PERFORMANCE PLATFORM
About
Performance Platform is a website and web app listing public activities from five different organisations based in Amsterdam: Dasarts, If I Can't Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution, NBprojects, School for New Dance Development (SNDO) and Veem House for Performance. In addition, Performance Platform calls attention to other performance-related events in the city and abroad.
Performance Platform is an entirely subjective, while broadly oriented mapping of the performance landscape. Besides being a user-friendly list serve, the platform aims to highlight pathways through the city, facilitating new discoveries across the various institutions where (performing) arts take place. Far from attempting an all-encompassing survey of the field, the platform’s organisers include information concerning performance-related activities that have captured our imagination: mainly in Amsterdam—to strengthen the local scene—but also elsewhere in the world.
Every month, the five partners come together to discuss preferred landmarks within Amsterdam’s performance field, unfamiliar artists, or events that arouse curiosity. We draw attention to the things that are already here, close-by, but which are perhaps overlooked, inconspicuous or as yet unnoticed. We don’t shy away from ‘big and famous’ either. Every month a new landscape of artistic activity arises—full of not-yet-visible links and possible interconnections, new perspectives, viewpoints and secret gardens.
Those who subscribe to the Performance Platform, get a monthly Letter in their inbox. The goal of this Letter is not to inform, nor to bring any 'news'. Until 2016, each month, in a rotating manner, Barbara Van Lindt, Anne Breure, Nicole Beutler, Frédérique Bergholtz and Bojana Mladenovic, have been presenting the platform’s readership with topics, ideas or people connected to their most current interest. In 2016, a new editorial board composed of Isobel Dryburgh, Maria Rößler, Marjolein Vogels, Annick Kleizen and Simon Asencio was invited to bring in their diversely informed perspectives and to continue the momentum initiated by the five ladies who artistically lead the Performance Platform’s constitutive organisations. Sometimes staying as close as to articulating excitement or concern from the life of the organisations, at other times drawing attention to complex and elaborate projects of others, the editorial board also occasionally extends the invitation to a guest to speak on its behalf.
Each Letter marks a point in time in which the thoughts and ideas on or around performance situate themselves rather freely in poetic, semi- or non-academic, invigorating, careless, engaged, frivolous and pertinent performance discourses at once.
The history and traditions of performance lie in the twentieth century. Today, this provides references, concepts, presentation modes, curatorial models, theoretical and philosophical ideas that infuse life in many different scenes. For us—a venue and production house, a dance company, a visual arts institute, a Bachelor Studies for Choreography and a training programme for Masters of Theatre—approaching the arts from a disciplinary angle does not correspond to the way we work, think and talk. Performance allows another perspective: less sticking to orthodoxy within disciplines, more addressing qualities of presence, the experience of an event, and the politics of show and tell.
English is the language most used in this international community and is therefore the one we have chosen to carry the Performance Platform contents.

HET VEEM THEATER
Filled with voices during the year; old and new, young and established, coming from the arts and beyond, coming from Amsterdam and abroad. Always exploring what performance can and should be in movement, time, and discourse; questioning what we take as given, performing new proposals for ways of looking, and taking us on journeys to unknown worlds. Veem stands as a house for performance, dance, and discourse for making and presenting radical, daring, and experimental work.
We do this by producing and presenting performances on the cross-disciplinary field of dance, theatre, visual arts, cinematography, and music from new makers and by inviting work of international influential artists.
We do this in connections with schools and institutions with whom we share fascinations and this field. (i.a. SNDO, Mime, Amsterdam Master of Choreography and DasArts; Stedelijk Museum, SPRING, ICK, Oude Kerk, Nieuwe Grond – Theater Festival)
We do this in discourse by organising exchanges of thought, booklaunches, debates and salons.
We do this in going outside and working at, and with, other spaces and places.
We do this with you – the audience, artists, and all curious minds out there. The doors are open! Be welcome.
IF I CAN'T DANCE
If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution is an association dedicated to exploring the evolution and typology of performance and performativity in contemporary art. If I Can’t Dance initiates, produces and presents projects with artists, curators and researchers on the basis of long-term collaborations. These projects are presented (inter)nationally through a network of partner institutions.
If I Can’t Dance works along the systematic of collaboration. It doesn’t have a ‘house’, but instead produces projects and programmes that have different manifestations in different institutions within the Netherlands and abroad. One of our networks is Corpus, a European consortium for performance production including the partners Tate Modern and Playground Festival (STUK, Museum M).
If I Can’t Dance’s programme is structured in two-year editions, comprising of artist commissions, research commissions, as well as discursive activities including a monthly reading group. Each edition, defined by a certain field of investigation, engages a group of associated practitioners and institutional partners and unfolds along a travelling trajectory. Previous editions examined theatricality (Edition I), feminism (Edition II) masquerade (Edition III), affect (Edition IV), and appropriation in conjunction with dedication (Edition V) in contemporary visual art.
For Edition VI (2015–2016), If I Can’t Dance takes the notions of ‘Event and Duration’ as the field of research for its biannual programme of Commissions, Performance in Residence projects, reading groups, seminars and workshops. The programme of Commissions includes the production and presentation of new work by artists Leonor Antunes, Alex Martinis Roe, Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, and Joke Robaard. If I Can’t Dance also continues its Performance in Residence programme, approaching performance-related practice through production-led research, with four new projects by Erin Alexa Freedman and Lili Huston-Herterich, Fred Moten and Wu Tsang, Peter Pál Pelbart, and Vivian Ziherl.
Since its inception in 2005, If I Can't Dance explores performance practice in visual art, set within the wider scope of both stage arts and feminism. Our relationships with practitioners to this day are informed by our ongoing interest in current and past theatre and dance practices and the manifestations of feminist discourse in art production.
The programme of If I Can’t Dance is supported by the Mondriaan Fund, the Cultural Programme of the European Union (Corpus) and the municipality of Amsterdam.
NBPROJECTS
NBprojects is a vehicle for the artistic and curatorial projects of choreographer Nicole Beutler and her associates.
NBprojects is motivated by the desire to find, and propose, alternatives to fixed ideologies. It seeks to articulate the instability of the rational, create conditions for encounters and reflection within an artistic practice that naturally goes beyond the borders of constructed disciplines such as theatre, visual art, music, dance and performance. This motivation leads to performance/ dance/ theatre projects, to various forms of cross-disciplinary collaborations, as well as to the curating of conferences, lectures, festivals and the annual summer academy: WE LIVE HERE.
Nicole Beutler studied Fine Arts in Germany and Dance and Choreography at the School for New Dance Development (SNDO), part of the Amsterdam Theatre School. Parallel to creating dance/performance pieces, she was a member of the theatre-maker’s collective LISA. After five years of existence as discursive framework and production platform, LISA came to an end. Nicole set up her own organisation: NBprojects. Propelled by the fundamental desire to ‘bring people together’, with NBprojects she continues the search for links and connections across the field and beyond.
NBprojects is joining the Performance Platform in order to expose existing artistic pathways across the city of Amsterdam and beyond its borders, to mark a landscape of affinities and potential connections and to relate individual practices to the larger context.
NBprojects is funded by the Dutch Performing Arts Fund.
DASARTS
DasArts is a master’s degree course within the Theatre School of the Amsterdam School of Arts. The programme is based on eighteen years of experience as an educational, production-based and research-orientated hybrid. Our two-year, question based, residential master’s programme functions as a laboratory and aims to improve the artistic competences of its international students.
Artists studying at DasArts define both their goals and the research methods they plan to adopt. Although the focus is placed on individual development, our main educational strategies are derived from the learning potential of encounters: significant collisions with peers, guest teachers and staff and the fostering of professional intimacy. In other words, the degree to which you are able to provide insights into your working processes to a group of colleagues and/or an audience (often comprised of professionals).
DasArts is an acknowledged master of theatre. Theatre is the backdrop: its history and conventions, the traditions and the avant-garde spirit. Performance is part of this legacy. Since this lively contemporary international scene of practitioners and theoreticians creates a cross-cultural critical environment, DasArts consciously brings it into its program: via guest teachers, advisors or mentors, the students themselves, or the books housed in the library.
SNDO
The SNDO—School for New Dance Development (School voor Nieuwe Dansontwikkeling in Dutch)—offers a full time four-year professional education course leading to a bachelor's degree in Art – Choreography. The school was founded in 1975 as an attempt to find new directions for dance next to the existing forms and styles that dominated the field. After forty years, the SNDO remains inquisitive, open minded, and in the foreground of progressive developments in the fields of dance and performance. In the curriculum, the school establishes the conditions from which the creativity of the student can emerge. Reflection on the specific qualities of dance and performance as art forms is developed, and awareness of the body and the artistic implications of working with it take precedence.
The SNDO has built an international reputation and has students from more than forty different countries. The staff and guest teachers are also international, and courses are taught in English. This international reputation, its strong image (inevitably followed by some myths!), and its excellent pool of alumni, all continue to contribute to its development and renewal, challenging and expanding upon established ways of making choreographies and performances. It is only possible to achieve this through the combination of an articulate vision on art, society, and education, and the translation of this vision into the school structure and the curriculum. Throughout the years one thing has remained constant—that which is expected from its students, the SNDO poses as a task to itself: continuous critical self-examination, experimentation, renewal, and the contemporaneity and progressiveness of its programme.
Over and above its core curriculum, the SNDO does this through active and critical dialogue with contemporary themes and politics within the profession; stimulating and initiating new developments and research in the area of dance and performance; by offering intensive courses and symposia, and by producing articles that can contribute to further development in the field. The SNDO collaborates with a number of local and international organizations from the fields of dance, performance, visual arts, and education: theatres Frascati and Het Veem, the fine arts institute If I Can’t Dance in Amsterdam and HZT from Berlin.
Like any educational structure, the SNDO is further recognized and enriched by the work of its alumni. Many teachers, dancers, and choreographers work in the international field. Within the large working community names such as Sasha Waltz, Martin Nachbar, Thomas Lehmen, Ivana Müller, or Nicloe Beutler stand as already established and recognized choreographers alongside more recent forces such as Alma Söderberg, Rodrigo Sobarzo de Larraechea, Vincent Riebeek, Florentina Holzinger, Lisa Vereertbrugghen, Simon Tanguy, Marta Ziólek, and Simon Asencio, to name just a few recent graduates.
The SNDO is part of de Theaterschool at the AHK—Amsterdam School of the Arts, and is accredited by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science.
JULY 2015 

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01–31
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Stedelijk Museum
A year at the Stedelijk: Tino Sehgal
Tino Sehgal
1 Jan-31 Dec 2015
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
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The first major survey of the German/British artist Tino Sehgal marks the new directorate of Beatrix Ruf. Taking place in 2015, the overview unfolds in 12 chapters. Conceived as a consecutive series of presentations, the exhibition features different work from Sehgal’s oeuvre each month, enacted in a different gallery space. Sehgal’s twelve-part survey is not only a prelude to a fresh approach to using the building under the new directorship but also an innovative re-envisioning of the exhibition as phenomenon.
- Daily, 10am-6pm; Thurs 10am-10pm
- € 15/7,50/3,50/0
- stedelijk.nl
- Museumplein 10, 1071 DJ Amsterdam
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13–02
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The Artist’s Institute
Carolee Schneemann
Carolee Schneemann
13 Feb-2 Aug 2015
The Artist’s Institute, New York (USA)
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When Carolee Schneemann entered the neo-avant garde of the 1960s, the materials available to artists had expanded up to an ironic limit: it seemed that a body could use everything but itself. In turning to the body as a material, Schneemann broke this basic conservatism and the taboo of erotic introspection that it had tacitly barred from art’s ongoing project of reflexivity. From February 13th to August 2nd, the Artist’s Institute will dedicate its program to Carolee Schneemann’s expanded conception of the body as a material, exploring its extensions and versatility.
