A project by Milena Bonilla and Natasha Papadopoulou, with the participation of: Alena Alexandrova, Bea Mcmahon and Jolene Ong.

Perception is a tricky thing. One sees a closed hand landing heavily on a table, but suddenly there’s no table to land on. Better to see a hand holding a hand, a foot, a waist or the pinky finger. Multiple hands un-holdingtheideaofonebody.

Once we agreed that the very idea of getting lost depends very much on context. We can get lost in routines that build patterns for the brain to follow, lazily falling into a loop. We can also get lost in unknown territory, piercing our safety with a body conversation, a dance that doesn’t have a purpose, doesn’t strive for profit, only exists for and by itself. A moment for sky leakages, control crashing, tables disappearing.

Come. Weareverymuchlookingforloopholes.

With love. Us.

by Natasha Papadopoulou & Milena Bonilla
With guest performances by Alena Alexandrova, Jo-Lene Ong, Bea McMahon


Public Presentations

Under Acupressure
6 April 2019, 19:00

Natasha Papadopoulou gives a sneak-peek into her new collection of wearable apparatus. Departing from the horny layer, the collection fits as a sub-dermal story pressing through power points to find release and multiple zones on demand. The wearables talk to any-body directly, she just translates and demonstrates.

Residues in Reverse
13 April 2019, 18:00

Alena Alexandrova will reenact a composition of openings or opening fragments. They are reverse residues, discarded before they were shaped or used in any other way. They only exist at the threshold between their appearance and their rejection in a mode of reductive intensity.

Attitudes of the Limbs
20 April 2019, 18:00

Jo-Lene Ong guides you through hands and feet in an exploration touching on mudras and footnotes, a pedestal and a scaffolding, and a circular ping-pong table.

Dot your Eyes
20 April 2019, 19:00
Bea McMahon in collaboration with Artémise Ploegaerts 

Bea McMahon gets stung in the eye by a bee while playing a zero sum beauty game. Turns out this poisonous deed ain’t accidental.

Behind that Grid There’s a Maze
28 April 2019, 19:00

Milena Bonilla wanna rescue words from a field of Poppies. A musicalized talk will touch some elements from her current spying on monocultured thought, mental illness and social change. If Artaud’s pussy is a field of poppies, we need a disorchestrated homage to that. At least that’s what she thinks.

This project is made possible with the generous support of AFK fond for the Kunst and the Mondriaan Fund

  

The exhibition features works by the collective (Eline Tsvetkova, Jakob Ehrlich and Anastasija Pandilovska) and by the invited guests artists: Smari Runar Róbertsson, Hedvig Koertz, Nicola Godman, Lotte van der Woude. Based on their relationship with the themes Heimat, Belonging and home making as a political instrument, in their own manner, each questions the notion of domesticity in regards to leaving and returning home.

The group exhibition is laid out as a flat landscape, open and unhidden. This presentation resembles the function of the known wide, transparent Dutch windows in family houses that are situated on ground floors. The message such windows attempt to convey is to demonstrate that the family in the Netherlands has "nothing to hide." Gradually, over the course of the programme, the artworks are contextualised and henceforth removed until we end up almost with an empty space. Referring to the project title A Decorated Room with Invaded Ideas we intend to discuss the concept of 'invasion of ideas' on objects. Therefore, the works will gradually be taken away instead of filling (decorating) the space, as opposed to the first project in Sofia where we gradually added ideas and elements to the space. The complementary programme, which will consist of three public events at puntWG, is aimed at initiating collective discussions in the space and active participation of the public. 

“They man made it, so I exist” is the final phase of the project series “A Decorated Room with Invaded Ideas”, a research-based project initiated and realized by three artists Eline van Dijk (Tsvetkova) (NL/BG) Jakob Ehrlich (AT) and Anastasija Pandilovska (MK/NL).

“They man-made it, so I exist” is a four-week programme consisting of a group exhibition and three public events, revolving around the notions of “belonging”, “Heimat“ and the process of “home making”. More precisely, the programme focuses on key factors that define the current Dutch, domestic space-making. 

Finding ourselves in the man-made country, we realise that we stand in a mountain-less, non-naturalistic “Heimat”. A self-made “Heimat”. We are wondering to what extent have local democracy, “speculative'’ romanticism and pragmaticism affected the current notion of Dutch domestic life? How have these concepts become problematised within an increasingly polarised society? 

