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On Tuesday i was in Amsterdam for a conference titled "I'm not a Barbarian, I'm an Alien' at the Dirty Art Department of the Sandberg Institute (with titles like that how could i refuse the invitation?) but i also found some time to visit Sonic Acts - Travelling Time at the NIMK, an exhibition of artworks that explore different modalities of time. What i might not find is the time to blog the whole show before it closes on 15 April 2012. But it's so good i should at least make space for a quick mention of one of the participating pieces:
Nummer negen: The day I didn't turn with the world is a time-lapse photography showing the artist standing alone on a barren, icebound plain. Guido van der Werve spent 24 hours in almost complete immobility on the axis of the world at the geographic North Pole. His only movements consisted in turning slowly clockwise as the planet under his feet turned counterclockwise. This means that in these 24 hours, he didn't indeed "turn with the world" but let the Earth rotate around him. The physical tour de force would be enough to make anyone admire the work. But the images are as stunning as the performance. The solitary silhouette, the shadow moving around the artist, the slowly changing sky, the unsympathetic landscape. And then there's that quiet, dream-like piano piece composed by van der Werve.
In Nummer negen: The day I didn't turn with the world, time and Copernican system seem to be suspended. It's an absurd, poetical and almost heroic work. Sonic Acts - Travelling Time remains open at NIMK (the Netherlands Media Art Institute) in Amsterdam until 15 April, 2012. Don't miss it if you're in or around Amsterdam! |
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While in Amsterdam last weekend, i went to see The Art of Hacking at the New Media Art Institute. The exhibition presents art projects that subvert, improve on or circumnavigate 'official' systems and practices and offer alternatives. I first thought of writing a report about the whole show but the work Identity Bureau ended up grabbing all my attention. That's what happens when Heath Bunting has a project in a collective exhibition.
Identity Bureau builds upon The Status Project (2004-2008), an inquiry into the construction of our 'official identity', as a collection of data and how it influences the way we can move around in social space, the internet and private or governmental databases. One day Heath Bunting realized that in the UK it is legal to have several identities, if they are not for criminal purposes. He set up an 'Identity Bureau' to allow ordinary people to buy new, official and legal UK identities at reasonable cost (500 euros.) It might start with something as banal as a supermarket loyalty card and from there, a new identity builds up that gets more and more coherent. The identity is based both on intangible and tangible materials. Bunting hands the ready-to-use identity inside a suitcase where the buyer can find supermarket loyalty cards, transportation cards, a mobile phone number, letters sent by governmental departments to an address in the UK, etc. The identity also exists in a less tangible way as the new person is inserted inside a web of shopping, library or transportation cards, bills, government correspondence, and other "personal" data. The person also belongs to a network made of other people, organizations, and institutions. The new identity allows you to have a bank account, free health care and a social security number in the country.
Identity Bureau challenges the idea of personhood by showing how materially produced an identity is. See also the conversation between UK barrister Bob Colover and Heath Bunting. The Art of Hacking is open at the New Media Art Institute in Amsterdam until November 26th, 2011. |
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If you find yourself in Amsterdam, don't miss the retrospective of sculptor and photographer Scarlett Hooft Graafland. Her stunning photos of landscapes installations are on view at Huis Marseille until mid-December. As surprising as it may appear, Scarlett Hooft Graafland takes analogue photographs, prints them straight from the negative and never uses Photoshop. The artist is fascinated by remote, unusual and sometimes even inhospitable locations. She went to Salar de Uyunu in the Bolivian Andes, the largest salt desert, she travelled with the Inuit across the sea ice of Igloolik on the Arctic plains of northern Canada, moved around Southern China and the lava fields of Iceland. Her interventions on the landscape are temporary and leave no trace behind them. Some of the works allude to masterpieces of art history. The balloons floating on water for example, are an homage to Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty. However, many of her works also arise from her deep concern for the natural environment. How could the words 'global warming' not spring to our minds when we see her Polar Bear?
The lemonade igloo was made by Nathan Qamaniq, one of the few traditional Inuit still able to hand-build an ice igloo. It took weeks to prepare the lemonade blocks but one day only to build the igloo itself.
The exhibition unfolds over several floors of the Huis Marseille and some of the photos can even be found in a small building at the back of the garden:
Vous êtes ici has the perfect slideshow to see more of Scarlett Hooft Graafland's work. The Scarlett Hooft Graafland retrospective is on view at Huis Marseille in Amsterdam through December 11, 2011. |
![-athejourneyaafland1[1].jpg](http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/wow/-athejourneyaafland1%5B1%5D.jpg)
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Sorry for the long silence, i was in Amsterdam for a Fringe Critics Lab masterclass and it took far more brain energy than i had expected. From now on nothing should disrupt the blogging flow.
If you find yourself in Amsterdam too, don't miss Battered at Melkweg's photo gallery. For obvious reason, the exhibition has the support of the Finnish Institute of Culture rather than the Finnish board of tourism. The photo series by Harri Pälviranta shows men (and a few women too) in the middle of or after a physical fight in the streets of Turku. The powerful flash leaves nothing to imagination. It's bloody, messy, a few teeth have probably been lost and the subjects will wake up the day after with ecchymosis all over their face. I had seen a couple of these portraits in another exhibition but they hadn't left such a strong mark on me. This time, seeing so many assaulted, punched, contused men one after the other, filled me with the fear that Finland might not be the perfectly lovely and idyllic city i had witnessed during my recent visits. After some 12 photos the discomfort turned to a strange fascination for the patterns the blood made on the men's face. None of them actually seemed to be much shocked or in pain. The minimal description of the scene contributed to turn a moment i regarded as dramatic (a man has just been injured) into a scene of utter banality: In a park, I don't know who hit me, Outside a bar, Second beating that night, on the Main Square (a popular place to get a good beating apparently), Outside a grill, etc. Many of the altercations involved Finns against Swedes.
