to be lazy? Stories bypassers spin will be interwoven into the fabric, which after summer will filter into kitchens and households.

September welcomes a solo exhibition by Cauleen Smith, initiated by our associate curator Suzy Halajian. Halajian, who was selected out of ninety-four candidates worldwide, will bring her voice to Kunstverein’s program by developing two projects annually. This is the first. The Los Angeles-based curator’s interests lie at the intersection of art and politics, looking at how images are made and consumed in relation to our colonial pasts and modern surveillance states. Previously, Halajian has curated exhibitions and programs for, among others, the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, the Armory Center for the Arts, and Sursock Museum (Beirut). Halajian has also been an integral part of the curatorial team at the artist-run space Human Resources (LA) since 2015 and—together with Anthony Carfello and Shoghig Halajian—is the co-founder of the journal Georgia.

We hope to see your sun-kissed faces then, if not sooner!
Kunstverein

Spring arrives at the café (BLOOD book launch)
June 18, 6–8pm
Columbusplein 233, 1057 TX Amsterdam

This event marks the unveiling of BLOOD, the newest publication on our imprint, edited and designed by Line-Gry Hørup. BLOOD has been six years in the making. This long-awaited publication presents the first-ever translations of the fourteen (and only) poems written by the Danish art historian and publisher R. Broby-Johansen in 1922, for which he was sentenced to jail. In vivid and gory details, the poems depict the red-light district of Copenhagen’s underbelly. In them, he defends those subjected to misery and poverty, and comments on the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie responsible for their misery. The appendix of the book gives a unique insight into Broby-Johansen’s methodology, interests and life following the end of his career as a poet, through photographs taken by Johannes Schwartz and translations of the archive by Hørup.

Since a more traditional book launch is currently out of the question, we’re launching the book with a special vinyl by the editor/designer, installed on the front window of our new publishing-oriented location in Amsterdam-West. Simultaneously, from afar, you can enjoy a series of audio recordings of the poems from the book here.

For orders of the book, please contact us via email. Kunstverein members receive 50% off publications.

For orders of the book, please contact us via email. Kunstverein members receive 50% off publications.

Anne Turyn
Messages To The Public
18 May – 27 June 2020
Public space (accessible 24/7)

As a prelude to our forthcoming exhibition TOP STORIES, the first institutional solo exhibition by Anne Turyn in the Netherlands (which due to the corona outbreak has been postponed until the fall), we are bringing one of Turyn’s enigmatic works to the streets and inviting you to go for a walk. On nine specifically selected poster columns located throughout Amsterdam, large-scale prints of the artist’s 1988 commission Messages To The Public will be shown.

The exact locations can be found here.

Anne Turyn, What if the sky were orange, 1988

Computer animation, Spectacolor lightboard, One Times Square, Sept. 1–30, 1988

 
This work was originally presented in digital form on the Spectacolor board overlooking Times Square in New York, and was part of a larger series of works commissioned by the Public Art Fund. In Turyn’s piece, rhetorical questions like: ‘What if everyone had a home?’, ‘What if there were free medical service for all?’ and ‘What if there were no lines at the bank?’ flashed up. In re-staging an adapted form of this work now, it has become even more evident that such questions are (unfortunately) today, almost forty years later, still topical, timely and largely unsolved.

Never have I found myself dancing in a crowd—or at any event for that matter—looking around and dividing the people that surround me into categories and percentages: 20% native speakers, 15% students, 35% non-binary, 48% parents, 50% smokers, 79% drunk, 12% fun …
Talk about a mood kill!

But imagine, if only for the sake of conversation, it was in your interest to undertake such a task. How could you even begin to categorise and quantify the community around you? Who makes up that community? How do you reach out to them? With full understanding of the delusional validation the data of your answers might provide, rest assured that these exact questions will rear their head when writing funding applications—an unavoidable reality in the cultural field. And, while jumping through hoops and trying to stay true to the audience that you already serve (hoping to grant them the dignity of not becoming a stereotype) as well as those “potentially untapped” audiences you’re gently puppeteered toward by the political desires embedded in each application, what comes to mind above all is: what makes you stick to us? Or is it the other way around, as current events have provoked me to ask—have we, unknowingly but ever so gratefully, been sticking to you?

To better understand this conundrum we decided, at the start of 2020, to devote the fifth issue of our in-house magazine Ginger&Piss to this, aptly titled “Audience”. In no way imaginable could we have foreseen then how important its preliminary online format would become, now that one country after another has gone into lockdown, the whole apparatus of society has started to slow down, institutions across the world are hosting exhibitions that will never be physically visited, and many of us are haphazardly putting together an “online equivalent,” legitimising our efforts (and our paychecks) despite the absence of, well, you.

This issue of Ginger&Piss—part confession booth, part audience survey in disguise—serves two aims: first, it seeks to provide unfabricated answers to questions about who our audience is (or is not) and to qualify their engagement with us, and second, it attempts to bring to the surface the many factors that can complicate statistical reasoning. We, who are in the business of creative license after all, are strikingly aware that questions can be shaped to receive answers that shine a favourable light on this or that. A multiple choice question can be formalised in a way that no matter which option you select it will return the predicted outcome, an outcome that is often geared towards placating funding partners. Hard data that spells out a whiny “you see!”

While this strategy is our main reason for going against the usual practice of rendering a survey authorless by acknowledging our guest editors Isabelle Sully and Reinier Klok as its architects, you will also find a number of contributions dotted throughout the survey written under the guise of a pseudonym (offering our authors the—somewhat cowardly—liberty to speak to their own experiences with data politics and audience profiling in the artistic field without having to fear backlash). It goes without saying that the answers you provide, making you both a subject of and an accomplice to this issue of Ginger&Piss, enjoy the same anonymity.

It will only take, as the vague invocation goes, a minute of your time…

here

The How and the What – edition hansjörg mayer
15 February – 11 April 2020
Extended until 21 June

From Thursday May 21 we welcome you back to The How and The What – edition hansjörg mayer. In addition to the first leg of the exhibition, which had focused on Mayer’s early typographic and film experiments, it will now feature almost the entire output of Mayer’s imprint, including the early Futura magazines as well as later ethnographical publications which earlier were on show at EENWERK.

The catalogue can be browsed during our regular opening hours (and by appointment) until the end of June, and is open to a maximum of two visitors at a time.

Kunstverein, Boekie Woekie and Eenwerk are happy to invite you to their joint exhibition of Hansjörg Mayer: “typoet,” concrete poet, printer, publisher and teacher. This fragmented exhibition – with the resolve of an institutional show – brings together Mayer’s (Stuttgart, 1943) extensive and diverse oeuvre. By placing Mayer’s work in the context of the bookstore, the street, the library, the gallery and the school, different aspects of his practice are shown.

Kunstverein
(Hazenstraat 28, Amsterdam. Open Thu–Sat, 1–6pm or by appointment)
Early experiments with typography and film take center stage at Kunstverein. From outside, projected directly onto the large front window of the space, passersby can watch the little-known films Mayer made as part of the Filma Arbeits Team. F.A.T. was a pioneering experimental film-making project set up by Georg Bense, Hansjorg Mayer and Rainer Wössner in Stuttgart. The films show their intense preoccupation with language, text and structure. Inside, Mayer’s own concrete poems and experiments with typography and printing techniques will be shown. These early works – in which the graphic and poetic is a result of experiments with technology and material – are key to understanding Mayer’s work.

Boekie Woekie
(Berenstraat 16, Amsterdam. Open Daily, 12–6pm)
Boekie Woekie is the artists’ bookstore run by the artists Henriëtte van Egten, Rúna Thorkelsdóttir and Jan Voss. On this occasion (almost) all of Roth’s books, published by Mayer, will be on display alongside the many Roth books they regulary hold.

Eenwerk
(Koninginneweg 176, Amsterdam. Open Thu–Sat, 1–6pm) – as the name suggests – shows only one work by one artist at the time. In the main gallery, enlarged pages from Mayer’s Typoaktionen as well as the ‘leporello’ itself will be shown. In addition, many books published by edition hansjörg mayer will be on show in the library of Irma Boom, adjacent to Eenwerk. Visitors are invited to browse through this immense, inspirational collection of publications, including Mayer’s own ‘typoems’, the Futura series, artists’ publications, artists’ catalogues and his later ethnographic books.

Finally, a first! At all locations, visitors can listen to records from Selten Gehörte Musik (Seldom Heard Music) – Mayer’s record label which captured the improvisation and mayhem of (among others) Dieter Roth, Gerhard Rühm, Hermann Nitsch and Oswald Wiener .

The exhibition is based on an idea by Marja Bloem.

Additional Event in collaboration with Studium Generale Rietveld Academie
20 March 2020, 4–6 pm

An afternoon of talks with Hansjörg Mayer and his contemporaries will take place at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie. Dialogues between the work and working methods of Hansjörg Mayer and kindred spirits will be discussed. The full program will be announced soon via studiumgenerale.rietveldacademie.nl. Additionally, a selection of work produced by Mayer and his students while he was teaching at Bath Academy and Watford School of Art, will be on display at the library.

This exhibition has been made possible through the kind support of Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, Kunstverein’s (Gold) Members and Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie.

Still from Dec 16 of the 365 Day Project by Jonas Mekas, edited with Elle Burchill.

Tonight at 7pm we are organising a one time only screening of films by Jonas Mekas and Elle Burchill in the presence of the filmmaker/editor herself at Cinema De Uitkijk, Prinsengracht 452. Entrance is 10€ (5€ for members). This screening is a part of our current exhibition Who’s Werner? that looks into the labour and voices of long term “assistants” of well known artists.

Who’s Werner? is on until the end of this week.

We invite you to attend the celebratory launch of Grace Crowley – the newest publication of Riet Wijnen on our imprint Kunstverein Publishing. This launch will take place within the exhibition Who’s Werner? on 24 November at 3pm with a reading by Riet Wijnen and Rindon Johnson.

Grace Crowley is a publication based on letters sent to the Australian artist and pioneer of modernist painting Grace Crowley (1890–1979) by friends, family and colleagues. Parts of those letters, which are now housed in the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the State Library of New South Wales archives in Sydney, were transcribed and categorized by Wijnen in subsections such as ‘Marital Status’, ‘Teaching’, ‘Hosting’, ‘Eurasia’, ‘X’, ‘Being A Woman’, ‘War’, ‘$’, and ‘Making Work’. The result is an alternative biography constructed solely through a living set of relations.

For the occasion Wijnen has invited writer and artist Rindon Johnson to read Conversation Six: Double Lines together. This fictional dialogue brings Grace Crowley and the British Constructivist Marlow Moss (1889–1958) together, which partly stems from Marlow Moss, a book by Wijnen previously published on our imprint in 2013. Through short monologues Moss and Crowley introduce us to important personal, professional and political relationships they maintained throughout their lives, and slowly parallels start to unfold between their two lives. Similarly to the book this conversation is also divided into subsections such as ‘Mentor’, ‘Lovers’ and ‘Gender’.

This publication was made possible with the support of Biennale of Sydney, Mondriaan Fonds, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, Stichting Niemeijer Fonds, Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, and Stichting Egress Foundation.

Who’s Werner?
23 November – 21 December 2019
Opening: 22 November, 5–9pm

Who’s Werner? is a spacial conversation that explores artistic practices that have become intertwined and focuses on the role of a figure whose work is commonly kept a public secret. It looks into some mutualistic relationships between artists in various disciplines and their assistants; producers; sometimes lovers. The exhibition reveals some of the misconceptions that exist around how a piece of art is made and the structures that keep those misconceptions intact, offering a telescopic view onto larger issues of ‘place’, equality of partnerships, sex and race.

The show includes works where it is difficult to tear apart who brought in what piece of the puzzle… by and for; Céline Condorelli, Denise Scott Brown, Elle Burchill, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Raoul De Keyser, James Langdon, John Baldessari, Jonas Mekas, Lucy Skaer, Margot Sandeman, Norman Laich, Paul Robbrecht, Robert Venturi, Simon Harlow, Jan-Philipp Hopf, Laura Kaminskaitė, and serves as a prefix of the methodologies and interests of Kunstverein’s new director Yana Foqué, who has followed up Maxine Kopsa since September of this year. The topic explored within this exhibition will extend into Kunstverein’s program of the following years.

Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, the Jonas Mekas Estate (Sebastian Mekas), Margot Sandeman Estate (Peter & David Robson), Ian Hamilton Finlay Estate (Pia Simig), Grimm Gallery (Sebastiaan Brandsen), Joan Hughson Gallery, Marian Goodman (Kristina Pallova, Lauren Sher), the Lithuanian Cultural Council and CAC Vilnius for their support.

Club Night #5
with Ola Vasiljeva, The Plant Orchestra, La Fureur de Vouivre & Bence Meijer

Take the night off and join us for our fifth club night on October 3 at 8pm with; a special soundtrack compiled by Ola Vasiljeva to a film by Mark Rappaport; a therapeutic listening session, as much as it is a dance, between Alexandra Duvekot and the flora surrounding her under the moniker The Plant Orchestra; a shamanic concert by La Fureur de Vouivre sculpting a dazzling weave of nature and technology evoking rhythms from their handmade flutes made from herbs and reeds. This is a NOT TO BE MISSED evening of concerts interlaced with songs selected by Bence Meijer (Haperende Mens) from his archive.

Note that this event will take place on location:

Cinetol, Tolstraat 182, 1074 VM Amsterdam
Entrance to the event is practically nothing (€6 normal price, €4 for Kunstverein members and neighbours of Cinetol)

Kunstverein thanks it (Gold)members for their continued support to our program. Together with Cinetol we also wish to thank Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, Stadsdeel Amsterdam Zuidoost and Volkshotel for their support to the Club Nights.

Salon Hang
13 September – 2 November 2019
Opening: 12 September, 7 pm

With:

      Gediminas Akstinas
Marja Bloem
Frits Bergsma
Ansuya Blom
Carla & Karlis
Nic De Jong
Linda van Deursen
Experimental Jetset
Maartje Fliervoet
Hreinn Friðfinnsson
Laurent-David Garnier
gerlach en koop
Rudy Guedj
Hadean Radio
Carl Johan Högberg
Johan Jensen Kjeldsen
Mathew Kneebone
Lieven Lahaye
Gabriel Lester
Alina Lupu
Katja Mater
Robertas Narkus
Jörn Nettingsmeier
Nick Oberthaler
Laura Pappa
Nerijus Rimkus
Smári Robertson
Scott Rogers
Benjamin Roth
Christine van Royen
Niels Staal
Zazie Stevens
Barbara Visser
Anne de Vries
Jessica Warboys
Riet Wijnen & Nel van Enckevort
Ebele Wybenga

 
Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst and Neef Louis Design for their support.

Dear reader,
A little update concerning my KV residency:

I have initiated two little collaborations: with Maria Barnas and Joke Robaard. Me and Maria will work on two different strands of ekphrastic texts… One outlining potential “objects”, other one potential “plots”. I hope these texts propel me (or maybe us) into making sculptures based on them. Joke will come and take photographs after the 23rd of August (my mother’s birthday). As it stands now, Joke is free to do whatever she wants (and I’ll be supplying her with whatever she might need: models, props, equipment as long as there is a work of mine in the photograph… I’m feeding her bits of our text for ideas.

I also would like to do something with Femke de Vries, Toon Verhoef, Huib Haye van der Werf, Christopher Mahon and Joachim Robbrecht. I’m still trying to wrap my head around the notion of rehearsal and what this means for the project, to not much avail. Yet, as it stands now there is a bunch of us, an ensemble, gearing towards…what exactly?

I just want you to know that for the following 2 weeks until the end of the month I will be pulling all the strands together to see where I can knot them. I feel like I’ve been agitating something that will burst once I can align all the stars and the people involved. The exact dates will be more clear in the coming time. I will keep updating them on the Google Calendar, you can subscribe to it and follow along.

Take care for now,

Artun

Clubnight #4: What Am I Doing With My Life?
with Styrmir Örn Guðmundsson, Jokūbas Čižikas, Indriði Arnar Ingólfsson, Géraldine Longueville and David Bernstein.

13 Juni, 9 pm
at Cinetol
Tolstraat 182
1074VM Amsterdam
€6 (€4 for Kunstverein members and neighbours of Cinetol)

Storyteller, performer, sculptor, illustrator, singer and pianist Styrmir Örn Guðmundsson roamed Europe in the past two year as a self-proclaimed M.D. with his traveling rap opera What Am I Doing With My Life? (W.A.I.D.W.M.L?) referencing the failures and perils of Western medicine.

Since then Styrmir has recorded an artist LP containing all the dark humoured rap songs and lullabies he composed on that tour together with his “Medical Faculty” (consisting of Jokūbas Čižikas, Indriði Arnar Ingólfsson, Jurgis Paškevičius, Thomas Myrmel, Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir, Hreinn Friðfinnsson, Géraldine Longueville, David Bernstein, Anat Spiegel, Bergur Thomas Anderson, Arnar Ásgeirsson, Örn Alexander Ámundason, Hilmar Guðjónsson, Žygimantas Kudirka, Curver Thoroddsen).

The fourth edition of Cinetol and Kunstverein’s joined Club Night marks the Dutch release of this unique record and will be celebrated with a concert by Styrmir Örn Guðmundsson, Jokūbas Čižikas, Indriði Arnar Ingólfsson & David Bernstein. Géraldine Longueville will brew a special sage potion for the occasion to calm the nerves.

The record, which also contains a set of drawings made by Guðmundsson especially for each track, will be for sale on the Club Night for a reduced price of €35.

Kunstverein thanks it (Gold)members for their continued support to our program. Together with Cinetol we also wish to thank Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, Stadsdeel Amsterdam Zuidoost and Volkshotel for their support to the Club Nights.

AND THEN…

I listen, listen, listen, I listen and remember, that
everything I have to say, transforms

her/* rhythm into
my speech.

Polyvibrations
Poly-vibrations
Po-ly-vi-bra-tions

All the time,
my story is evolving, interdependent and always alive//.

Kunstverein is happy to once more host Sandberg’s Fine Art Department’s annual Festival of Choices presenting ‘Collective Recollections’ by Tina Reden.

With ‘Collective Recollections’ Tina Reden zooms in on the task of listening and remembering as a strategy to break open the modern notion of a singular narrative and chronology. She explores the political possibility of polyphonic sound and imagines a collaborative world that connects voices through time and space. The exhibition will be open to the public daily from June 13 until June 16, between 12 and 6pm,

Additionally, on Saturday June 15, 1–4pm Reden, Francisca Khamis and Davide Sanvee invite you to take part in a workshop further exploring our collective memory based upon the sharing and mixing of stories by participants. The workshop offers an alternative experience of knowledge – not neutral, but plural – and in an interdependent relationship to others, allowing a passage, a crossing and intermingling between and across differences. To attend this workshop please announce your attendance to tina.reden@gmail.com (rsvp – max. 20 people)

Between 4–6pm following the workshop taking place on June 15, there will be a Public Moment with a chance to visit the exhibition in presence of the artist. Drinks will be served.

*‘Her’ as in the manifold, infinite other, in the middle of either or, ambiguous, threatening by the very ambiguity the orderliness of the system of schematized reality.

**This tekst was written by reverberating quotes by; Pauline Oliveros, Zora Neale Hurston, Fred Moten, Luisah Teish, Sun Ra, Maria Lugones,

Dear all,
It’s been a year in the making! And now:

Join us on Saturday 25 May, between 5 and 7pm, for the launch of Ginger&Piss #4: The Intern!

Ginger&Piss is published whenever we see fit and its remit is simple: to provide a platform for candid critique but at the same time allow the AUTHOR to stay hidden. The concept dictates that each contributor writes under a pseudonym and is offered full anonymity by the editors. This use of pseudonyms can be considered an answer to the cowardice of the art world, albeit a somewhat hypocritical one. ‘Loud’, ‘Gay’ and ‘Private’ were the themes of number 1, 2 and 3 respectively; Ginger&Piss #4 is dedicated to ‘The Intern’.
The Intern is guest edited by our two long term ‘interns’, Claes Storm and Mark Emil Poulsen, and offers a voice to the sorrows and sighs of various interns within their network. But the magazine doesn’t only look at the issue from bottom up! It also contains the voices of those who have guided interns and have come to regret their efforts.

JUICY STUFF!

To give voice to the anonymous authors Gabriel Lester will read Re: Ginger&Piss #4 by ___, Andrea Wiarda will read The Pencil Sharpener by Roxana Rosenthal, Chris Evans will read Doing Time by Mads-Egil Petersen – Interluded by – Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons’ intern – Sophie de Seriere reciting The Magic of The Assistant I, II & III by The Great Illusionist.

But the fun doesn’t stop there!

One week later on Friday 31 May at 7 pm, we invite you to join us for the launch of Octopus of Offshoots, a Werkplaats Typografie publication edited by the custodians of Speelplaats year 19 – Adriaan Van Leuven and Oliver Boulton. Together they proposed a way of working through imitation. Imitation, not so much in the aspect of ‘copying’, but in the idea of chewing, digesting and regurgitating an existing thing. The outcome of these exercises that took place at WT throughout 2018 will be presented along with new contributions to the publication: a series of readings written or composed by Adriaan Van Leuven, Line Gry Hørup, Mariana Lobão, Oliver Boulton, Robert Milne and Tabea Nixdorff.

Delta Mityba
Dinners on 15, 16 and 17 May, 6.30–9pm
Hazenstraat 28
1016 SR, Amsterdam

When Gordon-Matta Clark approached Carol Goodden during her flower party in the spring of 1971 – where both the guests and the food came dressed in flowers – and suggested they start a restaurant she answered “OK” and FOOD was born. FOOD became famous not only because of the extremely good cuisine, introduced through its “Guest Chef Days”, it also became famous because it was the place where all the – now infamous – SOHO artists would meet and hang out.

Considering this, the similarities between FOOD and Delta Mityba aren’t too far apart. Like FOOD, Delta Mityba is a place where when you step in you are likely to run into a kindred spirit. Its founder, Robertas Narkus, fondly refers to the space as an “Artist Daycare Center.” The restaurant is located in a former Soviet canteen as a subset of the independent not-for-profit artspace Autarkia (also run by Narkus). As a space, it is an experiment of social engineering set up with the intention to create a model that would prove to be economically self-supporting, ringing true to its own name.

It’s a curious place where the practical constraints of nourishing bleed into artistic nurturing. Something that is not in the least absent from the many delicious dishes created by the chef Jonas Palenkas, who, among other things, serves Lithuanian interpretations of East Asian dishes – exclusively with seasonal products. The flavours this cheff curiously imagines come extremely close to the real thing and simultaneously are refreshing experimental reinventions of those cited flavours.

But Delta Mityba is more than a restaurant. It’s one of those places you normally only read about long after it has disappeared. It’s a social nook where there is time for new ideas to grow and take shape…made visible in the dishes, the handcrafted plates, the self-made and/or collected furniture, the designed lamps, the graphics and the artworks temporarily “stored” on their walls.

We will try to bring the essence of this fascinating corner of the earth a little bit closer and invite you to come to dinner on May 15, 16 or 17, daily from 6.30 until 9pm.

Reservations aren’t a necessity, but can be made by calling +31 657 92 76 81. For more information, prices and the menu please visit our website.

This marks the third episode in our attempt to occasionally turn into a restaurant and serve you both historical and contemporary delights (and dishes) by artists and collectives that have mediated their practices through the dinner, the restaurant, the produce. The first and second dinners in this series were, respectively, On a Ship by Grace Schwindt, and Riccetario Imaginato by Leone Contini.

You’re in a derelict wharf building. You lie outstretched on a balding lawn. You’re in a world of language and numbers and grids. You’re treading across a layer of unbroken snow. You’re on an escalator moving upward through a glass chute. You enter an empty courtroom. You arrive at a door. Your eyes open onto soft pink walls in a dimly lit bathroom barely larger than a coat closet. You remove all items from your pockets. You put your money in the slot.

Join us at POTTS this Friday, April 12 at *7PM sharp* for the launch of Second Thoughts: Selected Writings, an epic paperback compiling ten years’ of collected re-re-rewrites by Angie Keefer.

The author will be present, along with special guest, artist and renowned hypnotist Marcos Lutyens, who will perform a group hypnosis based on scripts originally composed by Keefer for The Hypnotic Show – an eyes-shut exhibition created by Lutyens and Raimundas Malašauskas – and republished in this new volume.

Refreshments will be served.

Second Thoughts: Selected Writings (544 pages) is designed by Scott Ponik and co-published by Plug In ICA. It follows Kunstverein’s earlier publication, Paper Exhibition: Selected Writings by Raimundas Malašauskas, as the second in a series of books featuring the work of one extraordinary author whose writing has never before been collected in a dedicated, single object. From Friday onward the book can also be ordered worldwide via Idea Books. €25 is its normal price, $20 at the launch!

^Angie Keefer is an artist and writer who lives in rural upstate New York. Lately, she makes desk visits at the Werkplaats Typografie and leads a seminar on artificial intelligence at the Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam. You can find out more about her exhibition history, her looks, her many and varied professional accolades, and her untimely demise on the internet.

^Marcos Lutyens’s practice centers on the investigation of consciousness to engage at the mental as well as at the physical level. Investigations have included consciousness research with social groups such as the third-gender Muxhe, Raeilians, synaesthetes, border migrants, space engineers, and urban designers. Marcos has exhibited internationally in numerous museums, galleries, and biennials, including the Guggenheim Museum, New York (2017); The Armory, New York (2017); and dOCUMENTA(13), Kassel (2012). Recently his work has been included in the 33rd Bienal de São Paulo and the Havana Biennial (2019).

POTTS
2130 VALLEY BLVD
ALHAMBRA, CA 91803
Los Angeles
Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) Members, Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunst, and Ammodo Fonds for their continued support of our program. We also wish to thank Werkplaats Typografie and POTTS for co-hosting this unique event.

Kunstverein goes wild at Studium Generale
Wednesday 27 March 2019
takeawalkonthewildside.rietveldacademie.nl/page/conference

• Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
  Museumplein 10
  1071 DJ Amsterdam

he’s reading The Cut, on Deciem CEO Brandon Truaxe’s psychotic breakdowns posted live on his Instagram feed just days before his passing and in the next browser has New York’s Sex Diaries open. But that’s not all, she’s also looking for corrective bikinis, new glasses and a not too boutiquish Spanish hotel, a cheap flight to Dubai, where she can get her new face cleanser, cheaper and at How To Get The Most Out Of Your Next Coaching Session. She’s got Nora Turato’s script the good, the bad and the viscose open and is switching back and forth between it and her browsers…. About halfway into the script of she reads:

she prefers thank you over sorry.

She stops all searches there.

Imagine that. Consistently choosing thank you instead of using sorry – what would it entail? She promises herself to contemplate that later while she pulls out Bret Easton Ellis’s novel Glamorama from her shelves, lays it on her glass desk and then decides to google it instead of go through the actual book. And even though she has to admit that her bedside table now holds very different literature (The Seven Spiritual Laws Of Success by Deepak Chopra, The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey, 21 Lessons For The 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari), she thinks about Victor, poor Victor who finds himself in the quake of his hazardous media-centred life unable to stop the rush of the transitory where pseudo-famous looks and acts the same as famous. And maybe that’s the difference between 1998 and 2019: there IS no difference anymore between pseudo and non-pseudo, there is no need for capitulation. We can swim through it. To speak with Harari: we’re beyond the ‘global stories’ we’re in the ‘Trump moment’ hand in hand with the ‘Brexit period’.
But still….
She says:
Take a deep breath.

Take the day as a remedy, a retreat, a parachute drop out of this frippery and these pseudo-fame trappings. Take this day as a day of experiences, involvements, encounters, occurrences, friendship, digital avoidances, first person accounts, parallel perceptions, alternative languages and song. ‘In waves and ribbons, and transitions, accompanied by silences and lights. A stroll’ with Alice Chauchat and Raimundas Malašauskas. Listening to time travel with Rosalind Nashashibi. Encountering ‘a misdirected weeping angel within a close proximity communication method’ hosted by Austin Redman with Darío Dezfuli and Heleen Mineur. Dancing, swaying and being involved in the occasion of Isabel Lewis. Topped emotionally with a ballad sung to you by Mark Buckeridge.

• Studium Generale Rietveld Academie this year takes place at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam on 27 until 30 March between 10 am and 5 pm. Entrance to the event is € 3,– (excl. museum entrance), Rietveld students and KV Members are admitted for free.
  Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst and Ammodo for their support.

Club Night: Beyond the Desert, Do Ghosts Wither?

With Lucrecia Dalt, Love-Songs & Mitko Mitkov, Tintin Patrone & Orpheu de Jong
Invited by Phuong-Dan

20 March, 9 pm
at Cinetol
Tolstraat 182
1074VM Amsterdam

For this third edition of our monthly Club Night Hamburg based cultural anthropologist and DJ Phuong-Dan has selected a number of artists that through their practice will contemplate our (eurocentric) fascination for the foreign and explore both our glorification as well as our prejudices for the other, the unknown. The evening is a critical inquiry of our exotizing habits, of which the creation of stereotypes is one, but it is also an acknowledgment and acceptance of the foreign as a source of artistic inspiration. This ambivalence is approached in a diverse, playful way through; the musical contribution by Lucrecia Dalt, Orpheu de Jong, the band Love-Songs, a reading by Mitko Mitkov and an installation by Tintin Patrone.

These contributions do not want to provide an answer, but rather offer an illustration of how we can reflect critically, poetically and sometimes slightly dark humoured on our shared histories, routines and habits. Submerge yourself in a work made especially for this event by Tintin Patrone based on the popular Taiwanese Broadway musical from 2014 called ‘Fort Zeelandia’ depicting the Dutch presence in Taiwan, followed by a live performance of Lucrecia Dalt on the subject of Terra Nullius (No Man’s Land). After, Love-Songs will play a single one song titled Inselbegabung (Savant Syndrome) dealing with the phenomenon of someones extreme talent, in specifically one thing. Simultaneously, Mitko Mitkov will let us be part of his subjective imaginations of speculative islands. The evening will conclude with a listening set by Orpheu de Jong who will explore the topic by searching through his own collection of so-called Library Music – a genre which often categorizes music by continent, country or region and in doing so emphasizes the western construction and reduction of the faraway.

Phuong-Dan is a DJ based in Hamburg, Germany. For over a decade now he is both resident and host at legendary St. Pauli underground venue Golden Pudel Club. In addition, he works on a project-specific basis amongst others as a screenwriter, photographer and music curator.

Lucrecia Dalt dove into music full–time after working as a civil engineer in Colombia. Her pursuit of avant–garde sound brought her to Spain and then to Germany, where she currently resides. While highly technical, Dalt has always balanced the sharp mind of a methodical thinker with the restless heart of a passionate artist, gradually seeking a way to create handcrafted mental states through sound, maintaining a quantity of emotionality, merging accessible, melody with abstract structures, handcrafted effects and sampling. Her recent work develops around the ideas of repositioning fiction, time perception, scale, telluric effect, repetition, vocoding and sound dynamics.

TinTin Patrone is a German-Filipino multi-disiplinary artist who has worked as a composer, musician, actress, film and music producer, painter, performance artist and author. The connections between music, art, sound and experimental gesture is the general field TinTin Patrone is interested in. One focus of her creations lies on the visual elements of music, the tension between conceptual ideas and physical existence and how we relate to music individually and as a society. Her performances and installations include elements from musical Concept-Art, Fluxus and Social practice. Another important inspiration that informs her artistic practice is the culture of associations and clubs; she often performs with her orchestra or cooperates with other artists and collectives.

Love-Songs are Thomas Korf, Manuel Chittka and Sebastian Kokus. The trio has developed its own musical twist over the past few years. Different variations of Kraut music becoming an amalgamation of the heritage of German avant-garde pop music. Influences of Dub, Wave and Cosmic Music are obvious but rudimentary. The development of a new (musical) language is the primus of their work and finds a temporary climax on the recently released ‘Inselbegabung EP’ on Kame House Records.

Mitko Mitkov is a writer and publisher who lives and works in Hamburg. He is active in the fields of art and culture, initiating various projects mostly through his platform One%ofOne (oneofone-verlag.com).

Orpheu de Jong

Taking real pride and joy in unearthing and sharing his usually musical treats, Orpheu The Wizard is musically curious and invites his audiences to be so too. As versatile as he is eclectic, you are as likely to be floating in outer space one moment as you are rooted to a beat the next. Orpheu is a celebrated DJ known for the breadth and depth of his taste and the passion with which he plays. He is also the co-founder of Red Light Radio and the in house designer for Dekmantel.

Kunstverein thanks it (Gold)members for their continued support to our program. Together with Cinetol we also wish to thank Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, Stadsdeel Amsterdam Zuidoost and Volkshotel for their support to the Club Nights. A special thank you for this event goes out to the Goethe-Institut, Amsterdam and RE:VIVE, an initiative by Nederlands Instituut voor Beeld en Geluid.

2 notebooks
ca. 250 recipes
1 World War
1 prisoner of war and great-uncle, Giosué Fiorentino
1 artist and great-nephew, Leone Contini
1 keeper/transcriber and niece, Annarita Caputo
2 Kunstvereins, Amsterdam and Milano
1 graphic designer, Marc Hollenstein
1 launch

Please join us on February 28 at 7.30 pm for the launch of Kunstverein’s most recent publication, Riccetario Imaginato (The Imaginary Cookbook). The launch will be held at Mangiassai (Ruyschstraat 42, Amsterdam) and is accompanied by a 3 course dinner with custom wines. Places are limited, so please book your seat in advance via office@kunstverein.nl.

Riccetario Imaginato contains 250 regional Italian recipes drawn from two small handwritten notebooks, marked “B98” and “Ricettario Culinare n. 2” (“Culinary recipe book no. 2”). These notebooks once belonged to Giosué Fiorentino, and were compiled by him and other Italian war prisoners in a German prison camp. They had been brought there after having been captured by the Austro-Hungarian and German armies during the 12th, and last, Battle of the Isonzo (also known as the Battle of Caporetto or rather, the most disastrous defeat in Italian military history). Writing down these recipes and discussing the right way to prepare certain dishes became a survival strategy for this group of men who were succumb by hunger.
   It is the first time that the recipes from the notebooks have been published in both Italian and English, alongside the reproductions of the original pages of the notebooks.

   Simultaneously this book marks the end of a number of imaginary dinners organised by Kunstverein Milano and Amsterdam – with real food – that took place at several locations and were orchestrated, commented on, and hosted by the great-nephew of Giosué Fiorentino, Italian artist Leone Contini. This dinner and launch will be the final chapter.

The dinner includes a starter, a main and a dessert, 3 glasses of wine, coffee or tea and… a free book!

Price: €45 for members / €55 for non members.

Kunstverein wishes to thank our (Gold) members, Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunst (AFK) and Ammodo. A special thank you goes out to Stadsdeel Oost for their support to this project!

Zapp Magazine Club Night with Kathe Burkhart, Sean Dower, Karl Holmqvist, Annika Ström stand-in and Cosy Camping.

20 February, 9 pm
at Cinetol
Tolstraat 182
1074VM Amsterdam

€6 (€4 for Kunstverein members and neighbours of Cinetol)

When was the last time you found yourself in a space where the ceiling was just a little bit too low, the music a little too loud, the drinks warm and everyone smoking, singing along to ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ between breaths… Without wanting to bring out too much of the nostalgia, we would like you to join us for the second Club Night* hosted by Kunstverein, at Cinetol.

This time the event is centered around Zapp Magazine, a (initially) quarterly magazine on VHS videotape which allowed you to watch exhibitions from the comfort of your own couch. The parts you didn’t like you could fast-forward through, the ones you did you could watch on endless repeat. It was an initiative by Corinne Groot, Jack Jaeger, Arnold Mosselman and Rob van de Ven. With the help of correspondents from all over the world Zapp had eyes and ears everywhere and covered exhibitions, performances and… afterparties!

While you can binge-watch all the original tapes in the exhibition featuring the full Zapp Magazine archive at Kunstverein until March 16, we invite you to experience the performative work of a few artists featured in the video tapes, live on stage during our second Club Night at Cinetol on February 20.

With Kathe Burkhart (Zapp #0 &1) reading from xx, Sean Dower (Zapp # 3 & 4) introducing a new musique concrète composition titled 331/2, a performance by Karl Holmqvist (Zapp #3 & 4), a tentative appearance by Aernout Mik (Zapp #6 & 9), and a stand-in performance by xx of Annika Ström hit ‘I Don’t Know What to Sing’ guided by casio-piano. Cosy Camping will provide tunes before and after.

During the event we will also screen extra footage from the Zapp Magazine archive, including footage from Lothar Hempel’s Lotusclub, selected by Rob van de Ven en Corinne Groot to set the scene.

*Club Nights is a series of events in which we focus on artists who as well have a ‘lesser known’ musical practice, or vice versa, and invite them to share their work for one night in the small club setting of Cinetol.

Cinetol and Kunstverein wish to thank Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunst (AFK) and Stadsdeel Zuid for their support to this program.

Zapp Magazine
26 January – 16 March 2019
Opening: 26 January, 7–8 pm (following the members only preview starting at 6 pm)

The New Body by Astrit Ismaili
8–15 December 2018
Opening: 7 December 2018

On Friday December 7, Astrit Ismaili will present their performance The New Body at Kunstverein. For The New Body, Ismaili designed a wearable musical instrument that challenges the biological body’s physical and mental capacities by adding to and changing natural (given) traits. The New Body underlines their ongoing engagement into body and gender politics, and their exploration of the human voice in relation to physical movement.

The performance starts at 7 pm sharp, but you can join us for a glass of Glühwein in front of our space from 6.30 pm. In the week following the performance, a ghostly hologram of The New Body will inhabit Kunstverein (on view during regular opening hours until December 15).

This performance has been made possible with the help of Mondriaan Fonds, LambdaLambdaLambda, Digital Spring, Salts, and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

Yesterday I heard someone speak on a podcast about Roger Ailes, the sinister strategist behind the success of Fox News (and the comeback of Richard Nixon), saying that Ailes’ insight was that if you provide them with “emotion, drama, and conflict,” the “people” will be yours: create non-stop emotion, drama, and conflict, and the society will replicate your presence through obsessive fixation, whether as supporters or detractors. In this sense, I’ve surely done my part to perpetuate the current insanity. And I think the play that’s in the back of the book is about this.

– Angie Keefer, in an email sent to Kunstverein on November 7, 2018.

Second Thoughts by Angie Keefer
25 November, between 3–5 pm

Kunstverein Publishing is happy to announce a new book by Angie Keefer titled Second Thoughts: Selected Writings 2008–2018. This book follows up on Kunstverein’s earlier publication Paper Exhibition: Selected Writings by Raimundas Malašauskas and embodies the second chapter in a series of publications that focus on bringing together the writings of one extraordinary author whose work has never before been collected in a dedicated single object. During the event we will be staging What Is What – a roundtable discussion among four “characters”; an artist, a professor, a political scientist, and a marketing executive (played by Mark Buckeridge, Annie Goodner, Gerardo Madera, and Angie Keefer), and a dramatic side character (played by Richard John Jones). This reading will start at 3.30 pm.

Second Thoughts: Selected Writings 2008–2018 is (now, at this very moment) being designed by Scott Ponik and, although the book will not be present at the time of the event, its wonderful author will.

Mr. Peanut
Opening 13 October, 6–8 pm
On view until 1 December
I would like to take this opportunity to endorse the candidacy of Mr. Peanut for mayor of Vancouver. Mr. Peanut is running on the art platform, and art is the creation of illusion. Since the inexorable logic of reality has created nothing but insolvable problems, it is now time for illusion to take over. And there can only be one illogical candidate – Mr. Peanut.
– William S. Burroughs

Mr. Peanut… Mr. Peanut…. we know what you’re thinking: not another white man in a peanut suit.

But it’s 1974.

(Again)

And he’s running for mayor.

And, imagine. Really. Close your eyes and picture it. He doesn’t speak, he taps, he poses, he passes.

2,684 people vote for the big tap dancing peanut.

What does this say about politics, then?

And – tell us honestly – when, just now, you closed your eyes, and you saw him not in black and white, but full color, with his cane and his top hat, could you imagine yourself NOW, today, tomorrow, going into that voting booth and with your big red pencil ticking off the box next to the name “Mr. Peanut”?

Tell us.

Mr. Peanut… Not just another nut in politics.

“Borderline Case” photo Morris/Trasov Archive

Vincent Trasov became Mr. Peanut in 1971. It all started when he was making drawings of Mr. Peanut tap dancing for a stop motion film for the cultural platform Intermedia, and, finding the task tedious, decided to make a life-sized costume instead, one in which he could simply tap dance himself, animating the real thing and skirting the drawing process. The name Mr. Peanut stuck.

He was in good company. Like many artists in Vancouver connected with the then recently founded art institution, The Western Front (founded in 1973 and ongoing), working with an alias became the norm. Michael Morris took on “Marcel Dot”, Glenn Lewis, “Flakey Rosehip”, Anna Banana became “Anna Banana”, Eric Metcalfe & Kate Craig were “Dr. & Lady Brute”, A.A. Bronson, Felix Partz & Jorge Zontal became “General Idea” and Chip Lord & Hudson Marquez from San Francisco were “Ant Farm”.

For many of these figures collaboration is crucial. Collaboration and a determined interest in “finding [their] own audiences of like-minded individuals.” This quest was made concrete in 1969 when Trasov and artist Michael Morris developed a decentralized artist network that aimed to connect and exchange with contemporaries, mainly in Canada and the US. They called it Image Bank. People like Ray Johnson, William S. Burroughs and Robert Filiou were inspirational and also supportive – in fact the name “Image Bank” was referenced from William S. Burroughs’ novel “Nova Express” (1964).

In a world serviced relentlessly through social media, Image Bank and Mr. Peanut’s urgency persists. Functioning as practices and methodologies, they remind us of how vital it is to continue to question and circumvent the existing establishments of both art and political institutions.

The exhibition Mr. Peanut traces the history of Trasov’s revolutionary alias and includes historical documents, publications, correspondence, video footage as well as more recent drawings of Mr. Peanut and paintings by Vincent Trasov. A major retrospective on Image Bank will follow in the summer of 2019 at Kunst-Werke in Berlin.

Mr. Peanut has been made possible by the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia and the Morris/Trasov Archive. Kunstverein wishes to thank the Belkin and their fantastic team, Scott Watson, Michael Morris and Vincent Trasov.

C’était un rendez-vous
22 September, 9 pm
at Cinetol
Tolstraat 182
1074VM Amsterdam

€6 (€4 for Kunstverein members and neighbours of Cinetol)

From this autumn onward Kunstverein will set up five multidisciplinary evenings at Cinetol. The evenings will always explore a different intersection between art and music. This first evening we dedicate to C’était un rendez-vous, a short film by Claude Lelouch from 1976 that depicts one crazy, nearly nine-minute long (or short) ride through Paris. To shoot the film Lelouch mounted a camera on his Mercedes-Benz and drove like a mad man through the streets of Paris. In the beginning of the film the director notifies the audience that for this film “nothing was accelerated and no stunts were pulled” yet what he fails to mention is that, because he was unhappy with the sound of his own engine, Lelouch edited the engine sound of a Ferrari on top of his images.

Sound is quite often a subordinate to the viewing experience in most films, but a lot changes to that viewing experience when the score changes drastically. At the invitation of curator Yana Foque, No Age (Drag City), Jan Matthe (Für Dich Verlag) and Smari Runar Robertsson addressed this topic specifically. Each band made their own unique soundtrack for C’était un rendez-vous, which will be shown three times on the evening, each time with a different score.

No Age
No Age is an American noise-pop band from Los Angeles founded in 2006 consisting of guitarist Randy Randall and drummer/vocalist Dean Spunt. The band is closely linked to the so-called Smell scene based around the similarly called club where they provided bookings. The duo acts as conductors, shamans, catapults, roadies on record and in live situations, delivering the people reductive rock n roll inspired by bursts of energy. Cosmic radiation amplification, cancerous tunes, infectious feelings, overwhelming joy. Active since 2006 until now, and possibly until forever.

noage.bandcamp.com

Jan Matthé, together with Stacks
Jan Matthé from Antwerp is mostly known for his publications and mixtapes, which he releases as Für Dich Verlag. Lesser known are his beautiful synth compositions among which is “Musik Für Grottekinder 1 +2”, a tribute to Soothing sounds for babies made on the occasion of the birth of his niece. Together with his brother Sis he makes electronic pop music as Stacks. Of this soon the third album will be ready.

soundcloud.com/risikopress
youtube.com/watch

Smari Runar Robertsson
Smári Róbertsson (Iceland, 1992) is a multidisciplinary artist and musician from Amsterdam. In his work he examines location-specific phenomena and topographical characteristics, which he translates into written works, sound compositions and site-specific installations. Through his works we encounter objects that have not only been formed by history, but which owe their autonomy and existence to the incidental processes that occur in the background of our own lives. Together with Masaki Komoto he also forms the musical duo Mr. Music.

soundcloud.com/muldurmuldur
soundcloud.com/mrmusicinc
Cinetol and Kunstverein wish to thank Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunst (AFK) and Stadsdeel Zuid for their support to this program.

Food, honestly, sometimes is the reason why we make it out of bed. We’ve finally taken the step into making this a more structural part of our program and turned our fascination into a proper series. Throughout the coming year, Kunstverein will occasionally turn into a restaurant overnight, serving you both historical and contemporary delights (and dishes) by artists and collectives that have mediated their practices through the dinner, the restaurant, the produce… For the first edition in the series we are proud to present On a Ship by Grace Schwindt, co-produced by perform doc*.

The dinner and performance will take place at Kunstverein on Friday 14 and Saturday 15 September at 8pm on both evenings. The entrance will be € 40, this will include a three course meal with customary wines. As there are only 15 seats available per evening, please make a reservation via office@kunstverein.nl before Wednesday 12 September.

On a Ship is a new composition which interweaves live interventions with text, voice, sculptures and costumes, created by Schwindt and performed by opera singer Francesca Pusceddu, with several dishes of food loved and chosen by the artist and prepared by culinary talent Nick Jaël Bruynen. In the course of the evening the work examines the relationship between language and the physical, language and the emotional, and explores what can happen if language and the voice are separated from each other at first, and then joined again.

Grace Schwindt (b. 1979, Germany) works not only across different themes and stories but also across different media. All of her works are connected by topics such as the fragility of the body, the importance of objects in the construction of memory and history, and the influence of capitalism on society. In 2018 Grace Schwindt will have a solo exhibition at Rozenstraat – a rose is a rose is a rose in Amsterdam. Her performance Opera and Steel, which premiered at the Kaaitheater in Brussels last year, was part of the Something Raw festival in Amsterdam in March this year.

*perform doc supports performing artists by documenting their artworks, proposing a tailored and open manner for the art world to deal with performances when exhibiting, re-enacting or including them in their collection, as well as when having documentation on those works in archive centers after the completion of the live act of a performance. To keep the project close to the liveliness of performance, we program performances by the artists who will take part in this initiative. perform doc* is supported by AFK and would like to thank Rozenstraat – a rose is a rose is a rose for their support to this evening.

Announcing……the winner of our first yearly Summer Residency: Dean Allen Spunt (No Age).

For three nights in August, Spunt will bring Succession Sounds, a program he has been organizing in a former drag club located in the San Fernando Valley (LA), to Amsterdam. On August 15, 22 and 29, from 8 until 11pm, the space will become the melting point for people who make music, who play music, who show films, make objects, who drink or don’t, who are curious experimenters and flaneurs, to come together for maximum enjoyment and confusion. With performances and work by:

Nicole Antonia-Spangola
Negashi Armada
EM
Sam Gordon
Matthew Clifford Green
Kate Hall
Bert Huygue
Dirar Kalash
Miaux
NM Studio
Oomboi Lauw
Zane Reynolds
Jacob Robichaux
Jess Scott
Suzanne Kraft
Martine Syms

The show can be visited on performance nights or by appointment only. The entrance fee for each performance night will be €5, to be paid at the door. Space is limited so we advise you to join us right from the start.

Kunstverein wishes it’s (gold)members, AFK and Ammodo for their ongoing support. Additionally we would also like give special thanks to Oedipus Brewing for their aid to this project.

D
Κι αν στο έλεγα στη γλώσσα μου
Θα έπρεπε να κινηθείς στους μύες μου
Θα καλούσες εκεί που οι μύες μου σε θυμούνται
Μα στην δικιά σου, καμιά μνήμη δεν μένει

I
I’m afraid I forgot how to write, I forgot the fluidity of the rhythms of language. I’m afraid I even forgot how to spell the words and how to make them sound as consistent beings. It takes me seven minutes and one cigarette to write down three sentences. It takes one full stop. It takes one pause, one back and one play to start writing again.

During the course of the DIAL +31 203 313 203 show, featuring one of the keystone works by the visionary poet, activist, and artist John Giorno, Kunstverein is hosting a series of special evenings dubbed 3 Evenings on a Revolving Stage. This title is borrowed from a series of performance nights by the same name, organised by Jean Depuy at the Judson Church in New York in 1976, and lifts up a corner of what will be going on behind the curtain of Kunstverein’s backspace.

On June 7 from 8pm we give the floor to Danae Io and Ioanna Gerakidi who will be performing In The Current Of The Situation, a composition of oral stories and eroto-historiographies tracing the mnemonic representations of unrequited sentiments of eros, love, lust and desire. This email correspondence project is fragile, vulnerable, proximate, and intimate.

Again, the evening will be intersected with tracks from the Dial-A-Poem Records that criss-cross with the performance.

Serving: Drinks from the Lost in the Thrill of it All Bar, stocked with the favourite drinks of Bukowski, Burroughs, and Sexton.

As a part of the DIAL +31 203 313 203 show, focussing on the Dial-A-Poem service line set up by the activist and poet John Giorno in the late sixties, we are hosting a special radio show tonight between 9 and 10 pm on Redlight Radio. This broadcast will be hosted by Yana Foqué (curator at Kunstverein) and Jo Sandow (co-host Affiliated Station), and gives you the chance to listen to the Dial-A-Poem Poets from the comfort of your own home.
The show will feature the beatiful voices of:

Kathy Acker,
Laurie Anderson,
John Ashbery,
Imamu Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones),
Charles Bukowski,
William S. Burroughs,
David Byrne,
John Cage,
Nick Cave,
Diane Di Prima,
Ed Dorn,
Allen Ginsberg,
John Giorno,
Denise Levertov,
Frank O’Hara,
Charles Olson,
Patti Smith,
Diane Wakoski,

and many others featured on:
Disconnected,
Biting Off The Tongue Of A Corpse,
William S. Burroughs / John Giorno,
Totally Corrupt (The Dial-A-Poem Poets),
Big Ego,
Sugar, Alcohol, & Meat,
You’re The Guy I Want To Share My Money With,
Glenn Branca / John Giorno ‎– Who You Staring At?,
Life Is A Killer,
One World Poetry: Live From Amsterdam,
Lenny Kaye Connection ‎– I’ve Got A Right,
Better An Old Demon Than A New God,
A Diamond Hidden In The Mouth Of A Corpse,
Smack My Crack,
and Like A Girl, I Want You To Keep Coming.

Tune in!

As part of the DIAL +31 203 313 203 show, featuring the Dial-A-Poem project by the visionary poet and activist John Giorno, Kunstverein is hosting a series of open mic events dubbed 3 Evenings on a Revolving Stage. On May 24, June 7 and June 16 we invite everyone to join us and our special guests to read some poetry. This could be a horoscope, a message you received from a friend, the lyrics to a polular song,… in short, it can be whatever you consider poetry to be but, to level the ground, we ask you to only come to these events if you are willing to rise to the occasion.

Among the crowd at the first event on May 24, starting at 8pm, are Mia You (NL/US), Line-Gry Hørup (DK) and Andrea di Serego Alighieri (IT). You will present one of her newest poems to us, Hørup will introduce her publication on the controversial poet Rudolf Broby-Johansen and the never before translated work ‘Blod’, while di Serego Alighieri will lead us through the work of Charles Olson and the poetry of Denise Levertov, to a reading of an unpublished prose poem by Lyn Hejinian.

The evening will be intersected with tracks from the Dial-A-Poem Records and drinks to calm the nerves.

Kunstverein is proud to share with you a complete set of twenty Dial-A-Poem records, published by Giorno Poetry Systems (GPS). We invite you to come and listen to them at the opening of the show DIAL +31 203 313 203 on Saturday 21 April, between 6 and 8pm.

“I certainly won’t curl up in a chair with a book of poetry.” — John Giorno

Dial-A-Poem was a technologically revolutionary poetry service thought up in the late 1960s by artist, activist and poet John Giorno. Inspired by a late night conversation with his friend William S. Burroughs and the recent avant-garde methodologies of (pop) artists like Andy Warhol, Merce Cunningham and John Cage, Giorno created a new model for the distribution of poetry – one that would bring poetry to a larger audience, in a manner that steered away from fatigued traditions of formal readings (a dynamic that most often placed the poet on a page and the audience in a library).

Through his phone service callers would be connected to a web of 12 automatic answering machines and be randomly serenaded by the voices of over 70 artists, including Kathy Acker, Nick Cave, Patti Smith and Charles Bukowski. The selection of poems would change daily and often they would advocate urgent social issue of the time such as the Vietnam War, the Aids Crisis and the sexual revolution. When the phone lines got cut, Giorno moved on to distributing their poetry on vinyl. Under the GPS label he released albums regularly until the late 1980s. Many of these included early recordings by later prominent performers such as Laurie Anderson and Philip Glass as well as unique performances by Frank Zappa, Diamanda Galás, Allen Ginsberg, John Cage and many more.

It’s these albums we now hold in our collection and from April 21 until June 16 we welcome you to come and listen to them on a custom-made carpet designed by Physical Culture (Julie Héneault, Margaux Parillaud, Ursula Marcussen and Line-Gry Hørup).

During the course of the exhibition we will be hosting 3 Evenings on a Revolving Stage*. Three special events where readings will be hosted and shared. In analogy to the projects and with the purpose of distributing the show to as broad an audience as possible, making use of the various mediums at hand, a special radio show will be aired on Redlight Radio on May 28 between 9 and 10 pm. This broadcast, hosted by Yana Foqué and Jo Sandow, gives you the chance to listen to the Dial-A-Poem Poets from the comfort of your own home.

Or call us at +31 203 313 203.

* the title 3 Evenings on a Revolving Stage is borrowed from the similarly titled series of performance nights organised by Jean Depuy at the Judson Church in New York in 1976. To these evenings he invited artists that overlapped with the Dial-A-Poem Poets.

Presenting: Merchandise
#SlapIt #ProveIt #Swear #PutItOnSomething #ShowMe #kvmerch

A: Bean, I got the dankest shit on the planet it’s straight from colorado.
B: Shut the SHIBBY up bean!
A: Whoooooo!!! YEAAHHHHH! Whooooooo!
A: So I’ll meet you and then we’ll hit it.
B: Aight.
A: Yo, first lend me 20; you can hold this bike I just found.
B: DAAAAMMMMMMMNNNNNN he’s hot!
A: Bet.
B: Merch. It’s all about the merch.
A: No bet.
B: Ye.
A: First clean the car.

During the Hazenstraat Biennale, on five very special occasions Kunstverein presents its new MERCH. Join us on every Thursday in March, between 17–19h, for the launch of new piece made by Carla and Karlis, Sabo Day, Rudy Guedj, Marc Hollenstein, and Nora Turato.

This Thursday, March 1, we present the first item, a customized tote bag made by Rudy Guedj. For the occasion we offer a 20% discount on all Kunstverein books when buying a bag… Don’t miss out!

Now here’s a story.

While Joe Gibbons himself is landlocked, his exhibition Drawings from Rikers will open to the public at Kunstverein on Friday February 16, from 6–8pm (following the members only preview). And although Gibbons himself can’t join us in person for the night of the opening, we certainly hope you will.

The catalog
Available at Kunstverein is the book Drawings from Rikers edited by Maika Pollack, designed by Almog Cohen-Kashi and published by Object Relations (2017). It contains all of Gibbons’ drawings from Rikers, an extensive interview with Tony Oursler, and an introduction by former Curator of Collections at Anthology Film Archives, Andrew Lampert.

Evening screenings
Andrew Lampert has curated a selection of films by Joe Gibbons especially for Kunstverein, to be screened during the exhibition. More about location and dates will follow in a separate invitation. So keep your eyes open!

Joe Gibbons’ work has been exhibited at numerous institutions including the Museum of Modern Art in NY, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Centre Pompidou, and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, Spain. His work has been chosen for the Whitney Biennial in 1993, 2000, 2002 and 2006, and is regularly programmed at the NY Video Festival, the Rotterdam Film Festival, and the Black Maria Film and Video Festival. His films have been broadcast in Spain, France and Germany as well as on PBS. He has collaborated on performances, films and videos with artists Tony Oursler, Karen Finley, Tony Conrad, and Emily Breer.

Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst and Ammodo for their support, and sends a special thank you to the artist, Maika Pollack (Southfirst Gallery, New York), Andrew Lampert and, of course, the Friends of Joe Gibbons

We’re back, and kicking off the year with Amsterdam’s very first Artist Trading Card Fair (ATCF) happening Saturday 20 January, from 3 to 5pm. ATCF is initiated by Lotte Schröder, after having had a conversation with Anna Banana – whose extensive collection of Trading Cards is currently on view at Kunstverein.
Artist Trading Cards are miniature works of art created on 65 x 90 mm cardstock. They are original editions and, most importantly, self-produced. The idea, launched by Vänçi Stirnemann in April 1997 at INK.art&text (Zürich), is that you trade your cards – much like baseball cards – for others, with others.

Inspired by Anna’s collection and the simplicity and generosity of the idea, Schröder set out to make her own set of 9 cards. For the last day of Anna Banana’s exhibition, Schröder, in collaboration with Kunstverein, invited a.o. Juliaan Andeweg, Maria Barnas, Yael Davids, Constant Dullaart, Uta Eisenreich, Peggy Frank, Jennifer Tee, Sara van der Heide, David Jablonowski, Germaine Kruip, Laura Pappa, Florian and Michael Quistrebert, Ola Vasiljeva, Gabriel Lester, Freek Wambacq, Felicia von Zweigbergk, Maria Pask, Natalia Rebelo, Minne Kersten, Rudy Guedj, Nerijus Rimkus and Johannes Schwartz to participating in this ATC moment.

As a visitor you are invited to come take a look at the different sets-of-nine, that will be traded off and to come celebrate the new year.

Dear People:

The following material is intended to help you to increase the quality of your life; some are funny, some are serious, some are tasteless, some are ridiculous, but they are, each in their way, helpful.

If you do not wish to continue to receive this stuff, too bad. Comments welcome, nevertheless. Please feel free to forward this.

Until then,
Seth.

The Joke Book: Collected by Seth Sieglaub, p. 13

Come test your smiles and Ha-Has, and join us for holiday drinks and jokes on Friday 15 December between 5 and 7 pm, for the official launch of The Joke Book: collected by Seth Siegelaub. The amazing (and funny) Marja Bloem will give an introduction to the publication.

The Joke Book is the first printed edition of the complete jokes & messages file that was found on Seth Siegelaub’s computer by his partner Marja Bloem. It contains jokes, quotes and pieces of advice, that Seth Siegelaub collected since 1999 and regularly redistributed via email amongst his friends.

With contributions by: Alex Alberto, John Baldessari, Marja Bloem, Myrna Bloom, Martin Browne, Alan Kennedy, David Kunzle, Joel Miller, Loren Miller, Kay Robertson, Laurent Sauerwein, Seth Siegelaub, Joan Simon, Kira Simon-Kennedy, Peter Sinclair, Steven Wright; and an introduction by Huan Hsu (written after a long conversation with Marja Bloem).

After four days of hard networking and business card exchanging, join us on Sunday 26 November at 4 pm, for the presentation of the almost entirely sold out:

Oracles. Artists’ Calling Cards
Edited by Pierre Leguillon and Barbara Fédier

Serving: Poor Man’s Champagne

Artist Pierre Leguillon and independent curator Carrie Pilto will present the book and discuss the phenomenon of calling cards, which lay the foundations for a micro-history of social networks formed before the advent of Facebook.

This event is organized by Temporary Gallery. Centre for contemporary Art e.V., Cologne and hosted by Kunstverein.

Oracles presents 123 calling cards of artists from the 18th century to the present day, facsimiled and inserted into the publication. Oracles follows the history of the calling card, the social context in which it was produced, and related historical narratives.

The carded artists include:
Absalon, Anni and Josef Albers, John Armleder, Iain Baxter, Larry Bell, Joseph Beuys, Joseph Binder, Max Bill, Pierrette Bloch, Rosa Bonheur, Irma Boom, Aglaüs Bouvenne, Constantin Brancusi, Marcel Broodthaers, Antonio Canova, Caran d’Ache, A.M. Cassandre, Chenue malletier, Iris Clert, Claude Closky, Le Corbusier, Silvie Défraoui, Sonia Delaunay, Fortunato Depero, Marcel Duchamp, A.R. Dunton, Céline Duval, Nathalie Du Pasquier, Yan Duyvendak, Daniel Eatock, Edward Fella, Sylvie Fleury, Schwestern Flöge, Piero Fornasetti, Hans Frank, Lene Frank, Emile Gallé, General Idea, Dan Graham, Wolfgang von Gœthe, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Walter Gropius, Guerrilla Girls, Hector Guimard, Friedrich Haeffcke, Raymond Hains, Keith Haring, Raoul Hausmann, John Heartfield, Anton Herrgesell, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Ray Johnson, Ana Jotta, Wassily Kandinsky, André Kertész, Martin Kippenberger, Paul Klee, Johann Adam Klein, Yves Klein, Július Koller, Joseph Kosuth, Yayoi Kusama, Carl Gotthard Langhans, Fernand Léger, Pierre Leguillon, George Maciunas, Robert Mallet-Stevens, Edouard Manet, Piero Manzoni, Christian Marclay, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Karel Martens, Annette Messager, Lucia Moholy, Piet Mondrian, Valérie Mréjen, Félix Nadar, Isamu Noguchi, The Offices of Jenny Holzer, Peter Nadin, Richard Prince and al., Yoko Ono, Claes Oldenburg, Nam June Paik, Francis Picabia, Adrian Piper, Emil Pirchan, Man Ray, Les ready made appartiennent à tout le monde®, Carl August Reinhardt, Gerrit Rietveld, Auguste Rodin, Edward Ruscha, Alexander Search, Willem Sandberg, Erik Satie, Gino Severini, Johan Gottfried Schadow, Egon Schiele, Oskar Schlemmer, Käthe Schmidt, Roman Signer, Alec Soth, Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas, Jack Smith, Hélène Smith, Harald Szeemann, Sophie Taeuber, Karel Teige, Oliviero Toscani, Theo van Doesburg, Roman Vishniac, Andy Warhol, Weegee, Neill Whistler, Heimo Zobernig, Piet Zwart, Emmy Zweybrück Prochaska

With texts by:
Samuel Adams, Damarice Amao, Daniel Baumann, Stuart Bertolotti-Bailey, Géraldine Beck, Paul Bernard, Christian Besson, Christianna Bonin, Véronique Borgeaud, Marie de Brugerolle, Garance Chabert, Kyrill Charbonnel, Yann Chateigné, Manuel Cirauqui, Chiara Costa, Caroline Coutau, Jean-Baptiste Delorme, Carla Demierre, Dakota DeVos, Corinne Diserens, Eva Fabbris, Patricia Falguières, Arthur Fink, Sophie Gayerie, Kati Gegenheimer, Mark Thomas Gibson, Nicolas Giraud, Victor Guégan, Andrea Gyorody, Nastassja Haidinger, Dean Inkster, Aurélie Jacquet, Elisabeth Jobin, Vincent Jolivet, Moritz Küng, Angela Lampe, Charlotte Laubard, Anaël Lejeune, Quentin Lannes, Pierre Leguillon, Charlotte Magnin, Nicole Marchand-Zañartu, Valérie Mavridorakis, Aurélien Mole, Michael J. Moore, Adrien Mouginot, Christiane Mühlegger, Émilie Parendeau, Ying Sze Pek, Corine Pencenat, Mathias Pfund, Fabien Pinaroli, Raphaël Pirenne, Paulo Pires do Vale, Carrie Pilto, Frans Postma, Jeanne Quéheillard, Fabienne Radi, Ivan Ristić, Vincent de Roguin, Paul-Louis Roubert, Margot Sanitas, Gilles Saussier, Elana Shapira, Klaus-Peter Speidel, Friedrich Tietjen, Rebecca Topakian, Gesine Tosin, Xiaoda Wang, Christophe Wavelet, David Zerbib, Célia Zuber

Oracles. Artists’ Calling Cards
Softcover, 320 pages, 123 color plates
20 x 26.5 cm
ISBN: 978-3-906803-16-6
Published by Edition Patrick Frey, 2017
Out of print, last three copies available at the event

To Whom It May Concern:
Anna Banana is a project that explores the historical and contemporary implications of mail art and highlights a unique approach to humour, disguise, and the democratic potential of print media and critique. The show will feature Anna Banana’s artist stamps, mailers, postcards, posters, and costumes made over a forty-five year period.

Anna Banana is a historical overview, yet an urgent and contemporary response to our current socially saturated and mediated world. It a meaningful show for Kunstverein, that continues our co-operation with significant Canadian conceptual artists (Kunstverein worked with Glenn Lewis in the past and will work with Image Bank in the near future.)