- Wed-Sun, noon-6pm
- Free admission
- theartistsinstitute.org
- 163 Eldridge St, New York, NY 10002, USA
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06–23
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mumok
My Body is the Event – Vienna Actionism and International Performance
Günter Brus, Hermann Nitsch, a.o.
6 Mar-23 Aug 2015
mumok, Vienna (AT)
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Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien (mumok) is presenting its collection focus on Vienna Actionism in the context of international developments in performance-based art. Whereas previous mumok shows of Vienna Actionism always concentrated on the pictorial artifacts of the movement’s main protagonists, the focus of this exhibition is on the performative aspects of their creative work. Actions by Günter Brus, Hermann Nitsch, Otto Muehl, and Rudolf Schwarzkogler will be contrasted with works by significant international practitioners of performance art, with works by Marina Abramovic, Joseph Beuys, Chris Burden, Jon Grigorescu, amongst others.
- Mon, 2pm; Tue-Sun, 10am
- €10–0
- mumok.at
- Museumsplatz 1, 1070 Vienna, Austria
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25–30
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EYE
If We Ever Get to Heaven
William Kentridge
25 Apr-30 Aug 2015
EYE Film Instituut, Amsterdam
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EYE presents If We Ever Get to Heaven, an exhibition with work by the celebrated South African artist William Kentridge (Johannesburg, 1955). Kentridge achieved renown with his remarkable animations, charcoal drawings and installations. He is also active as an opera and theatre director. It is for the first time that such an extensive exhibition featuring a number of installations by Kentridge has been presented in the Netherlands. Specially for EYE, he developed More Sweetly Play the Dance, a frieze of moving images measuring some 45 meters in length. In addition to this new work, EYE is presenting three other large works by William Kentridge.
- Sat-Thu, 11am-7pm; Fri, 11am-9pm
- €9/7,50
- eyefilm.nl
- IJpromenade 1, 1031KT Amsterdam
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29–03
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Centre Pompidou
Le Corbusier – The measures of man
Le Corbusier
29 Apr-3 Aug 2015
Centre Pompidou, Paris (FR)
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The Centre Pompidou is devoting a retrospective to the work of Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, aka Le Corbusier. Not only a visionary architect, urban planner and theorist of modernity, but also a painter and sculptor, Le Corbusier made a profound impression on the 20th century in dramatically changing architectural design and the way people lived in it. The Centre Pompidou invites audiences to grasp the output of this major figure in modernity through the idea of human proportions, the human body being essential as a universal principle defining all aspects of architecture and spatial composition.
- Daily, 11am
- €14–11
- centrepompidou.fr
- Place Georges-Pompidou, 75004 Paris, France
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20–28
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Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
Be a Place, Place an Image, Imagine a Poem
Ree Morton
20 May-28 Sep 2015
Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid (ES)
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The work of Ree Morton (Ossining, NY, 1936 – Chicago, 1977) can be found in the specific art scene in the USA around 1970, characterised by a strong reaction to Abstract Expressionism, via Minimal art, on the one hand, and Conceptual art and Pop art on the other. Different hard-to-classify movements materialised and were defined by Lucy Lippard as “Eccentric Abstraction”, or, for instance, Post-minimalism and phenomenological and performative practices inclined towards ritualism, animism and the body. The show devoted to the artist in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía aims to represent a new landmark in the study of her work.
- Mon, Wed-Sun, 10am
- €8–0
- museoreinasofia.es
- 52 Santa Isabel Street, 28012, Madrid, Spain
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23–27
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Tensta konsthall
Here We LTTR: 2002–2008
Emily Roysdon, Ginger Brooks Takahashi, a.o.
23 May-27 Sep 2015
Tensta konsthall, Spånga (SE)
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In the Spring of 2014, the four editors of LTTR’s fifth issue, Emily Roysdon, Ginger Brooks Takahashi, K8 Hardy, and Ulrike Müller gathered around the archive. The groundbreaking and playfully rigorous work of LTTR will now be exhibited for the first time and activated at Tensta konsthall. The exhibition Here We LTTR: 2002-2008 includes the group’s five issues of the journal as well as photographs and other documentation of LTTR’s social energy. Local and international guests connected to LTTR and to queer art, activism, and research, will guide a series of walk-throughs in the exhibition.
- Wed–Sun, noon
- Free admission
- tenstakonsthall.se
- Taxingegränd 10, 163 04 Spånga, Sweden
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05–27
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Hamburger Bahnhof
Black Mountain (…)
Richard Buckminster Fuller, John Cage, a.o.
5 Jun-27 Sep 2015
Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (DE)
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The Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart presents the first comprehensive exhibition in Germany devoted to the legendary Black Mountain College. Founded in 1933 in North Carolina, USA, Black Mountain rose to fame on account of its progressive teaching methods and the many prominent figures who taught and studied there. Its influence upon the development of the arts in the second half of the 20th century was enormous; the performatisation of the arts, in particular, that emerged as from the 1950s derived vital impetus from the experimental practice at Black Mountain. The exhibition traces the history of this university experiment in its main outlines.
- Tue-Sat, 10am; Sun, 11am
- €14–6,50
- smb.museum
- Invalidenstraße 50-51, 10557 Berlin, Germany
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06–13
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MOCA
Tongues Untied
Marlon Riggs, John Boskovich, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, a.o.
6 Jun-13 Sep 2015
MOCA Pacific Design Center, California (USA)
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The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, presents Tongues Untied, an exhibition titled after the landmark film by poet, activist, and artist Marlon Riggs. Tongues Untied presents a selection of works from the museum’s permanent collection by John Boskovich, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and others, alongside Riggs’s deeply personal and lyrical exploration of black gay identity in the United States. Made during a historical period marked by the onset of the AIDS crisis, the works navigate desire, love, loss, and mourning to engage and question sexual and political repression, expression, and deviation.
- Tue-Sat, 11am
- Free admission
- moca.org
- 8687 Melrose Avenue, West Hollywood, CA 90069
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17–21
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KONTAKT
Thirty One
Pawel Althamer, Mária Bartuszová, Walter Benjamin, a.o.
17 Jun-21 Jul 2015
National Gallery of Kosovo, Prishtina (KV)
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The exhibition Thirty One presents works that play an integral part in European art history but claim an exceptional status within a politically heterogeneous terrain. With Thirty One, the National Gallery of Kosovo in Pristina hosts a distinctive overview of the works in the Kontakt Art Collection, which have been arranged and assembled by its director, Erzen Shkololli, in accordance with the concept by Petrit Halilaj and Hans Ulrich Obrist. The number of artists corresponds with the opening days of the exhibition and is meant to be a starting point from which to facilitate new, unanticipated approaches to the collection that will lead to a concept for a future exhibition.
- Tue–Sun, 10am
- n/a
- galeriakombetare.com
- rr. Agim Ramadani, 60, Prishtina, Kosovo
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20–30
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De Vleeshal
Violent Incident
Rosa Aiello, Bernadette Corporation, Andrea Fraser, a.o.
20 Jun-30 Aug 2015
De Kabinetten van De Vleeshal, Middelburg (NL)
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‘Violent Incident’ takes its title from Bruce Nauman’s 1986 video work. Combining three works from the M HKA collection, including the video by Nauman, with several artists not in the collection, the show explores the perverting of our intimacies; the transformation of affect and emotional excess into technical form, as strategies of industrial, institutional critique. Goodbye letters turned into art market machines, claustrophobically formal texts built to declare love, a correspondence course in how to see and draw better are considered as the results of and solutions to institutional indebtedness.
- Tue–Sun, 1-5pm
- Free admission
- vleeshal.nl
- Zusterstr. 7, 4331 KG Middelburg, NL
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21–30
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De Vleeshal
On False Tears and Outsourcing
Cally Spooner
21 Jun-30 Aug 2015
De Vleeshal; Markt, Middelburg (NL)
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On False Tears and Outsourcing is the first institutional solo exhibition by Cally Spooner in the Netherlands. For her show, Cally Spooner will make a new series of devised, living gestures, which change every three weeks. The gestures mark the start of a long-term project by the artist, which considers the violence of being used as, and using, a Human Resource. The project presents choreographed instances in which language and emotional excess are extracted, then redeployed as strategy. The show runs parallel to and in dialogue with the group exhibition Violent Incident at Vleeshal Zusterstraat, curated by Cally Spooner and Roos Gortzak.
- Tue-Sun, 1pm
- Free admission
- vleeshal.nl
- Markt, Middelburg, The Netherlands
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25–05
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Berliner Festspiele
Gonzo. The Making-of
Florentina Holzinger and Vincent Riebeek
25 Jun-5 Jul 2015
Haus der Berliner Festspiele; Parking Level, Berlin (DE)
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The duo Holzinger/Riebeek is renowned for its radically physical and strongly aestheticizing performances. With reference to the Gonzo genre (familiar to us from the fields of pornography and journalism), where the camera operator becomes part of the event, they attempt to project the spectators into events at a film location in the contemporary wilderness of a parking level. While the audience is given several perspectives of the actors’ actions, the production’s reality is revealed. ‘Gonzo. The Making-of’ is presented as part of the Berliner Festspiele – Foreign Affairs programme 2015.
- 25 Jun, 6pm; 26 Jun-5 Jul, 7pm
- €10/8
- berlinerfestspiele.de
- Schaperstraße 24, 10719 Berlin, Germany
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25–04
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Belluard Fest. 2015
Beheld (Alone) Weisslingen
Graeme Miller
25 Jun-4 Jul 2015
Belluard Tower; Ground floor, Fribourg (CH)
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Each year a few migrants who have hidden in the wheelbays of aircraft fall to ground as the undercarriage is lowered. They fall into the country, town, suburbs, and gardens that surround major airports, disrupting the stable identity of the place where they land and creating a collision of identity and social geography. In 2010 two women from Weisslingen discover the body of a man in a ravine in the forest that lay under the flight path to Zurich airport. Now in 2015 Graeme Miller has visited and recorded this site. Miller’s installation Beheld invites the audience, in an act of witness, into an intimate encounter with the location and its significance.
- see full programme
- Free admission
- belluard.ch
- Derrière-les-Remparts 14, 1700 Fribourg, Switzerland
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26–13
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Maumaus
Heimo Zobernig
Heimo Zobernig
26 Jun-13 Sep 2015
Lumiar Cité, Lisbon (PT)
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Heimo Zobernig articulates his art through objects in exhibitions, the exhibition itself, and by installing his exhibitions in a particular way, which allows him to appropriate the architectural aspects of the exhibition site. Zobernigʼs oeuvre creates a field of ambiguity between the work of art and the display system that we need to turn objects into art – display systems which become works of art in their own right in Zobernigʼs exhibition. By appropriating art historical discourse, he exposes the basic underlying narratives and ideological positions, thereby destabilizing and reinterpreting them with a light touch and an economy of means.
- Wed-Sun, 3pm
- ticket price: n/a
- http://www.maumaus.org
- Rua Tomás del Negro, 8A, 1750-105 Lisbon, PT
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27–09
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Kunstverein Hildesheim
THE GOOD TIMES (are killing me)
Dan Graham, a.o.
27 Jun-9 Aug 2015
Kunstverein Hildesheim, Hildesheim (DE)
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Die Ausstellung THE GOOD TIMES (are killing me) – benannt nach einem Punksong der Headcoats – beschäftigt sich mit Ritualen des Feierns und deren gesellschaftlicher Bedeutung. Die Ausstellung zeigt Werke von internationalen Künstler_innen, die sich mit Feier- und Musikkulturen befassen und nach den kulturellen Ursprüngen, Freiräumen und Abgründen von „guten Zeiten“ fragen. Dabei geht es auch um die Auseinandersetzung mit Sub- und Fankulturen, um Musik als soziales Phänomen und deren identitätsstiftende Kraft.