Keywords to our programme and group exhibition are the Dutch words: GEMEENTE (municipality, community), VLAK (plain, without depth, area) and VLOED (flood). Their various meanings provide a solid ground for our research in defining how we belong.


Events

A REAL PLACE
Lecture Performance/Reading by Phil Baber
11 May 2019, 17:00-20:00

“…What I am making is
A place for language in my life

Which I want to be a real place
Seeing I have to put up with it
Anyhow…” (W.S. Graham)

The experience of estrangement or alienation from language is one of the tropes of modernist literature. During the evening, Baber will be asking how we might overcome such alienation without resorting to spurious notions of authenticity or nationhood. In the process, he is looking at how language is conceived in the Jewish mystical tradition as well as in the work of such poets as Friedrich Hölderlin, Paul Celan, Henri Meschonnic, W.S. Graham, C.D. Wright, and Vahni Capildeo. He proposes that language is not a “prison-house” (Fredric Jameson) but a home, and that it is our task to learn to live in it.

*****

GEMEENTE, VLAK, VLOED 
Multimedia Installation/Performance by the Collective A Decorated Room with Invaded Ideas
18 May 2019, 17:00-20:00

The second event will focus on the Amsterdamse School style as we consider this architectural style to be a pivotal point of Dutch space-making as all three keywords GEMEENTE, VLAK, VLOED can be exemplified through the work of the architects that adopted this way of thinking. As a case study we will take the building Het Schip in the Spaarndammerbuurt in Amsterdam designed by the architect Michel de Klerk in 1919.

*****

HANDLE WITH CARE
Spatial Intervention and Discussion by the Collective 
25 May 2019, 17:00-20:00

During this event the feelings of anticipation or at the other extreme angst which come along when moving towards a new geographical coordinate are what we intent to explore. Such individual reactions on a new environment are sometimes also referred to as culture shock, which is a term that we think is too often neglected when talking about ways of living together or side by side. During that night the space of puntWG will become a room for discussion on the basis of a communal listening to a sound piece created by our collective A Decorated Room with Invaded Ideas.

Nomadic Picnic is a participatory performance, an unconventional meal, during which people meet each other in silence. This is an intimate gustative experience for up to 16 people. Nomadic Picnic dishes are served without tableware and eaten without cutlery.

The dishes are sculptural and conceptual and are designed and prepared by the artists. This meal consists of six vegan organic courses without gluten and added sugar, the most universal diet letting everyone participate.

The space for the performance is composed from the picmats and arranged using knowledge of proxemics. Nomadic Picnic explores the realms of human-human and human-food relations. This performance questions social and cultural norms and gives conditions for authentic ways of communicating, as well as eating.

Let's break the cycles of inner repetitions.

There are two performances on the day, starting at 13:00 and 18:00 respectively. The length of each dinner is approximately 2 hours.

If you have any specific food allergies please email them to daycollective@gmail.com before March 26

Tickets: https://www.yourticketprovider.nl/events/29000-nomadic-picnic/

Nomadic Picnic is a participatory performance, an unconventional meal, during which people meet each other in silence. This is an intimate gustative experience for up to 16 people. Nomadic Picnic dishes are served without tableware and eaten without cutlery. 

The dishes are sculptural and conceptual and are designed and prepared by the artists. This meal consists of six vegan organic courses without gluten and added sugar, the most universal diet letting everyone participate. 

The space for the performance is composed from the picmats and arranged using knowledge of proxemics. Nomadic Picnic explores the realms of human-human and human-food relations. This performance questions social and cultural norms and gives conditions for authentic ways of communicating, as well as eating. 

Let's break the cycles of inner repetitions. 

There are two performances on the day, starting at 13:00 and 18:00 respectively. The length of each dinner is approximately 2 hours.

If you have any specific food allergies please email them to daycollective@gmail.com before March 26

Tickets: https://www.yourticketprovider.nl/events/29000-nomadic-picnic/

Opening
24 March 2019
Ongoing spa tour starting: 15:00
Beauty Abduction treatments: 16:00-17:00
Drinks & finger food: 17:00-18:00

Finissage
24 March 2019
Beauty abduction treatments & spicy tea: 15:00-18:00

In Catastrophic times… Can the orgasmic body be a source for sustainable electricity production? Can the cavities that make up the landscapes of the human sexual organs be a territory for agricultural development? Can sex hormones offer alternative components for psychopharmacology and recreational drugs formulas?