Kara Hamilton, founding director of Kunstverein Toronto, has initiated this important retrospective of Anna Banana’s long art practice.* The exhibition will travel from Toronto to Amsterdam in October.

There will be an artist walk-though and preview (members only) at 5 pm prior to the official opening on October 21st at 6 pm.

Anna Banana runs until January 13th 2018.

Sincerely,

Kunstverein, Amsterdam

*Following in the mighty footsteps of Anna Banana: 45 Years of Fooling Around with A. Banana, The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and Open Space Arts Society (2015), Pratt Institute Libraries (2016)

2016 has passed, but some of its (political) diseases still linger…
Time to get to the heart of the problem…
Time for an alternative cure…
    Please join us on September 8 and 9 for the opening of Kunstverein’s new season and the Dutch premiere of Styrmir Örn Guðmundsson’s performance What Am I Doing With My Life?

What Am I Doing With My Life? is a traveling opera, a rap show and a comic routine combined, that deals with the subjects of (alternative) medicine, general health and death. The map for this touring performance takes on the shape of a body, with each European city on its path representing a different part in need of medical assistance.
    Aid and relief is given to its Amsterdam audience by self-proclaimed Doctor, Styrmir Örn Guðmundsson, with the help of local collaborators: Indriði Arnar Ingólfsson, David Bernstein, Géraldine Longueville, Hreinn Fridfinnsson, Anat Spiegel, Thomas Myrmel and Annabelle von Girsewald (as tour manager).

●
On Friday September 8, at 7 pm the action starts with crystal tears, Mayan death flutes and lullabies performed within an architectonic intervention by Hreinn Fridfinnsson.

Serving herbal elixirs.

●●
One day later, on Saturday September 9 at 7 pm, the performance is repeated, but with a twisted end: a boom box-amplified procession, on bikes, leaves from Kunstverein and slowly crawls across Amsterdam to end at David Bernstein’s opening of Because Most of the Cosmos is Compost (Thinging Part V) at P/////AKT.

The performance on Friday is a members only event. Due to its specific context, space is limited. We advise you to arrive early on Friday and/or (on bike) Saturday.

Tabula Rasa
Smári Runar Róbertsson
21–25 June 2017
Opening: 22 June 2017, 17:00–19:00

Join us this Thursday June 22 at 5pm for the opening of Tabula Rasa by Smári Rúnar Róbertsson, as part of the Festival of Choices … This Thursday, June 22, join us for the the opening of Tabula Rasa at 5pm – as part of festival of choices – by Smári Rúnar Róbertsson … As part of festival of choices, join us for Smári Rúnar Róbertsson’s Tabula Rasa opening Thusrday June 22 at 5pm …Tabula Rasa, by Smári Rúnar Róbertsson, as part of the Festival of Choices, this Thursday at 5pm. Join us …

Tabula Rasa marks the end the start or reshuffle of Smári’s catalogue of works. During the build up of the exhibition Smári is trying to “touch the near future with a really long stick”. He is trying to grab hold of a condition that changes constantly and will keep progressing during his time spend at Kunstverein. His works are will become visual visceral metaphors for intangible things, “sweeping across your face at the speed of a second-hand. ”

The exhibition will run from Wednesday June 21 until Sunday June 22, during regular opening hours (1–6pm). The opening will take place on Thursday between 5 and 7pm.

Serving: Icelandic delight (Mamma kaupa brennivín)

Tabula Rasa is part of A Festival of Choices, Master of Fine Arts Graduation 2017, Sandberg Instituut, 21–25 June 2017, various locations throughout Amsterdam. A Festival of Choices emphasizes upon the relationship and choices made between the graduating student and the diverse range of institutions and organizations offered within the cultural landscape of Amsterdam. For more information and the full program, please check www.festivalofchoices.nl-

Please feel welcome to join us on Saturday 3 June, at 5pm for the launch of Kunstverein‘s sporadic in-house magazine Ginger&Piss. With a musical intermezzo by Smári Runar Róbertsson*
Serving: Highball

Kunstverein’s in house magazine is a cross between an academic journal and a darts club newsletter. Ginger&Piss (the name is a misquotation of Laurence Weiner) is published whenever we see fit, each issue containing a limited amount of contributions that vary in length according to the subject matter at hand. Loud and Gay where the themes of number 1 & 2, respectively; Ginger&Piss 3 is dedicated to Privacy.

The remit of Ginger&Piss is simple; to provide a platform for candid critique but at the same time allow the AUTHOR to stay hidden. The concept dictates that each contributor writes under a pseudonym; the use of pseudonyms can be considered an answer to the cowardice of the art world, albeit a somewhat hypocritical one.

*and one final installment to this Salon Hang by Nerijus Rimkus. We’re happy to announce that since our opening we have added works by the following members: Christine van Royen, Frits Bergsma, Angelo Tromp, Gijs Stork, and Maria Barnas.

Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst and Ammodo for their support.

“In 2012, I was invited to the Facebook group ‘Hey, Let’s Hang Out in Parks, etc…’ There were 31 members and a total of 2 posts – 4 days apart – in May 2012. I think I went to a BBQ because of it? – It didn’t work out that great first time around but I’d like to give it another try.”
secret handshakes,
inside jokes,
short and long term encounters,
awkward situations,
and staged social events

Please join us on Monday, May 29, at 5pm for Lieven Lahaye’s joyful start of his week long Salon-Hang-Hang-out: Hey, Let’s Hang Out in Parks, etc…

Serving: Vin des Amis

Hey, Let’s Hang Out in Parks, etc… is Lieven Lahaye’s first long term performance piece, focusing on situations and what it evokes if, for instance, “a friend visits you at work”. The series of illustrious meetups will take place in and around Kunstverein, weaving through the city – and Kunstverein’s program – a number of interventions at various locations, starting Monday May 29 at Kunstverein (Hazenstraat 28, Amsterdam).

Hey, Let’s Hang Out in Parks, etc… is open to everyone, but subscription is necessary. Kunstverein members receive priority. You can subscribe to the series by sending an e-mail to lieven@kunstverein.nl with subject line ‘hey’ to receive the program and daily updates.

Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst and Ammodo for their support.

Please join us for the book launch of Hand Reading Studies by Valentina Desideri, Friday May 19, from 5 pm onwards.

Hand Reading Studies is a collection of conversations, readings and writings that proliferated from A Studio in Hand-Reading: Charlotte Wolff, an exhibition by Valentina Desideri that took place in Kunstverein, Amsterdam from 23 May to 25 June 2015.

For A Studio in Hand-Reading: Charlotte Wolff Desideri transformed Kunstverein’s space at the Gerard Doustraat into a Studio – a place that generates knowledge through different modes of being together. Throughout the exhibition, Desideri invited participants as well as visitors to gather for readings and in study. The Studio – and its bar – were open for readings during Kunstverein’s regular opening hours and punctuated by weekly contributions to the study by the invited guests and artists.

The publication we are presenting now picks up where the project left off, bringing together a variety of materials and publications that were generated in or reverberated from the Studio, with contributions by Dr. Charlotte Wolff, Anthony Blunt, Céline Condorelli, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Jessica Warboys, Jason Dodge, Mia You, Christian Hawkey, Annick Kleizen, and Valentina Desideri.

In the framework of Salon Hang Desideri will reactivate the Studio for the duration of one afternoon. Desideri will be joined by fellow readers Mia You and Annick Kleizen to provide readings and/or experiment on possible ways of reading whatever question, object, text or crisis anyone would need a reading for. You are equally welcome to join as a reader or to pose a question.

The readings begin at 5 pm and at 7 pm the book will be launched, with readings and drinks.

A Novelistic Simulation Of An Everyday Space –
A treatise on style.

17–21 May 2017

Nathan Azhderian
David Bernstein
Hreinn Friðfinnsson
Susanna Hoikkala
Johan Jensen Kjeldsen
Richard Kostelanetz
Børge Morgensen
Jo Niemeyer
Laura Pappa & Ronald Pihlapson
Florian & Michael Quistrebert
Nicholas Riis
Karen Sargsyan
Lycke von Schantz
Bert Scholten
Ikea of Sweden
Jay Tan
Ilmari Tapiovaara
Nora Turato
Frits Vanèn
Ola Wihlborg
Geo Wyeth
Ran Zhang
Bruno Zhu

Amsterdam Art Fair
Kunsthal Koper, Huidekoperstraat 28
Around the corner from De Nederlandsche Bank

Wed May 17: preview and opening
Thurs May 18: 11–19
Fri May 19: 11–21
Sat May 20: 11–19
Sun May 21: 11–17

Please join us this Sunday 23 April, between noon and 9pm, for the third edition of Spring Performance Festival (SPF): a block party festival of performances at Cinetol Theater, Library (OBA) & Tolbar (Tolstraat 160–182, Amsterdam). Reservations are not required. FREE entrance (donations accepted).

With Performances/ interventions by, in order of apperance, Dr. Holobiont and the Lichens, niv Acosta, Johannes Büttner, Bruno Zhu, DYNASTY HANDBAG, and Geo Wyeth.

For more information + timetable go to:
facebook
instagram

SPF is an initiative by Galerie Juliette Jongma & Kunstverein, Amsterdam in collaboration with De Ateliers, and organized by Jeanine Hofland.

SPF is generously supported by the Municipality of Amsterdam, Stadsdeel Zuid Special thanks to OBA, Cinetol. Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold)members, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst and Ammodo.

Salon Hang
9 April – 10 June 2017
Members preview: Saturday 8 April 6 pm
Opening: Saturday 8 April 7 pm
Kunstverein: “See something that means something.”

It’s time to renew our vows.
Start fresh.
Re-kindle.

We’re not going to Hawaii. We’re staying in Amsterdam, but we’re holding the ceremony at our new location. We enter together the pink and blue living room of a Hollywood ex-porn star. Think gold, shag, keyboards, candles; think domestic pleasures, salon tenderness.

Welcome to this year’s members-only Salon Hang.

Ed van der Elsken, Taipeh (poster), 1973. Nederlands Fotomuseum. © Ed van der Elsken. Courtesy Annet Gelink Gallery.

Please join in a feast of you and your things; your pictures, objects, books, magazines, records, vases, pieces of strange cutlery, odd watches, paintings, and anything zebra. In a place transformed into a plush, domestic residence where one can sit and listen to live music, recitals, poetry readings, and drink and talk amidst a variety of artworks.

Kunstverein’s Salon Hang “brings together, unifies, weds, and combines the sacred with the profane, the lofty with the low, the great with the insignificant, the wise with the stupid.” (Andy Warhol)

Salon Hang marks a very special time of year: the time to celebrate its members*. Please welcome, amongst others: Gediminas Akstinas, Maria Barnas, David Bernstein, Marja Bloem, Ansuya Blom, Tim Braden, Sarah Crowner, Valentina Desideri, JL Diantus, Experimental Jetset, Maartje Fliervoet, Hreinn Fridfinnsson, Laurent-David Garnier, gerlach en koop, Melissa Gordon, Roos Gortzak, Krist Gruijthuijsen, Rudy Guedj, Kara Hamilton, Will Holder, Marc Hollenstein, Juliette Jongma, Mathew Kneebone, Germaine Kruip, Lieven Lahaye, Jungmyung Lee, Gabriel Lester, Glenn Lewis, Matthew Robert Lutz-Kinoy, Raimundas Malašauskas, SL Martinez, Mevis & Van Deursen, Maureen Mooren, Lisa Oppenheim, Will Peck, Adam Pendleton, Michael Portnoy, Alexander Ramselaar, Nerijus Rimkus, Smári Runar Róbertsson, Scott Rogers, Christine Roland, Benjamin Roth, Beatrix Ruf, Glenn Ryszko, Lotte Schröder, Maaike Schoorel, Dexter Sinister, Gijs Stork, Claes Storm, Berend Strik, Jay Tan, Angelo Tromp, Nora Turato, Andy Warhol, Felix Weigand, Wieske Wester invited by Dürst Britt Mayhew, Riet Wijnen, Robert Wilhite, Luc Windaus, Geo Wyeth, Bruno Zhu …

Piss On The Electric Fence – Smári Róbertsson

*Kunstverein is a space that crosses culturally varied ground, on an intimate, ambitious, and domestic level. Kunstverein is a not-for-profit organization, which, through the support of its members, creates a community that endorses a distinct program. By being a member of Kunstverein you stake a claim to wanting to “see something that means something.” As a member, you participate in KV’s program, receiving priority for limited seating at events, special previews, access to members only happenings (like Salon Hang), discounts on publications, and other cultural benefits.

Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold)members and we are extremely happy to announce the support of Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, as well as Ammodo.

Reader,

Please join us for the launch of Reader, aantekeningen exemplaar, Werkplaats Typografie’s newest publication, on Saturday March 25 at 7pm. Along with the presentation of this new publication, seven special annotated versions with personal revisions and notes by Wigger Bierma, Malin Gewinner, Marijke Hoogenboom, Koen Kleijn, Andrea di Serego, Riet Wijnen and the editors themselves, will be introduced during the evening. Serving: Chameleons.

As part of Speelplaats, a parallel program of Werkplaats Typografie, participants challenged what was being offered in the school’s curriculum by introducing improvements or suggesting alternatives. Reader, aantekeningen exemplaar brings together these contributions made to the Speelplaats program alongside other like-minded initiatives by participants, guests and tutors in the shape of examples as well as reference texts and other materials. The reader borrows its title from an annotated copy of the catalogue Ruimtelijk Werk (1983), found in the library of Werkplaats Typografie, in which Wigger Bierma had penciled down what could have been done more consistently or what was lacking in his original design.

The reader was edited and designed by Nerijus Rimkus and Ronja Andersen with the support of Maxine Kopsa and contributions by Ronja Andersen, Danielle Aubert, Joel Colover, Valentina Desideri, Jason Dodge, Olya Domoradova, Paul Elliman, Rosie Eveleigh, Eloise Harris, Sarah Käsmayr, Maxine Kopsa, Raimundas Malašauskas, Robert Milne, Josse Pyl, Nerijus Rimkus, Charlotte Taillet, Maud Vervenne and Caroline Wolewinski.

The Werkplaats Typografie (WT) is part of the ArtEZ University of the Arts.

Kunstverein is extremely thankful for the support of its (Gold) members and the support of AFK and Ammodo.

Please join us on Friday March 3rd at 7 pm for Female Genius: an imagined conversation between Eva Kenny and Melissa Gordon on the past, present and future of Female Genius. With a reading by Melissa Gordon, followed by a Q&A.

Female Genius is the second launch of the book Painting Behind Itself. This publication was made on the occasion of Gordon’s exhibition at Vleeshal in 2016, and includes the essay “Painting Behind Itself” by Eva Kenny and an interview between Roos Gortzak and Melissa Gordon.

Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members, Stadsdeel Zuid, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst and Ammodo.

Noa Eshkol
I Look at the Moon and Think about My Daughter-in-Law
4 February – 19 March
A joint solo exhibition at Vleeshal and Kunstverein

Kunstverein
Hazenstraat 28, 1016 SR
Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Member’s preview & walk-through at Kunstverein: February 3, 5 pm
Film screening at Kunstverein: February 4, 4 pm

When looking closely at a hand turning a doorknob, a “rotary movement” is observed, very different from the motion one would witness of jumping jacks, which are considered the result of a “plane movement,” and certainly unlike the perceived effort of a waist circling inside a hula-hoop. How do we define one movement from the next, and how do we preserve them in time, in order perhaps to redo them one after the other?

Kunstverein, together with Vleeshal (Middelburg), is excited to present a joint solo exhibition in two parts: ‘I Look at the Moon and Think about My Daughter-in-Law’ – on the work and thinking of contemporary dancer, choreographer, carpet maker and theorist Noa Eshkol (IL, 1924–2007).

In the 1950s, Noa Eshkol, together with architect Avraham Wachman, developed a notational system for movement, which uses a combination of symbols and numbers to define the motion of any limb around its joint. The Eshkol Wachman Movement Notation (EWMN) system, named after its developers, was born out of a social practice and way of life, as much as it was a visual means of representing (human) motion. The system offers a way of looking at the movements of the body, by organizing them in relatively simple categories making it possible to notate and thus reactivate motion, precisely and mathematically, at a later time.

Please join us on Saturday February 4 for the opening of ‘I Look at the Moon and Think about My Daughter-in-Law.’ There, the first copy of the EWMN system will be on view, as well as a generous selection from the historic archives (curated by Maya Pasternak with research assistance by Mor Bashan). Kunstverein will also present the first ever screening of an early performance by the Noa Eshkol Chamber Dance Group exercising the system. And a chameleon balancing on a branch.

The films will be screened on the window of Kunstverein’s storefront in the heart of the Jordaan, enabling both viewers inside and outside the space to be engulfed by the hypnotizing dances. Drinks will be served.

The exhibition will be open Thursday to Saturday 1–6 pm or by appointment from 4 February to 19 March 2017.

The exhibition at Vleeshal opens with performances by The Noa Eshkol Chamber Dance Group on January 21, at 5 pm and workshops takes place on January 22. For more information on how to attend the workshops please visit www.vleeshal.nl

Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members, Stadsdeel Zuid, and Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, and Ammodo as well as the Noa Eshkol Foundation for Movement Notation and Anja Casser for their foundational work on the previous exhibition of Noa Eshkol’s Wall Carpets and archival material which took place at the Badischer Kunstverein, Germany.

Kunstverein during Amsterdam Art Weekend
24–27 November 2016

We are pleased to invite you to the numerous events happening at Kunstverein this week:

On Thursday at 3.30 pm we will give Amsterdam Art Weekend a first shot – literally. Kunstverein has invited artist L-D Garnier to prepare a work that is a drink, one that embodies the season, in spirit. This limited edition piece, entitled AFTERNOON AUTUMN, will be available for free but dispensed at our discretion, only during Amsterdam Art Weekend.

And…

On Saturday between 5–7 pm, we host Kunstverein Toronto. In the good company of the artist, editor and designers, you are welcome to join us for the launch of Collection/Correction, a publication that for the first time brings together the writings of Andrew James Paterson (Toronto, 1952). Collection/Correction is anchored upon a series of new and recent poems, but also includes four of Paterson’s fictocriticism texts that were published in IMPULSE magazine between 1980 and 1989 and the scripts from Paterson’s videos: The Walking Philosopher (2001), Eating Regular (2004), 12 x 26 (2008) and Passing (2013). The book is co-published by Kunstverein Toronto and Mousse Publishing, edited by Jacob Korczynski and designed by Laura Pappa & Lotte Lara Schröder (more information here: kunstverein.ca).

Also!

Sorry! NO We Don’t Do REQUESTS, is our ongoing exhibition of twenty years of Will Holder’s work with publications, talks, printed matter, and teaching, requested in nine week-long presentations by nine different guests and shown at Kunstverein. This week, Maxine Kopsa, a guest in her own home, has requested a full house and a lost speech. Her generous visuals will be on display from Thursday until Sunday, during AAW opening hours (see below).

Please note:

Kunstverein will be open during Amsterdam Art Weekend on: Thursday 24 November from 1–6 pm; Friday 25 November from 1–10 pm; Saturday 26 November from 12–8 pm; and Sunday 27 November from 12–6 pm.

Collection/Correction is published with the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Andrew James Paterson and Jacob Korczynski gratefully acknowledge the Canada Council for the Arts for their support of their travel to launch Collection/Correction.

‘A Clocktower in the Eye’
By Alex Waterman

Kunstverein is excited (and proud) to announce a special one night only performance deep in the South of Amsterdam.

On Thursday November 17, at 7.30 p.m. please join us in the midst of the Beatrix Park in the historic and monumental Kunstkapel, to listen to a set of compositions by Alex Waterman that explore the relationship between musical composition and the social construction of landscapes, whilst simultaneously searching for a place in and outside of these landscapes for the feelings that constitute us whilst always already undoing us: grief, loss, and desire.

Special location: Kunstkapel, Pr. Irenestraat 19, 1077 WT Amsterdam
Doors open at 6.30 p.m. performance starts at 7.30 p.m.
Tickets are €5 for non-members; members go free
Please reserve your tickets via office@kunstverein.nl.

Alex Waterman is a composer, performer, and scholar based in New York. His pieces are composed from found sounds and field recordings, often played back and re-recorded through early forms of recording devices and media (phonographs, homemade Berliner gramophones, cassette tapes, micro cassettes, etc.) or by attaching transducers to the back of the corpus of his instrument – transforming the cello into another speaker in the room.

Alex studied cello with Andor Toth, Catherina Meints, George Neikrug, and Frances Marie Uitti. He was a founding member of the Plus Minus Ensemble, based in Brussels and London. In New York he has performed and recorded extensively with the Either/Or Ensemble. Alex has worked with musicians and artists such as Robert Ashley, Helmut Lachenmann, Marina Rosenfeld, Anthony Coleman, Ned Rothenberg, Elliott Sharp, Miya Masaoka, David Watson, Chris Mann, George Lewis, Alison Knowles, Thomas Meadowcroft, Beatrice Gibson, Peter Gordon, Ned Sublette, Elio Villafranca, Shannon Ebner, Wayne Koestenbaum, Amy Sillman, Michael Schumacher, and E.S.P. TV. His installation works have been exhibited at the ICA London, Stonescape, Vilma Gold, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, Printed Matter, the Bonnefantenmuseum, and the Whitney Museum. His book on Robert Ashley, written and edited by Waterman and Will Holder, was released by New Documents in September 2014. He has produced two other books with Will Holder: Agape and Between Thought and Sound. Waterman was an artist in the 2014 Whitney Biennial where he built a television studio, and installation space inside the museum in order to produce 3 operas by Robert Ashley. He has taught at Bard College (MFA program), NYU, Bloomfield College, and the Banff Centre for the Arts. He is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Wesleyan University. His writings appear in Dot Dot Dot, Artforum, Brooklyn Rail, BOMB, A Circular, and The Third Rail.

Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members, Stadsdeel Zuid, and Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst.

Sorry! NO
We Don’t Do
REQUESTS
15 October – 17 December 2016
Preview 14 October, 5–7 pm

This exhibition takes place at a special location:
Hazenstraat 28, 1016 SR Amsterdam

is an exhibition of twenty years of Will Holder’s work with publications, talks, printed matter, and teaching presented through individual selections by nine different guests: Sara de Bondt, Linda van Deursen, Johanna Ehde, Elisabeth Klement, Maxine Kopsa, Kaisa Lassinaro, Mason Leaver-Yap, Riet Wijnen and Felicia von Zweigbergk. The main purpose of the exhibition is to make a book. Using Kunstverein as space for writing, printing and binding – Will Holder will recall hundreds of tiny material decisions made in response to a specific context of past collaborators’ work. The book will be self-published and printed on demand, and is called

Visitors are welcome to look through the archive, view the weekly presentations and order a copy of STAPLES (EUR 15, excl. postage). STAPLES will be printed and hand bound on demand on the premises. Each copy potentially different in content.

STAPLES will be the first catalog of Will Holder’s work and will also be the first book published by a (“uh”) books, Glasgow – an initiative of Will Holder with Emmie Mcluskey.

Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members, Stadsdeel Zuid, and Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst.

Dear BYU friend and attendee,
Join us this Thursday July 7 for BYU #49: The Sell Out.

Before we toss off our clothes for the summer, we welcome you at the last, possibly ever, BOB’s YOUR UNCLE of the season. We are packing up and will be discarding many things: paint, glass & glasses, wood & carpet, But mostly BOOKS. Bargains can be found, or made, on lots of our stock! So don’t miss out and come say hi (and bye) before exiting the city.

Serving: left-overs
doors: 12 till 5pm

Yours truly,

B.Y.U.
Kunstverein
Gerard Doustraat 132
1073 VX, Amsterdam
+31 (0)20 3313203
office@kunstverein.nl
www.kunstverein.nl

BOB’s YOUR UNCLE is designed by Robert Wilhite, open every Thursday or Friday, and brings you a special host and special servings each week. Reservations: bobsyouruncle@kunstverein.nl

Join us this Thursday June 23 for BYU #48:
Better Decision, a conference with Robertas Narkus (LT)

Let’s envision, together, the scope of a new, possibly humorous, system for production and collaboration. Imagine, with us, the future. In the semi-casual setting of BOB’s YOUR UNCLE, Robertas Narkus, founder of Visionierius, will give an introduction to its program Visionierius is a Lithuanian-based cooperation which aims to intersect the cutting edge ideas from the world of the arts with those of science, and combine those with the professionalism of local craftsmanship. This vital alliance is based on a sharing of acts and thoughts and forms in itself an urgent exercise in freedom.

19.30 doors open
19.40 Welcome word by Visionierius CEO, Robertas Narkus
19.50 Introduction to the Concept of Visionierius
20.10 Snacks and Refreshments
21.00 doors close

Time and space are limited, so please confirm your presence.

RSVP before June 22nd to bobsyouruncle@kunstverein.nl and mention your name and the number of people that will be joining.

Sincerely,
Bob

CEO
B.Y.U.
Kunstverein
Gerard Doustraat 132
1073 VX, Amsterdam
+31 (0)20 3313203
office@kunstverein.nl
www.kunstverein.nl

Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members and Stadsdeel Zuid.

BOB’s YOUR UNCLE is designed by Robert Wilhite, open every Thursday or Friday, and brings you a special host and special servings each week. Reservations: bobsyouruncle@kunstverein.nl

Coming To Your Senses by Zazie Stevens
15–19 June 2016
Opening: Friday, 17 June 6–9 p.m.
Placing emphasis on the ‘nothing to say’, the point of pointlessness.
The message of the flower is the flower.

The thought image is not the same as the visual image that appears when one looks at an actual thing. The mental image is vague; the image that appears to the physical eye is specific. Mental images appear as conceptual images of a perceived thing, encompassing the abstract trace of all images one has seen.

In the first moment of perception there is direct sensory experience. In the second moment, a concept arises, superimposed on direct perception. Vivid perception is obscured by that concept: instead of seeing, hearing, or tasting the clear, specific thing, one experiences its conceptual replicas through a filter of general understanding. The thing itself becomes vague, immediately loosing contact with its initial, singular affect.

Photographs can capture the space of love, they point to that love, poignantly suspending what text says. In Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes looked for a photograph of his late mother and found it. But looking at the photograph he didn’t get over his loss. He had ‘nothing to say’, like Zen according to Alan Watts and corresponding to Freud’s distinction between mourning and melancholia. “The horror is this: I have no other recourse than this irony, to speak of the ‘nothing to say’”. Barthes’ last piece of writing, for a talk he never gave, was found on his desk at his death and was entitled: ‘One always fails in speaking of what one loves.’

Zazie Stevens (1988, NL) explored the relationship between artistic creativity, perception and meditative experience. By highlighting both clarity and obscurations through poetry, theoretical research and a series of exercises she investigated Buddhist art principles reflecting on her practice of documenting, relating to perception.

Coming To Your Senses is part of A Festival of Choices, Master of Fine Arts Graduation 2016, Sandberg Instituut, 15–19 June 2016, various locations throughout Amsterdam. A Festival of Choices emphasizes upon the relationship and choices made between the graduating student and the diverse range of institutions and organizations offered within the cultural landscape of Amsterdam. For more information and the full program, please check www.festivalofchoices.nl

This Wednesday June 8 at BYU:

My friend Jonas is a pretty good dresser, I would describe his style as “JFK on a Sunday”. When, one day, he was telling me about his plan to buy a hat, I pointed at the first person wearing a Fedora and asked if maybe he wanted to look like that jerk. He told me “that guy isn’t wearing a hat, the hat is wearing him”. During B.Y.U. this Wednesday, June 8, I’m proposing we all wear hats (proudly), on the sidewalk in front of Kunstverein or inside the bar.

The night will also include a talk by Lieven Lahaye; about hats, caps and provisional thoughts on how, if we would just concede and go along with things, taking minimal steps towards social conformity, great social change might be brought forth.

Doors open at 7.30 p.m.
Serving: Manhattan

Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members and Stadsdeel Zuid.

BOB’s YOUR UNCLE is designed by Robert Wilhite, open every Thursday or Friday, and brings you a special host and special servings each week. Reservations: bobsyouruncle@kunstverein.nl

BYU #46 – Watermarks Broadcast
with DES (LT) and Kevin Rice (USA)

Join us this FRIDAY May 27th for a live broadcast of Watermarks at BOB’s YOUR UNCLE. Watermarks is a musical exploratory initiative set in motion by DES (LT) & Kevin Rice (USA). In their collaboration they focus on rare and beautiful sounds from below the surface; a sonic journey of presents a nighttime advance, of beautiful sounds from both past and present.

Doors open at 8 p.m.
Serving: A watered down cocktail

Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members and Stadsdeel Zuid.

BOB’s YOUR UNCLE is designed by Robert Wilhite, open every Thursday or Friday, and brings you a special host and special servings each week. Reservations: bobsyouruncle@kunstverein.nl

with Lotte Lara Schröder

Hello Inertia,

you are here as your physical self.
Not as the representation or your proclaimed truth.
Thank you for coming.

What I would like to share is personal. It’s a random, yet controlled sequence of images, thoughts, sounds. A representation of experiences. Experiences derived from a childhood fascination for the volcano, its literal and metaphorical presence, its untouchable energy.

Let it be violent and beautiful, nestle inside your body, through its frequencies and alcoholic fluids, mold you into a flow of volcanic energy.

For this night at BOB’s YOUR UNCLE, Lotte Lara Schröder will present a series of interdisciplinary works set in motion by and expiring mental report. The works are a metaphor for the slow, energetic build-up – similar to both volcanic as well as personal outbursts. Join us for a hot, energetic and undoubtedly, eventful night.

Doors open at 7.30 p.m.
Serving: Volkan Beer, Black and Blond*

*Volkan beer brings together, Lava Rock filtered mineral water and the best of local ingredients from the volcanic island of Santorini. Since the Mediterranean Island receives little rainfall, what grows on it is intense in flavor and limited in quantity. Volkan beer is a Greek Debt Free™ product. With every 1 euro of profit, they help reduce the Greek National debt by 50 euro cents. Help Greece.

Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members and Stadsdeel Zuid.

BOB’s YOUR UNCLE is designed by Robert Wilhite, open every Thursday or Friday, and brings you a special host and special servings each week. Reservations: bobsyouruncle@kunstverein.nl

Join us this Thursday May 12 for the presentation of Fig. 3 with Nerijus Rimkus (LT)

Doors at 7.30 p.m.
Serving Ouroborus Liliaceae / Cruciferae

The third event in a series presenting one of the missing flowers of the final flower arrangement of blooming vegetables. Each event is an allegory presenting the ongoing research on the fine line between aesthetic assumptions and functional use.

*Fig. 1: June 3 2015, Blooming Radish. Fig. 2: October 10 2016, Final Flower Arrangement.

For the occasion Kunstverein is presenting the second postcard in its series. It will be for sale at Kunstverein or can be ordered via office@kunstverein.nl

Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members and Stadsdeel Zuid.

BOB’s YOUR UNCLE is designed by Robert Wilhite, open every Thursday or Friday, and brings you a special host and special servings each week. Reservations: bobsyouruncle@kunstverein.nl

Welcome to the very first gathering of the Jack Lemmon Support Group at BOB’s YOUR UNCLE on Thursday May 5th.

Doors open at 7.30 p.m.
Serving: Little Mothers, the classic amongst classics.

Dear supporters,

Jack Lemmon was an actor not a sculptor. You all know that that’s not true. His sculptures are widely seen, but just not acknowledged as such.

We would like to invite you to re-make together a sculpture Jack Lemmon made for the film The Apartment by Billy Wilder in which he plays a character named C.C. Baxter that is forced out of his apartment by his superiors, because they want to use it for their adulterous acts. In his eagerness to climb the ladder he capitulates time and again, but despises himself for it. Disgusted and bored he carves out time with Dry Martini’s in a bar around the corner.

Please join us to re-circle the circle that Jack made and spiral downwards into the alcoholic void while imagining the space of your own apartments, and what they look like and how they are, without you in them.

Sincerely,
Bob and gerlach en koop

Please note that space is limited.
JLSG-members & KV-members have priority.

Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members and Stadsdeel Zuid.

BOB’s YOUR UNCLE is designed by Robert Wilhite, open every Thursday or Friday, and brings you a special host and special servings each week. Reservations: bobsyouruncle@kunstverein.nl

Jessica Warboys, Angle Pose
17 April – 10 June 2016
Opening: 17 April 3–6 pm
With a special performance by Morten Norbye Halvorsen at 5pm.

For Kunstverein, Jessica Warboys creates an all-emersive mise-en-scene, marrying large scale (sea) paintings, bent metal lamps, sculptural objects and film. The viewer experiences the exhibition from the spine of an enforced catwalk running down the middle of the space.

An Attempt to Evolve (ongoing)
A talk by Will Holder

Wednesday 13 April, 8pm

In advance of the forthcoming Materialist Inventory, a book and an exhibition at Kunstverein this fall, Will Holder will give a talk about typography/ organisation of language/ automatic writing/ survival of ideas/ bodies as documents/ “sometime all of them will have the last touch of being, a history of them can give to them,”

Typographer Will Holder produces oral and printed publications with artists and musicians, and is preoccupied with conversation as model and tool for a mutual and improvised set of publishing conditions – whereby the usual roles of commissioner, author, subject, editor, printer and typographer are improvised and shared, as opposed to assigned and pre-determined. Particular attention is placed on an oral production of value and meaning around cultural objects, and how live, extra-informational qualities might be analyzed, documented and scored.
 Based in Glasgow, Holder is editor of F.R.DAVID, a journal concerned with reading and writing in the arts (published by de Appel, Amsterdam, since 2007). He co-curated TalkShow (with Richard Birkett) at the ICA, London, an exhibition and season of events concerning speech and accountability. Together with Alex Waterman, he edited and typeset Yes, But Is It Edible?, The music of Robert Ashley, for two or more voices (Vancouver: New Documents, 2014). Holder is a 2015 recipient of a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Awar

Member’s only exclusive tour of Seth Siegelaub: Beyond Conceptual Art by Marja Bloem, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (RSVP to office@kunstverein.nl)

Marja Bloem, director of the Egress Foundation, Seth Siegelaub’s partner and a current board member of Kunstverein, will guide us through his impressive collection. The tour is guaranteed to give an inside perspective on the material on display and will allow us far more insight into Seth’s thoughts on contemporary art and the institutions around it. His pioneering approach, still today exceedingly urgent, should afford plenty of substance for conversation afterwards, when we conclude the tour with a drink at BOB’s YOUR UNCLE.

If you haven’t reserved a ticket yet, or would like to become a member in order to join this special members only event, don’t hesitate to contact us at office@kunstverein.nl.

The tour starts at 6 pm in the foyer of Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

Jokes With Seth Siegelaub
Friday 1 April 2016

An evening of presentations, screenings, talks and jokes at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Invited by Kunstverein, artist David Bernstein reads from a selection of jokes from Kunstverein Publishing’s forthcoming publication: The Joke Book. Collected by Seth Siegelaub (June 2016).

Program begins at 7 pm in the Teijin Auditorium of Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

The annual Spring Performance Festival (SPF) is hosted by Kunstverein and Galerie Juliette Jongma, this year in collaboration with De Ateliers, Galerie Gabriel Rolt, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Vleeshal.
SPF 2016 will take place on Sunday 20 March and will include a.o. performances by Vaginal Davis, Simone Forti, Nora Turato, Raed Yassin, Mehraneh Atashi and Rodrigo Sobarzo de Larraechea.

Join us Sunday 6 March for BYU #41: Ian F. Svenonius performs ESCAPE-ISM
Doors open at 5.30 p.m.
Serving: The Last Word
And with an introduction by Experimental Jetset

ESCAPE-ISM is a found-sound dream-drama performed by singer, author, filmmaker and talk show host, Ian F. Svenonius (known from Chain & the Gang, The Make-Up, Weird War, Soft Focus, etc.) on the occasion of the release of his new book of essays and stories, Censorship, now!!

ESCAPE-ISM is a live collage, a ritual offering to the fractured landscape of AM radio. A broadcast of doppler radar weather reports, drums, electric guitars, electro-magnetic tapes, eye-in-the-sky traffic reports, game-time sportcasts, guest appearances, live interviews, machines, sermons, sickening sounds, stolen samples world news and many opinions.

“Censorship Now!! is reorganizing people’s ideas about censorship, Ikea, documentary filmmaking, the Berlin Wall, the film Heathers, the twist, the frug, the mashed potato, shaving one’s body, Apple, Inc., Nordic functionalism, the supposed benevolence of Wikipedia, hoarding, college rock, the origins of the Internet, and more.” – Akashic Books

Please note that space is limited.
KV Members have priority.

BOB’s YOUR UNCLE is designed by Robert Wilhite, open every Thursday or Friday, and brings you a special host and special servings each week. Reservations: bobsyouruncle@kunstverein.nl

Join us this Thursday 18 February for the second adaptation of ‘Bibliomania: Haven O’More’ a play written and performed by Olivier Lebrun and Alex Balgiu.

“What can you do, when you are forty and – having avoided alarm systems, fooled the distracted librarian, squirmed through ventilation ducts, left the place with your precious catch and finally put it up on one of your extraordinary shelves – you are overcome, suddenly, by a feeling of bliss.”

Doors open at 7.30 p.m.
Serving To Have No More

Olivier Lebrun is a French graphic designer based in Paris. He is the author of “Stolen Works of Art” (self published, 2010) and “A Pocket Companion to Books from the Simpsons in Alphabetical Order” (Rollo Press, 2012, 2013). He is currently working with Urs Lehni and Camille Pageard on the forthcoming monography of Bernard Chadebec (Rollo Press, 2016).

Alex Balgiu is a Romanian French designer and theorist. He specialised in the phenomena of animality and kinship in social relationships through (American) Literature. Together with Thierry Chancogne he also runs the publishing house and research platform Tombolo Presses.

BOB’s YOUR UNCLE is designed by Robert Wilhite, open every Thursday or Friday, and brings you a special host and special servings each week. Reservations: bobsyouruncle@kunstverein.nl

CANCELLED!

Dear member, guest & friend,

Unfortunately tonight’s BYU with Floris Vanhoof has been cancelled, due to illness. We are very sorry about this, as we were hoping to treat you all to a spectacular night with music, tequila and film by this young, experimental film-maker.
You are still welcome to visit us during the day (between 1–5 pm) to see our new show Hans de Vries ‘Works 1968–1975’ and we look forward to raising our glasses again on February 18 in the company of Olivier Lebrun & Alex Balgiu.

BOB’s YOUR UNCLE is designed by Robert Wilhite, open every Thursday or Friday, and brings you a special host and special servings each week. Reservations: bobsyouruncle@kunstverein.nl

Join us this Thursday 28 January for BYU #38: Gerard Herman

Experimental, solo-concert with instruments from Gerard Hermans personal collection of household objects — selected on account of how they sound, not how they look.

Doors open: 7.30 p.m.
Serving: Speak Low

Gerard Herman (BE, 1989) is an artist based in Antwerp. His work focusses on language and the absurdities of every day life – his observations are put into works of various form and media. Herman is also one-half of the publishing house Groepdruk as well as tutor at the graphics departement in KASK, Ghent.

BOB’s YOUR UNCLE is designed by Robert Wilhite, open every Thursday, and brings you a special host and special servings each week. Reservations: bobsyouruncle@kunstverein.nl

Hans de Vries ‘Works 1968–1975’
23 January – 19 March 2016
Opening 23 January 6–8 pm

With a new publication published by Kunstverein Publishing
Partner: Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam
Curated by Krist Gruijthuijsen

Hans de Vries concentrated on the study and registration of processes and appearances that occur in and are created by nature. De Vries was a close observer, an onlooker, an eyewitness, whose aim was to discern and document the relationship between man and his natural environment. His practice has been referred to as “micro-emotive art”, a term coined by the Italian artist Piero Gilardi. Micro-emotive art was art that arose from the interest in minimal sensations and experiences (micro-emotions) –the results of slow processes otherwise not readily perceived.

De Vries’s practice was fully integrated in his daily life. He lived in the countryside and registered every detail of his domestic existence. Developments in nature were studied and phenomena one might consider superfluous, were highlighted. This accumulation of facts and observations has been captured in his publications – the artist books of Hans de Vries.

His first book, Het Tuinboek, [The Garden Book] was published in 1971 as part of the Atlas voor een nieuwe metropool [The Atlas For a New Metropole], edited by Jan Donia and published by the Rotterdam Fund For the Arts. Een jaar rond: huiselijke activiteiten en het weer [A Full Year: Domestic Activity and the Weather], Hilversum, Becht, 1971, was published with the help of collectors Agnes en Frits Becht. An example of a self-published book is Kruisingen [Intersections] published in 1973 in Finsterwolde. These publications were only distributed in galleries (like Seriaal) in Amsterdam.

The illustrated De geschiedenis van de citroengeranium [The History of a Citrus Geranium] was published in 1973 by Art Animation in Groningen. This book was the result of a close study of a Citrus Geranium De Vries and his wife, Emmy, initiated in September of 1970. The artist book Stijgbeelden van vruchten [Growth Images of Fruits] is a folder with an original photograph published alongside the exhibition of the same title in the print gallery of the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag in 1975.

Het Dooie beestenboek [The Dead Animal Book] published by De Harmonie Amsterdam a year before Stijgbeelden van vruchten, is the first book that was available in Dutch bookstores. It is a registry of all the dead animals he and his wife came across in 1971 on their way to Winschoten from their home town, Beerta in the north of the Netherlands. This publication’s design reflects De Vries’s manner of working: showing things as they are, plainly, and with little to no formal concern. Het Dooie beestenboek straightforwardly displays each dead animal accompanied by a handwritten text and a sketch of the situation in which it was found.

Hans de Vries ‘Works 1968–1975’ is De Vries’s first exhibition since he stopped producing art at end of the 1970s. It is a retrospective of all the publications and book-related works including parallel articles and essays about his practice.

Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members, Mondriaan Fonds, Stadsdeel Zuid, and the Agnes & Frits Becht Collection.

Join us this Thursday for BYU#37 with Glenn Ryszko

14012016.vid – a quadraphonic sound piece on intimacy.

Doors open: 7.30 p.m.
Evening starts at 8 p.m. with a short screening followed by the performance

Serving: specialized beers marked for the occasion by Lotte Schröder.
Live stream: 20 hrs

What does intimacy mean for a community that shares personal information via the internet like it was sharing a sandwich? How does this exchange function in its online surrounding and how does it reflect upon exchange offline? These questions form the starting point for the sound piece made for this intimate gathering. By ripping, analyzing and combining audio fragments from YouTube videos in which people share their very private thoughts with – potentially – millions of viewers, Glenn Ryszko focuses on a specific sort of interchange. 14012016.vid is a documentary on human behavior that varies in intensity from the extremely personal to the extremely random.

BOB’s YOUR UNCLE is designed by Robert Wilhite, open every Thursday, and brings you a special host and special servings each week. Reservations: bobsyouruncle@kunstverein.nl

Jennifer Tee meets COBRA*

Pierre Alechinsky, Asger Jorn, Frits Lemaire & Eugène Brands, Jennifer Tee, Raoul Ubac, Reinhoud
In collaboration with The Cobra Museum of Modern Art
November 29, 2015–January 16, 2016

Book launch of Jennifer Tee’s The Soul in Limbo: ‘Listening to The Soul in Limbo’ November 29, 12–2pm, with live music by Glenn Ryszko, octopus rice triangles & bloody caesars

Copyright: Frits Lemaire/MAI

 
It’s always better to be a little bit hungry
-Agnes Martin
 

[Two women sit down at a rectangular table across from one another. Both open their laptops and type in google docs. One makes a ‘zip your mouth’ motion with her right hand. The other nods. The first starts to type. The other follows.]

 
Short forms

If I were a branch

Awkward poses

If I were a…The one thing people probably still read is a list.

How long will it all last?

I mean, how do we have to go on?

Yoga

Sculpture
 

[She looks up over the head of her companion, out of the window]

 
When the water reflects up onto the trees and you stare at it for a while you make the trees move.

If yoga could turn into sculpture.

Breathe, breathe. Breathe towards the belly.

How do you do that? I always end up just sticking out my belly and hoping the air will find its way down and up.

A carpet that determines the spacing of movement. No foot stepped out of the rectangle. I remember a grey man doing a grey performance on a grey carpet.

And the urns, oh the urns.

The urns that are death but also vessels to hold food, grains and air.

Next to them, they sit, cross-legged, knees not quite touching the floor. And their hands are open upwards. Their arms stretched high, but their elbows still bent. Welcoming, but awkward.
 

[She looks out of the window again]

 
Laissez-faire gardening.

Seasonal curating?

No. Well, yes. Maybe that would be more interesting.

Peter Brook talks about the stage the empty stage and if you cross it you assume an audience, or you affect one. I can take an empty space he says and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged.[1]

Tee’s work affects. Now there’s a start.

Tick tock
Tick Tock

OK. OK.

*Kunstverein is the proud host of the launch of artist Jennifer Tee’s Monograph ‘The Soul in Limbo’, published in conjunction with her winning the prestigious Cobra Art Prize Amstelveen, and her solo exhibition of the same title, held at The Cobra Museum of Modern Art (24 November 2015 – 21 February 2016). As a means of creating a mise-en-scene for the publication, Kunstverein, together with Jennifer Tee and the Museum have selected historic and lesser-known works from the museum’s collection creating an intimate and perhaps impertinent exhibition. The associations and non-hierarchal, cross-historical pollination between selected works from the Cobra and Tee allow Tee’s work to enter into a conceptual and formal discussion with specific pieces and specific concerns. The selection was based on a definitive parallel that can be drawn between the works of Reinhoud, Brands and Alechinsky and Tee’s, most notably in Tee’s and their study and use of ethnographic sources. As well as the role of the shaman, the magician – which overlaps in all works. A spiritual and expressionist interest in the earlier pieces might even be brought into a conversation with such contemporary thought as Objet Oriented Ontology (OOO), a ‘movement’ that Tee’s work is conceptually connected with.

 
The event entitled ‘Listening to the Soul in Limbo’ is a performative launch that takes place during Amsterdam Art Weekend, presenting the book through live music and ritual. ‘Listening to The Soul in Limbo’ also marks the opening of the exhibition ‘Jennifer Tee meets Cobra’ at Kunstverein.

[1] Peter Brook, The Empty Space, 1968 (Penguin edition, 2008)

Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, Mondriaan Fonds, and Stadsdeel Zuid.

Please join us this Friday at BOB’s YOUR UNCLE for ‘Curse of The Walking Techbane’
Doors open at 19.30
Talk begins at 20.00
Serving the Gremlin

Mathew Kneebone will talk about how experiencing a sequence of technical problems can lead to forms of superstitious behaviour. Supposedly able to short circuit electrical systems, magnetise objects, and block wireless signals, a Walking Techbane is someone who believes that their ongoing issues with technology are beyond coincidence.

Together with the talk will be a display of works by the artist.

Mathew Kneebone is an artist and former researcher at the Jan van Eyck Academie. Amongst his interests are the methods that end-user’s adopt to cope with technological issues. His work addresses our relationship to technology through historically tracing examples of innovation, planned obsolescence, black boxing, and user-level anxieties.

BOB’s YOUR UNCLE is designed by Robert Wilhite, open every Thursday, and brings you a special host and special servings each week. Reservations: bobsyouruncle@kunstverein.nl

Please join us this Friday at BOB’s YOUR UNCLE for Date Night #3: GAME ♠ WAR ♥ LOVE featuring Jay Tan in a busker-inspired bodily communication.

Doors open at 19.30, performance will happen unannounced.
Serving: Endless Love (ft. Mariah Carey)

Jay Tan is currently, next to her usual practice, exercising repressed dreams of being a magical, french, butoh, acrobat (not unlike her fantasised version of Denis Lavant) and trying to tell people how she feels by talking less.

Date Night is inspired by the triangle of forces GAME ♠ WAR ♥ LOVE, mainly inspired by the special ménage between Michelle Bernstein and Guy Debord, but recurrent more or less unconsciously in all kinds of relationships and love affairs. With the aim of unveiling artists’ personal lives, side practices, dreams, habits or hobbies as connectivity catalysts, Date Night presents them in a space ruled by a common awareness of the attendees, which is that they might have the possibility to fall in love anytime, even during the same evening.

Emma Panza is the instigator of Date Night.

BOB’s YOUR UNCLE is designed by Robert Wilhite, open every Thursday, and brings you a special host and special servings each week. Reservations: bobsyouruncle@kunstverein.nl

Please join us this Thursday for “Quitting the Band” by Nickel van Duijvenboden – a reading and drum solo.
Doors open at 7.30 p.m.
Reading and drumming start at 8 p.m.

Serving the Bitter Apple

Nickel van Duijvenboden is a writer and artist from Amsterdam. He is currently about to leave the Rijksakademie, where he has been dedicating himself to paper and electronic correspondences and their spin-offs as an artistic mode. He has lately taken up drumming again, as a rhythmic consequence of writing and reading.

In his late teens and early twenties he used to be the drummer of a metalcore band with ties to the vegan-straight edge scene. This youthful experience in a way preceded a commitment to art and writing, and foreshadowed the precariousness of being in a community. It was marked by a gap between the joy of playing music together and the ideological rigour of the ‘scene’, which in fact amounted to a substitute form of conformism – a conformism within antagonism.

At BOB’S YOUR UNCLE Nickel will try to get out of his usual writerly and readerly role and improvise on the drums as an homage to whomever has had to quit the band.

BOB’s YOUR UNCLE is designed by Robert Wilhite, open every Thursday, and brings you a special host and special servings each week. Reservations: bobsyouruncle@kunstverein.nl

Hreinn Friðfinnsson
‘I collected personal secrets’, (1972–2015)
12 September – 7 November 2015
Opening: 12 September, 6–8 pm

In the early 1970s, the Icelandic artist Hreinn Friðfinnsson (b. 1943, Iceland) placed an advert in a Dutch art magazine asking people to send him their secrets. By posing as a collector of secrets, the artist would, he thought, allay suspicions that he had any ulterior motive in using or revealing privileged information that might come his way. It is like something from a novel by José Saramago, or an urban myth or rumour. The secret, Friðfinnsson may be telling us, is that there isn’t one. His art, on the other hand, is an invitation to imagine that there might be.

The artist’s work is celebrated for its lyricism and stark poetry that transcends the often-commonplace subjects and materials that the artist uses to create his pieces. Although there is a consistency of theme and a common emotional thread to his art, the media that Friðfinnsson employs are remarkably varied in scale and substance, from photography, drawings and tracings to presentations and installations of sound, texts and ready-mades. Friðfinnnsson often presents found objects with which he interferes as little as possible, creating new works that investigate ideas of the self and of time. He has said that: “Notions of time are always compelling. I read what comes my way about physics and mathematics, but I read as one who is uninitiated. The feeling and the interest in the essence of time is serious, but my dealing with time is not knowledge-based; it is more exploratory and feeling-based”.

Iceland seems a long way from the sophisticated cosmopolitanism. Friðfinnsson, who has lived in the Netherlands for more than 40 years, wants us to appreciate both the culture he comes from, and the larger world in which he finds himself. There is an important lesson in this, especially from someone who has hidden himself somewhere deep down in Amsterdam with rarely a public appearance. His relationship to the world finds itself at the ‘self’. Friðfinnsson is a natural storyteller; hence that most of his works often beg a narrative, or the fabrication of a story, even when there isn’t one.

After 40 years, Friðfinnsson will conclude his “secrets project” for the exhibition at Kunstverein. The accumulated secrets will be used as base for a monochrome painting, which will be on display alongside the advertisements the project had published throughout the years.

Organized by Krist Gruijthuijsen

Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold)members, Mondriaan Fonds, and Stadsdeel Zuid.

Dear Maxine,
How is your summer? It’s been a while we haven’t spoke about the upcoming show, so I decided to write you my recent thoughts which are now gathering in a shape of a SHIP.

Let’s start by saying that while understanding darkness as a mutual agreement, I decided to divide my 24 hrs exhibition into two time periods – day and night and start the whole with an invitation to the darkness of the “Mid Manhattan Library”. The performance can be seen as the trial of the hypothesis of the philosopher Empedocles, which states that light is a product of the human eye. In the fifth century BC, he postulated that everything – all matter – was composed of the four elements: fire, air, earth and water. He also believed that Aphrodite made the human eye out of them and lit the fire, which shone out from the eye making sight possible.

Empedocles knew that things were somewhat more complicated than this, and guessed there was an interaction between rays from the eyes and rays from a source such as the sun. The audience of the performance is invited to the live try-out of the hypothesis, during which they listen to the narrator retelling the floor plan of the PC Lab in the Mid Manhattan Library.

I think of this work as a way to participate in a usual state of mind – to be in two places at the same time. I also see it as a real time extension of one of the infrastructures, underlining how libraries are places of shared knowledge and manufacturing.

Did you know that public libraries in the US are investing in 3-D printing machines now, so people can use them easily and less expensively? I read about a team of doctors, who wanted to assist the doctors performing the operation, but ordering a replica of the boy’s skull would have taken two to three weeks and cost about $4,000, so they went to the Chicago Public Library instead, and printed out a replica of the boy’s skull using a 3-D printer. The model of the skull took just 12 hours to make, cost $20 and the surgery was successful.

This reminds me of a cartoon I saw recently, which shows a furious foolish rhetorically asking why we still need libraries, when standing in front of a newly renovated branch of a public library. The picture itself suggests at least several, socially charged answers, one being the Unemployed Man using the Internet connection in order to find a job. This is just one example that brings us back to the bounce between creativity and function, the authority and the extension of infrastructure, which starts from one’s dream, defined by one’s reliances. How do the current social needs disguise themselves and what different shapes and forms are they ready to take?

The dream of the aforementioned Unemployed Man supplements the architecture and the concept of every branch of every public library and becomes a ship travelling from one to another, with variable measurements and weights.

The performance in Kunstverein would be guided by the friend of mine, Antanas Laukaitis, a famous hip hop Dj in Lithuania who goes under the name “Now U Don’t”, and mainly plays 1993-1998 east coast rap and other same school hip-hop music. At the moment I am dealing now with cafe de Duivel and hope that Antanas can dj there in the night-time of the show, thus becoming the main composer of the SHIP.

When it starts to get darker and the performance series finishes, Kunstverein will become an enlightened gallery space, and the visitors will be invited to take a walk out in the city. I am thinking specifically of one spot in Amsterdam, which can only be experienced by knowing of the specific gaps in the infrastructure of town. As for now, I imagine continuing my show with a meeting near the secret entrance to Artis, The Royal Zoo, used by my friends and I to enter and have walks around the zoo on Sunday evenings.

As such, instead of perceiving the shift of day to night as a discipline, I take it as an example and as a metaphor of the shift between private to public, legality and to illegality. As we both know, invisible things are not just overshadowed by the darkness of the night. Therefore, I think of the gaps in the infrastructure, as independent aestheticized forms.

Meanwhile, Kunstverein will become a bleached-out space containing a few objects: including remains and props of the Mid Manhattan Library performance, such as open cinema tickets as well us amorphous plasticine sculptures by artist (my father) Gediminas Akstinas. He made them in 1988, at the same age as me now and so I thought it would be important for him to participate in this show, as another artist, who shares the same body.

The constant presence of collaboration in this show, lead me to think about the flyer and the map of the exhibition, which could have a design provided by one of the widely accessible places in town. For now I am thinking of collaborating with Sonny Falafels, which is just around the corner from Kunstverein and one my favourite fast food stops. I think it would be nice if the flyers of the show could be spread around before the show and interfuse with other flyers, which connect to the mix of entertainment and hardcore labor . During the night, this flyer could also become one of the objects in the show, bleached in the gallery light of Kunstverein.

I have to think of the friction between desire and consent, leisure and labor, imagination and authority. That’s why “SHIP” became my working title, as an open invitation, depending on the speed of economy and the sharing of knowledge. Imagination is our compass, although we don’t own it.

As for now I would love to come to Kunstverein and measure the space. Maybe it would be a good chance to meet? And what is the deadline for the press release? I also wanted to ask you about the printed matter, is it possible for Kunstverein to print the flyers for the show?

Let me know your thoughts.

Very best,
Gediminas

SHIP is an exhibition by Gediminas Akstinas with works by Gediminas Akstinas and Gediminas Akstinas. It takes place from 5 September until 6 September, from 9 am until 9 am, at Kunstverein and, from midnight, at Cafe De Duivel.

Stand up, script, reverse
Friday June 26, 4-8pm
At Apollohal Gymnasium, Amsterdam, NL

Please join us for Stand up, script, reverse, an event that introduces the artists Alexis Blake and Ilke Gers‘ research process into the transference of knowledge through the body. The event is both a site of research and production. Participants are invited to join the artists and experts in investigating the conditioned and intuitive body by exploring the idea of play and freedom within rules and structured systems.

Participants will learn a new set of skills with self-defense instructor Cesario Di Domenico tap into their body and mind connection with sport psychologist Anna Loots and draw another awareness of the body in space with Blake and Gers.

Stand up, script, reverse is presented within the contextual framework of Disassemblies, which is part of Knowledge is a Does – a reading group formed during a residency period at the Jan van Eyck Academie.

As places are limited, 30 participants, please send an email to reserve to office@kunstverein.nl (members have priority).

Apollohal Gymnasium
Apollolaan 4
1077 BA Amsterdam

 
This project was made possible by the generous support of Jan van Eyck Academie. Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members, Cesario Di Domenico – Martial Arts Academy Amsterdam, Anna Loots – Vereniging voor Sportpsychologie Nederland, and Stadsdeel Zuid.

Join us this Friday, 19.30 – 22.00, at BOB’s YOUR UNCLE for

A reading playlist.

The book launch of the exhibitions Spell to Spelling ** Spelling to Spell and Your Time Is Not My Time of the Curatorial Programme of de Appel arts centre. Designed by Dongyoung Lee.

A performance by Laurent-David Garnier, #INEFFABLE at 20.00

BOB’s YOUR UNCLE is designed by Robert Wilhite, open every Thursday, and brings you a special host and special servings each week. Reservations: bobsyouruncle@kunstverein.nl

A Studio in Hand-Reading: Charlotte Wolff. A project by Valentina Desideri

23 May – 25 June 2015
Opening: Saturday 23 May, 6–8 pm

Jessica Warboys, Four Lines, 2011

Look at your hand, that tool between a fin and a wing, which developed fingers, a thumb and now grasps and touches everything, real and imaginary. It images the real in its tactile rendering of objects, distances and shapes. It realizes the imaginary by gesturing, approximating thinking through space.
Can I read your hand?

Its surface, gestures and lines offer a complex image that calls for reading. Many readings actually, as each reading is in turn an imaging, a composition, an expression of possibilities.

Jason and Raimundas, Céline, Audrey, Koenraad, Jessica – Can I read your work?

Dr. Charlotte Wolff (1897–1986) read the palms of André Breton, Man Ray, Maurice Ravel, T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Antonin Artaud, Cecil Beaton and Aldous Huxley. She read their character in their hands and their palms also figure in her now rare and exceptional book Studies in Hand-Reading (1936).

But reading always happens between at least two: the reader and what is read – be it books, palms, objects, people, artworks. To engage in this kind of reading together is to engage in study. I propose to gather in the Studio, with books, hands, artworks, coffee and drinks, to read.

On Saturday 23 May
Christian Hawkey will read his poems
On Wednesday 27 May and Thursday 11 June
Annick Kleizen and Valentina Desideri will unravel ways of reading
On Saturday 30 May
Luisa Ungar and Milena Bonilla will read Céline Condorelli’s coffee
On Friday 5 June
Ben Woodard will talk about the relation between gestures and thinking
On Tuesday 16 June
Tim Ingold will discuss lines and making
On Friday 19 June
Stefano Harney will lead us in study
On Thursday 25 June
Denise Ferreira da Silva will talk about notions of reading and imaging

A Studio in Hand-Reading is an exhibition, a studio, a study and a display of artworks and their author’s hands.

Charlotte Wolff (1897–1986): scientist, radical sexologist, chirologist, philosopher, wearer of men’s clothes, psychologist of gesture, lesbian identified* acts as an attractor for topics and ways to read in the Studio.

Valentina Desideri proposes the Studio as a place that generates modes of being together. She will be present in the exhibition throughout the exhibition, inviting participants as well as visitors to gather for reading and in study. This Studio will be the basis for a publication (to be launched at the end of 2015 by Kunstverein Publishing). The exhibition begins with one work by Jason Dodge and Raimundas Malašauskas and a reading by American poet, translator, editor, activist, and educator Christian Hawkey. The show continues to accumulate artworks weekly: following Jason Dodge and Raimundas Malašauskas, Céline Condorelli, Audrey Cottin, Koenraad Dedobbeleer and Jessica Warboys will lend a work and a print of their palms, available for reading in the Studio. The Studio – and its bar – will be open for reading during Kunstverein’s regular opening hours, punctuated by weekly contributions to the study by the invited guests and artists.

*From Christian Hawkey’s N Ear Flowers Re Fre/nd: A Poets’ Play

A Studio in Hand-Reading: Charlotte Wolff. A project by Valentina Desideri

With: Liudvikas Buklys, Céline Condorelli, Audrey Cottin, Mike Cooter, Koenraad Dedobbeleer, Jason Dodge and Raimundas Malašauskas, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Stefano Harney, Christian Hawkey, Tim Ingold, Annick Kleizen, Luisa Ungar and Milena Bonilla, Jessica Warboys and Ben Woodard

Valentina Desideri is an Amsterdam-based artist. She trained in contemporary dance at the Laban Centre in London (2003–2006) and later on did her MA in Fine Arts at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam (2011–13). She does Fake Therapy and Political Therapy, she co-organises Performing Arts Forum in France, she speculates in writing with Prof. Stefano Harney, she writes biographies by reading people’s hands, she engages in Poetical Readings with Prof. Denise Ferreira da Silva.

Please follow the updates regarding scheduling for A Studio in Hand-Reading: Charlotte Wolff on this website and on facebook. Weekly invitations will also be sent out to announce forthcoming events.

Much thanks to Stadsdeel Zuid, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, Sandberg Instituut, Mondriaan Fonds as well as Kunstverein’s (Gold) members for their generous support.

Please join us this Saturday 9 May for the Book Binding Consultancy

From 11 am to 8 pm

Maria Jimena Sanchez and Jungmyung Lee – book binding professionals – will be consulting and offering the best binding solutions for your specific/special printed projects.

There are two packages of consulting available:

1. Consultation
15 euros / 30 minutes

2. Consultation + Binding
10 euros (for a consultation) + tailored price depending on the number of pages, copies and binding solution

For either package you will need to book in advance. Please send your time preference and a brief description of your project to:

jungmyung@werkplaatstypografie.org
jimena@werkplaatstypografie.org

We will get back to you with a confirmation of your appointment before Saturday.

Please join us this Thursday 30 April, 7–10 p.m. for Mime Radio, the launch.

Expect music and stories.
Serving: Amateur Delight

Mime Radio was performed and written orally by French artist Benjamin Seror at a series of events over a two-year period, then transcribed and edited into a novel. The story revolves around a cast of eccentric characters, who meet at the Tiki Coco, a bar in Los Angeles that holds “Challenging Reality Open Mic” nights for amateur inventors and performers. Eventually, the protagonists get caught up in trying to help Marsyas, a character from ancient Greek mythology that lost his body after being defeated in a music contest against the god Apollo, to recover his voice, his very ancient voice. Unbeknownst to them, this recovery unleashes a disaster… Mime Radio is a novel about how language and perception can be one and the same.

Mime Radio by Benjamin Seror is Edited by future and published by: Bat; Adéra; CRAC Alsace; Kunstverein, Amsterdam; and Sternberg Press.

ISBN 978-3-95679-151-2
€ 20

BOB’s YOUR UNCLE is designed by Robert Wilhite, open every Thursday, and brings you a special host and special servings each week. Reservations: bobsyouruncle@kunstverein.nl

Thursday 23 April, 7:00 pm
Mime Radio (notes for chapter I to XII)
Until 2 May

Thursday 30 April, 7:00–10:00 pm
Mime Radio, the launch

Mime Radio was performed and written orally by French artist Benjamin Seror at a series of events over a two-year period, then transcribed and edited into a novel. The story revolves around a cast of eccentric characters, who meet at the Tiki Coco, a bar in Los Angeles that holds “Challenging Reality Open Mic” nights for amateur inventors and performers. Eventually, the protagonists get caught up in trying to help Marsyas, a character from ancient Greek mythology that lost his body after being defeated in a music contest against the god Apollo, to recover his voice, his very ancient voice. Unbeknownst to them, this recovery unleashes a disaster… Mime Radio is a novel about how language and perception can be one and the same.
Each live chapter of the novel made use of props, models, costumes, music and sound effects. For the first time, Mime radio (notes for chapter I to XII) presents all the models employed as part of these performances. This series of notes draws a mental landscape of the story told in Mime Radio.

The exhibition Mime radio (notes for chapter I to XII) is on view from Thursday 23 April until Saturday 2 May. On 30 April, a special evening and launch is planned that celebrates Mime Radio in its entirety. Expect music and stories.

Mime Radio by Benjamin Seror is Edited by future and published by: Bat; Adéra; CRAC Alsace; Kunstverein, Amsterdam; and Sternberg Press.

ISBN 978-3-95679-151-2
€ 20

Join us this Thursday at BOB’s YOUR UNCLE for summery drinks, readings and sun dance beats from Greece.

In the name of Half Man Half Orange

If magic is sometimes very close to nothing at all, it might be indeed possible to mistake one for the other. No wonder language found its origin in myths. This summer reader is about the cup of coffee that keeps us awake every morning. How much of it has to do with caffeine and how much of it with our will to believe in rituals? Amen.

This publication brings together all the spiritual advice, scientific gossip, self-esteem exercises and chronic fictions that were read, written, watched, played, forgotten and discussed over a year in Arnhem by the Werkplaats Typografie participants.

Half Man Half Orange
12 x 17cm; 288pp

With contributions by Amir Avraham, Fred Cave, Yana Foqué, Daniel Frota, Virginie Gauthier, Daria Kiseleva, Mathew Kneebone, Fay Kolokytha, Menelaos Kouroudis, Jungmyung Lee, Iván Martinez, Laura Pappa, Christine Pogatchnik and Maria Jimena Sánchez

Edited by Daniel Frota and Menelaos Kouroudis and with support from Maxine Kopsa
Designed by Daniel Frota

Published by Werkplaats Typografie/ ArtEZ Institute of the Arts
www.werkplaatstypografie.org
Arnhem, 2015

PLUS:

Witness the sneak preview of

Mime radio (notes for chapter I to XII)

Mime Radio was performed and written orally by French artist Benjamin Seror at a series of events over a two-year period, then transcribed and edited into a novel.

For the first time, Mime radio (notes for chapter I to XII) presents all the models employed as part of the Mime Radio performances. This series of notes draws a mental landscape of the story told in Mime Radio.

On view until Saturday 2 May with the Mime Radio book launch happening next week, on Thursday 30 April

BOB’s YOUR UNCLE is designed by Robert Wilhite, open every Thursday, and brings you a special host and special servings each week. Reservations: bobsyouruncle@kunstverein.nl

Join us this Thursday at BOB’s YOUR UNCLE for The Hummingbird’s Perch by Scott Rogers

Come to rest fast beating wings.

Wear crimson, celebrate the thaw.

A bright spot in a spring shower.

Sweet citrus. Potent nectar. Hibiscus business.

The April migration takes its toll.

Stay a while.

Doors open at 19.30
Serving Nectar
Dress Code: Red accents
Video: Rufous Hummingbird at rest
Sound: Wingbeats chopped and screwed
Flowers: Tropical or seasonal

BOB’s YOUR UNCLE is designed by Robert Wilhite, open every Thursday, and brings you a special host and special servings each week. Reservations: bobsyouruncle@kunstverein.nl

Join us this Thursday at BOB’s YOUR UNCLE for the long awaited bartending of Gabriel Lester, feat. Smári Rúnar Róbertsson

Doors open at 19.00
Serving Icelandic Brennivin

Lester and Robertsson will make a turn in the groove. But you gotta make it move. The Kunstverein will be packed, stacked and connected. Its gonna be the station. The centre for elevation. Getting down with fresh new creations. Yes a party is over here! Not a party over there! So all come on down, spread that vibe everywhere.

Please join us this Thursday at BOB’s YOUR UNCLE for
Date Night #1: GAME ♠ WAR ♥ LOVE featuring a karaoke session by Nathan Azhderian.

Doors open at 19.30, karaoke performance from 20.00

“… We all know how this performance is supposed to look, how it’s ‘supposed’ to sound – but the right effect remains elusive. What we get instead is more human, and less Beyoncé; flat notes and forgotten lyrics and awkward pauses in all the wrong places. More than anything else, the raw, messy sensation of expelling sound from our bodies. Sucking down air and then pushing it back up and struggling to shape it, pushing it back out onto the pop-imago like the human grease that spoils the perfect surface of the screen, together.”

With a special contribution by Matkissing Agency, to be discovered inside Kunstverein.

BOB’s YOUR UNCLE is designed by Robert Wilhite, open every Thursday, and brings you a special host and special servings each week. Reservations: bobsyouruncle@kunstverein.nl

Please join us this Saturday afternoon, at 5 pm for a talk by Luis Berríos-Negrón, a core collaborator of Paul Ryan’s Threeing at Documenta 13.

His Threeing rugs, developed together with Paul, were on view throughout Kunstverein’s Paul Ryan exhibition.

Luis Berríos-Negrón will be discussing flying carpets, the anxious prop, and his experiences with Paul Ryan and Threeing.

Doors open at 4 pm
Serving cookies and spiked cranberry tea

Luis Berríos-Negrón (Puerto Rico, 1971) focuses on visual arts, material economies, and mass customization through the lens of architecture. He holds a Master of Architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Parsons New School for Design. While at the New School, he was teaching assistant to urban ecologist Jean Gardner, assistant editor/curator to conceptual artist Silvia Kolbowski, and studio assistant to photographer Larry Clark. While at M.I.T., he was teaching assistant to visual artist Antoni Muntadas, and performance artist Joan Jonas. His master’s thesis was co-advised by Dean Adele Santos, and director of the Center for Advance Visual Studies, Krzrysztof Wodiczko, co-read by William Mitchell, then head of the MIT Media Laboratory. He has received various awards, including first prize of the Parsons-Kalil Award for Smart Design 2002, first prize of the M.I.T.-Schnitzer Award for the Visual Arts 2004, and most recently the 2013 Royal Danish Council for the Arts International Visiting Artist stipend. In 2012, he was core collaborator exhibiting in Paul Ryan’s Threeing project at Documenta13, and in Ute Meta Bauer’s Future Archive at the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein. In 2013, he represents Germany with curator Matthias Böttger in the São Paulo International Biennial for Architecture, and will be in residence at the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste. From 2011 to 2013, he was Assistant Professor and Researcher at the Institute for Design and Architecture Strategies at the Architecture, Civil Engineering, and Environmental Sciences Department of the Technische Universität Braunschweig. In 2013–14, he will be Visiting Lecturer at the Münster University for Applied Sciences. Recent publications include Digital Utopia (Akademie der Künste, Berlin 2012), Space Matters (Ambra Verlag, Vienna 2013), and The Social Design Reader (co-published by Angewandte/ETH/Columbia Universities, Vienna/Zurich/NY 2013). He has an independent practice, is the founder of the Paramodular design group, and of the Anxious Prop art collective. Berríos-Negrón lives and works in Berlin since 2006.

Please join us for the launch and presentation of:

Mierle Laderman Ukeles: Seven Work Ballets

A lecture by Mierle Laderman Ukeles followed by a conversation between the artist and editor Kari Conte.

Monday 23 March, 19.30
Goethe Institut, Herengracht 470, Amsterdam

For reservations please contact the Goethe Institut:
Tel. 020 531 2900
info@amsterdam.goethe.org
Entrance: € 5; for Kunstverein members: € 3; Students: free

Mierle Laderman Ukeles’s 1969 manifesto “Maintenance Art: Proposal for an Exhibition” was a major intervention in feminist performance practices and public art. The proposition argued for the intimate relationship between creative production in the public sphere and domestic labor – a relationship whose intricacies Ukeles has been unraveling, ever since. Starting in 1977, she became an unsalaried artist-in-residence at the New York City Department of Sanitation, a position that enabled her to introduce radical public art as mainstream culture into an urban system serving and owned by the municipal population.

Through archival research, this monographic publication focuses on Ukeles’s work ballets – a series of large-scale collaborative performances involving workers, trucks, barges, and hundreds of tons of recyclables – which took place between 1983 and 2012 in Givors, Echigo-Tsumari, New York, Pittsburgh, and Rotterdam.

Edited by Kari Conte
Contributions by Kari Conte, Krist Gruijthuijsen; with 7 chapters written by Mierle Laderman Ukeles; a conversation with Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Tom Finkelpearl, Shannon Jackson

Co-published by Kunstverein Publishing, Grazer Kunstverein and Sternberg Press in collaboration Arnolfini, Bristol, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane and Marabouparken, Stockholm. Design by Marc Hollenstein

Mierle Laderman Ukeles
Ukeles completed an undergraduate degree in history and international studies at Barnard and an MA in Interrelated Arts at NYU in 1973. Ukeles’ early work was experimental, and visually and symbolically conveyed the social unrest surrounding events such as the women’s movement and the Vietnam War. Since the 1970s, she has exhibited and performed widely, among others in C7500, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, USA (1973); Issue: Social Strategies by Women Artists, Institute of Contemporary Art, London (1980, both curated by Lucy Lippard); Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York (1998), WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; MoMa PS1, New York (2007–2008); Maintenance Art Works 1969–1980, Arnolfini, Bristol, and Grazer Kunstverein, Graz (both 2013). Ukeles is currently completing a permanent environmental public art commission for Freshkills Park in NYC, formerly the largest municipal landfill in the world, that will be completed in 2016–2017.

Kari Conte is a New York-based curator and writer. She is the editor and an author for Mierle Laderman Ukeles: Seven Work Ballets, published by Sternberg Press, Grazer Kunstverein and Kunstverein Publishing. Since 2010, she has been the Director of Programs and Exhibitions at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP). At ISCP, she leads residencies, exhibitions, and public programs in which she collaborates with more than a hundred artists each year. Previously, she worked at Whitechapel Gallery, London and received an MA in Curating Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art. She has curated or organized over thirty international exhibitions, site-specific commissions and performances including contributions to the Aichi Triennale and Performa Biennial. She has given recent talks at institutions including Art in General, Bard College, Creative Time, Goethe-Institut, Independent Curators International (ICI), Ludwig Museum, Purchase College, and Sharjah Art Foundation.

SPF 15

Co-hosted by Galerie Juliette Jongma with de Ateliers, Upstream Gallery and Galerie Gabriel Rolt participating in the 2015 edition.


Friday 20 March

Upstream Gallery and Galerie Gabriel Rolt will serve drinks from 18.30,
Kunstverein from 19.00.

Marc Bijl
‘Start me up!’
18:45
Location: Intersection Ceintuurbaan/Sarphatipark and Tweede van der Helststraat
During ‘Start me up!’, Marc Bijl waves a chequered flag to lap traffic in De Pijp to a flaming Formule One finale.

Jeroen Jongeleen
‘Running Things’
19:00–20:30
Location: the runs will start at Upstream Gallery and pass by all SPF locations
While people raise their glasses to the arts in De Pijp, tempers are challenged when a group of visitors seem to be plundering the galleries.

House of Makers
‘Looking Back’
19:30 – 20:00
Location: Galerie Gabriel Rolt
Looking Back was created by artists Sterre van Rossem, Peter Leung, Matthew Pawlicki-Sinclair and Clotilde Tran-Phat and will be performed at SP15 as a site-specific work. The work is in its essence fluid and always displaced, forcing the artists to adapt constantly to new circumstances. It is constantly being vandalized and deconstructed in order to make space for a new piece to emerge, adapted to the circumstances of a new environment.

Paul Ryan
‘Threeing Session’ lead by Sevanne Kassarjian
20:00–21:00
Location: Galerie Juliette Jongma
The workshop introduces you to the collaborative practice of Threeing and invites participants to generate ways to make Threeing operative in their work and play. Please sign up via office@kunstverein.nl.

Laurent-David Garnier
‘Cocktail #3 Fast Ice Racing Sand Track – FIRST’
20:00–22:00
Location: Bob’s Your Uncle Sports Bar (Kunstverein)
Laurent-David Garnier develops the third of his series signature cocktails.

Stefano Faoro
‘I want to write them and say it is not going to last’
22:00
Location: Bob’s Your Uncle Sports Bar (Kunstverein)
After The Protagonists and The Means, the third and final chapter.
 Spoken words performance, circa 20 minutes.

Karaoke Police
23:00
Location: Tour begins at Kunstverein
Karaoke Police is a touring-game performance led by David Bernstein, Monika Lipšic, Marija Olšauskaitė, Jurgis Paškevičius and other special guests.

23:45
official start of SPRING

Saturday 21 March

The Dogs of Shame
‘Doing the Marina’
starts at 14:00
Location: Museumplein/Museum square and route to Galerie Gabriel Rolt
The public is invited to join the Dogs of Shame in their physically and mentally challenged ‘Doing the Marina’ method. A moving guerrilla performance in public space.

Death Shanties (Lucy Stein, Sybren Renema, Alex Neilson)
16:00-17:00
Location: De Ateliers
Death Shanties is a mixed media free jazz group featuring Alex Neilson (drums), Sybren Renema (sax) and former de Ateliers resident Lucy Stein (painting/ projections). Stein uses primitive devotional images, food stuffs and even her own hair in visceral, highly textured painted projections making Death Shanties a unique and immersive live experience.

Rent the Korean (Jungmyung Lee and Ingo Valente)
17:00–19:00
Location: Bob’s Your Uncle Sports Bar (Kunstverein)
Rent the Korean will offer you a bizarre experience while Jungmyung Lee and Ingo Valente serve rice balls and vj cooking for welcoming the spring awake from hibernation. It is under an Institutional Package in which there are secretive interactive moments between Rent the Korean and visitors at the Kunstverein.

Peter Schuyff
19:00
Location: Galerie Gabriel Rolt
Neo-minimalistic painter and sculptor Peter Schuyff, will close SPF by performing with his band The Woodwards in the garden of Galerie Gabriel Rolt.

Addresses:

Kunstverein
Gerard Doustraat 132
1073 VX, Amsterdam

Galerie Juliette Jongma
Gerard Doustraat 128a
1073 VX Amsterdam

Galerie Gabriel Rolt
Tolstraat 84
1073 SE Amsterdam

Upstream Gallery
Van Ostadestraat 294
1073 TW Amsterdam

De Ateliers
Stadhouderskade 86
1073 AT Amsterdam

SPF 2015 is made possible through the generous support of Stadsdeel Zuid

Dear Participant,

Kunstverein has been interested in the work of Paul Ryan since the summer of 2012. We’ve decided to introduce you to his work via live workshops on Threeing and an eclectic, investigative source book.

Paul Ryan (1943–2013), was a pioneering video artist, writer, teacher and theoretician who worked and lived in New York City. Ryan’s work appeared in the groundbreaking exhibition TV as a Creative Medium at the Howard Wise Gallery in New York in 1969, and he was a member of the Raindance media collective as well as contributor to its seminal video journal Radical Software. Much of Ryan’s theoretical work focuses on triadic behavior – the interrelation of three units or persons – codified by Ryan into the concept of “threeing” as well as the Earthscore Notational System which draws upon video to address issues of ecological sustainability. Paul participated in Documenta 13 with Threeing live sessions. “Paul Ryan’s Threeing is comprised of situations in which three or more people create sustainable, collaborative relationships.”

Kunstverein has invited Sevanne Kassarjian, a professional workshop leader who studied under Paul Ryan, to facilitate a number of sessions on Threeing. Sevanne Kassarjian: “The workshops will introduce you to the collaborative practice of Threeing and invite you to generate ways to make Threeing operative in your work and play. The workshops will combine theory and practice, communication and creativity. Participants will be expected to work with both abstract concepts and the embodiment of those concepts and learn to practice Threeing in both its verbal and nonverbal versions.”

The various workshops/sessions on Threeing will be focused on movement, another on words and another on making a mark. On Sunday 15 March Sevanne will be holding sessions all day, as well as on Monday 16 March. There will be approximately 4 sessions held per day and one session that will take place on Friday 20 March, in the evening, at Galerie Juliette Jongma.

We invite artists, educators, theorists and everyone interested in exploring knew ways to collaborate. Please send an email to office@kunstverein.nl to show your interest in participating and your preferred day and time (feel free to choose more than one session):

March 15: sessions at 12:00; 16:00. Location: Ruyschstraat 4 III
March 16: sessions at 11:00; 14:00; 17:00. Location: Ruyschstraat 4 III
March 20: session starts at 19:00. Location: Galerie Juliette Jongma

On Saturday March 28 there will be a live talk with Berlin based artist Luis Berríos-Negrón, a core collaborator of Paul Ryan’s Threeing at Documenta 13. His Threeing rugs, developed together with Paul, will be used and on view throughout the project. Information here: www.luisberriosnegron.org/ThreeingShedRugs.

More information from Paul’s site: www.earthscore.org/themes
As well on the site, there is the entire lesson plan for how to participate and generate Threeing. Everything is open source and the idea is, once the parameters are understood, that people can interpret and take things where they want them to go.

Sevanne Kassarjian specializes in theatre based education and communication, surfacing opportunities in every interaction. Bringing the tools of improvisation and 20 years on the professional stage to bear on a wide range of themes, including cross-cultural communication, managing uncertainty, and creating learning organizations, Sevanne designs and conducts experiential education programs for corporate and non-profit organizations, supporting clients to expand their repertoire. She has worked with hundreds of independent clients and developed and delivered programs for organizations including the US Olympic Committee, Price Waterhouse Coopers, The House of Chanel, Coca-Cola, Miraval Resort, Global Business Network and the San Diego Police Department. She is the in-house coach in numerous organizations as diverse as American Express, the David Zwirner Gallery and Idealist.org. Sevanne holds a BA from Brown University and an MFA from the University of California, San Diego.

Sevanne Kassarjian and Paul Ryan met because of Paul’s interest in the work of Gregory Bateson, Sevanne’s grandfather. They discovered a mutual interest in re-examining the landscape of our interactions and began a long friendship in which Sevanne supports the spread of Paul’s work on triadic relationships. Paul asked Sevanne to train the 23 people at Documenta 13 who would man Paul’s installation for the entire summer exhibit.

Will Holder and Alex Waterman read Robert Ashley
Will Holder and Alex Waterman will be reading an hour of duets from Robert Ashley’s opera’s “Dust” and “Celestial Excursions” as part of the reading tour of YES, BUT IS IT EDIBLE? The music of Robert Ashley, for two or more voices.
Edited by Will Holder and Alex Waterman. Published by New Documents, 2014

Location: Theater de Roode Bioscoop, Haarlemmerplein 7
Doors open at 7 p.m. performance starts at 8 p.m.
Tickets €11 and €6 for members (bring you membership card) via www.roodebioscoop.nl or reserve via office@kunstverein.nl

Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members and Stadsdeel Zuid.

Please join us this Thursday at BOB’s YOUR UNCLE for
Date Night #0: GAME ♠ WAR ♥ LOVE hosted by The Dutch Oysters Club.*
Oysters and bubbles served from 19.30

“In pre-romantic, pre-modern time marriages or love connections were a matter of relatives, counselors, your uncle, your aunt, and so on … Today is similar, only instead of all those old wise uncles it’s dating agencies and marriage agencies. What they offer is precisely love without the fall, without falling in love, without this totally unpredictable traumatic encounter.” (Slavoj Žižek introducing Event: A Philosophical Journey Through A Concept, 2014)

*For the Date Night #0, the Dutch Oysters Club will be making their first public appearance. The founding members are Dina Danish, Bea McMahon and Emma Panza.

I’m With Her Records and BOB’s YOUR UNCLE presents:
Nancy Acid, live at Ellen de Bruijne

Thursday 19 February

Doors open at 8 p.m.
Gig starts at 8.30 p.m.

Ellen de Bruijne Projects
Rozengracht 207a
1016 LZ Amsterdam

The Performance Programme at Ellen de Bruijne Projects and BOB’s YOUR UNCLE is curated by Dorothé Orczyk.
10 January – 28 February 2015

Salon Hang
Open: 14–28 February
Preview: Saturday 14 February, 6–8 pm

With:

   Alex Bailey
        Maria Barnas
 Christiaan Bastiaans
     Marja Bloem
       Ansuya Blom
Tim Braden
  Danila Cahen
      Leone Contini
 Sarah Crowner
  Jeremiah Day
      Dexter Sinister
    Jaring Dürst Britt
Nel van Enckevort
      Experimental Jetset
Laurent‑David Garnier
     gerlach en koop
  Melissa Gordon
Krist Gruijthuijsen
     Kara Hamilton
   Sara van der Heide
  Bas Hendrikx
     Maurits Hertzberger
Geirthrudur Finnbogadottir Hjorvar
    Ernst van der Hoeven
 Jeanine Hofland
     Daniel Hofstede
    Will Holder
  Marc Hollenstein
       Richard John Jones
 Juliette Jongma
Angie Keefer
   Gert Jan Kocken
 Richard Kostelanetz
     Germaine Kruip
  Gabriel Lester
 Glenn Lewis
    Matthew Lutz-Kinoy
Armand Mevis and Linda van Deursen
        Maureen Mooren
 Martijn van Nieuwenhuijzen
    Willem Oorebeek
     Lisa Oppenheim
       Adam Pendleton
    Falke Pisano
       Alexander Ramselaar
     Christine Roland
Benjamin Roth
     Felix Salut
         Maaike Schoorel
     Dean Allen Spunt
   Jennifer Tee
      Barbara Visser
 Axel Wilhite
         Robert Wilhite
   Susanne M. Winterling
 

Please join us this Saturday 14 February, for the first annual Members Only Salon Hang.
For the first time in its 5-year history, Kunstverein will be hosting a Salon Hang, open to all and only its esteemed members. The Salon Hang is an exciting out of control event that showcases an abundance of local and international work. At once harking back to the infamous Salons of the past, referencing these full and novel exhibitions that often wrote history, and at the same time, looking forward to what a contemporary art community and self-organization can look like today.

Please join us Thursday 5 February for the radio feature
If loving you is wrong, I don’t wanna be right #3 by Kerstin Cmelka.

A live DJ set and radio broadcast exploring female emotional desires and their attempts of expression in pop music.

Doors open at 7 p.m.
The set starts at 8 p.m.

Serving Negroni Cocktail

and

This Thursday BOB’s YOUR UNCLE’s newest franchise, the BOB’s YOUR UNCLE SPORTS BAR* in Bergen, Norway, will be hosted by Swedish artist Tobias Karlsson. The evening will feature pink cocktails, a soundtrack of 50’s love songs, and a re-enactment of one of Karlsson’s slam poetry performances from the 90’s.

*Appropriated by Amsterdam-based artist Carl Johan Högberg, BOB’s YOUR UNCLE SPORTS BAR is part of the exhibition “Shuttlecock, feat. Bob’s Your Uncle Sports Bar” at Hordaland Art Centre, curated by Anthea Buys. Read more about the exhibition here.

The Performance Programme at Ellen de Bruijne Projects and BOB’s YOUR UNCLE is curated by Dorothé Orczyk.
10 January – 28 February 2015

BOB’s YOUR UNCLE is designed by Robert Wilhite, open every Thursday, and brings you a special host and special servings each week. Reservations: bobsyouruncle@kunstverein.nl

Join us this Thursday at BOB’s YOUR UNCLE for a screening and Bärenjäger.

Doors open at 7 p.m.
Screening starts at 8 p.m.

A Recess and a Reconstruction
Written and directed by Louise Hervé and Chloé Maillet, 2011, 22 min.
With: Rachel Spicer as Hippolyta, Benjamin Seror as Manfred, and Francis Grew.

Somewhat at a loose end, two museum guides in a basement storeroom are marveling at the great resourcefulness of archeological museography. Elsewhere, on an excavation site, an archeologist standing by trenches and mechanical diggers is describing artefacts. Much further along, a young woman imprisoned in the underground recess of a castle lets her terror fantasies run wild. A Recess and a Reconstruction is a Gothic story where the line between what is past and what lies in the future is in the process of disintegrating.

Production I. I. I. I., with the support of Pôle Image Haute Normandie, Cultures France, FRAC Île-de-France, Mairie de Paris, Raven Row. Thanks to Marcelle Alix, Paris. Image: Maria de los Angeles Parrinello, sound: Arthur Beja, Sam Ryan, editing: Clement Tomé, costumes: Martin Hervé, catering: Michèle Monory.

Join us this Saturday for Nora Turato does Rammellzee
Performance starts at 7 p.m.

World premiere of ‘Shut Up I’m Counting’
Saturday 10 January 2015
At Rialto cinema
Doors open at 11.30 a.m. screening starts at 11.45 a.m.
A blini brunch follows at Bob’s Your Uncle

Please join us for the premiere of Felix Salut’s extraordinary film ‘Shut Up I’m Counting’, a project on the cutting edge of film and graphic design.

The movie is a parable of a complex and erratic world. Tara and Ohio are trapped in a reality packed with symbols, systems and fragments. They don‘t know how to escape from it. They are looking for the sign ‘X’ to show them the WAY OUT. Guided by the Oracle with its mysterious riddles, a turbulent adventure story evolves.

The film is written, directed and produced by Felix Salut and has a duration of 27 min.

Following the screening there will be a chance to speak with the director, Felix Salut, at Bob’s Your Uncle, and share in some Blinis and Cava. As well, we will be showing and playing the game Galapagos, as featured in the film.

Tickets including blinis and cava: 5 EUR
As seating is limited, please send an email to reserve to office@kunstverein.nl (members have priority).

SOLD OUT

The experimental film script of ‘Shut Up I’m Counting’ was published by Spector Books in 2014. It was awarded the Walter-Tiemann-Preis, a prize for innovative book design and typography.

Duration: 27 min
Director: Felix Salut
Camera, Animation & Sound: Simon Krahl
Tara: Tara Khan
Ohio: Matthew Lutz-Kinoy
The Oracle: Karen Røise Kielland
Dot: voice by Yotam Haber
The Voice: Wendy Taylor
Magic Child: Noah Weigand

Rialto cinema
Ceintuurbaan 338, Amsterdam

This project was made possible by the generous support of AFK and supporters of wemakeit.ch. Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members and Stadsdeel Zuid.

Please join us for the Kunstverein Christmas party with Santa Robert Wilhite serving Santa’s Crutch.

Friday 19 December, from 7.30 pm.

This Thursday 4 December, BOB’s YOUR UNCLE will host a triple special:

• The Exhibitionist serves The Pete – a non-controversial cocktail.

• Adam Pendleton reads Hannah Weiner – from afar.

• And Kari Cwynar of Kunstverein Toronto launches KVT’s first publication:
a new edition of Schneemann’s iconic artist’s book, Cézanne, She Was A Great Painter (1976), published in conjunction with the exhibition Dear Carolee: Carolee Schneemann in Letters (on from November 27 – January 10).

Doors open at 19.30.

We’ll be playing some Rammellzee. Poems welcome.

Hannah Weiner and Rammellzee
29 November 2014 – 31 January 2015

Preview: Friday 28 November, 5–8 pm

The show is about two people who use language/words and even letters in their very own way. Rammellzee liberated letters from their enslaved status in the alphabet so that they could do battle. And Weiner saw words in the air and on people.

We’ll have paintings by Rammellzee and books by Weiner.

Image: Rammellzee, copyright Vincent Vlasblom, NL

Events:
28 November: Tommy Oost live
4 December: Adam Pendleton reads Hannah Weiner
& January 2015: Nora Turato reads Rammellzee

Doors open at 19.30

Please note that space is limited so it will be first come first serve and members will have priority.

Eau de Cologne
27 September, from 5–10 pm

Hosted by Gallery Juliètte Jongma and Kunstverein.

With k.i. beyoncé, Bisou de Saddam, Michiel Ceulers and Anthony Salvador, Echo + Seashell, Laurent-David Garnier, Richard John Jones, Nancy Acid, Ana Navas, and introducing I’m With Her Records. Hot dogs by Ron Blaauw.

Eau de Cologne is an anti-fashion show and a raw punk, fuzz-pop festival.

Eau de Cologne takes its name from Monika Sprüth’s radical female only in-house gallery magazine by the same title, published only three times between 1985–1993.

Line-up
5 pm Ana Navas, around Gerard Douplein and at Kunstverein
            Michiel Ceulers and Anthony Salvador, at Juliètte Jongma
            Laurent-David Garnier, in Bob’s Your Uncle
            k.i. beyoncé, on Gerard Douplein
            I’m With Her Records, in I’m With Her Records
7 pm Richard John Jones, on Gerard Douplein
8 pm Echo + Seashell, on Gerard Douplein
9 pm Bisou de Saddam unplugged, in Bob’s Your Uncle

Thanks to Stadsdeel Zuid and Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst as well as Kunstverein’s (Gold) members. Special thanks to Monika Sprüth.

K-tanglement

14 September 2014, 8pm

On September 14 at 8pm in Amsterdam and Milano and at 2pm New York and Toronto time, a simultaneous hypnosis performance will be held under the glow of giant billboard screens in NY, Toronto, Amsterdam and Milan. Following on from and inspired by “Color Therapy”, a project that brings abstract visuals and sounds that counterbalance weather and social traffic flows at these 4 locations, K-tanglement is a project that seeks to decolonize the mind from the sense of unitary location. Participants will be invited to listen to an audio that enables them to enter a trance state in which their unconscious minds will be invited to dematerialize, decontextualize themselves from the surrounding branding, dissolve into color-based emotions and finally develop a sense of simultaneous entanglement with participants in the other 3 cities.

If you would like to participate please register here.

K-tanglement : a project by Marcos Lutyens in collaboration with Kunstverein Toronto, Milan, New York and Amsterdam.

Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members and Stadsdeel Zuid.

Eau de Cologne magazines

5 September – 4 October 2014
Opening: 4 September 7-9pm

In February 1983, Monika Sprüth opened her first gallery in Cologne. Advocating the talents of then-emerging artists Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Cindy Sherman and Rosemarie Trockel, Sprüth countered a “Cologne over-run by male artists” with a gallery focused on women. Emblematic of this perspective is Sprüth’s publishing venture Eau de Cologne: an “effervescent, shape-shifting magazine, featuring almost exclusively women artists and art practitioners – which she published, with accompanying exhibitions, three times between 1985 and 1993”.

The presentation at Kunstverein of these historic publications prefaces the EAU DE COLOGNE event, which will be held on September 27.

Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members and Stadsdeel Zuid. Special thanks to Monika Sprüth and Ahrend.

Axel Wilhite

5 September – 4 October 2014
Opening: 4 September 7–9 pm

Menko is a Japanese children’s game played with small cards (similar to baseball cards) elaborately decorated with samurais and other notable historical figures instead of athletes. Axel Wilhite paints on top of these illustrations, sometimes adding to the original image by adding a hat or a flower to a samurai in warrior stance. On other cards, he completely erases the original image, reducing it to its bare lines and then making it anew. Wilhite began working with Menko cards in Chiba, Japan, where he lived for a year while attending school and studying kendo, the art of Japanese swordsmanship. It helped him deal with loneliness of being in a foreign country. “At first, it was something I did for the benefit of my dorm mates, who were also foreigners in Japan,” he says. “Painting the Menko cards is my way of connecting with Japanese culture.”
Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members and Stadsdeel Zuid. Special thanks to Ahrend.

Launch Abstraction Création: Art non-figuratif (reprint and translation)

Kunstverein presents on 4 September – in collaboration with the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam – a reading by Will Holder on the occasion of the reprint of Abstraction Création: Art non-figuratif, with the first full translation of the material in English.

Between 1932 and 1936 five edition of the cahier Abstraction Création: Art non-figuratif was published in Paris by the eponymous association, uniting all movements who worked abstractly. The magazine not only formalised a new tendency for language in visual art, but also became a form of explicit self-promotion and opposition against the growing force of figurative Surrealism, led by André Breton. Two minimal yet clear criteria needed to be fulfilled to become a member of the association: you had to be an artist and work non-figuratively. This resulted in a list of members of long-forgotten artists mingled with names such as Kandinsky, Mondrian, Calder, Delaunay, Van Doesburg and Brancusi.
A year after the establishment of the association the first issue of the cahier Abstraction Création: Art non-figuratif was published. Most of the members handed in documentation of work along with self-written texts. Those writings were visions about their own work, detailed explanations of the documentation, short viewing instructions, epistles about the true meaning of abstract art, essays on the relation between abstract art and evolution, straight forward explanations why a locomotive is not a work of art, and a poem about God being a copycat.

During the launch in Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Will Holder will lead a small audience through the Museum’s galleries, stopping to read writings from Abstraction Création: Art non-figuratif to paintings and sculpture by their authors.

The publication is an initiative of Riet Wijnen and published by Kunstverein Publishing.

The readings will take place on 4 September at 7 – 7.30 pm, 8 – 8.30 pm, and 9 – 9.30 pm at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Reservation is required. Please send an e-mail to reservations@stedelijk.nl, including your preferred time slot.

Afterwards there will be drinks at BOB’s YOUR UNCLE.

Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members, Stadsdeel Zuid, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Stichting Stokroos and Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst.

There’s only two Alex Bailey’s
25–29 June 2014

Dear Maxine

I imagine you’re duly impressed, if not ‘weak at the knees’ by the photograph i’ve attached. It also shows TWO of the works i’ll be exhibiting. I consider the show as ’stuffing works’ down every orifice of the space. Much like a Gang Bang.

Kindest of Regards

Alex Bailey

The exhibition features work from Michael Bailey (UK), Alex Bailey (UK), Robert Chilton (UK), A Donkey (NL) and an amateur painting from deceased footballer George Best (NI).

Friday 27th June, 7pm, performance at Café Van Wou, Van Woustraat 25.

