There’s a hypothesis that the appendixes of Homo habilis and our earlier ancestors could emit and receive radiation, allowing for a form of remote feeling over long distances, something that became vestigial as the voice gained primacy. If a telephone ‘speaks with its ears and hears with its mouth’, as the riddle suggests, the appendix was able to talk without either orifice, transmitting and receiving directly through the skin's pores. Stress can cause acid reflux to abrade and mute the vocal cords, and as the throat quietens, the appendix sings along to other voices. 

Appendix Songs is an exhibition touching on friendly abjection and sensing at a distance, with works by Mónica Mays, Susan Ploetz, Jean-Francois Peschot and Tom K Kemp, with a text by Radna Rumping. 

Live Programme 

Susan Ploetz - ‘PSY-SOMA-TEK’ - LARP
8th-25th April
One-to-One Sessions: Bookable between the 10th and 25th April
Group Sessions - 13th, 16th and 21st April
Group sessions conducted as 3 hour larp (live action role play)
Online group session April 25th
For more info and to sign up visit: https://susanploetz.com/PSY-SOMA-TEK

Through iterative role plays and one-on-one appointments participants will explore a variety of embodied extra-sensory techniques inside the fictional framing of a speculative institution called PSY-SOMA-TEK. Founded by a mysterious figure in a time of crisis, the institute seeks to create sustainable psy-somatic technologies to find missing people, see into the past and future, and communicate and connect across distances, decentralize knowledge and extend powers to those in need when the technocratic-suprastructures of the old order have started to fall apart.

Tom K Kemp - ‘After the Maestro’ participatory RPG session - ONLINE.
Saturday 17th and Sunday 18th April @ 3pm
5 players per session - duration ~3hrs.
Book an appointment by writing you name in this document
Or email tomkkemp@gmail.com.

After the Maestro is a tabletop roleplaying game set within an anthropomorphised anatomical city akin to those seen in animations like Once Upon a Time... Life, Osmosis Jones and Cells at Work!. Players take on the role of cellular and microbial workers during the aftermath of a successful labour emancipation within the inner body. Through ludic storytelling and speculative worldbuilding, each iteration of the game generates a narrative with its own body-politic metaphors, describing and anthropomorphising different anatomical systems and devising new structures of organisation and interdependence in the sudden absence of established biological hierarchies.

Artist Bios

Mónica Mays’ (ES/NL) practice considers materials and objects through their production and reproduction - following the contexts they come from, through the symbolic meanings they acquire, to the economies they circulate in. Informed by fabulations of the home, her installations work with the vernacular stories and tacit knowledges of the objects she deploys, where craft, lore and agencies meet.

Susan Ploetz (US/DE) is an artist-researcher working with somatics, theory, writing, experience design and real-life simulations in different speculative configurations. Her work deals with the overlapping spaces of soma and technos; she uses imagination, the senses, bodymind, magical materiality and protocol to induce emancipatory emotive dissonances and the expansion of perceptions and ontologies.

Jean-Francois Peschot (FR/NL) revises the function of contemporary imaging technologies, forcing mutations in the translation and standardisation of information into human modes of comprehension. Through sculpture and video he explores mechanisms at work in the image economy, using misappropriated consumer devices to contaminate common scientific narratives and the production of semiotics.

The films and installations of Tom K Kemp (UK/NL) use RPG design, improvised filmmaking and animation to parse the eerie consequences of global bureaucratic and financial systems on intimate and immediate human relations. His works generate semi-autonomous Weird fictions, where gamification and collaborative storytelling are combined into a deviated method of complexity modelling.

Given the current situation, the artists will work in the space and build up the exhibition as planned but open public visits will only be announced in April if the current corona measures change. Follow the exhibition through our Instagram account.

Works and exhibition supported by Mondriaan Fonds, Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunst, Bilbao Arte Foundation and the Stimuleringsfonds.

Concept: Koen Bartijn

Performers: Doke Pauwels, Elisa Zuppini, Federica Dalla Pozza

Choreography: Elisa Zuppini 

In Bare Time three performers inhabit the space of Punt GW for a day. The daily activities of practicing, dancing, and resting are performed within the space. Looped, these activities succumb to a bare choreographed pattern in which nothing new seems to enter. At the same time, the shared space in which they’re performed provides the potential for micro-events to influence the flow, creating raptures in the routines and emancipating them. While their times and activities are partitioned, there is a constant search for a common time

On May 1st and 2nd, we open the doors of the exhibition space in which you can witness the dancers in the loop of their common practice. 

This performance is part of Antidote an international network of solidarity, collaboration and collectivity between dancers, artists, thinkers and other creatives.

Images: Julia Mira https://juliamira.net/

Finissage 30 May 14-18 Hrs 
Visits by Appointment
Fri-Sun / 14-18 Hrs

In 2019, Good Neighbour (GN) proposed an exhibition that could be seen as a container for words, similar to a book. To make art as words, this was the invitation to ten artists and one writer to participate in Sufferin’ Succotash. Back then, different works were drafted, organized, selected and written. Due to the pandemic, the show was postponed and all the plans were delayed. Throughout 2020, this interruption opened time and space for new meanings and reconsideration. In its 2021 version, the works embraced slight adjustments and the exhibition became SUSU, a repetition of the original show, but including a few differences. 

The title Sufferin’ Succotash was originally taken from Ron Padgett & Joe Brainard’s homonymous publication made in 1971. It referred to a trademark expression said back then by Silvester the cat, the Looney Tunes’ cartoon. 

“Because these cartoon characters were ubiquitous in the childhood of most North Americans between, say, 1940 and 1995, a lot of people have only ever heard this phrase said by them, never by an actual human in the same room they are in.” According to users of the question-and-answer website Quora: “it was an interjection to express dismay, frustration, distress or surprise. Anyhow, the literal meaning of succotash is a vegetable dish with corn and beans, sometimes also with tomato, peppers, or onion. The phrase sufferin’ succotash may therefore have an intrinsic meaning beyond its usefulness as a minced oath: aw, crap, we're eating this again?”

Given the current situation, the artists will work in the space and build up the exhibition as planned but the opening and public visits will only be announced after 9 February if the current corona measures change. You can follow the exhibition through our Instagram account and an online event will take place on 28 February. The space is currently closed to the public.

I sit here and hurt, unable to tell you what you want to hear. Use me but take me as I am. A human-made hand may crystallise my shape whilst men without machines stretch me. I don't mind being cut, I like to multiply although I much prefer to mutate. When I am miscarried, I stick to rocks and I don't let go. Sometimes I have a voice but they always tell me what to say. I sit here, like wanting to but not, if that makes sense. Wanting to have a speech but knowing it would never be mine. Wanting to be real but preferring to remain a fantasy. Wanting to stand still but sure I won't pervert the endless desire to metamorphose. Wanting to change my structure but only to be seen with different eyes. The one perpetual thing is my life in the forest where I can forever resist to individuate and rather continue scratching the veil of your fantasies, like rodents clawing at walls and doors.

This exhibition deconstructs the elements of cinema by appropriating parts of its language to emphasise their potential to suggest a world. Wanting to but Not presents words, scenography, and objects that recall cultural references to nonexistent places such as those of other planets or the ones created in virtual reality. We play in between the power of the visual to generate the narrative and the non-visual to evoke images. We see fantasy as a life experience that exceeds and corrupts social norms and patterns.

Reading Performance Event

feelsgalore.tv is a live reading performance part of the project Wanting to but Not. We’ll share the link to the event on Facebook and Instagram.

channel 1. Helena Grande reading from Wanting to bu Not, accompanying music by Daniel Vorthuys, Faysal Mroueh and Giovanni Giaretta. She's written a science fiction story where planthumans (half humans, half plants) cannot live freely because they have become addicted to a terrans’ substance that induces human emotions and desires in them. 

This feeling is difficult to describe. 

It is a rush of energy that gently takes control of your life. 

I want to help 

                                        work 

                                                 sex 

                                                        stop

    I want to 

      but I also don’t want to.

channel 2. Daniel Vorthuys is going to play songs and poems featuring famous characters from Ancient mythology, sometimes Greek, or older Assyrian figures. Penelope waiting for her husband’s return together with 100 suitors, let’s stop and consider the fantasies such a situation unleashed upon the famous Greek ‘cuckquean’ – the wife of Odysseus the adventurous [raise eyebrows] husband. 

1. Attis, high priest of the Dindymis
2. Jason and his Argonauts
3. Achilles and Thetis
4. Penelope, the cuckquaen
5. Poseidon.

Accompanied by Faysal Mroueh and Giovanni Giaretta.

Bios

Giovanni Giaretta is a visual artist living in Amsterdam who works with video, installation, photography and a few writings. His work has recently been featured at IFFR (Rotterdam, NL) MAMbo (Bologna, IT); Tegenboschvanvreden (Amsterdam, NL); He is represented by Galleria Tiziana Di Caro.

Helena Grande is a writer and curator based in Amsterdam. She is the author of the flash fiction collection Speech Choke (2020). Her stories have appeared in Fictional Journal and the anthology book DW Cities Amsterdam and her essays in A*Desk, nY and Research Catalogue.