In the artist's own words: Batteries and street fights are every night activities during the weekends in Finland. People have a strong tendency of getting rather intoxicated during the partying and once drunk, people are released from their inhibitions. Aggressivity turns into physical acts, to direct violence.
There is a social awareness on this topic in Finland, the issue is recognized and it is considered to be a severe social problem. But the discussion has mainly literal dimensions, it appears in news headlines and it is discussed in seminars. There are no images from these happenings. By photographing assaults and batteries I wish show the real faces of street violence in Finland. In contrast to the stereotypic portrayals of male heroicism and the worn-out attempts at shocking people I am interested in dealing with the utmost banality inherent in violence. What I find more unsettling than any single representation of physical injuries is the everyday nature of street violence and the laissez-faire attitude towards it in the Finnish society.
Battered remains open at Melkweg's photo gallery in Amsterdam through 2 October 2011. |
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I've just had a long long day so please don't hold it against me if i take no more than two minutes to copy paste a plea that could help save Dutch new media art institutions. As you might know already, new media art institutions in The Netherlands are threatened with a 100% cut in their structural governmental funding. I believe that Mediamatic is right when they write that "The loss of funding will not only destroy the Dutch infrastructure, but will disrupt the international New Media Arts network as well." These institutions have been generous not only with Dutch media artists but also with artists from all over the world, offering them residencies, inviting them to give talks, to head workshops, to participate to exhibitions and perform in their space. Mediamatic set up a and i do hope that you will all sign it.
When the budget cuts for arts and culture are accepted by Parliament on Monday June 27th, all New Media Art institutions in The Netherlands will lose their funding. Institutional support for New Media culture will come to a grinding halt. From 2013 onwards there will be no development platform for New Media Art in The Netherlands. Please help us prevent this from happening by signing the petition. If you have a mailing list or a website, please spread the petition and this information. The loss of funding will not only destroy the Dutch infrastructure, but will disrupt the international New Media Arts network as well. Sustaining the Dutch infrastructure for New Media Art requires a mere 1% of the national arts budget. Help us prevent this destruction and retain support for New Media Art. Mediamatic also created infographics that puts arts spending in proportion to lots of other costs in dutch society... Image on the homepage: Marnix de Nijs, Run Motherfucker Run, 2001-2004. |
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There is a fantastic exhibition right now at the Netherlands Media Art Institute in Amsterdam and if i were you, i'd go there immediately. Not only because the 5 videos by Omer Fast NIMk is showing are worth the trip but also because NIMk (as well as other Dutch new media art centers) needs all the national and international support it can get right now. But more on this later! Fast's Nostalgia trilogy is a particularly stunning, moving, words-fail-me-really artwork. The three films are based on the actual story of a West African refugee who requested asylum in London.
The fist video follows a white man as he is building a trap for partridges in the woods, a voice over explains how to do so. The shots evoke an amateur video.
The second part reenacts the conversation that the artist had with a young Nigerian man who is seeking political asylum in the UK. The film is more polished and unfolds over two screens. Despite the tragic theme, the short movie feels like a comedy with the white artist attempting to understand the life that the young man had in Africa while the former Nigerian child soldier gently plays with the artist's preconceptions about Africa.
The final part of the video is shot on 16mm and looks like a scifi movie shot and set in the 1970s. This time, the emigrant is a white English man from Surrey who sold his kidney and bike in exchange for a clandestine trip to Africa. The poor guy was arrested on the coast of West Africa. He had to flee an England of the future where people starve and hope for a better life in a prosperous African country where Britons are not welcome. That episode was particularly moving because of the way traditional roles are reversed. The European guy is pleasing for a place in well-off Africa while the African immigration officer displays the kind of prejudice we might have over here in Europe. While talking later with her lover, an immigration officer explains that "In England people might be poor but they are incredibly friendly", and the boyfriend retorts that "No one travels to Europe anymore, only hippies used to go there as voluntary workers,' etc. Nostalgia provides the missing piece in the current immigration debate in Europe (or lack of in many cases.) Omer Fast's exhibition remains open until 23 July 2011 at the Netherlands Media Art Institute in Amsterdam.
Now the other thing i need to mention is that the Dutch organisations which can be regarded as some of the most active motors of the whole new media art community are facing a 100% cut in their structural governmental funding. Steim, Waag Society, Mediamatic, V2_, WORM & NIMK are about to lose all their funding. I'm just back from Amsterdam where i saw exhibitions at NIMk, Mediamatic and another one orchestrated by Waag. Each of them was of high quality and i cannot imagine how bland my stay in town would have been if the contemporary art offer of the city has been limited to the Stedelijk and a few commercial art galleries, no matter how brilliant their programme can be at times. The whole cultural panorama is going to be hit by the drastic and short-sighted plan but it's the most avant-garde, experimental and audacious programmes that are particularly threatened. Show your support by writing your comment on NIMk's Media Art, We Care page. And sign the Save Dutch Media art orgs. Govt plans to slash them all! petition. Read also: Letter to Dutch art butcher Halbe Zijlstra, Response New Media & Art Institutions To Governmental Cuts, Dutch Coup d'Etat in art and culture, Support the Rijksakademie, secure the art of the future. |