- Wed, 6pm; Sat, 2pm; Sun, noon
- €3–1,50
- kunstverein-hildesheim.de
- Am Kehrwieder 2, D-31134 Hildesheim, DE
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29–10
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Over Het IJ Festival
The Office of Lost Time
Olivia Reschofsky, Alice Pons
29 Jun-10 Jul 2015
Station Amsterdam Centraal, Amsterdam
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With The Office of Lost Time Alice Pons and Olivia Reschofsky make lost time special, the moments in between of the passers-by, especially by creating room for imagination, imaginative powers and intimacy. The office is open on weekdays, from 4 to 8pm, and offers an unexpected feeling of home. The Office of Lost Time is presented as part of Over Het IJ Festival 2015, for more information and the full programme, visit: overhetij.nl
- 4pm
- Free admission
- overhetij.nl
- Stationsplein, 1012 AB Amsterdam
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01–05
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Rietveld School of Art & Design
Graduation Show 2015
Graduates of the Rietveld School of Art & Design
1-5 Jul 2015
Rietveld School of Art & Design, Amsterdam
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About 200 students of the departments inter-architecture, designLAB, Graphic Design, Fashion, Jewellery, TxT (Textile), Image & Language, Photography, Glass, Ceramics and VAV (Audiovisual) present their graduation work(s) in a five day exhibition with presentations, screenings, performances and events. For more information and the full programme, visit: rietveldacademie.nl
- see full programme
- Free admission
- rietveldacademie.nl
- Fred. Roeskestraat 96, 1076 ED Amsterdam
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02–03
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Julidans
Les Sylphides
Nicole Beutler / nbprojects
2 & 3 Jul 2015
Julidans; Leidseplein (2 Jul) and Noordermarkt (3 Jul), Amsterdam
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Les Sylphides is a contemporary remake of the first abstract ballet ever (Michel Fokine, 1909), in which three dancers recall the essence of the piece. The piece, made by Nicole in 2007, was the first project in which she researched elements of collective dance history and shaped an existing choreography to her own needs. On 2 & 3 July, Les Sylphides is back with a special cast of five dancers for two performances during Julidans at two city squares: Leidseplein (2 July) and Noordermarkt (3 July). With: Claire Philippart, Ester Natzijl, Hillary Blake Firestone, Charlotte van den Reek, Nathalie Ho-Kang-You.
- 7pm
- Free admission
- julidans.nl
- Leidseplein and Noordermarkt, Amsterdam
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02–12
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Over Het IJ Festival
Framing
Johannes Bellinkx, a.o.
2-12 Jul 2015
NLY-terrein; NDSM-werf, Amsterdam
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On an open air site the public looks at the landscape through an installation. Johannes Bellinkx determines the way we see things and offers a different perspective on apparently normal things. He subtly changes the landscape, manipulates and plays with what can and cannot be seen; with the suggestion of the invisible. With this he really focuses the attention of the public. Framing is about the human need to fit things in frames and to categorize them. It gives us the illusion that we can comprehend the world. Framing is presented as part of Over Het IJ Festival 2015, for more information and the full programme, visit: overhetij.nl
- see full programme
- €8–6,50
- overhetij.nl
- Tt. Neveritaweg 61, 1033 WB Amsterdam
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02–12
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Festival Theaterformen
STILL (The Economy of Waiting)
Julian Hetzel
2-12 Jul 2015
Opernplatz, Hannover (DE)
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The container world created by STILL is carefully furnished with carpeting, seating accomodations, overhead lighting and wallpaper. It sounds, smells and tastes like the world out there. It is populated by creatures very similar to the people outside of the container – one is in an interim realm. There is nothing to do here except wait. Waiting is an excellent matrix for encounters with performers and other spectators because STILL is not always still: emotions can get heated when the system of values surrounding productivity and work is newly framed and can be negotiated between those involved. STILL is an invitation to waste time in a meaningful way.
- see full programme
- €7
- theaterformen.de
- 30159 Hannover, Germany
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03
-
Julidans
Mount Olympus: To glorify the cult of tragedy. A 24-h performance
Jan Fabre / Troubleyn
3 Jul 2015
Stadsschouwburg; Grote Zaal, Amsterdam
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Jan Fabre has done everything imaginable onstage – and more. He now adds the marathon performance ‘Mount Olympus’ (Dutch premiere) to his list of achievements. For twenty-four hours, the main auditorium of Julidans becomes the mythical Mount Olympus, somewhere between forever and never, sleeping and waking, performance and reality. During the performance, you are permitted to enter and exit the auditorium, walk around, eat and drink.
- 8.30pm
- €65
- julidans.nl
- Leidseplein 26, 1017 PT Amsterdam
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03–04
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zeitraumexit
just arrived – Young International Performance Art
Igor Kuruga, Guido Marko, a.o.
3 & 4 Jul 2015
zeitraumexit, Mannheim (DE)
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‘frisch eingetroffen’ (engl. ‘just arrived’) – Young International Performance Art is the platform for young and current performing art-positions far from the mainstream. The two-day festival at the Mannheim zeitraumexit shows performance, live-art, contemporary dance as well as crossing- and in-between positions of certain genres and media. A special curatorial interest lays in innovation and originality: artistic positions exploring new formats and aesthetics, which are experimental and do not mind a certain risk. For information and the full programme, visit: zeitraumexit.de
- see full programme
- €13–6,50
- zeitraumexit.de
- Hafenstrasse 68 68159 Mannheim, Germany
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03–12
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Piet Zwart Institute
HIGH-RISE
Graduates of the MFA programme of the Piet Zwart Institute
3-12 Jul 2015
Hofpoort; 18th floor, Rotterdam (NL)
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HIGH-RISE takes place on the 18th floor of the Hofpoort building, in a rough empty space surrounded by windows that offer a spectacular view out onto Rotterdam and beyond. The exhibition title is inspired by J.G. Ballard’s eponymous novel, in which characters band together and fight to establish a new hierarchy. With this fictional narrative lingering in mind, the arrangement of the artworks responds to the uncanny particularities of the host building and the ‘competition’ from concurrent exhibitions and activities happening on site. HIGH-RISE is presented as a celebration of this group of artists as its own ‘tribe’, whose careers are on the rise.
