4bid is a group of four people that engages in creative dialogue & collaboration through different mediums: illustration, performance, dance, installation and curatorial practice. 4bid develops temporary cultures and interlinks fields of knowledge and comprehension through arts and culture. “We think that art and culture, when approached critically, has a positive impact on society. We attempt to bringing consciousness about the current social situation by sharing and distributing knowledge through development of temporary culture, a culture that is dynamic and evolves as we speak. Being critical is an approach but not only. