Part of the puntWG Open Call Series

With the film project "Am I, an object," artist Benjamin Francis delves into the blurring boundaries between the body and the object. The project takes place place in a funeral home wherin he explores subjects such as funeral care, death rituals, and the hierarchical relationship between the artist and his sculpture. The film employs satire, humorously questioning concepts such as authorship, originality, and value.

During the film, two performers are presented as sculptures, their bodies manipulated and moved by the artists. But conflict arises when discussions emerge about who is the most original - the artist or his creation?

While performing as art sculptures, the performers will present texts based on lyrics of funeral hymns. The lyrics are constructed through errors occurring in mistranslations to English and through disparities between English and non-English language hymns. Francis found this process of lyric-making significant as it questions meaning-making and authenticity. What does it mean for something to be original? When we think of mourning processes and discussions of death, we often insist on stressing the departed’s individuality, what makes them special, one of a kind.

Performers
Myself
@mattricule
@billymoregone
@loganhonmua
Supporting actors:
Frank van der Burg, Iris van Elshuis, Maureen van Elshuis, Karin Toole, Bojan Fajfric, Patrick Teixeira, Maritte Joseph, Misty Super-De-Luxe, Lizzy, Zazi Creijghton.
Video DOP: @nvisible.studio
Photographer/Light assistant: @gingerhorn
Sound recording: @ossip_blits
Runner/Producer: @beyondtheblinds

Production: @ewan_mcsorley
Make up: @carmelitasart
Hair: @zynwalahair
Special thanks @abcndstore for the Jewelry
and @museumtotzover for lending me an art piece

Colorist: @jacob.creach
Sound Design: @dennis.wav
Editor: kdanielwalwin

Graphic design: @createbylaw
Voiceover: @_sarjon_
Introduction text @stefhulskamp

Part of the puntWG Open Call Series

Lived experience, seeping bodily fluids, nosey neighbours, “nuisance tourism”, urban redevelopment schemes, commercialised culture, and back-handed liberalism; TOLERANCE is a group exhibition by Pennie Key, Brianna Leatherbury, and Tild Greene. The show presents the complexities and contradictions between private and public space in Amsterdam, taking De Wallen and the WG-Terrain as its sites of study.

The self-proclaimed “tolerance” of Amsterdam specifically is in question. Especially as the city is now reconsidering its economic future, “the kinds of tourists” it would like to have visit, and, most shockingly, the future of legal sex work, we wanted to bring together our specific experiences and interests in the structural make up of Amsterdam that also comprise our individual practices. Together we react on private and public exchange, the city’s own ecologies of visibility, voyeurism, pomp, and surveillance.

Altogether, TOLERANCE presents different frictions of bodies and materials that make up and challenge the physical space of the community, anchored directly in our city. By working with the structures that direct our behaviours in Amsterdam, each of our work is a means of questioning the social norms assumed by these structures.

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Live music performance at 8:30 PM by Francisco Garrido

Part of the airWG Series

Serene Hui, artist in residence at atelierWG, will present her new work, Fricatives, Mute and Fugue - A Prelude, produced during her stay at the airWG residency.

Fricatives, Mute and Fugue - A Prelude

Serene's research practice is often eclectic, involving a discursive, artistic and political exploration of her own context, using the geographical distance from personal lived experiences.

The project took inspiration from the text written by poet Eric Yip, Fricatives, through the productions of the body, voice and language to anticipate the problems of much larger social, cultural and political processes. The works on display aptly echo the poem’s title – how movements of the mouth and teeth are of the essence – to play with the allegory from ontology and linguistics. Taking the teeth as a physical embodiment of identity, both physically and conceptually, conveys ambiguity and ambivalence about cultural imperialism and displacement.

Taking double entendre for the word Fugue, the project extends to thinking of ways of comprehending that which escapes translation. While we hear repetition, ellipsis, foreign-ness and the untranslatable, almost fugue-like motifs, they are simultaneously language soaring in flight, like a Baroque composition Fugue – an attempt to emphasise the diverse and nuanced identity of the self and the constant redefinition of the subject.

puntWG will be open 21-25 March, 2-7 PM each day.

Supported by Hong Kong Arts Development Council and Mondriaan Fonds.

Fricatives, Mute and Fugue - A Prelude wordt ondersteund door Hong Kong Arts Development Council en Mondriaan Fonds

photography by Ilya Rabinovich

Part of the atelierWG Series

Ciska Brugemann presents some of her sketches and paintings, inspired by the WG-premises and surroundings.

Part of the atelierWG Series

within and without,
whose form is elemental,
whose form is internal.
flowing, falling
A BEING IN FLUX,
A HYMN OF DEATH,
to be dissolved in the water of memory

A series of performances dedicated to material imagination, sonic and spatial sensibilities, further contemplating upon life and death, being and becoming.

Performance at 14:00 and 16:00, 10 February
Finissage Performance at 15:00 and 19:00, and Performance by Qihang Li at 20:00, 11 February

Phototgraphy by Ilya Rabonovich