There’s only two Alex Bailey’s is part of A Festival of Choices, Master of Fine Arts Graduation 2014, Sandberg Instituut, 25–29 June 2014, various locations throughout Amsterdam. A Festival of Choices emphasizes upon the relationship and choices made between the graduating student and the diverse range of institutions and organizations offered within the cultural landscape of Amsterdam. For more information and the full program, please check www.festivalofchoices.nl

Mime Radio, The Final Chapters
Mime Radio is an orally written novel by Benjamin Seror.

“This is the story of an ancient voice. This is the story of how Marsyas, poor Marsyas recovered his voice millions of years after having lost it.”

Chapter X
Wednesday, 11 June 2014
Doors open at 7 pm, performance starts at 7.30pm

Chapter XI
Friday, 20 June 2014
Doors open at 7 pm, performance starts at 7.30pm

Chapter XII
Thursday, *26 June 2014
*Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Teijin Auditorium
Performance starts at 8pm

The story begins in a bar located in Los Angeles, the Tiki Coco. The bar is the center of the story where every night, a group of people attend the “Challenging Reality Open Mic” during which the audience is invited to take the microphone to present some new tools, techniques or ideas that could extend reality or at least shake at it a bit. This meeting will see the growing friendship between four characters, Angie, Bernhard, Benjamin and David, who move together to the Solog House built by one of them in the Hudson River Valley. This is also where they discover they have been followed by Marsyas, a character from ancient Greek mythology that lost his body after being defeated in a music contest against the god Apollo. The characters proceed to help Marsyas to recover his voice, his very ancient voice, without knowing what disaster this recovery could unleash.

Each chapter of the novel had been relayed orally through a cycle of improvised performances that are then transcribed to be later published in their entirety. One of the main concerns of this project is the use of a public event as a possible writing technique. Mime Radio follows on the principles of Cinema Vérité as described by Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin when collaborating on Chroniques d’un été (1960), a film about the impact of different camera movements on a given situation. In this and other Cinema Vérité films, the audience replaces the camera and the central question becomes: What would change for an author if s/he were to write a story directly addressed to a particular audience?

The core subject of this novel is language itself: What are the possibilities of words, and how can they be used in the most efficient ways to make things happen? The question is also paramount to all the different protagonists of the story who come together at the Tiki Coco. At this bar, they organize nightly events where they stretch the limits of language to describe tools that challenge reality. Most of the characters that appear in the novel come from other novels such as Ovid’s Metamorphoses, as well as living artists with whom Seror is in dialogue.

Please make your reservations up until one day before each performance via office@kunstverein.nl. Please note that members have priority.

Fellow Traveler
31 May – 22 June 2014

Opening: 30 May 7–10 pm

From 31 May until 22 June a selection of publications by Kunstverein Publishing will be on display at Zirkumflex, Berlin, organised in collaboration with Kunstverein Milano.

The selection of publications, will include our latest releases, ‘The LIP Anthology’ and ‘The Correspondence Book’.

Zirkumflex Fontanestraße 25 12049 Berlin
More information you find here or at zirkumflex.com.

Complicity
21 May – 5 July 2014
Opening: 17 May 5-8 pm

A project by Susanne M. Winterling
With narrations and works by Romaine Brooks, Eileen Gray, Carson McCullers and Annemarie Schwarzenbach; with film screenings and conversations and the launch of The Correspondence Book

Complicity is an exhibition that aims to highlight the ‘other’ Modernism, where complicity is related to the notion of a community and aesthetic solidarity of cosmopolitans and sensualists, meeting and forging networked paths. Forming a basis that glows with roots longer and more distinguished than a mere reduction to Modernism.

Referring to architectural historian Beatriz Colomina, who has written extensively on how architecture and communication are entangled in creating the subject, Complicity points to the importance of networked relations. The show is a room in which to be introduced to works, letter, drawings, furniture and thoughts, an ‘asylum for friendship and solidarity’.

Susanne Winterling: “What interests me is the community and mutual influence of these women, and how these networked connections became a visual and sensual landmark. The show does not attempt to correct the way we see these iconic figures (figures like Eileen Gray and Romaine Brooks), but presents their positions, their relations as a dynamic that is a tool for todays imaginative and sensual activism.”

Moreover, Complicity operates as the backdrop for the launch of The Correspondence Book, featuring the never before published correspondence between writers Carson McCullers and Annemarie Schwarzenbach (co-editors: Susanne M. Winterling and Vivian Ziherl; Design: Marc Hollenstein).

Kunstverein wishes to thank its (Gold) members and Stadsdeel Zuid. Special thanks to ClassiCon, Christian ter Maat, Cassandra Langer and Galerie Elstir, Paris.

Glenn Lewis
8 March – 3 May

6 March, 8 pm – Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam talk (reservations via office@kunstverein.nl before March 3)

8 March, 4 pm – members only preview

20–22 March SPF (Spring Performance Festival) in collaboration with Galerie Juliette Jongma

20 March, 10.30 pm – Glenn Lewis’s synchronized swim performance in the Mirandabad and the opening of BOB’S YOUR UNCLE with special host Robert Wilhite

Glenn Lewis has been working for close to six decades; he has appeared in some two hundred solo and group exhibitions. Studying ceramics under Bernard Leach, the well-known studio potter whose practice combined Western and Eastern crafts and philosophies, inspired in Lewis an abiding interest in simple forms, in botany and horticulture, in food preparation and the everyday aspects of life. Lewis’s work has extended to photography, film and video, ceramics, poetry, collage, sculpture, correspondence, horticulture and performance, and it embraces street parades, craft fairs, paper burnings, cooking demonstrations and a wide range of measurings and mappings.

Swimming performance

In 1970 Glenn Lewis created the mail-art exchange group known as the New York Corres Sponge Dance School of Vancouver—part of a network of artists that included General Idea in Toronto, Ant Farm in San Francisco and the New York Correspondence School under Ray Johnson. The NYCSDSOV camouflaged its meetings as performances at the Vancouver Aquatic Centre, public events witnessed by bemused fellow swimmers, featuring synchronized aquatic routines and shark fin swimming caps designed by Kate Craig (a co-founder of the Western Front).

During the months December, February, April and June, Valentina Desideri will give Political Therapy at Kunstverein. Political Therapy deals with problems of a political nature and creates the conditions to develop other languages to talk about and live through politics. There is no specific discipline or theory behind it. Its practice develops as it happens. Neither the therapist nor the patient is responsible for any kind of ‘solution’ to the problem. Instead, the problem is treated as an occasion for language to develop, for speculation to happen and for politics to be felt. It is a form of therapy for those who neither need, nor want, to be fixed. The role of therapist and patient are always exchangeable. The sessions are never recorded.

You can book an individual session by mailing your name and preferred month(s) to office@kunstverein.nl. We will then contact you to set a specific date and time. The sessions take place at Kunstverein and will be at least one hour (but can be longer, depending on the session itself). The cost for one session is € 35,–, € 25,– for members, with a discount for multiple bookings.

More information about Political Therapy on faketherapy.wordpress.com/political-therapy or you can mail valedesideri@gmail.com.

Kara Hamilton, Christine Roland with Angie Keefer
Shoes by Steffie Christiaens

29 November 2013–1 February 2014

Opening: 29 November 5–8 pm
Special event: 1 December at 4 pm Sunday afternoon Bloody Marys in collaboration with Juliette Jongma

*WHERE WERE WE, by Angie Keefer, published by the Serving Library in synch with the exhibition (servinglibrary.org)

There is a pleat, or a certain type of gown, known as a Watteau Pleat or a Watteau Gown, though the painter Watteau doesn’t seem to have had much to do with its invention. He merely depicted the look repeatedly, famously, and once in petal pink satin on the back of a woman ascending a step. The latter stars in a shop sign commissioned by a man who made his living selling art and baubles to aristocrats, though it’s unclear whether artist or client truly expected the painting to advertise anything other than itself. Indeed, the sign depicts aristocrats shopping for art and baubles, but a buyer acquired it from the shop almost immediately, Watteau died shortly thereafter, and now the work is considered his final masterpiece, rather than, say, a watershed in the history of sign-making. (Angie Keefer)

Kara Hamilton, Christine Roland with Angie Keefer. Shoes by Steffie Christiaens is made possible with the support of Stadsdeel Zuid; Het Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst and Kunstverein’s (Gold) members.

Please join us at Kunstverein for Reading Out Loud. Artist Matthew Shannon will read out loud from a selection of texts from the rare, avant-garde, historical periodicals on display in the exhibition Mit Mokka nach Mekka, for Bruce.

These magazines are: Poor.Old.Tired.Horse, KWY, Phantomas, Meta, Control, Interview, Ephermera, Fandangos, Kiss, Arcade, C-Magazine, Officina, Stereo Headphones, Revue Nul=0, Fuck You, Just Another Asshole, Jan Cremer Krant, Open Oog, Internationale Situationniste and Plankton.

Reading Out Loud will take place this coming Saturday 2 November from 5–8pm. This is also your last chance to see the exhibition, so we hope to see you there!

Mit Mokka nach Mekka, for Bruce is made possible with the support of Stadsdeel Zuid, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst and Kunstverein’s (Gold) members. With thanks to the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, John Benjamins and neugerriemschneider.

Mit Mokka nach Mekka, for Bruce

7 September – 2 November 2013
Opening: 7 September, 5–8 pm

 
The show, Mit Mokka nach Mekka, for Bruce, is titled after a work by German sculptor Meuser. The exhibition investigates the self-reflexive and discursive field of art-making. And is based on the notion of inspiring ’source’ material. The concept expands on the format of the book – exploring different practices that are book related in the specific medium on view. Mit Mokka… is thus a show that can be ‘read’ and includes rare, avant-garde art periodicals (on loan from a private collection), historical photographs by little known Swiss photographer Miklós Klaus Rózsa photographs by Brâncuși of his own work in situ and engravings by Thomas Bewick and featuring a poem by Joe Brainard. The mixing of historical periods and mediums heightens the significance of the pieces as ‘sources’ – works to, potentially, be digested, quoted or learned from.

It’s 38 degrees and there’s a forest fire smoking just over the ridge of the mountains behind us. It’s too hot to walk to the pool. But the wind has picked up and that might mean we can get a draft going in the house, cool it down enough to be able to sleep tonight. You turn to me and say, ‘I’m looking forward to watching the Lubitsch film.’

A phone rings and you pick it up and it’s Bruce, stoned and sunburned, from Los Angeles who tells you he’s sorry. He tells you he’s sorry for not being here, at the house, with you. He tells you that you were right, that he should have flown to the workshop this summer, and he tells you he’s sorry he’s not in New Hampshire and that he’s sorry he hasn’t called you in a week and you ask him what he’s doing in Los Angeles and don’t mention that it has been two months.*

You do however mention the fire. And then Bruce tells you how he wants to get in a car and drive up his own mountain and be able to walk into an air conditioned clinic and see like 30 Bewicks and 30 Brâncușis, bam, bam, right next to a big steel cube by Meuser and he says he’s been reading and rereading Control and quotes Brainard like punctuation and then he tells you he’s holding onto all the Miklós Klaus Rózsa’s surveillance records. ‘Hundreds of them,’ he whispers. You want to think about this, put it into context somehow, somewhere maybe, but it’s gotten hotter and your thoughts fizzle midair.

He’s still talking when you walk out the sliding doors to check on the fire and when you return he’s saying how Roger was in the limo with him back from the hotel and there was a new commercial for the Lost Weekend with a Van Halen contest on* and he turned to Roger who was too stoned to turn to him and said ‘I always wanted to show an imprint of my thumb next to Manzoni’s.’

You hadn’t said a word back, not since the beginning of the call and by now I spot ash on the tiled bathroom floor and can see flames curling at the ridge instead of just smoke so I start packing a bag with what I think we won’t be able to live without and mouth so that Bruce can’t hear: ‘We. Have. To. Go.’ But Bruce is still on speaker, still going strong: ‘…I said to Roger, right then as we were leaving the zoo, I said, the animals remind me of things I can’t explain. And he kisses my hand and I think, I have faith in this man – let’s drive to the clinic right now.’

Mit Mokka nach Mekka, for Bruce, with, in alphabetical order:

Thomas Bewick
1753–1828
Engraver and natural history author

Joe Brainard
1941–1994
Artist, poet, and theater set designer

Constantin Brâncuși
1876–1957
Sculptor

Meuser
Born 1947
‘He had endless discussions with Beuys and shared a love for picture titles with Kippenberger.’

Christof Nüssli
Born 1986
Graphic designer

Christoph Oeschger
Born 1984
Photographer

Miklós Klaus Rózsa
Born 1954
Photographer and activist

&

POOR.OLD.TIRED.HORSE.; KWY; PHANTOMAS; META; CONTROL; INTERVIEW; EPHEMERA; FANDANGOS; KISS; ARCADE; C-MAGAZINE; OFFICINA; STEREO HEADPHONES; REVUE NUL=0; FUCK YOU; JUST ANOTHER ASSHOLE; INTERNATIONALE SITUATIONNISTE and PLANKTON; JAN CREMER KRANT; OPEN OOG

Please help Christoph Nüssli and Christoph Oeschger realize their beautiful book by making a donation! More information you find here.

Mit Mokka nach Mekka, for Bruce is made possible with the support of Stadsdeel Zuid, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, Swiss Arts Council and Kunstverein’s (Gold) members. With thanks to the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, John Benjamins, neugerriemschneider, coos de wit wonen scandinavisch georïenteerd, and The Informers by Bret Easton Ellis*

Please join us for the launch of Kunstverein Publishing’s The Lip Anthology and Kunstverein’s end of season drinks & sausage sizzle

Saturday July 13, 4-7 pm

Editor of The Lip Anthology Vivian Ziherl will talk about Lip at 5pm, and be joined by respondent Rachel O’Reilly from the JVE, discussing the periodization of feminist art histories and (neo)liberal present takes on the politics of recognition.

Lip magazine was self-published by women in Melbourne from 1976 to 1984 and stood as a lightning rod for Australian feminist artistic practice over the Women’s Liberation era. The art and ideas expressed over Lip’s lifetime track with groundbreaking moves into performance, ecology, social-engagement and labor politics; all at an intersection with local realities.

Collecting and presenting the materials of Lip for the first time since their original appearance, The Lip Anthology, edited by Vivian Ziherl, privileges the range and dynamism of contesting feminisms that comprised the Lip project. Selected interviews, artist-pages, essays and activist reports are re-produced in facsimile, preserving Lip’s graphic experimentation.

The Lip Anthology is published by Kunstverein Publishing and Macmillan Publishing, co-produced with Grazer Kunstverein and with the support of the Australia Council for the Arts and the TEWRR.
 

Gerard Doustraat 132
1073 VX, Amsterdam
+31 (0) 20 3313203
office@kunstverein.nl

Hush Hush #5
Il Trasloco

28 June 2013, 7pm
Location: Kunstverein, Gerard Doustraat 132

The fifth in the Hush Hush series, organized especially for the members of Kunstverein Amsterdam, Milan and New York, is a screening of Il Trasloco (Moving out of the future), a 1991 independent documentary directed by Renato de Maria, now presented with English subtitles. Set in Bologna and retrospectively looking at the history of one of the key places where the Autonomia movement took place during the 1970s, the film is a surprisingly personal and heartbreaking recollection of the emptying of a household and the ending of an era, one that was possibly already dead.

The translation and subtitling of this film is by author Federico Campagna and artist, Richard John Jones and wasfirst commissioned by Auto Italia South East in 2010. This event will feature an introduction by Campagna and Jones which oscillates between the historical, social and political context of the film and the personal reflections and ideas that have formed around its redistribution and the many encounters the pair have had with it over the past three years. This performative dialogue will be followed by a pre-recorded introduction by Franco Berardi himself.

Members Only
Please RSVP via office@kunstverein.nl

Organised and supported by Werkplaats Typografie/ArtEZ; initiated by Mathew Whittington.

Political Therapy*

3–7 July
Special opening hours: 2 – 5 pm

July 7th, 4pm:
A conversation run by Valentina Desideri.
After two weeks of political problems in Kunstverein, the therapy gave its fruits.
Geraldine Geffriaud made a Dot Dry Date.
Jurgis Paškevičius has a Second Missing Thought.
Roi Alter has a question.
You are coming.

*Political Therapy deals with problems of a political nature and creates the conditions to develop other languages to talk about and live through politics. There is no specific discipline or theory behind it. Its practice develops as it happens. Neither the therapist nor the patient is responsible for any kind of “solution” to the problem. Instead, the problem is treated as an occasion for language to develop, for speculation to happen and for politics to be felt. It is a form of therapy for those who neither need, nor want, to be fixed. The role of therapist and patient are always exchangeable. The sessions are never recorded in any way and take approximately one hour.

Valentina Desideri was best defined by a friend who called her a 20 year old on tour. Although this was meant as a reproach, she found this definition more suiting than performance artist or anything on that tone. Lately she has also been called a psychic,which, if added to the previous description, makes of her a psychic 20 year old on tour. She trained in contemporary dance at the Laban Centre in London, she is doing a MA in Fine Arts at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam, she does Fake and Political Therapy, she makes performances, she writes biographies by reading people’s palms. She writes other things too but mostly she’s around.

Political Therapy is part of A Festival of Choices, Master of Fine Arts Graduation 2013, Sandberg Instituut, 3-7 July 2013, various locations throughout Amsterdam.
A Festival of Choices emphasizes upon the relationship and choices made between the graduating student and the diverse range of institutions and organizations offered within the cultural landscape of Amsterdam.
For more information and the full program, please check www.festivalofchoices.nl

‘Marlow Moss had short hair, combed completely flat and cut with absolute precision; had a high, white, forehead; had a narrow neck; had a small, oval, skull; had deep golden-brown eyes; her skin had a pale shine; her jaw and chin were a pure line; she was petite; had a sartorial style; wore jodhpurs and riding jackets; wore white blouses; Moss was a drag-king; a lesbian; a pseudo-man; her family did not support her choice to be a professional artist.’

‘Over half of the entire body of Moss’s work is only known through black and white documentation or sometimes only through a catalog or auction listing with no visual record at all.’
 

Please join us at Kunstverein for Meet Marlow Moss, an insert of Marlow Moss’s ‘Composition with Double Line and Blue Square’ (1934). This special event takes place Saturday 18 May from 5–8 pm and features a repeated performance by Dutch actor Martijn Nieuwerf, once at 6 pm and once at 7 pm.

On this occasion, Kunstverein Publishing is proud to launch the publication ‘Marlow Moss’ written by Riet Wijnen, designed by Marc Hollenstein.

‘Larry Bell and Sarah Crowner, Meet Marlow Moss’ opened on April 20 and runs until June 22.

Larry Bell and Sarah Crowner, Meet Marlow Moss is made possible with the support of Stichting Niemeijer Fonds; Stadsdeel Zuid; Het Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst and Kunstverein’s (Gold) members. With thanks to De Vleeshal, Middelburg

Larry Bell and Sarah Crowner, Meet Marlow Moss
 

Larry Bell and Sarah Crowner
20 April–22 June 2013
Meet Marlow Moss, an insert by Marlow Moss
18 May–22 June 2013

Opening 20 April, 5–8 pm

Kunstverein continues its research into alternative retrospectives with a new mise-en-scène by Sarah Crowner containing very recent and lesser-known works by Larry Bell, and an historical insert by Marlow Moss.

The three protagonists:

Larry Bell (b. 1939 in Chicago, lives and works in Taos and LA) walked around Venice California in the early sixties with a camera attached to his back, a bio-feedback chip in his hat and a trigger mechanism connected to his earlobes. Alpha waves emitted by a body in a state of wellbeing would set off the photo-taking process and eventually lead to a series of blurred pictures capturing perception on the move, observation in its most random form. Larry Bell, probably known best for his minimal glass sculpture, (the cubes were first exhibited at Pace Gallery in 1965) is a ‘spontaneous and improvisational, investigator of improbable visuals by improbably means’. Each thing, he says, was an experiment in something, where craft and simplicity (how do I make this thing simpler, how does it become through less doing?) were key issues. Finish Fetish West Coast Minimalism preferred a softer surface–like Bell’s coated glass–as opposed to the harder East Coast predilection for industrial materials like steel, concrete or plywood. But both were commenting on the relation to their technological environment. Californian artists, you could say added luster to their reductionism, added the sun, the surf and the gloss of custom-made cars. And where Bell’s ‘stable unit’ was once evidently a cube, it is now twisted, pink, yellow, bright red and reflective, undaunted by its own surface contortion.

Sarah Crowner (b. 1974 in Philadelphia, lives and works in Brooklyn NY) is inter-disciplinary Modernism. Geometric constructs follow the spirit and legacy of past practices, cutting up, referencing, undoing, adding to, playing on and tribute to, a language of abstraction. Unfolding, remembering and befriending the past, through scissors, fabric, thread, ceramics, wood, an industrial sewing machine, and paint, Crowner re-stitches fragments into new concurrences. Paintings as paintings and paintings not afraid of being fashion, design, and part of our current technological, even voguish, environment restage art historical points of interest and anxiety, updating them into contemporary concerns.
For Larry Bell and Sarah Crowner, Meet Marlow Moss, Crowner visits Larry Bell and Marlow Moss, creating a complete setting for the exhibited pieces, including her own. New large-scale works are an analysis of earlier Bell and Moss, at once closely referencing these latest temporary teammates and at the same time tripping the light fantastic and stating full autonomy.

Marjorie Jewel “Marlow” Moss (1889 – 1958), also known as Marlow Moss, “was a biological realist, a recluse, a persona non grata, a phenomenon, … an Amazon. She was a British, lesbian, Constructivist artist. She was also a woman, a Modernist, and a Neo Plasticist, a disciple of Piet Mondrian, and a student of Léger. She was a painter and a sculptor. She was a drag-king. She was a contemporary of Georges Vantongerloo, Jean Gorin, and Max Bill. Added to the list of adjectives could also be ‘middle class’, or even ‘upper-middle-class’, and Jewish, but then again she was also an atheist and an existentialist. … Moss disrupts and subverts the narratives that could include her. … This resistance to categorisation is a large factor in Moss’s obscurity; she is omitted from the histories, because she does not fit in. To date she is most consistently approached in reference to Mondrian, a context that casts her in the role of follower, or worse: imitator”, a role that’s far beneath her. *

Kunstverein Publishing
Larry Bell, Sarah Crowner, Marlow Moss is a Kunstverein publication designed by Marc Hollenstein that will be launched during the Marlow Moss event, 18 May.

Other dates and venues
18 April: Larry Bell artist-talk with Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam director Ann Goldstein in the Teijin Auditorium, Stedelijk Museum, 8–9.30 pm
18 May: Insert by Marlow Moss, an event at Kunstverein, 5–8 pm

Larry Bell and Sarah Crowner, Meet Marlow Moss is made possible with the support of Stichting Niemeijer Fonds; Stadsdeel Zuid; Het Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst and Kunstverein’s (Gold) members. With thanks to De Vleeshal, Middelburg.

* Lucy Howarth, ‘Marlow Moss (1889-1958)’, PhD thesis, University of Plymouth, 2008, p.1.

A talk with Larry Bell

From a letter to Barbara Rose about the primary concern of my work.

Once an artist friend of mine gave a party for some close friends, it was in celebration of his recent marriage. As the party went on, he took several people into the kitchen to try some very expensive Danish cheese, that he thought was fabulous.
I managed to slip unnoticed into the room to watch these gourmets enjoy themselves. Each one was given a small taste, and they all rolled their eyes back in their heads in sheer ecstasy as they savored the tiny morsel.
When I was discovered standing in the corner I was asked by one of the guest if I wanted a taste. My friend immediately replied, that to give me a taste was like ‘casting pearls before swine’. We all laughed and I had my taste. As it turned out I didn’t like the cheese, obviously proving his point.

Larry Bell

– Quoted from: ‘Larry Bell’, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 8 December 1967 – 14 January 1968, Catalogue nr. 427

Larry Bell (born in 1939 in Chicago, Illinois) is an American artist. He lives and works in Taos, New Mexico, and maintains a studio in Venice, California. He is in Amsterdam for the exhibition ‘Larry Bell, Sarah Crowner meet Marlow Moss’, opening 20 April at Kunstverein. Bell is jointly invited by Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Kunstverein to hold an artist talk, and will be interviewed afterwards by Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam director Ann Goldstein in the Teijin Auditorium, Stedelijk Museum on Thursday 18 April at 8pm.

Reservation is required. Please send an e-mail to reservations@stedelijk.nl, stating your full name, e-mail address, telephone number, and the date of the event for which you want to reserve a seat.

This project is made possible with the support of Stichting Niemeijer Fonds; Stadsdeel Zuid; Het Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst and Kunstverein’s (Gold) members.

Hush Hush #4

IMAGINED MENU
Quanno tu mangiavi cor pensiero…*
*Quanno tu mangiavi cor pensiero… is a quotation from a poem written in Cellelager by a prisoner from Lazio. The regional dialect seems grammatically odd in Italian, and could be translated to English as ‘When we ate with our minds’ and/or ‘When we ate thoughts’.

The fourth in the Hush Hush series, organized especially for the members of Kunstverein Amsterdam, Milan and New York, is an Imaginary Lunch with real food ­– arranged, hosted and introduced by Italian artist Leone Contini (1976, Florence). The eight plus-course menu is made from a selection of regional recipes that were collected in a notebook by Italian war-prisoners in Germany during the First World War. As such, the meal is a reflection of a (historic) community and (a national) identity. Served now, 95 years later, it can also be seen to reflect our current status quo, one riddled with crises and transformed by global migration.

In late 1917, the worst military debacle in Italian history began: the infamous ‘Battle of Caporetto’. Between October 24 and November 19 countless soldiers were taken prisoner, and among them Giosuè Fiorentino, an 18 year-old Italian officer and the great uncle of Contini. From the Cellelager POW camp in northern Germany, these men who experienced displacement, despair and starvation, turned to imagined food to combat their misery. Food became an obsessive desire and an imaginary escape; it was the subject of endless discussions. Speaking about food was an attempt to turn a crowd of starving bodies into a community again, able to share memories from a previous life. In an attempt to humanize hunger, to reframe this primary instinct into a sort of – however virtual – conviviality, discussing meals also became a collective action of cultural resistance.

Giosuè Fiorentino recorded the oral recipes from his fellow prisoners – records of intimate fragments from family lives – and re-assembled them into two handmade sketchbooks, a patchwork of regional cuisine, from Friuli to Sicily. The cookbooks became an unintended ethnographic writing, picturing the cultural materiality of an ‘imagined community’ called Italy.

This action of resistance, conceived in the deep darkness of the First World War, will be turned into a real, collective action in the form of a Sunday lunch on the 7th of April.

Time: 1pm until 4.30pm
Location: We will gather at Kunstverein to walk to the restaurant.
Reservation: Seeing as space is limited, please make reservations before the 3rd of April at office@kunstverein.nl. The eleven course menu will cost EUR 25.10 per person, the exact price of production only. As this meal is being prepared especially for those invited, we kindly ask you to keep your reservations.

Kunstverein
Gerard Doustraat 132
1073 VX Amsterdam

Please note that this is a members-only event, if you don’t want to miss it, it’s time to become a member.

Imagined menu is developed in collaboration with Kunstverein Milan and generously supported by the City Council of Amsterdam, District South and AFK (Amsterdam Fund for the Arts) and Kunstverein’s (gold) members.

Tradition
16 March – 19 May 2013

A selection from the Center for Social Research on Old Textiles (CSROT) with works by Willem Oorebeek, Lucy Skaer and Christopher Williams.

Following Raven Row’s exhibition The Stuff That Matters, which presented for the first time the elaborate collection of historic textiles assembled by Seth Siegelaub over the past thirty years for the Center for Social Research on Old Textiles (CSROT), Marres, Centre for Contemporary Culture, will continue to explore Siegelaub’s collection in close dialogue with Maxine Kopsa and Krist Gruijthuijsen from Kunstverein in Amsterdam and the Grazer Kunstverein in Graz, Austria.

The exhibition will feature approximately 50 items from the collection, which currently comprises around 650 pieces. The selection is based on the abstraction of forms that make up functional textiles and on the abstracted potential of their function. It will include woven and printed textiles, embroideries and costume, ranging from fifth-century Coptic to Pre-Columbian Peruvian textiles, late medieval Asian and Islamic textiles, and Renaissance to eighteenth-century European silks and velvets. Barkcloth (tapa) and headdresses from the Pacific region (especially Papua New Guinea) and Africa will also be on display. To provoke multiple readings, the textiles in the exhibition will be shown alongside the works of three artists, Willem Oorebeek, Lucy Skaer and Christopher Williams, who’s individual practices examines the usage of appropriation, modernity, craftsmanship and representation.

An recent essay by artist Doug Ashford will accompany the exhibition.

Tradition is the result of a collaboration between Marres, Centre for Contemporary Culture, Maastricht, Kunstverein Amsterdam and Grazer Kunstverein, Graz, Austria.

The exhibition will travel to Grazer Kunstverein in June 2013

Opening: 15 March, 7-9 PM
Location: Marres,
 Centre for Contemporary Culture,
 Capucijnenstraat 98, Maastricht
Entrance: Valid ticket

Musical Interlude

Kunstverein is excited to invite you for a Musical Interlude on Friday January 25th at 8 pm. We will start the year with a performance by composer and musician Dorit Chrysler.

‘A Wizard, A True Theremin Star! Imagine if Marianne Faithfull and Nikola Tesla had a love child, with Jane Birkin as the nanny and Bjork as the wayward Girl Scout leader!’
(Ann Magnuson of Paper Magazine)

Dorit Chrysler is best known for her theremin style, the theremin is one of the earliest electronic music instruments and the first musical instrument played without being touched. The instrument is invented in 1919 by the Russian Leon Theremin.

Dorit also has a prolific recording and performing career as a vocalist, guitarist, keyboardist, producer and engineer. She fronted a number of notable bands, including New York rock quartet Halcion and shared live bills with acts as diverse as Alex Hacke, Amon Tobin, Dinosaur Jr., Blond Redhead, Marylin Manson, Mercury Rev and Oingo Boingo.

Besides that she also collaborated and recorded with artists & producers such as Tocotronic, Anders Trentemøller, Judah Bauer (Catpower). Matt Johnson (The Th-e), Neon Indian, Gordon Raphael (The Strokes) and many more.

Embarking upon a solo career in 2000, Dorit has since performed worldwide, ranging from notorious dives. After a wide range of film &TV soundtracks, compilations, and singles, Dorit released her first solo record in 2004 featuring her theremin and which was produced, recorded, engineered, and performed by (the artist) herself.

Since 2005 she has toured the US, Japan, Australia, Canada, Brazil and played amongst others in Paris, London, Berlin, Stockholm, Mexico City, Reykjavik, Prague, Bucharest, Vienna, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, England, Portugal and New York. In addition to her solo career, she has founded the New York Theremin Society.

This project is supported by the City Council of Amsterdam, District South and AFK (Amsterdam Fund for the Arts) and Kunstverein’s (gold) members .

In:quest of Icarus by Norman Potter 
(1975)

In:quest of Icarus is a tragedy; a contemporary work written of and from a contemporary situation and drawing upon Greek myth to illuminate certain aspects of that situation.–Norman Potter

Norman Potter (1923–1995) was an English designer and educator. In 1964 Potter co-founded the Construction School, an experimental design course at the West of England College of Art in Bristol, England. His bold programme de-emphasised specialization in design and encouraged practical collaboration between disciplines. The school’s brief history is burdened by resistance to Potter’s ideas at every level of the educational institution. Coloured by this, and his involvement in the student protests of 1968, Potter’s thoughts on the structure of design education became increasingly anti-authoritarian.

In:quest of Icarus is a complex and allegorical reflection on these experiences. Potter describes the work as concerned with ‘walls, barriers, both of languages and hardware; the codes people use to protect their identity and to make random experiences ordered and comprehensible; the occasional wisdom of foolishness; freedoms and imprisonments; and so forth.’ It is Potter’s only play, and has been performed only once, by students at the Construction School on 5 December, 1974. The work is here represented by participants at the Werkplaats Typografie, Arnhem and the Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam.

The staging of the performance is integral. The design of the hall and props follows the visual language and apparatus of the typewriter, on which it was composed. The configuration of the hall itself is a representation of the typewriter, with the audience actively implicated in the position of the keys, described by Potter as ‘the alphabetic possibilities of the spoken and written language.’ The staging is prepared by the performers themselves, and the four day process of construction, rehearsal and performance together constitutes the work.

In:quest of Icarus (1975) is restaged by James Langdon in partnership with Kunstverein and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; performed by students of the Werkplaats Typografie with construction by Daniel Hofstede and Benjamin Roth.