Faysal Mroueh is a visual artist living in Rotterdam who works with installation, digital media and sound. His work has recently been shown at Thkio Ppalies in Nicosia, Arti et Amicitiae in Amsterdam and AVL Mundo in Rotterdam.

Daniel Vorthuys is a poet based in Amsterdam. His work explores the heritage of the western classical tradition through its stories of metamorphosis, transforming this tradition into a mythology of alien and unstable subject-hood. His writing is geared towards performance and video introducing elements of music and costume. His work was most recently presented at Currents #8 in Marres, Maastricht. 

Photo documentation by Ilya Rabinovich.

atelierWG Foundation invites artists working in any medium to organize an exhibition at puntWG, an exhibition space located in the centre of Amsterdam in the period from September 2021 - September 2022. puntWG provides a platform for artists to temporarily own the space with a sense of freedom and responsibility, to give form to their own program and make contact with the public.

We encourage proposals for duo and group exhibitions to stimulate dialogue between artists and their work. Proposals for one-person presentations are also possible on the basis that artists seek interaction with other (relevant) individuals or groups through their program. Proposals that include a diverse public program of events such as artist talks, performances, screenings or (performative) lectures are preferred. Since circumstances have changed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we invite applicants to consider alternative ways to connect with an audience while still taking Corona safety measures into account.

Artists are selected on the basis of the quality of their proposal and their considered approach to using the space. Each exhibition will last four weeks (including installation and deinstallation times). This call is not intended for curated group exhibitions or exhibitions that have previously been shown in other spaces.

Support:

The organization of both puntWG and Foundation atelierWG almost fully depends on volunteers. atelierWG Foundation provides selected artists with an open platform to realize their projects at puntWG. This includes the space and basic equipment, professional photo documentation & invigilation. Additionally all exhibitions and side programmes will be shared on our website and instagram page. As a small non-profit organization run by a team of artists, we are able to offer selected exhibitions a modest budget towards the production costs. To further aid the realisation of each exhibition, puntWG’s team will issue acceptance letters for successful applicants to support their applications for external funding. 

You can find the puntWG floor plan HERE.

Application guidelines:

Please send ONE pdf (max 10 mb) which includes the following documents in your email  submission. (Please do not include text in the body of your email as part of your application):

•       Full name, date and place of birth, postal address, phone number, e-mail and website
•       CV, max two A4 pages per participating artist
•       A proposal (max. 250 words) that includes a description of your exhibition and the public programme. Please be concise.
•       A short motivation for showing at puntWG.
•       A maximum of five supporting images or links to moving image, sound, or performance pieces, (max. 5 mins each) for each participating artist. Please do not send websites. 
•       Please indicate your preferred months for the exhibition and the times when you are not available. The more accurate you are, the better we can organize the calendar.

- Please indicate if you at the time of this application have already (partly) secured funding for the exhibition.

- In case of group projects, please indicate which artists have confirmed their participation

Proposals to be emailed to opencall@atelierwg.nl

The submission deadline is 10 Feb 2021.

All recipients will be notified before 1 April 2021 .

For general information and questions regarding puntWG, contact team puntWG: opencall@atelierwg.nl 

Organization and programming of puntWG: Lily Lanfermeijer, Mila Lanfermeijer, Michelle Son, Maaike Anne Stevens and Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec.

About

Following the relocation of the hospital Wilhelmina Gasthuis in 1984, now the AMC – Academic Medical Center – artists, small business owners and residents have shaped and preserved the unique character and special site of WG in Amsterdam. Today a large number of artists are living and working on the grounds, including those who are part of atelierWG (in Pavilions 18 and 19).

AtelierWG Foundation, established in 1989, houses 120 artists' studios as well as initiating projects in the fields of art and culture, including international exchanges and Open Studio routes.

In 2006 puntWG was created as an interdisciplinary exhibition space and platform for the arts, with a lively program of exhibitions, performances, concerts, lectures and discussions with the aim of initiating an open and broad discourse between artists and the public. PuntWG was initiated by the artists of atelierWG, who finance the space and organize its programming.

airWG, an artist-in-residence, opened in September 2015, hosting a guest studio for national and international artists with an emphasis on research and collaboration.

puntWg and airWG are kindly supported by Mondriaan Fonds.

Due to the lockdown the opening times of the exhibition Enfleshed - Elaborated have changed . 

puntWG will be closed until the 18th of november 2020. From 19 Nov till 6 Dec 2020 puntWG will be transformed to a sensory environment that functions as incubator of other knowledge and experiences (subsensorial installation, music of the Urals, film, poetry, essays and stories, shamanic Manchurian music and interventions).