- see full programme
- Free admission
- pzwart.nl
- Hofplein 20, 3032 AC Rotterdam, NL
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04–09
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Nicole Beutler, Andrea Božic, Marijke Hoogenboom
WE LIVE HERE 2015
Konstantina Georgelou, Inge Koks, a.o.
4-9 Jul 2015
Multiple venues in Amsterdam
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The summer academy WE LIVE HERE, platform for artistic encounters, marks its fifth anniversary this year! Besides the lab sessions for artists and thinkers, we are happy to invite you to this year’s public program; a lecture by Michiel van Hoogenhuyze on musical thinking, a book launch by Joe Kelleher, the open session DRAMATURGY AT WORK by Konstantina Georgelou, Efrosini Protopapa and Danae Theodoridou and two HOW DO YOU WORK? sessions in which we meet film directors/producers Quirine Racké & Helena Muskens and cultural programmer and initiator Radna Rumping. For more information: we-live-here.com
- see full programme
- RSVP
- we-live-here.com
- Multiple venues in Amsterdam
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04–08
-
Stedelijk Museum
Zero: Let Us Explore the Stars
herman de vries, Armando, Henk Peeters, a.o.
4 Jul-8 Nov 2015
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
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Fire, light, movement, space, demonstrations, and performances: the Stedelijk Museum presents an historic survey of the innovative, international avant-garde artists’ group, ZERO. In the ’50s and ’60s, the ZERO artists’ group experimented with the most innovative materials and media. In 1962, the Stedelijk Museum staged the first museum presentation of ZERO. A few years later, a more comprehensive survey, Nul 1965, followed, a presentation widely considered as one of the movement’s highlights. Now, fifty years later, the Stedelijk is proud to present an historical survey that sheds light on how the network’s artists redefined the meaning and form of art forever.
- Daily, 10am
- €20–0
- stedelijk.nl
- Museumplein 10, 1071 DJ Amsterdam
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09
-
Julidans
Double Bill: Los Angeles and Please me Please
Noha Ramadan / Liat Waysbort
9 Jul 2015
Podium Mozaïek, Amsterdam
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In ‘Los Angeles’ brengt Noha Ramadan (oud-student SNDO) live dans samen met actuele nieuwsbeelden, films uit de jaren negentig, fantasieën en toekomstdromen – beelden die we allemaal door elkaar heen met ons meedragen, als levende databases. ‘Please me Please’ van de Israëlische choreografe Liat Waysbort gaat over behagen en bevredigen. Danser Ivan Ugrin verbeeldt de perfecte mannelijke danser en zet al zijn kwaliteiten in om het publiek te verleiden, transformerend van dominante man naar onderdanige vrouw, van ballerina naar pornoster.
- 9pm
- €15–10
- julidans.nl
- Bos en Lommerweg 191, 1055 DT Amsterdam
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09–12
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Queeristan
Queeristan 2015 – Autonomous Festival for Radical Queer Politics
Liz Allan, Josefin Arnell, Kareem Lotfy, a.o.
9-12 Jul 2015
Binnenpret, Amsterdam
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Queeristan is a DIY festival about exploring and countering the normative workings of gender, sexuality and identity in an autonomous space that avoids capitalism, commercialization, heteronormativity, racism, sexism and transphobia. This year’s festival will focus on Racism, Feminism and Trans* issues. We want you to share your story. The full programme is now up on www.queeristan.org
- see full programme
- n/a
- queeristan.org
- Eerste Schinkelstraat 14, Amsterdam
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09
-
Piet Zwart Institute
Cartographies of Acting Pedagogically (…)
Master Education in Arts programme of the Piet Zwart Institute
9 Jul 2015
Hofpoort; 13th floor, Rotterdam (NL)
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As part of Masters 2015, the Master Education in Arts programme of the Piet Zwart Institute presents two events which conclude their current lecture and seminar series at TENT entitled Cartographies of Acting Pedagogically – Working with Liquid Logic. The series was developed by course tutor Prof. Dr. Frans-Willem Korsten, in collaboration with Priscila Fernandes, as part of her solo exhibition that runs until 5 July. For more information and the full programme, visit: pzwart.nl
- see full programme
- Free admission
- pzwart.nl
- Hofplein 20, 3032 AC Rotterdam, NL
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10
-
Black History Walks
400 Years of Black Women Resistance Leaders
Dora Akunyili, Dame Jocelyn Barrow, a.o.
10 Jul 2015
Univ. of Wesminster, London (UK)
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Black History Walks presents visual and biographical details of Black women from the UK and around the world who have resisted colonialism and racism. Women do not get the historical credit they deserve. This interactive audio visual presentation will give the audience video and documentary evidence of the who, what and why of over 30 female fighters who used any means necessary to fight for equality.
- 6.30pm
- £3; RSVP
- eventbrite.co.uk
- Little Titchfield St, London, W1W 7UW, UK
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10–16
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Forum of Live Art Amsterdam
The title is a drawing. The drawing is an undefined network.
Clara Saito, a.o.
10-16 Jul 2015
Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam
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In this event, Clara Saito explores what would it mean to be an anarchical body and mind, as a necessary precursor to attempting anarchical society. Through her antiheroic incarnation of Spiderman, the artist shares her confusion, paranoia and self-therapy methods, brought forth through a visual art exhibition and quartet performance. In addition, Clara invites seven guests to provide various counterpoints to this thought-process, through lecture, body, interventions, and a workshop. For more information and the full programme: arti.nl
- Tue–Sun, noon
- €3
- arti.nl
- Rokin 112, 1012 LB Amsterdam
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12
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Badischer Kunstverein
Curator’s tour – with Jacob Korczynski
Jacob Korczynski
12 Jul 2015
Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe (DE)
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A curator’s tour with Jacob Korczynski through the exhibitions of Juliette Blightman and Ellie Epp currently on view at Badischer Kunstverein. The exhibition ‘holding one`s own in an unfinished system’ takes its name from a 1987 text by Canadian artist Ellie Epp. The unfinished systems in which Epp and British artist Juliette Blightman hold their own are multiple: from the commitments of the artists’ daily lives, to the context of the societies they occupy, to the art institutions which provide one possible frame for their work. Both Blightman and Epp accumulate text and images amassing personal archives without the need to always establish an audience.