Please note that In:quest of Icarus is a 3 day event and accessible to the public 30 November, 1 and 2 December at the Stedelijk Museum, Teijin Auditorium, during regular opening hours. The play will take place 2 December at 4pm in the Teijin Auditorium.

As seating is limited for the performance 2 December, please RSVP before Friday 23 November via office@kunstverein.nl. Please note that members have priority.

With thanks to Stadsdeel Zuid and The Sandberg Instituut.

Please join us for the unorthodox book launch of **MIND GAMES* by Amsterdam-based Icelandic artist Geirthrudur Finnbogadottir Hjorvar, Saturday 3 November 2012, from 5 pm**.

• An extended slide-show presentation will be unveiled to the public on this occasion.
• Visually stimulating images will offer informative diagrams so as to describe the structures that have occupied the mind of the author and led to the creation of the work.
• The presentation will be accompanied by the performance Essence — in which a pop band will be present.
• This performance will honor the domain of popular culture in the modern-day formulation of a pop band and its ability to express the geometry of communicative patterns.

‘Construction School Featuring In:quest of Icarus’
A project by James Langdon with construction by Daniel Hofstede & Benjamin Roth
8 September – 2 December 2012

With In:quest of Icarus, a play by Norman Potter
30 November – 2 December 2012
Hosted and co-produced by the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

This work explores the history of a bold attempt to establish an experimental art school in a provincial English context. The first phase (1964 to 1968) placed an emphasis on interdisciplinary working and collaboration. The second phase (1975 to 1977) was defined by a radical attempt to decentralise the educational structure of the school.

The school’s history is closely bound to the career and concerns of its founder Norman Potter, a practitioner in the margins of a mid-twentieth century English design culture. His work at the Construction School represents a period of intense critical thought about the structure of design education. The constitution of the school exemplified many of the ideas expressed in Potter’s What is a Designer, a text that was formulated during his time in Bristol. In particular Potter’s emphasis on the relational aspects of design – the mechanics of social interactions that shape design processes – was a defining feature of his programme.

The project was initiated during a residency at Spike Island, Bristol in Summer 2011. A presentation took place at Corner College in Zurich, June 2012. James Langdon is trained as an artist and now practices as an independent designer.

Workbench photograph courtesy Jim Wood.

Generously supported by the City Council of Amsterdam, District South

A Festival of Choices
Master of Fine Arts Graduation 2012,
Sandberg Instituut

Artist: Riet Wijnen

11–15 July 2012
Opening: 11 July, 6–9 PM

‘A Festival of Choices’ emphasizes upon the relationships and choices made between the graduating student and the diverse range of institutions and organizations offered within the cultural landscape of Amsterdam.

For more information and the full program, please check www.festivalofchoices.nl

An evening with Little Joe

Alongside our current exhibition ‘Closer – The Dennis Cooper Papers’, Kunstverein will host on the 30th of May a festive event of readings, screenings, music and drinks organized by Little Joe magazine at the fabulous Paleis van de Weemoed.

Little Joe is a new biannual publication looking at film from a different perspective. It is a direct move away from the traditional method of reviewing all current and future releases towards a more selective and eclectic focus on films that inspire alternative discourse.

It’s a magazine about queers and cinema, mostly.

When: 30th of May
Location: Paleis van de Weemoed, Oudezijds Voorburgwal 15, Amsterdam
Start: 20.30 onwards
Entrance: € 5 (free entrance for members)

For reservations, please contact office@kunstverein.nl

Closer – The Dennis Cooper Papers
23 March – 23 June 2012
Opening: 23 March, 18.00 – 20.00

In continuation of Kunstverein’s survey-as-shop series, Closer – The Dennis Cooper Papers profiles the influential literary figure of Dennis Cooper (1953, Pasadena, USA), acknowledging his important impact across literature, poetry, performance and visual art.

The exhibition hinges on the George Miles Cycle (1989 – 2000), a series of interconnected novels that include graphic scenes of violence and desire, of pedophilia, mutilation and necrophilia. The complex structure of the cycle could be seen as literary sculpture; one that is layered and constructed out of geometrical forms.

Dennis Cooper’s literary aspirations were explored early on and often took the form of imitations of Rimbaud, Verlaine, De Sade, and Baudelaire. He wrote poetry and stories in his early teens that explored scandalous and often extreme subjects.

In 1987, Cooper moved to Amsterdam where he finished writing the first novel of the George Miles Cycle entitled Closer. Closer was awarded with the first Ferro-Gumley Award for gay literature and has since been translated into seventeen languages.

Cooper was 15 when he met George Miles, the 12-year old brother of a friend. They immediately became very close and continued their affection and friendship after George developed a severe bipolar disorder in his early teens, causing him to go through phases of serious depressions, manic episodes, suicide attempts and occasional periods of institutionalization.

In the early 80s, after they had been out of touch for over two years, Cooper began to write a cycle of novels in tribute to George, which consist of Closer (1989), Frisk (1991), Try (1994), Guide (1997) and Period (2000).

“Over (the) years, I’d developed a game plan or overall structure for the cycle. It would take the form of a novel being gradually dismembered to nothing. The first novel would construct the themes, archetypes, subjects, style, and atmosphere of the cycle. (…) Each succeeding novel’s form would reflect the damage caused by the violence, drug use, and emotional turmoil of the previous novel. (…) Parallel to this dismemberment in stages, the structure would be a mirrored structure where the first novel would seem to gradually move through a mirror and eventually, over the course of the cycle, become a backwards reflection of itself.”
-Dennis Cooper

In 1997, after publishing the fourth novel in the cycle, he found out that George had committed suicide ten years earlier. The fifth novel, Period, was therefore written with the awareness that George was no longer alive and would never read the cycle attributed to him. The novel is inspired by and dedicated to the artist Vincent Fecteau.

In the collaboration with the Fales Library & Special Collections of New York University, Kunstverein presents the archive of the George Miles Cycle, comprised of manuscripts, journals, posters, correspondence, scrapbooks and videocassettes.
In addition, works by Vincent Fecteau and Falke Pisano are shown alongside the archive material. Artist Trisha Donnelly has been commissioned to produce new work based on the five novels.

Prior to the opening, on 22 March at 19.30, the director of the Fales Library & Special Collections, Marvin Taylor, will give a keynote lecture on the structure of the George Miles Cycle.

On 16 and 17 April, Dennis Cooper will conduct a writing workshop.

A booklet containing an interview with Dennis Cooper, Marvin Taylor and Krist Gruijthuijsen will be available.

Closer – The Dennis Cooper Papers is conceived in dialogue with Marvin Taylor, director of the Fales Library & Special Collections of the New York University

Hush Hush #3
The Quiet Volume
A project by Ant Hampton and Tim Etchells

28 February 2012, 14.00 – 17.00
Location: Bijzondere Collecties, University of Amsterdam, Oude Turfmarkt 129

The Quiet Volume is a whispered, self-generated and ‘automatic’ performance (Autoteatro) for two at a time, exploiting the particular tension common to any library worldwide; a combination of silence and concentration within which different peoples’ experiences of reading unfold.

Two audience members / participants sit side-by-side. Taking cues from words both written and whispered they find themselves burrowing an unlikely path through a pile of books. The piece exposes the strange magic at the heart of the reading experience, allowing aspects of it we think of as deeply internal to lean out into the surrounding space, and to leak from one reader’s sphere into another’s.

“This now of the page is what grips me – the present moment, this one, summoned here with this arrangement of marks/code, ink/pixels, letters and words.”
– Tim Etchells

Members Only
Please note that seating is very limited so we advise you to RSVP before 26 February 2011. For reservation, please contact office@kunstverein.nl

KV Auction
17 February, 17.00 – 19.00
Dutch Assembly, ARCO, Madrid

Especially for ARCO, Kunstverein Amsterdam, Milan and New York have collectively set-up an unique auction featuring works by artists who have collaborated with one or more of the Kunstverein venues. KV Auction is a two-hour performative venture hosted by artist Gabriel Lester, in which alternative means of fundraising are explored. Works to be auctioned are by amongst others Sarah Crowner, Richard Kostelanetz, Gabriel Lester, Raimundas Malasauskas, Renzo Martens, Simon Martin, Willem Oorebeek, Adam Pendleton, Michael Portnoy, Alexandre Singh, Barbara Visser and Robert Wilhite.

Book launch and lecture “Paper Exhibition – selected writings by Raimundas Malasauskas” as part of The Sandberg Series organized by the Sandberg Institute.
8 February 2012, 19:30
Location: Goethe-Institut, Herengracht 470, Amsterdam
Entrance: € 5

Raimundas Malašauskas (born in Vilnius, lives and works in Brussels) is a curator, writer and tutor at the Sandberg Institute. From 1995 to 2006, he worked at the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius, where he produced the first two seasons of the weekly television show CAC TV, an experimental merger of commercial television and contemporary art that ran under the slogan “Every program is a pilot, every program is the final episode.” He co-curated “Black Market Worlds,” the IX Baltic Triennial, at CAC Vilnius in 2005. From 2007 to 2008, he was a visiting curator at California College of the Arts, San Francisco, and, until recently, a curator-at-large of Artists Space, New York. In 2007, he co-wrote the libretto of Cellar Door, an opera by Loris Gréaud produced in Paris. Malašauskas curated the exhibitions “Sculpture of the Space Age,” David Roberts Art Foundation, London (2009); “Into the Belly of a Dove,” Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City (2010), and “Repetition Island,” Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2010). His other recent projects, Hypnotic Show and Clifford Irving Show, are ongoing. Malasauskas is an agent for dOCUMENTA 13 and on the advisory board of Kunstverein.

In collaboration with Kunstverein Publishing, Sternberg Press, Sandberg Institute and The Baltic Notebooks by Anthony Blunt, Malašauskas has published an anthology of his writings since 1998, which will be launched on the evening.

The already infamous Vilnius Sling cocktail will be served at cocktailbar Door 74, reguliersdwarsstraat 74, from 22.00 onwards.

Please contact info@amsterdam.goethe.org or call +31 20 5312900 for reservations.

Kunstverein, Gallery Juliette Jongma, Tulips & Roses and Marres, Centre for Contemporary Culture present:
A performance by Robert Wilhite and the launch of three publications: LABOUR, The Federal #2 and Chris Evans: Goofy Audit, collected works 1998 – 2010

20 December, 19.00 – 21.00
Location: Gallery Juliette Jongma, Gerard Doustraat 128a

———————————-

About the performance:

A restaging of Robert Wilhite’s Audio piece for his solo exhibition at Larry Gagosian’s first gallery in Los Angeles, the Broxton Gallery, 1976. The windows were blocked off and the artist read explanations over the phone of the exhibition on view. No caller got the same explanation. Half of the callers received explanations and the other half received a sound work created for the event. A limited number of records documenting the event were produced.

About the publications:

The Federal #2
Published by gallery Tulips & Roses, The Federal is an artwork reader, a periodical magazine hinged on a single artwork per issue with some new writings revolving around it. Right now it seems that it’s grasping at some kind of non-disciplinary knowledge.

LABOUR
Initiated by artist Melissa Gordon, LABOUR addresses the general conditions of feminized labour, and how a feminist reading of work benefits a critique of the current scenario for all art workers. It includes new writing and presentations by: Nina Power, Henry VIII’s Wives, Marina Vishmidt, Emma Hedditch, Claudia Sola, Lisette Smits and Meredyth Sparks, Avigail Moss, Jessica Wiesner and Rachal Bradley, Lizzie Borden and Kaisa Lassinaro. The periodical arises from a series of four meetings of practicing female artists entitled ‘A conversation to know if there is a conversation to be had’, held at semi-public spaces in 2010 and 2011 respectively in New York (Dexter Sinister), Amsterdam (Kunstverein), Berlin (Salon Populaire), and London (Raven Row).

Chris Evans: Goofy Audit
Collected works 1998 – 2011
The work of artist Chris Evans (1967, Eastrington, UK) evolves through conversation with people from various walks of life, selected in relation to their public position or symbolic role – resulting in sculptures, letters, drawings, film scripts and unwieldy social situations. These become indexes of a larger structure through which Evans deliberately confuses the roles of artist, collector, philanthropist, commissioner, art dealer and public funding body. Goofy Audit presents a monograph of an artist, whose works conspicuously speculate in the space where art meets patronage, be it private, corporate or political. It includes essays by Penelope Curtis, Marina Vishmidt and Tirdad Zolghadr as well as a form of notation by Will Holder for each individual work produced since 1998.

Galerie Juliette Jongma
Tulips & Roses
Marres, Centre for Contemporary Culture

Hush Hush #2
Ad Reinhardt: A Retrospective of Comics

21 November 2011, 19.30pm
Location: Kunstverein, Gerard Doustraat 132

The second in the Hush Hush series, organized especially for the members of Kunstverein Amsterdam, Milan and New York, is dedicated to Ad Reinhardt’s Comics. In the 1940s Ad Reinhardt published a series of caustic comics commenting on the New York art world. His broadsides appeared in outlets such as PM, Art News, and Transformations.

For the event Robert Snowden and Scott Ponik bring together a selection of these comics in a single table size print, which will be accompanied by a reading by Angie Keefer and Robert Snowden.

The retrospective was first shown at The Chrysler Series in New York, and is currently on view at the ICA in London.

Robert Snowden is a writer who lives in New York. Scott Ponik is a graphic designer in Portland, Oregon and Angie Keefer is a New York-based writer, editor, amateur engineer, and occasional librarian.

Members Only. Each member is welcome to bring one guest.

Please note that seating is limited so we advise you to RSVP before 18 November 2011. For reservation, please contact office@kunstverein.nl

The KV Survey Shop at Artissima 18, 4–6 November 2011

Kunstverein is proud to announce its participation at the Art Fair Artissima in Torino, this Fall.

For 4 days only, Kunstvereins Amsterdam, Milan and New York will collectively set-up a KV Survey Shop featuring works by artists who have collaborated with Kunstverein or who will in the future develop projects with one or more of the Kunstverein venues.

The KV Survey Shop is an alternative form of exhibition, an unorthodox response to the art fair, as well as a way of seeking support for Kunstverein’s programs. With works available by, amongst others: Carlos Amorales, Zbyněk Baladrán, Travis Boyer, CCH, Heman Chong, Sarah Crowner, Carla Filipe, Isola & Norzi, Ben Kinmont, Richard Kostelanetz, Gabriel Lester, Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, Juan Pablo Maçias,Raimundas Malasauskas, Renzo Martens, Simon Martin, Willem Oorebeek, G. T. Pellizzi, Adam Pendleton, Cesare Pietroiusti, Michael Portnoy, Guillermo Santamarina, Alexandre Singh, Nedko Solakov, Enzo Umbaca, Marianne Vitale, Barbara Visser

Download catalog

For more information, please check www.artissima.it

Kunstverein presents:
The Robert Wilhite Store for Art and Design

29 October 2011 – 04 February 2012
Opening: 28 October, 6-8 PM

When the University of California, Irvine opened in 1965, Robert Wilhite (1946, Santa Ana, CA) was one of the first students to study under Robert Irwin, Larry Bell, Ed Moses, and Tony DeLap. After graduating, he spent some time working for Pace Gallery in New York, and returned to Los Angeles in 1971. He has been based in Venice California ever since. Kunstverein presents a survey of his work

Robert Wilhite’s practice is marked by a continual battle between the serendipitous and the calculated, the conceptual and the tangible. His work displays a readiness to freely move amongst mediums and disciplines, from sculpture to performance to the design of flatware. Wilhite: “A painting is an object and a coffee pot is an object. Which makes you look at it twice and provokes thought? As artists we should be able to look at both with inspiration and folly.”

Music plays a crucial role in many of Wilhite’s works. To date, he has constructed wind, string, percussion, electronic and silent instruments as sculpture. “Though the idea of silent musical instruments or sculptures seems absurd, when one ponders the importance of silence to music, the concept of a silent instrument seems reasonable.”

In the late 1970s, Wilhite collaborated on four plays with Guy de Cointet and he remains involved in the re-staging of these plays today. IGLU, co-presented by Kunstverein (together with The Stedelijk Museum and If I Can’t Dance) in early 2011, at Frascati Theatre in Amsterdam, premiered at the Vanguarde Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles in 1977. Here too the musical instrument and sound (or sometimes silence) holds a significant position. In IGLU’s narrative sounds replace words at times, or are translated into gestures, transferring conventional communication to a distinctive, parallel plain. IGLU – as other works by Wilhite ¬– deals with language, meaning, and where these are capable of either meeting at, or extending in different directions from, a common point.

The Robert Wilhite Store for Art and Design transforms Kunstverein into a total environment – a Gesamtkunstwerk – with all facets of Robert Wilhite’s practice on view: from diagonal tables to flatware, drawings and paintings to sculpture and instruments.

Recent and upcoming shows include: ‘Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945–1980’, organized by the Getty Center; ‘Downtown LA’, Las Perlas, with Larry Bell, Ed Moses, Robert Irwin, and Laddie John Dill; ‘Los Angeles goes life: Performance Art in Southern California 1970 – 1983’, LACE, Los Angeles; ‘Chinese Cocktail’, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco.

On 28 and 29 October 2011 at 20:30 hrs, If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution is presenting the first restaging of the play Five Sisters (1982) by Guy de Cointet at Frascati WG in Amsterdam. Robert Wilhite collaborated with Guy de Cointet on four of his plays in the 1970s.
Please Visit the website of If I Can’t Dance for more information.

Image: Robert Wilhite, Audio piece for solo exhibition at Larry Gagosian’s first gallery in Los Angeles, the Broxton Gallery, 1976. The windows were blocked off and the artist read explanations over the phone of the exhibition on view. No caller got the same explanation. Half of the callers received explanations and the other half received a sound work created for the event. A limited number of records documenting the event were produced.

Kunstverein will be participating in the NY Art Book Fair 2011. For more information, please visit: www.nyartbookfair.com

On September 10th at 6PM, Kunstverein is proud to host the launch of two publications: Guerrilla Art Action Group, 1969–1976 (reprint) and Discipline.

In collaboration with Printed Matter and the Research Centre for Artists’ Publications at Weserburg – Museum of Modern Art, Kunstverein has republished the catalogue of the highly influential activist collective, Guerilla Art Action Group (GAAG). A precursor to radical artist groups such as Gran Fury and the Guerrilla Girls, GAAG’s activities began at a time when artists were increasingly challenging the conduct of museums and other institutions. Originally published in 1978, the publication documents the art actions by the Guerrilla Art Action Group between 1969 and 1976.

Kunstverein will simultaneously host the European launch of Discipline, a new periodical published from Melbourne. Collating many of the strongest critical voices and art practices in its region, the magazine suggests that what is needed in relation the current question of art is some discipline; the discipline to pause, to look, to read and to think.

On the occasion of Discipline’s launch, Kunstverein will additionally host a display of independent Australian art periodicals including such seminal titles as Lip, Art Network, Art & Text, On the Beach and Pataphysics. Key editorial figures for each publication will make a selection of editions for the display.

Kunstverein would like to thank Suzanne Davies (Lip, Art-Network), Mark Titmarsh (On the Beach), Rob McKenzie (Art & Text) and Yanni Florence (Pataphysics).

15 July, 6 PM

Richard Kostelanetz will join us to discuss his practice during an informal walk-through of the exhibition.

Richard Kostelanetz (born 1940, New York) is an American writer, artist, critic, and editor of the avant-garde. He is infamous for his prolific and often biting prose. In his short fictions (some only 2 words long) and visual poetry, RK employs a radically formalist approach consisting of arrangements of words on a page using such devices as linking language and sequence, punning, alliteration, parallelism, constructivism, and minimalism. As a more viable alternative to a straight forward retrospective, Kunstverein has been temporarily transformed into a bookstore dedicated to the artist.

Kunstverein presents Openings & Closings –
The Richard Kostelanetz Bookstore
2 July – 1 October 2011

Richard Kostelanetz (born 1940, New York) is an American writer, artist, critic, and editor of the avant-garde. He is infamous for his prolific and often biting prose. In his short fictions (some only 2 words long) and visual poetry, RK employs a radically formalist approach consisting of arrangements of words on a page using such devices as linking language and sequence, punning, alliteration, parallelism, constructivism, and minimalism. His literary work challenges the reader in unconventional ways and is often printed in limited editions at small presses. Kostelanetz’s nonfiction work The End of Intelligent Writing: Literary Politics in America (1974) charged the New York literary and publishing establishment with inhibiting the publishing and promotion of works by innovative younger authors. Among his other works are Recyclings: A Literary Autobiography (1974, 1984), Politics in the African-American Novel (1991), Published Encomia, 1967-91 (1991), On Innovative Art(ist)s (1992) and A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes (1999, 2001). In 1970 Kostelanetz co-founded and directed the innovative annual aptly called Assembling; thirteen editions of “otherwise unpublishable” art and literature, including the Complete Assembling were produced between 1970 and 1982. Now scarce, Kunstverein will have the complete set of Assembling 1 through 13 on view. Also available will be the many recordings and audiocassettes issued on RK’s own label, as well as critically acclaimed edited works on B.B. King, Merci Cunningham, John Cage and Gertrude Stein.

For reasons closely connected to Kostelanetz’s practice we feel it is consistent that Kunstverein becomes a Bookstore dedicated to the artist – as a more viable alternative to a straight forward retrospective. The Richard Kostelanetz Bookstore will host and sell all of RK’s publications (over 80 titles). As well, rare artifacts, editions and smaller artworks will be on view in the secret backroom. Richard Kostelanetz’s role since the late 60s has been one of instigator, assembler, editor, artist and journalist. This multi-relational practice is not only historically significant, it is unquestionably inspirational and exemplary for the present.

Openings & Closings – The Richard Kostelanetz Bookstore is conceived in dialogue with Hyo Kwon and Goda Budvytyte

Generously supported by the City Council of Amsterdam (District South)

Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Kunstverein present:

Ben Kinmont
An Exhibition in your mouth (2002)
May 18 and 19

An historical exhibition of artist-written recipes prepared as a dinner at Restaurant As on May 18 and an informal talk given by the artist at the Stedelijk Museum on May 19.

May 18: An Exhibition in Your Mouth
Location: Restaurant As, Prinses Irenestraat 19, Amsterdam
Starts at: 19.30
Reservations: Seeing as space is limited, please make reservations before 13 May
at info@restaurantas.nl. The 9-course menu will cost € 55

May 19: Lecture by Ben Kinmont
Location: Temporary Stedelijk 2, Auditorium
Starts at: 19.30
Reservations: Reservation is mandatory, via reservations@stedelijk.nl
Entrance: Valid museum ticket

The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Kunstverein present a two-night event with artist Ben Kinmont. Kinmont’s projects are as disproportionately ambitious as they are formally discreet: supporting a family as an antiquarian bookseller specializing in books and manuscripts about domestic economy and food; comparing radically different value systems (e.g. cookery and art); wondering about the meaning of art (while doing the dishes), etc. This decentring reminds us of other artists who set out to pare down their practice down while not actually opting for an entirely different professional status. In his printed broadsides Kinmont explores activities that test the work of art’s strength in forms not strictly artistic: a dinner, a bookfair, an ephemeral action, and so on. Thus gastronomy becomes a temporary artistic structure and a powerful model for pushing art to its limits.

An Exhibition in your mouth presents an exhibition in the form of a dinner on Wednesday May 18. Restaurant As will prepare a 9-course menu full of eccentric but above all tasty recipes by artists such as Marcel Duchamp and Louise Bourgeois. In the evening of the following day,19 May, the artist will give a lecture about his practice in general with a particular focus on An Exhibition in your mouth as well as his project entitled On becoming something else (with the Pompidou Center and seven different restaurants in Paris in 2009).

On May 14 and 15, Kunstverein will be participating in the Amsterdam Art/Book Fair 2011. For more information, please visit: www.amsterdamartbookfair.com

Hush Hush is a collaborative series of private events especially organized for the members of Kunstverein Amsterdam, Milan and New York.

Beatrice Gibson
“The Tiger’s Mind”

26–28 April 2011
Starting daily at 5 PM

Location: Ruyschstraat 4 III, Amsterdam (previous location of Kunstverein)

‘Notation is a way of making people move. If you lack others like aggression or persuasion, the notation should do it. This is the most rewarding aspect of a work on notation. The trouble is, just as you find your sounds are too alien, intended for a different culture, you make the same discovery about your beautiful notation. No one is willing to understand it. No ones moves.’ — Cornelius Cardew

“The Tigers Mind” is a serialised publishing project, initiated by Beatrice Gibson and Will Holder, that takes as its departure point, a score of the same name written by British experimental composer Cornelius Cardew in 1967.

Members only: please rsvp office@kunstverein.nl

Download PDF

Kunstverein presents Prospectus Amsterdam as part of a traveling survey of the work of Ben Kinmont

12 March – 22 May 2011
Private view: 11 March 18.00 – 20.00

Ben Kinmont (Born 1963 Burlington, Vermont, USA) is interested in interpersonal communication as a means of addressing the problems of contemporary society.
His sculptures and actions attempt to establish a direct, personal relationship between the artist and the viewer, using the work as a mediator. If art is supposed to be an agency of intellectual and emotional challenge, then the artist concludes that the audience should also be addressed beyond the institutional frame of the gallery and the museum, and that contact should be more direct. To that effect, Ben Kinmont goes on the street and engages in a dialogue with any passer-by who demonstrates interest in his proposals. His actions range from washing dishes in a museum restaurant, receiving strangers at his home, asking passers-by on the street about the possibility of considering a casual conversation a form of art. His sellable work is in the form of archive boxes each containing all the pertinent documentation of one of Kinmont’s actions. The collector becomes an archivist; as such he becomes responsible for updating the data thus continuing the work of the artist and the gallerist. Besides, the artist earns his living with an antiquarian bookselling business about food, wine and domestic economy, considering this activity as a sculpture ‘the artwork is not the business itself, but the contribution to our cost of living.’ Kinmont’s practice also includes conducting research and publishing work about other artists under the name Antinomian Press.

Prospectus is a traveling series of presentations in which a selection of works from the past twenty-two years are exhibited and (re)activated. For each location, Kinmont has worked together with a different curator to conceptually develop the premise of the show. Each exhibition is intended to be different and to reflect each curator’s interest in the projects. The source material will include project descriptions and archives, past curated projects, publications from Antinomian Press and earlier sculptural objects.

Prospectus Amsterdam
As initiator of the overall project, the exhibition at Kunstverein will concentrate on Kinmont’s complete archives – brought in their entirety to Amsterdam. A selection of five to seven works will be presented each week. Throughout the show the curators thus become archivists, handling the works/archives on view. Each of the projects on display will correspond to different aspects of Kinmont’s body of work and will operate as a starting point for a discussion. Besides functioning as a platform for exchange, the table on which the works are presented will also host Kunstverein’s office and storage for the rest of the archives.

Workshop
March 14 & 15
Location: Kunstverein
Some of the archives will be reactivated and updated through workshops with various art educational institutions such as the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and Piet Zwart Institute. The archives are thus activated and will continue to grow instead of functioning merely as art historical records.
For reservation please contact office@kunstverein.nl

Exhibition in your mouth
In collaboration with the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Ben Kinmont will present Exhibition in your mouth, a historical exhibition of artist-written recipes prepared as a dinner on May 19. For reservation please contact office@kunstverein.nl

Publication
An updated version of Prospectus, the collection of project descriptions Kinmont published earlier with JRP Ringier in 2002 (the original edition is out of print), will be co-produced by Kunstverein, Kadist Art Foundation, Fales Library New York University and Air de Paris, published by Antinomian Press and distributed by JRP Ringier.

—————————————-

Other venues and dates
Prospectus Paris
Kadist Art Foundation, Paris
02 April – 01 May 2011

Prospectus New York
Fales Library, New York University (in collaboration with Kunstverein NY)
New York City
Sept. 15 – Nov. 15, 2011

Prospectus San Francisco
In collaboration with San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
San Francisco
Spring 2012

——————————————–

“Prospectus Amsterdam: A survey of the work of Ben Kinmont” is generously supported by:

Kunstverein and de Appel arts centre present:
BOOK TOUR, 6 February 2011, 14.00–20.00
On the occasion of the launch of various new publications, a series of presentations and talks will be organized throughout the city.

PROGRAM

14.00–16.00
Kunstverein and de Appel present:
The Encyclopedia of Fictional Artists + The Addition
Location: Ambassade Hotel, Herengracht 341

First published nearly a decade ago, and now translated into English for the first time, The Encyclopedia of Fictional Artists is a project by author and editor Koen Brams, for which he commissioned and compiled an anthology of imaginary biographies based on the numerous artists invented by writers across the centuries, from the beginning of the seventeenth century to the present. The Addition is Krist Gruijthuijsen’s editorial answer to the Encyclopedia, in which he invited more than 20 artists to reflect on the aspirations and ideals of encyclopedias by autonomously deconstructing the notion of fiction.

Over the course of two hours, the audience is invited to book a private meeting with the Encyclopedia’s ‘spokesman’.

16.00–18.00
De Appel presents the first monograph of Valérie Mannaerts
An Exhibition-Another Exhibition.
Location: de Appel’s Boys’ School, Eerste Jacob van Campenstraat 59

On view: Diamond Dancer, a total installation with a selection of uninhibited and disparate objects by Valérie Mannaerts

In her work Valérie Mannaerts extends the medium of collage to spatial objects. She examines the physiognomy of things and questions the relationship between organic and inorganic forms, the autonomy of objects and the stories concealed by them.
In 2010 Valérie Mannaerts built an eclectic sculpture park named Blood Flow at Extra City (Antwerp). This exhibition and Diamond Dancer form the basis for Valérie Mannaerts’ first monograph, which she conceived as an extended catalogue that contains many images and thoughts on her work including an essay by Anselm Franke and a discussion between Valérie Mannaerts and Ann Demeester.
On the occasion of the book presentation, a conversation will take place between the artist, Ann Demeester and Anselm Franke.
Valérie Mannaerts will also sign copies.

18.00–20.00
Kunstverein Amsterdam, Milan and New York present Ginger&Piss #2,
I’m On Your Side and On View, Worldwide for the Month Of
followed by a performance by Nils Bech
Location: Kunstverein, Ruyschstraat 4 III

As a collaborative model, Kunstverein will, together with its sister organizations in Milan and New York, present three new publications:

Ginger&Piss #2
Gay is the subject of the second issue of Ginger&Piss (Kunstverein’s occasional in-house magazine) and continues the magazine’s flirtation with all-purpose (non) themes. As a verb and as an expression (and maybe even a curse) Gay may appear less one-dimensional than Loud (Ginger&Piss’ first theme). Flamboyantly exhibited as internal swagger and compulsive paranoia, the articles in this issue continue Ginger&Piss’ journey towards immaculate speculation.

I’m On Your Side
The publication I’m On Your Side functions as part four of a project by Heman Chong for Kunstverein (Milano). Consisting of three separate essays by Alessandra Poggianti, Andrea Wiarda and Katia Anguelova, co-directors of Kunstverein (Milano). I’m on your side unfolds as a collection of thoughts about the introduction of a node into the cultural landscape of Milan. Alongside their independent sections, a floating world of images is re-located through their intervention, selected from God Bless Diana, a series of images Chong produced between 2000-2004.

On View, Worldwide for the Month Of
Kunstverein (NY) launches its 2011 Calendar in which 12 artists were asked to contribute a new work. These twelve collected works constitute a yearlong exhibition inserting itself into administrative offices, apartments, and studios around the world.
With contributions by a.o. Josephine Meckseper, Kathy Garcia, Michael Smith, Dexter Sinister and Judi Werthein.

19.00
Performance Nils Bech

After one and a half years of exciting events at Ruyschstraat 4III, Kunstverein embarks on a new adventure: Kunstverein is moving to a ground floor shop location and opens its brand new doors at Gerard Doustraat 132 on March 11th.

To mark this historic event we end the evening of BOOK TOUR with a performance by Nils Bech.

Nils Bech (NO) has devised his own unique path as a persuasive performer through the world of contemporary art. A classically trained singer, he has managed to tap into the best of both worlds. His fragile yet flamboyant presence magically transforms each hosting venue into an intimate experience.

Paying A Visit To Mary Part 2
With Guy de Cointet, Sarah Crowner, Elad Lassry, Willem Oorebeek, Alexandre Singh, Robert Wilhite.
11 December 2010 – 6 February 2011
In collaboration with the Stedelijk Museum, Alexandre Singh performs on 9 December at 7.30 PM at the Stedelijk Museum and during the opening at Kunstverein on 10 December between 6-8 PM

Communication, visible and not, audible or unspoken, is transmitted through signs, through things, things we choose to have and wear, point to or buy, sit alongside or say. These things sociologist Erving Goffman in 1956 calls ‘fixed props’ or ‘sign equipment’.

Sign equipment is, of course, just as much a conduit as it is social baggage. In fact, the American visionary, designer, architect, author, and inventor, Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983), stopped speaking for two years at the age of 32 because of his sign equipment. He said he didn’t want to go on simply repeating what he was taught. Instead of communicating by rote, depending on automatic responses, he stripped himself of his inherited ‘sign equipment’ or ‘fixed props’ and re-booted his system to say what was needed, when it was needed.

The exhibition Paying A Visit To Mary Part 2 takes as its cerebral anchor the 1977 play Iglu by Guy de Cointet and Robert Wilhite. Iglu contains invented languages, where sounds become words, gestures are sentences; where the actors (sometimes even switching gender) mostly understand one another not because they use words as we do, but because it seems they have agreed to agree. Agreed to agree on meaning; thereby shifting conventions and signs to a different communicative plain.

Paying A Visit To Mary Part 2 stages the question of how individual relations can be perceived and interpreted. How do we communicate? What forms can communication take? Do we understand one another, really? Is your blue mine? And if it is, or if it isn’t: how does this affect how we understand one another? The artists in Paying A Visit To Mary Part 2 contend with ‘sign equipment’ or ‘fixed props,’ with the shiftiness of communication, social conventions and visual representation. The show, which includes a play, a live storytelling, a lecture, a film and objects is an abstract conversation, amongst the participants and between them and the audience.

After co-presenting Iglu in Amsterdam at Frascati Theatre on 9 November, Paying A Visit To Mary Part 2 opens at Kunstverein 10 December with a performance by Alexandre Singh.

Kunstverein’s Store for Independent Publishing presents Paraguay Press
11 December 2010 – 6 February 2011
Opening: 10 December 6–8 PM

Paraguay is a co-operatively run, independent art publishing company based in Paris and managed by the group of artists, writers and curators behind castillo/corrales and section 7 books. Paraguay Press was conceived by this group in order to reclaim control of the means of creation, production and distribution of the books in which their work appear and to create a framework for producing publications with a growing number of artists, writers, and institutions. Each project developed by Paraguay Press looks carefully into the pragmatics of publishing, and, according to the nature of each publication, adapts each print-run and scope, deploys different printing devices, and considers various distribution strategies. But all depart from an understanding of the space of the book, considered not as a medium of documentation nor a vector of promotion, but as an act of translation and the extension of artistic, critical and curatorial thinking into a graphic, mobile, democratic and durable form.

Please note that Kunstverein will be closed from 25/12/2010 – 02/01/2011

Kunstverein co-presents IGLU by Guy de Cointet and Robert Wilhite as part of Paying A Visit To Mary Part 2

9 November: 20.00
Location: Frascati WG, M.v.B. Bastiaansestraat 54, Amsterdam
Tickets: 10 Euro
Reservations: +31 (0) 20 626 68 66 / www.theaterfrascati.nl

Paying A Visit To Mary Part 1 and Part 2 take as their cerebral anchor the 1977 play Iglu by Guy de Cointet and Robert Wilhite. Iglu contains invented languages, where sounds become words, gestures are sentences; where the actors (sometimes even switching gender) mostly understand one another not because they use words as we do, but because it seems they have agreed to agree. Agreed to agree on meaning; thereby shifting conventions and signs to a different communicative plain.

Iglu premiered in Los Angeles in 1977, after which the videotapes of this first and only performance mysteriously disappeared. For years Iglu lived on through the recollection of the artists, the actors at the time, and the audience that evening—until now.

New York Art Book Fair 2010

Kunstverein will present the new publication grey-blue grain by Adam Pendleton, which comprises of a series of writings used and appropriated in previous works and performances. In conjunction with the publication, stacks of ceramic black cubes are on display, functioning as a materialization of an abstract alphabet – A phenomenological meaning-making device. The cubes, all of part of the piece untitled (small black cubes) are, like separate letters of an alphabet, individually for sale.
The whole will function as an ephemeral installation that also “hosts” Kunstverein’s other publications, on view and for sale amidst the black cubes.

Adam Pendleton composes formal templates in which he slots information, shifting language, forms and images into an arena of artistic inquiry. Practicing extreme freedom of reference and quotation, as well as a rejection of conventional hierarchies among sources, Pendleton establishes new referential devices and displays in which he exploits the easy-psychology of biographical readings, rendering language and image both concrete and contingent.

The NY Art Book Fair, November 5–7, 2010
Preview: November 4, 6-9 p.m.
MoMA PS1, 22-25 Jackson Ave. at the intersection of 46th Ave., Long Island City, New York

Free and open to the public:
Thursday, November 4, 6-9 p.m.
Friday & Saturday, November 5 & 6, 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.
Sunday, November 7, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Nedko Solakov
“High Level Margins With A Catalogue”
18 September – 21 November 2010

Special private view as part of Kunstverein’s Benefit event
18 September 20.00–23.00

Kunstverein will celebrate its first anniversary with a special commission by Nedko Solakov entitled High Level Margins With A Catalogue.
Hailing from Sofia as one of Bulgaria’s finest, Nedko Solakov’s artistic practice is best described as a hurricane of wittily and often with humor constructed stories that poetically, politically and institutionally criticize their surroundings. Solakov is mostly known for his (tiny) handwritten comments that are often displayed in spaces, which at first appear to be empty. Playing with the viewer’s expectations is a particular goal in Solakov’s work in which the viewer is often obligated to knee, bend or perform other movements to be able to read the comments up close.

To come full circle, Kunstverein has invited Solakov to view the architecture of the space from literally a higher level, namely the ceiling’s margins. Barely readable tiny writings and drawings form a story that represent the artist’ spirit within the space.

The catalogue will function as key to exhibition, as it thoroughly and conveniently represents all the stories as seen from the above, with close-ups of the little scenarios and the now perfectly readable texts.
The viewer will therefore experience the “bare” architecture of the space, only this time lead by an imaginary world.

Benefit event

18 September
20.00

Kunstverein will celebrate its first anniversary on the 18th of September with a benefit event featuring a special opening of the exhibition High Level Margins With A Catalogue by Nedko Solakov and a series of unusual boat rides hosted by American artist Doug Fishbone.

Doug Fishbone’s performances weave elaborate narratives and visual tapestries from familiar freely found imagery that question the way information is presented, manipulated and processed in the current cultural and visual landscape. Interested in the politics of representation the artist’s monologues constantly shift, narrating grey areas between our perceived notions of fact and fiction, myth and propaganda, comedy and advertising.

The evening starts at 20.00 at Aan de Amstel, Weesperzijde 42a, which besides hosting drinks and music, also functions as information and gathering point from where you will be escorted to the appropriate locations.

Doug Fishbone’s performance starts at 20.30 and 21.30 and Nedko Solakov’s installation is open throughout the evening but limited to five persons at the time.

Tickets for the benefit event are 50 Euro and include a yearlong membership (worth 50 Euro). Members have free admission.

For reservation please RSVP before 13 September to office@kunstverein.nl

Lezing #1 M.V.
16 July 19.00

The first in a series of lectures by Koen Brams on remarkable yet overlooked figures of the Belgium art scene who have appeared and disappeared at historically significant moments in time.

In 1973 Marian Verstraeten (31 May 1951-11 February 1997) started working for radio 3 in Belgium. During that time, Verstraeten conducted interviews with artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Marcel Broodthaers, Robert Ryman and David Hockney while simultaneously working as a translator/editor for Bozar, center for fine arts in Brussels. Afterwards, Verstraeten became editor of the art magazines +-0 and Artefactum and started working as the assistant of visual artist, art critic and theoretician Fernand Spillemaeckers who initiated the progressive Galerie MTL in Brussels.
Founded 1970, Galerie MTL provided a platform for more than a hundred exhibitions, of which mostly were dedicated to conceptual art. Many important artists at the time exhibited at the gallery among whom Sol LeWitt, Gilberto Zorio, Daniel Buren, André Cadere, Marcel Broodthaers, Jan Dibbets, Mel Bochner, Joseph Kosuth, Guy Mees, Hanne Darboven, John Baldessari and Robert Ryman

Marian Verstraeten’s files provide a rich and unvarnished impression of what happened during that period.

Kunstverein’s Brunch Lunch Launch presents Ginger&Piss #1: Loud
Contributions by Elvira Belafonte, Hula Capellinni, Billy Male and G. Alonso Oeuf
27 June 2010, 2–5 pm with a performance by Matthew Lutz-Kinoy starting at 3.30 pm
 

Dear Reader,

Ginger&Piss is Kunstverein’s in-house magazine – a cross between an academic journal and a darts club newsletter. Ginger&Piss (the name a misquotation of Lawrence Weiner) is published twice yearly, with the first edition appearing in a short run. Each issue contains a maximum of five or six contributions of varying length, appropriate to the individual subject matter.

The remit of Ginger&Piss is simple; to offer an outlet for authors to say what they feel is vital (and not necessarily at all related to the art world) but were unable, unwilling or too afraid to publish previously. The concept dictates that each contributor writes under a pseudonym. The editors guarantee full anonymity.

The use of pseudonyms can be considered an answer to the cowardice of the art world, albeit a somewhat hypocritical one. By providing a platform for candid critique but at the same time allowing the author to hide behind a pseudonym, Ginger&Piss recognizes its own complicit cowardice. In fact, Ginger&Piss fully embraces its somewhat misleading bravery, but maintains that it makes sense for now, for the current cultural climate­.

Loud is the subject of the first issue and it is a broad – probably far too broad – theme (if a theme at all). In fact Quiet might have been more appropriate. But perhaps a clear, ‘honest’ voice is better suggested by volume than whispering.

Krist Gruijthuijsen & Maxine Kopsa
Editors

In conjunction with the magazine’s launch, Kunstverein will host a performance
by Matthew Lutz-Kinoy

Welcome to the story of my life is a dazzling one-man musical extravaganza in which the performer and the objects presented are in a constant state of transition. Loosely based upon the life of Fassbinder’s Maria Braun, Lutz-Kinoy’s narrative follows an array of performance elements such as musical theater tropes and pop / jazz dance in which the objects, surrounding the protagonist, constantly change their meaning.

Dexter Sinister, A Model of The Serving Library
29 May – 24 July
Private view: 28 May, 7 – 9 PM

During Spring and Summer Kunstverein will collaborate with Dexter Sinister.
Dexter Sinister is the compound name of David Reinfurt and Stuart Bailey who, in 2006 established a workshop and bookstore with the same name in New York’s Lower East Side.
Most of Dexter Sinister’s projects have explored aspects of contemporary publishing in many different contexts. As well as designing, editing, producing, and distributing both printed and digital media, Dexter Sinister have also worked with ambiguous roles and formats, usually in the live contexts of galleries and museums. Their bi-annual house journal Dot Dot Dot (begun in Amsterdam in 2000) often functions as a framework within such projects.

Currently Dexter Sinister intends to dissolve all their activities (including the journal, workshop and bookstore) into one single project called The Serving Library. The Serving Library is as much social furniture as it is a specific model. It intends to operate on the principle of developing something in public and will eventually comprise: a physical library, a collection of artefacts, a teaching facility and a journal entitled “Bulletin of The Serving Library”.

For Kunstverein, a speculative model version of the Library is developed providing the backdrop for a number of seminars and other events, which will discuss issues drawn from the contents of the library. The artefacts and books will serve as triggers for conversation and teaching, and the space will serve as a meeting point and hangout. The whole might be considered a kind of temporary school — a school primarily concerned with what a contemporary art school might become.

——————————————

Events

Within the framework of A Model of The Serving Library, Kunstverein will organize various events that reflect upon aspects addressed within the library’s content.

31 May – 2 June
“Applied Art” starting each day at 2 pm at Kunstverein
Workshops hosted by Dexter Sinister with Gerrit Rietveld Academy (31 May), Piet Zwart Institute (1 June) and Werkplaats Typografie (2 June). The workshops are open to the public.
Please make reservations before 27 May to office@kunstverein.nl

27 June 14.00 – 17.00
Brunch Lunch Launch of Kunstverein’s first issue of its own house magazine Ginger&Piss with a performance by Matthew Lutz-Kinoy.

16 July 19.00
Lezing #1 M.V.
The first in a series of lectures by Koen Brams on remarkable yet overlooked figures of the Belgium art scene who have appeared and disappeared at historically significant moments in time.

Simon Martin
7 March – 9 May 2010

With UR Feeling, a lecture at Hermitage, 6 March 2010, 4 pm
Private view: 6 March 2010, 6–8 pm

Simon Martin’s practice could be summed up as a continuing, considered inspection of the significance of our cultural baggage – how it is thought about, displayed, categorised and remembered. Whether painting, sculpture or moving image, Martin’s work examines the relationship society forms not only with its artworks but also (historical) artefacts, human icons (Warhol) and objects of design (Memphis).

Untitled (2010) is a formal study of a sculpture – an African figurine placed next to an organic lemon. The sculpture is empirically investigated, observed, rotated, examined as it hovers between a state of pure objecthood and unblemished representation. It could equally be an advert for the sculpture, with its quick edits moving sleekly across surface of the elusive product. This is clearly an animation and, like a diagram or a sign, an animation has no ‘weight’. Or does it? Untitled transitions from knowing to sensing to not-knowing and back again. Untitled ’s duplicity is echoed by the bronze ‘desk sculpture’ with accompanying real organic lemon, called Untitled (2007). A replica of the same African figurine as depicted in the animation, Untitled, like its counterpart, refuses to become a clear-cut, easily defined object. On the one hand, it touches the familiar as a generic model of an African artefact, perhaps a discreetly decorous souvenir, on the other, in its modest placement, remains unsettlingly enigmatic. There is a hint of inert aggression in its demand for wholeness: without the commitment of he who oversees the work – he who promises to replenish the organic lemon – Untitled is not complete; or simply is not.

‘They will feel in the alleyways something, but it’s not quite medieval and its not quite modern. It’s something else. In other words, my whole idea of affect is that you experience something, you feel something, you see something, but you can’t quite explain it. It has an Ur-dimension to it… something between understanding and not, lets say.’ (Peter Eisenman)

UR Feeling is the title of a lecture or ‘investigation’ by Simon Martin. According to Martin, “the UR Feeling describes a pre- or non-verbal moment of apprehension”. The title is taken from a conversation between the architects Peter Eisenman and Charles Jenks. Eisenman outlines a situation where the plural coding of architectural forms and a careful attention to the social history of a place begin to produce a particular affect on the viewer. For Eisenman these affects appear as ‘texts’ and are intended to be explicit and physical.

The UR Feeling lecture will be held once only, prior to the opening on March 6, 4 pm at the Hermitage, Nieuwe Herengracht 14. Along with Untitled (2010) and Untitled (2007), it forms the third part of the artist’s exhibition at Kunstverein.

Seeing as space is limited for the lecture, please make reservations before 3 March to office@kunstverein.nl. Kunstverein’s members will have priority.

Kunstverein’s Store for Independent Publishing presents
False Friends by Garamond Press
7 March – 9 May 2010

Private view: 6 March, 6–8 pm

Antonio Pigafetta’s questionable travelogue from 1591, titled Regnum Congo, was based upon stories from Duarte Lopez, a Portuguese explorer who supposedly visited the Congo. The travelogue introduces an odd vision of European landscape in which fantastic creatures are presented. South-African artist Ruth Sacks re-contextualizes these historical interpretations by re-appropriating them into contemporary conditions, juxtaposing the varied characteristics. Hence the logo of her fictional publishing house, Garamond Press: a fantastic animal based upon a description of one of the possible animals from Regnum Congo.

Kunstverein is proud to present and produce the Garamond Press’ first publication False Friends. The narrative of the book derives from the storyline of Edgar Allen Poe’s “Murders at the Rue Morgue” from 1841, generally agreed to be the first detective story ever written. This contemporary version is set in Antwerp, Belgium, and is split into three languages: Dutch (Flemish), French and English. To follow the story’s plot, one has to be fluent in all three languages.

ISBN: 978-94-90629-02-1

€ 12,50

Ray Johnson, A Book about Death, 1963–1965
12 Dec. 2009 – 31 Jan. 201

Ray Johnson’s (Detroit, 1927) early work consisted of intricately painted geometric abstractions influenced by Albers’ color theories, and he exhibited with the American Abstract Artists group, including Ad Reinhardt and Leon Polk Smith. Soon, however, he turned to complex collages combining images with ink and paint or other surface textures that reflected the atmosphere of Abstract Expressionism then still prevalent in New York. During the 1950’s, Johnson established the format and style he would continue to use throughout his life. Kindred in spirit to the work of Joseph Cornell, he called his small irregularly shaped collages “moticos”, an anagram for “osmotic” (from osmosis). Johnson’s works continued the Dada and Surrealist tradition of collage (including that of Kurt Schwitters and Max Ernst) and pursued the provocation of paradoxical verbal and visual puns, absurd juxtapositions, word-play riddles and hidden references with a witty nihilistic sense of humor.

Johnson wrote poetic texts and letters and integrated language and a unique system of cryptic signs into his work. Considered by many the “father of Mail Art”, as early as 1953 Johnson began sending highly conceptual images/texts to friends, often encouraging the recipient to “add to” the work, or “please send to” someone else, or “return to Ray Johnson”. Forming the “New York Correspondence School” in 1962, Johnson established an enormous network of participants throughout the world – one which remains active even after his death, as is evident with Ray Johnson web sites on the Internet. Paralleling the idea of Allan Kaprow’s Happenings and of later Fluxus events, in the early 1960’s he began doing “Nothings” – informal performance art or non-art pieces which were continued over the years under the guise of NYCS meetings or lectures. Johnson was recognized as much for his performance-like persona as his collages and mailings.

In 1968, on the day Andy Warhol was shot, Johnson himself was mugged, an event which precipitated his move to Locust Valley, Long Island. Although he remained involved with the art scene through conversations and correspondences, he gradually withdrew from actively exhibiting. Johnson continued to make art, however, such as the master collages he worked on over a period of many years. He also continued to perform in his own circuitous ways, until apparent suicide on the night of Friday the 13th of January, 1995, when he was last seen leaping off the bridge in Sag Harbor, Long Island doing the back stroke into oblivion, and act some consider to be his last “performance”.

Between 1963 and 1965, Ray Johnson printed thirteen pages of his Book about Death with the Pernet Printing Company, 120 Lexington Avenue at 28th Street. His title, which designated the thirteen unbound pages as a book, is A Book about Death, yet also A Boop about Death and A Boom about Death. Those thirteen photo-offset pages were re-printed in 1976 for a catalogue, Correspondence, North Carolina Museum of Art, Richard Craven, editor and curator. The Carolina pages were folded once from the bottom, hence are not quite like the pages Ray folded for envelopes.

The presentation at Kunstverein will include a publication by Bill Wilson, which elaborates on each of the pages of “A Book about Death”.

Kunstverein would like to thank The Estate of Ray Johnson represented exclusively by

Richard L. Feigen & Co.

“grey-blue grain”, an exhibition by Adam Pendleton
12 Dec. 2009 – 31 Jan. 2010

grey-blue grain is the second in a three-part program by Adam Pendleton entitled EL T D K Amsterdam, comprising, along with this exhibition, two performances.
grey-blue grain is a selection of projects from 2007-09 that deal directly with the abstraction and instrumentalization of language and image through sculpture and wall-based work, including including a selection from his ongoing System of Display, mirror and glass works that atomize historical trajectories and textual realities through framing, reflection and fragmentation; sculptural work derived from the code-based work of ‘Clairvoyant Poet’ Hannah Weiner; poster-format rereading of texts based on the work of Liam Gillick and Malcolm X; and fresh configurations of the artist’s abstract and phenomenological alphabet, Untitled (small black cubes).

Adam Pendleton’s conceptual practice constructs formal templates in which he slots information. As a painter, writer and performer, he uses extreme freedom of reference and quotation, as well as a rejection of conventional hierarchies among sources, to create a re-historicized present, one that upsets and unbalances comfortably subjective interpretations of history and culture.

Over the past few years American artist Adam Pendleton has written various performances in which he exploits the easy-psychology of autobiographical readings by using devices that render language concrete and contingent. Often he combines specialized discourses and common knowledge in a redistribution of cultural information. Previous performances range from the evening length 30-person gospel choir production The Revival to a series of manifestos such as the Black Dada Manifesto.

EL T D K Amsterdam is a collaboration between Kunstverein, Amsterdam and de Appel.

Note:
Part three, BAND, will be performed the 13th and 14th of December at 8.30 PM
Location: De Brakke Grond (Rode Zaal), Nes 45, Amsterdam
For reservations, please contact: +31 (0)20 626 68 66 or hzomer@deappel.nl

BAND is a form and content refashioning of Jean-Luc Godard’s Sympathy for the Devil. Made in the aftermath of May ’68, the original film helped mark Godard’s break from his Nouvelle Vague period into a more committed engagement with the politics and class struggles of the time. It modelled the director’s emerging political faith that radical formal complexity could undermine the bourgeois logic implicit to narrative filmmaking. Often read as a tribute to the Rolling Stones whose rehearsals form an ongoing motif in the film, the Stones were in fact emblematic of the mainstream counterculture from which Godard was attempting to remove himself. BAND will unfold in stages, beginning at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 17th with a rehearsal and live concert by the indie-rock/post-punk band Deerhoof. The Amsterdam performance/reading will present the first edit of footage from Toronto with work-in-progress sequences from texts based on the work of authors explicitly related to Godard’s film, such as the Black Panther’ Eldridge Cleaver; or tangentially related, such as Gertrude Stein. The final stage of BAND will occur at The Kitchen, New York in Fall 2010.

Co-producers: Wayne Baerwaldt, Alberta College of Art + Design, Calgary; Noah Cowan, Toronto International Film Festival, Future Projections; Ann Demeester, De Appel, Amsterdam with additional support from Rashida Bumbray, The Kitchen, New York.

Kunstverein
13 November
19.30
Location: Ruyschstraat 4 III, Amsterdam

Kadist Art Foundation
14 November
19.30
Location: 19 Bis – 21 rue des Trois Frères, Paris

An ever-growing collection of scripts, ideas and works by: Julieta Aranda, Olivier Babin, Francisco Camacho, Derick Carner, Asli Cavusoglu, Etienne Chambaud, Audrey Cottin, Torreya Cummings, Gintaras Didziapetris, Cerith Wyn Evans, Michael Fliri, Mark Geffriaud, Fabien Giraud, Loris Gréaud, Graham Gussin, Will Holder, Pierre Huyghe, Joachim Koester, Gabriel Lester, Jennifer Di Marco, Patrizio Di Massimo, Nicholas Matranga & Francesca Bennet, Piero Passacantando, Cesare Pietroiusti, Matthew Shannon, Snowden Snowden, Gareth Spor, Maryelizabeth Yarbrough, Carey Young

As well as a one night session conducted by Marcos Lutyens

Curated by Raimundas Malasauskas

Hypnotic Show FAQ:

Q: What is Hypnotic Show?
A: A temporary social structure of engaging into creative cognitive acts through shared practices of art and hypnosis.

Q: What is the relationship between art and hypnosis?
A: The Hypnotic power of artworks has always been a favorite trope of people looking for transformative potential of art. However instead of seeing “hypnotic power” as a rhetorical figure, Hypnotic Show aims at reducing art practice to the method of pure hypnosis. According to biometrics it connects to the brain faster.

Q: Why brain?
A: It is the ultimate destination of neuro-social engineering as well as subjectivities of yet-to-be-invented. From the perspective of ceaseless production and total transparency, the brain is seen as a final frontier to be colonised, from the perspective of individual subjectivity – as a last resort of things not-to-be-known. Hypnotic Show positions itself on both ends of the perspective.

Q: How does Hypnotic Show work?
A: When all spaces undergo gentrification and you think that your very inner subjectivity will remain a space of a strictly personal order your brain-waves are being measured against you.

Q: No, no, but how does it work technically?
A: A number of invited artists have submitted proposals for Marcos Lutyens to be performed on the audience through a session of hypnosis.

Q: Can my girlfriend attend the séance?
A: Of course, please tell her to RSVP at office/at/kunstverein.nl or contact/at/kadist.org to sign up for a séance that will take place on the 13th of November at 19.30 Kunstverein Amsterdam and on the 14th of November at 19.30 at Kadist Art Foundation in Paris

Q: Is it true that hypnosis can convince of the value of certain artwork against my will?
A: Multiple techniques are used in promoting art’s value, hypnosis is just one of them.

Q: What remains after this show?
A: Reconfiguration of principles about workings or art and mind implied by the artists’ proposals.

Q: Where can I find the artists’ proposals?
A: They will be available at www.rye.tw on – please feel free to download it.

Q: What is the relation of Hypnotic Show to The Man Who Taught Blake to Paint in His Dreams drawing by William Blake?
A: It is not clear in this painting whether the Man was teaching painting in his dreams and Blake had access to that knowledge telematically or whether Blake was taught how to make paintings in his dreams. Or both.

Q: Will there be any works of artists made under the influence of Hypnosis?
A: No, Hypnotic Show aims at inducing trance rather than show its static records.

Q: Is it an empty show?
A: A show in your head will never be empty. There will be possibly a dream-machine of Burroughs and Gysin installed in the gallery.

Q: Did it take place anywhere before?
A: Yes, at Jessica Silverman gallery in San Francisco in 2008 and Artists Space in NYC in 2009.

Q: What are the inspirations of Hypnotic Show?
A: Works of many artists including Graham Gussin, Matt Mullican, Ann Lislegaard, Pedro Reyes, Warren Neidich, Cerith Wyn Evans; conversations with Fernando Delmar, Pascal Rousseau as well as the work of all the artists participating in Hypnotic Show with proposals.

Q: Is Hypnotic Show about collaboration?
A: Not really, but the relationship between hypnotist and the audience should be be described as collaboration.

Q: Can I buy I a hypnotic artwork?
A: Not at this moment. However soon you will be able not only to buy, but to commission a hypnotic artwork created especially for you or to be able to induce your own hypnotic artwork on your friend out of pure love. Or both.

Note that seating is limited so we advice you to RSVP before the 6th of November.
Members of Kunstverein have priority in seating.

For reservation and further information, please contact:

Kunstverein

Ruyschstraat 4 III

NL- 1091 CB Amsterdam

+31 (0) 20 4277603

office/at/kunstverein.nl

www.kunstverein.nl

Kadist Art Foundation

19 Bis – 21 rue des Trois Frères

FR- 75018 Paris

+33 (0) 1 4251 83 49

contact/at/kadist.org

www.kadist.org

www.rye.tw

www.mlutyens.com

blog.sideshows.org/2009/03/hypnotic-show

Books for sale and on view from 9 Oct. – 30 Nov. 2009.
Featuring:
– Norman Potter, What is a designer
– Norman Potter, Models & Constructs
– Anthony Froshaug: Typography & texts / Documents of a life
– E.C. Large, Sugar in the air
– E.C. Large, Asleep in the afternoon
– Stuart Bailey & Robin Kinross, God’s amateur

‘Hyphen Press was started in 1980 to publish one book, What is a designer by Norman Potter. This book had been published first in 1969, in the wake of the events of that time. Potter, then teaching design, joined the students at Hornsey College of Art in their occupation of the school. By the late-1970s the book was out of print, and its publisher was now part of a larger imprint with no interest in reissuing it. Norman Potter and I worked together on a second edition, expanding it to about twice the length of the original. In full control of editing, design and production, we made the book we wanted. Partly as a way of supplying pictures to an unillustrated work, Potter wrote an accompanying pamphlet, Designing a present, which included contributions from his colleagues. We handled distribution ourselves, and encountered all the difficulties that this brings. But the book sold out eventually. What is a designer certainly has the spirit of 1968 – but, as its subsequent history has shown, it has other dimensions too.

This adventure set the course for Hyphen Press. Through the 1980s, I was busy with other things, and selling this book was just a part of my activities. Hyphen started a second phase of life when Potter and I started work on a third edition of What is a designer, and on his second book Models & Constructs. These were published in 1989 and 1990. After this the list began to grow, with other writers joining. Each book continued to be in some way a collaboration between author (often also designer) and myself as editor.

In 2000 I finished a book about the typographer Anthony Froshaug, which I had worked on for about 15 years. Froshaug and Potter were close friends and colleagues, and it had been Froshaug who had introduced me to Potter. So this book joined the sequence of works that represent and document a certain element of English culture, and one that was previously unknown except within small circles.

Later still, in 2008, with Potter and Froshaug long gone, we added to this sequence by reissuing books by the English writer E.C. Large – which had provided some inspiration and reassurance for both of them. This effort of rediscovery was done in collaboration with Stuart Bailey. He and I made a third book, God’s amateur: the writing of E.C. Large, to accompany the reissue of the novels.’

Robin Kinross, August 2009

www.hyphenpress.co.uk

Ian Wilson
9 Oct. – 9 Nov. 2009

Kunstverein is pleased to present an exhibition and Discussion by Ian Wilson.

Kunstverein is housed in an 19th century private apartment in a monumental five storey residential house in Amsterdam with, one could say, a long-standing cultural history. Always closely connected to art and its production, the first owners of Ruyschstraat 4 were infamous for their efforts during WWII in sheltering artists threatened by the Nazis. Following these cultural Samaritans, for years the fourth floor housed the studio to the City’s Official Sculptor. Today, with its original architecture virtually intact, Ruyschstraat 4 III & IV is the home of Dutch artist Germaine Kruip.

With such deep-seated links to the private and the public cultural domain safely nestled in its very location, Kunstverein plays with the possibilities of pushing the borders of institutional frameworks by introducing a ‘salon’ structure. Due to its unconventional (intimate) make-up Kunstverein allows alternative methods in presentation and hosting, whereby dialogue is key. The program will responds accordingly, mirroring the ingredients of its inception: at its core are the notions of commitment and self-organization.

It seems only befitting then that Kunstverein opens with an exhibition by Ian Wilson in whose work Kunstverein would like to see its mission reflected; to explore relationships between the viewed – or discussed – and the viewer and the topical urgency of such interaction.

‘Ian Wilson (°1940, South Africa) is one of the mythical figures of conceptual art. In 1968 he decided to take his ideas about visual abstraction into the invisible abstraction of language, along with a number of other artists such as Lawrence Wiener, Joseph Kosuth, Robert Barry and Art & Language. But Ian Wilson went furthest in the dematerialization of art. He wanted to speak instead of making things.’ *

The exhibition comprises two works from the late 60’s, as well as a Discussion held prior to the opening.
Red Rectangle (first named Untitled) originates from 1966 as part of a series of monochrome paintings. During this period, Wilson’s artistic explorations were based entirely around the monochrome and in questions relating to perception and painting. In 2008, more than 40 years after their creation and loss, Wilson decided to reconstruct three of these monochrome works for an exhibition at Jan Mot Gallery.

Circle on the Floor (1968) is one of Wilson’s very last physical works before his investigations turned to the notion of oral communication as a form of art. Following careful instructions, a chalk circle is drawn directly onto a floor, 1/2 an inch thick and circumscribing an area of about six feet in diameter. The circle can be drawn everywhere, at anytime, and still remains the same. It thus examines its own abstract intangibility.

The exhibition is befitting for an additional reason, as Red Rectangle has been newly acquired by Germaine Kruip herself. In this manner, public, private, history, commitment and urgency come full circle, at this the first exhibition at Kunstverein.

Kunstverein wishes to thank Jan Mot, Stichting Egress Foundation, Chaz, Eindhoven and its Gold Members for their generous support of Ian Wilson’s Discussion held on the 7th of October at Kunstverein. Without their help this event would not be possible.

*From Oscar van den Boomgaard’s interview with Ian Wilson, 2002.

The evening starts 19.30 at café Aan de Amstel, Weesperzijde 42a
Adam Pendleton
three scenes
As part one of EL T D K Amsterdam in collaboration with de Appel

Performed at 20.00 and 21.00
Location: Ruyschstraat 4 III, Amsterdam

Over the past few years American artist Adam Pendleton has written various performances in which he exploits the easy-psychology of autobiographical readings by using devices that render language concrete and contingent. Commonly, he combines specialized discourses and common knowledge in a redistribution of cultural information.

Previous performances range from the evening length 30-person gospel choir production The Revival to a series of manifestos such as the Black Dada Manifesto. For his performance at Kunstverein entitled three scenes, Pendleton will evoke the notion of a retrospective by pulling, assembling and re-appropriating material from all of his performances to date.

Michael Portnoy
Human Intwist Group

Performed at 21.00, 22.00 and 23.00
Location: Intercontinental Amstel Hotel, Professor Tulpplein 1, Amsterdam

Michael Portnoy is a ‘director of behaviour’ and performance artist based in New York. His practice circles the laws and habits of play and communication — language itself forming a significant aspect in the works.

Portnoy’s installations, music, objects, relics and performances reside in a world where cryptic, specific communication, symbols and gesture seem to live alongside standard social conventions. The rules governing his works are thus experienced as odd and distant yet somehow recognizable. This pushing and pulling of a rather intimate familiarity makes ‘participation’ possible while an overall structure remains enticingly opaque.