Open: Friday-Sunday, 14:00-18:00

There's also PDF documentation of this collaborative exhibition, including images, esseys, stories and poems and links to video and sound works. Download it HERE.

Enfleshed is a multisensory exhibition reflecting on shamanisms of Inner Mongolia and Manchuria (Northern China) in relation to the serious pollution, electromagnetism, heavy industry and rare-earth mining in the region, global capitalism and the artist’s own body. 

Central in the exhibition is Kristiina Koskentola’s film, Flesh and Metal. Light and Oil. (2020) in which rituals such as for example the healing ceremony of Shaman Liu (who, embodied as her Fox God, healed the artist’s shaking hands) dialogue, drumming and singing intertwine with atmospheric electronic soundscapes and (industrial) landscapes. The film examines the potential of ‘non-living’ or 'spectral' subjectivities and time as active political and ethical actors and agencies. It searches for a deeper relationship with natural and spiritual worlds through alternative knowledges and explores the boundaries of human rationalism and knowledge production and the environmental injustice and slow violence of the logic of (global) capitalism. The film draws on dialogues with involved shamans, healers and musicians, local knowledge, lived experience, nonhuman knowledge and theorising by Karen Barad, Rosi Braidotti, Rick Dolphijn and Jussi Parikka.

puntWG will be transformed to a sensory environment that functions as incubator of other knowledge and experiences and  as a space for healing.

This inquiry is further expanded and sensitised in installations of the program Enfleshed- Elaborated. 

Event
Public Program as Installations 
Fetauring: Zoénie Deng, Rick Dolphijn, Mark Kremer, Pia Lindman, Jussi Koitela, Han Xiaohan, German Popov, Bo Wang
Integrated into the exhibition throughout its opening times

Enfleshed-Elaborated is a programme as installations consisting of essays, healing sessions, music performances, interventions and poetry. It is a programme in which, for example, theory might become a poem, an essay a recipe, ancient Manchurian and Uralic music a contemporary soundpiece and a bone setting session of Finnish oral tradition an installation of the subsensorial.     

Group of artists, philosophers, cultural theorists, researchers, musicians and curators from Eurasia were invited to reflect on the context of the exhibition Enfleshed – in words and bodies, in flesh. They have delved, among other, into diverse ideas of closeness to nature, spirituality, and the conflicting realities created today’s global economy, as well as the power structures of knowledge and science.

Supported by: Amsterdams fonds voor de kunst, Kone Foundation, Finnish Cultural Foundation, Avek.

Photo documentation by Ilya Rabinovich.

PLEASE! REMEMBER TO FOLLOW THE COVID-19 PROTOCOL
Announce your visit by sending an email to enfleshedelaborated@gmail.com

GUIDELINES VISITOR - KEEPING YOU SAFE! 
In adherence to the protocol for cultural spaces due to COVID19 we kindly request you to consider the following before and during your visit; Refrain from visiting when you are experiencing (minor) health issues such as a head cold, a runny nose, a cough, a sore throat, a raised temperature or fever, and/or shortness of breath. You are required to always keep a minimum distance of 1.5 meters from other visitors and staff and wear your mask.

With the aim of giving visibility and opportunity to international artistic production for artists with different career levels, as well as establishing alliances that expand our radius of action, artist residency programme airWG will welcome the 15th edition of the Miami New Media Festival 2020 CENSORSHIP Art and new media censorship in the information age, from this 30th of October to November 1st at puntWG , 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Daily.

Thanks to the invitation from Jimmy Yánez, International Official Curator & Museographer for the insular and Caribbean representation, we will show a selection of 9 video artworks by artists from different countries. This 15th edition also includes a special guest, Olga Gabrielle (Aruba) with recent artwork entitled SOTAVENTO.

The Miami New Media Festival is a multimedia platform held in Miami by Arts Connection Foundation since 2006.

PLEASE!
REMEMBER TO FOLLOW THE COVID-19 PROTOCOL,
We are allowed a maximum of 4 visitors inside the space at the same time. Announce your visit by sending an email to airwg@atelierwg.nl.

GUIDELINES VISITOR - KEEPING YOU SAFE!
In adherence to the protocol for cultural spaces due to COVID19 we kindly request you to consider the following before and during your visit; Refrain from visiting when you are experiencing (minor) health issues such as a head cold, a runny nose, a cough, a sore throat, a raised temperature or fever, and/or shortness of breath. You are required to always keep a minimum distance of 1.5 meters from other visitors and staff and wear your mask.