- 11am
- Free admission
- badischer-kunstverein.de
- Waldstraße 3, 76133 Karlsruhe, Germany
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14
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Witte de With
Between Nothingness and Infinity Ontologies of Blackness
Kara Keeling, a.o.
14 Jul 2015
Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam (NL)
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Presented as part of ‘NO HUMANS INVOLVED’, an exhibition by the artist collective ‘HOWDOYOUSAYYAMINAFRICAN?’ on view at Witte de With until 16 August 2015, the symposium ‘Between Nothingness and Infinity Ontologies of Blackness’ brings together artists and scholars to crack open the ‘nothingness’ of the historically produced dilemma of Blackness, both as a philosophical and factual position.
- 6pm
- €3,93–2,34
- eventbrite.nl
- Witte de Withstraat 50, 3012 BR Rotterdam
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15
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If I Can't Dance
How We Behave
Grant Watson and Annette Krauss
15 Jul 2015
The Showroom, London (UK)
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Inspired by an interview with Michel Foucault published in Vanity Fair in 1983, entitled ‘How We Behave’ Watson’s long-term project focuses on the central question that Foucault posed in this interview – why can’t life be ‘the material for a work of art?’. Exploring how people shape their lives, this project involved over fifty interviews that took place in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Amsterdam, Sao Paulo and London. For this event, Grant Watson presents his ongoing research, in conversation with artist Annette Krauss.
- 6.30pm
- Free admission
- theshowroom.org
- 63 Penfold Street, London NW8 8PQ, UK
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18
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Santarcangelo Festival 2015
69 positions
Mette Ingvartsen
18 Jul 2015
Santarcangelo dei Teatri, Santarcangelo di Romagna (IT)
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Excess, nudity, orgy eroticism, ritualistic pleasure, audience participation and political engagement: all the peculiar expressions of the sexual utopia developed during the counterculture and experimental performances of the 60’s. This guided tour through an archive of sexual performances serves as a filter for Mette Ingvartsen to explore unresolved issues about sexuality in contemporary practices. In doing so, her body turns into a field for physical experimentation and uncanny sexual practices arise in relation to the environment that surrounds her.
- 10.30pm
- €13
- santarcangelofestival.com
- Via Andrea Costa 28, Sant. di Romagna (RN), Italy
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20–22
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MIT List Visual Arts
They Come to Us without a Word II
Joan Jonas and Jason Moran
20, 21 & 22 Jul 2015
Teatro Piccolo Arsenale, Venice, Italy
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A new video performance conceived and directed by Joan Jonas with newly composed music by Jonas’s longtime sound collaborator, the American jazz pianist and composer Jason Moran, will take place on three evenings in July at the Teatro Piccolo Arsenale. Moran will play live accompanying Jonas for the performance. An aspect of They Come to Us without a Word II will be reedited video footage from the installation in the U.S. Pavilion.
- 9pm
- €15–10
- joanjonasvenice2015.com
- Campo della Tana, Castello, 30122 Venice, Italy
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23–24
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Het Veem Theater
All things; Archeology of a space object
Norberto Llopis Segarra
23 & 24 Jul 2015
Antic Teatre, Barcelona (ES)
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“It started one day that I entered a supermarket and for the first time I saw a deodorant for babies, in that moment I realized that I was indeed a deodorant for babies and therefore time was also a deodorant for babies. How do things affect space and time? What would be for instance the time of a plastic bottle? I could be the value of a plastic bottle. That would be even less than the 25 cents it costs to produce it.” – Norberto Llopis Segarra.
- 9pm
- €10–6
- anticteatre.com
- Carrer de Verdaguer i Callís, 12, 08003 Barcelona, Spain
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31–07
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Theater aan Zee 2015
[THE MACHINE]
Orion Maxted
31 Jul-7 Aug 2015
AZ Sint-Jan, Oostende (BE)
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Deels geïnspireerd op Georges Perecs gelijknamige hoorspel, gaat [THE MACHINE] uit van taal en subjectiviteit als een oneindige en continu veranderende ruimte van mogelijkheden. Deze zelf genererende performancemachine – met telkens een andere output bij elke voorstelling – is als het ware een laboratorium. [THE MACHINE] wordt gevormd door mensen die continu elkaars woorden en gebaren reproduceren volgens een bepaald algoritme. Output wordt input in deze live feedback-loop waarbij complex gedrag ontstaat uit simpele regels. [THE MACHINE] ontvlamt in een rollercoaster der verbeelding, speels switchend tussen jij, ik, wij en ‘the machine’.
- 7pm
- €9
- taz2015.theateraanzee.be
- Kaïrostraat 84, 8400 Oostend, België
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Letters
Summer. The season of waving.
We love seasons, periods with particular qualities that color our lives. They come and go, and come back. Seasons are shared conditions. We’re in it together, when the academic year comes to an end, when the festival season has just started, when the summer is late.
Bye to our audiences, students, colleagues. Bye to Amsterdam for a while, by-hye!
Anne, Barbara, Bojana, Frédérique and Nicole.
.
.
.
1
We all know what it is to wave. We have waved to welcome somebody approaching, or as a gesture to accompany somebody moving away from us, or perhaps we were the person arriving or leaving and this can equally spur us into some waving. In its minimum form, it takes two people. It is a gestural dialogue in the folds of changing distance and proximity, full of expectation and anticipation, whether of imminent reunion or separation.
Many variants are possible within the relational contract. How the wave is reciprocated, whether people wave simultaneously, alternately, or not at all, how long or how invested—all of this makes up a complex algebra of possibilities, and of possible dramas too.
.
2
You wave. Say I am the one you are waving to. For this gesture to have relevance I cannot be too close to you. If I am too close, your wave must equally miniaturize and scale to other proportions. At a close distance, your wave is just a hand lifting in the air, a ‘hi, there’. Hello in pedestrian form. When I am close, your face will need to adjust and become social, moulding the adequate facial expression; it cannot be too big, or your ‘hello’ seems grotesque or pathetic.
.
3
The wave that is not a moderate hello, not just a hand, but an arm in the air (minimum up to the elbow, if not an entire arm) is by nature bigger than average. It may start small or end small, but at some point it will need to grow into a fully embodied shape if it wants to communicate over longer distance. It is not an easy task to accomplish, to defy the distance as it is shrinking or stretching between you and me. Without a bit of effort, your waving can lack conviction and fall short, just in front of your feet.
.
4
Although a wave needs a bit of pathos, it has its own economy too. One must find the right proportion. One needs to be in sync, or things can get out of hand. It’s mostly a matter of the hand anyway, and the arm. Your forearm sways, left to right, right to left. You repeat this a couple of times—how many times depends on the zeal, the occasion, the emotions invested, the reaction it evokes. Without repetition a wave is not finding its momentum. The arm needs to move, it cannot be just immobile in the air, or you turn into a statue, and the arm becomes prosthetic, a weird appendix.
.
5
Also the space between the person waving and the other person needs to be in motion. Waving with two static positions at equal distance, without any change, makes the wave loose its point. A wave can only live on the brink of imminent departure or arrival within a sphere of attention that keeps shifting its spatial coordinates. Without the eventfulness of such transitioning, the wave is merely a shell, a replica of its true function.
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6
Sometimes the movement of the wave spreads into the body, infecting it. Then the wave ripples. It may start with the head that tilts in the opposite direction of the arm, and back, and then back again. It may also take over the entire body and make it sway, distributing the weight from one leg to another. This little dance with its repetitive structure can curve into crescendo and peak, to decrease again in intensity, until a new surge occurs. Perhaps that’s why a wave is called a wave, because it is a tide, an alternation of intensities, a sequence that spreads, and ultimately it will reach your shore too.
.
7
A wave is a semaphore, meant to communicate visually over longer distances. Eye contact is crucial. The blind do not wave. But, notwithstanding the visual confines (you wave when I come into sight, or until I am out of sight), it has affinities with telepathy too. It harbours the belief that we can energetically touch somebody at a distance, without immediate physical touch. It’s the launching of affective energy, a stirring of the molecules within the lane of attention between you and me.
Your waving can make me wave. When I wave with even more passionate investment, it may refuel your response, make it bigger, or not. A call and response game, where energy is the invisible ball we toss between us. In some pantomime games one pretends to give a blow to somebody, and the other person, if he/she plays the game, reacts with a played bodily reaction. Likewise, in the wave one needs to be able to send and receive, playing and performing its impact as if it were in response to a physical touch.
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8
Waving is a real art. Two traps lie at either end of its performance. If your wave is too rigid it can risk petrification (the shell), if you get too enthralled by the movement or indulge too much in its seductive performativity, it can come to stand on itself, unhinged from the interplay. Then you are a soloist, while waving is plural, never single. Trance is not the goal. Nor is pastiche. You can enjoy the pantomime features of my wave, underscore it, even with a touch of irony, yet, if you cannot be too much absorbed in it, you cannot stand above it either. You need to surf the wave and dip in and out of its charm.
.
9
Perhaps the wave is the Ur-form of drama. It has a beginning, middle and end. It comes in a sequence. Its unfolding crosses various stages, types of waving too, sometimes with a moment of rest, before the arm lifts again, and resumes waving. These moments of rest are crucial. They can be intervals during which the reaction and impact of the waving are calibrated or energy is restored. But they can also be… the end, if no waving action follows anymore. Waving is timely, and the timing of its resolution is giving the drama its true colour. All is in the specifics of the finale, just before the ‘climax’ of reunion or when departure has become separation.
.
10
Say, I wave back to you and I stop my gesturing very quickly… I may be perceived as impatient, casual or indifferent. But when we wave too long after the person has disappeared from sight, we may be considered over-concerned parents (practicing a panoptic gaze), romantic fools (who cannot let go) or mystics (who practice the art of affective telepathy, way beyond the horizon).
In the case of the welcome ritual, the waving is never the last gesture. When the person is close enough, we shift to other greeting gestures—like the embrace, the slap on the shoulder, a kiss or a nod. In the case of departure, we shift not to other gestures, but to other states—of resign, relief, grief or waiting, etc. In the latter case, we need not integrate a physical presence into our lives, (like in the welcome), but an absence.
.
11
How interesting that one and the same gesture can serve such opposite events!
Thank you!
Myriam Van Imschoot


The Big Unknown (...)
Together with the graduation year of the Mime School (AHK), Nicole Beutler develops ‘The Big Unknown with a Bit of Nature and Everything Else on My List of Things to Do’; a musical piece about the illusion of perfect order in our society, where madness lurks just beneath the surface.
A city square. Men and women wearing business suits in grey, black and white. Each of them displays just a touch of individuality: different shirts, different hair, different shades of grey for their identical trousers. From a distance, however, the differences are barely discernible. Everything seems in perfect order. But inside there are other forces at work. Four performers – Mees Borgman, Luca Hillen, Felix Schellekens, and Isadora Tomas – break out of the frame and operate as a single organism as they test out their ideas on freedom, the invisibile and the unpredictable.
Nicole’s work is notable for its integration of divergent disciplines. Text and movement merge in her evocative choreographies, which always take a position in relation to the world. ‘The Big Unknown with a Bit of Nature and Everything Else on My List of Things to Do’ forms part of Nicole’s research into the significance of the square in human life and thought.
More information: nbprojects.nl
Tour June 2015
16 – 18 June 2015, 8.30pm
(Premiere, 16 June)
Het Veem Theater, Amsterdam
Tickets: €15–5
hetveemtheater.nl
19 June 2015, 8.30pm
Compagnietheater, Grote Zaal
ITs Festival, Amsterdam
Tickets: €13–9
itsfestivalamsterdam.com
25 June 2015, 8.30pm
Korzo, Den Haag (NL)
Tickets: €10–6,50
korzo.nl
29 June 2015, 6pm
Folkwang Uni. der Künste, Essen (DE)
Tickets: €5–3
folkwang-uni.de