Isabel Burr Raty is creating hybrid performances and installations that invite the public to queer fixed categories of production understandings and experience the benefits of embodying utopian Sci-Fi in real time. She is currently running a mobile Farm that starts by harvesting human female genital juices, to produce beauty bio-products in Portugal and Amsterdam, and evolves into an “Eco-erogenous Para-pharmaceutics Village” in the Atacama Desert, where “every-BODY” will harvest and recycle each other.

In this exhibition/performance Isabel, together with the Farm Beautician, will run an experimental Spa that offers a menu with beauty abduction treatments for the public. During the SPA tour, the benefits of the beauty bio-products are explained and the audience is invited to inquire on the farming technologies as well as advising on the sustainable model of production of these farms.

Inscriptions for the Next Beauty Kit Female Farm, which will happen in Mediamatic Amsterdam in August 2019, will be open for participants all throughout the exhibition.

Artist Bio

Isabel Burr Raty (BE/CH) is an independent filmmaker and performance artist, interested in the ontological crack between the organic and the artificially engineered, between the unlicensed knowledge of minority groups and the official facts. Since 2013 she is based in Brussels. In her film work, Isabel embodies human Cosmo-visions that are in eco-survival resistance, bringing the imaginative realisms of the camouflaged and their subversive sense of chronology into the screen. In her artwork she interweaves new media, body/live art, lectures and participatory performance proposing hybrid narratives and bio-autonomy practices that play with synthetic magic and compose in situ Sci-Fi.

​Isabel is associate researcher in a.pass.be, teaches Media art history in École de Recherche Graphique Brussels; and in 2018/19 is artist in residency in Waag, Mediamatic and VU Amsterdam after obtaining a grant for outstanding international artist given by the AFK. Her works and collaborations have been shown in venues such as: KVS (Royal Flemish Theater), Constant_V, ZSeene Art Lab, Beursschouwburg, Limal (Brussels); Palais de Tokyo Paris, ISEA Hong Kong; and in conferences such as FEMeeting Portugal, Taboo Transgression Transcendence in Art and Science (Corfu Greece), Human Enhancement Clinic at Border Sessions (The Hague) and FACTT at Humbolt University Berlin.

Whether we stand on the top of a mountain, on the moon or inside a room, whether it is natural or manufactured – we are always surrounded by some sort of landscape.

As subjects, we try to understand the different landscapes we are embedded in. We break panoramas into pictures, and translate an orange tree into a table with orange juice or sand into glass. We try to understand what surrounds us with our bodies, minds and sometimes with tools. If we would describe landscape as a zoom out, and subjective experience as a zoom in, how does that jump happen and in which forms?  

Finissage:Talk and Lunch with Leonardiansyah Allenda, Iqra Tanveer and Ehsan Ul Haq, 3 March 2019 @ 12:00-15:00

Something other than a thing here reflects to a state of being, a state of being of a “thing” for a particular moment in time. Neglecting and rejecting preconceived ideas and perceptions of what it has been. It is a departure from its former state of existence and its ascendance or descendance to a new state in such a way that it becomes something else. It becomes something more or less than what it has been. This transience in ascendance or descendance is not a way to reject all what this “something” can be, but taking a brief pause from its formers states in order to find new potentials that are not affected by its previous perceptions and meaning.

The project ‘Something other than a thing’ is an effort to take a flight from rationales of everyday mundane plane of life and strip away all the logics, functionalities and usefulness of the “thing” in order to approach this “something”. This idea is explored by the artists to create works that reflect this transient nature of being.

The project ‘something other than a thing’ also includes a public Lunch-Talk. This event marks the finissage of the on-going show in the form of a performative talk. During this event the artists will cook for the public as a hospitable offering to initiate a collective discussion that extends from the initiation of the project to the recipes cooked and their origin. For this Lunch-Talk the artists invite everyone to become a part of this communicative process, which embodies cooking, eating, talking and exchanging thoughts about art and everything around it.

‘Something other than a thing’ is a collaborative project between artists, Iqra Tanveer, Leonrdiansyah Allenda and Ehsan Ul Haq.

Finissage:

Talk and Lunch with Leonardiansyah Allenda, Iqra Tanveer and Ehsan Ul Haq
3 March 2019 @ 12:00-15:00

The project ‘something other than a thing’ serves as the starting point for this public Lunch-Talk. This event marks the finissage of the ongoing show in the form of a performative talk. During this event the artists will cook for the public as a hospitable offering to initiate a collective discussion, that extends from the initiation of the project to the recipes cooked and their origin. For this Lunch-Talk the artists are inviting everyone to become a part of this communicative process, which embodies cooking, eating, talking and exchanging thoughts about art and everything around it.

Ehsan Ul Haq born in 1983 in Lahore, Pakistan, works with sculptural forms that question their own inherent content, making, and object hood. Stripping away their histories, their functionality, and context, he engages the viewer with a new guidebook of perceptions for existing objects/meanings. His notable exhibitions include “Survival kit” annual contemporary art festival in Riga Latvia, “An Age of Our Own Making” Images festival Holbaek, Denmark 2016, “Back in 5 minutes”, Martin Van Zomeren, Amsterdam Netherlands, “No Real Body”: 3rd Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art, Yekaterinburg Russia 2015, “VOID: there’s nothing more left, but a little trace from human beings”, Ginkgo Space, Beijing China, Moscow International Biennale For Young Art, Moscow 2012, and ‘The Rising Tide’ at the Mohatta Palace Museum, Pakistan 2010. He has been a resident artist at Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten 2014-2015.He is currently a recipient of “Werkbijdrage Bewezen Talent” from Mondriaan Fonds Netherlands.

Iqra Tanveer born in 1983, Karachi, Pakistan is currently based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Working with video, photo and objects in her installations, Tanveer has participated in several group and solo exhibitions across Pakistan, India, UAE, Italy and Hong Kong and Netherlands. She has recently completed her residency program at Rijksakademie van Beeldende kunsten,Netherlands ,2017.She has been a participant in Colombo biennale,Sri lanka, 2016 and a part of the exhibition “Whorled Explorations” at Kochi Muziris Biennial, India. She has also exhibited her works at Moscow Museum of Modern Art in a solo show titled Between Earth and Sky.

Leonardiansyah Allenda born in 1984, In Indonesia. Allenda’s practice intertwines notion of art, agency, interior and other designs, centered to the body and perception of space in addressing his personal inquiries on infrastructure of cultural and capital values. Allenda has recently completed the Rijksakademie residency in 2017. His work was presented in solo show Bertimbang Taruh, at Cemeti Art House, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Some group exhibitions include, Asian Art Biennial, National Museum of Fine Art, Taichung, Taiwan; Kathmandu Triennale, ‘The City’, Nepal; Jogja Calling, 4A Center for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney, Australia; Biennale Jakarta, ‘Maju Kena Mundur Kena’, Jakarta; ‘High Water’ Fukutake house project, Shodoshima, Japan.

Opening & Performance: 2nd Feb 18:00 to 20:00

Performance: A Transcontinental Apology
Ghost in Silence - Rumiko Hagiwara
Sorry Not Sorry - Jo-Lene Ong
BELLYBUTTON - Bea McMahon and Rumiko Hagiwara

((((((((((((())))))))))))

You are alive! Snip! Your umbilical cord has been cut!

What kind of behaviours will you exhibit?

At a bar in Amsterdam, Bea was giving feedback to Rumiko’s video/performance work Ghost in Silence (2018), which concludes its narrative with the word 'Sorry.' This word, 'Sorry', sparked the idea for their collaboration, and BELLYBUTTON is the end result. It is both a presentation of source material and a performance. They invited Jo-Lene for assistance in how to do some Transcontinental Apologizing, and she will contribute with a fashionable "Sorry not sorry."

Sorry.

According to Bea the full stop after the above sorry can only be one of four possibilities:

1. stop
2. please stop
3. O please stop
4. O do please stop

Rumiko had thought it was going to be apologizing without end.

The source material for BELLYBUTTON can be viewed 1st to 3rd February from 14:00 - 18:00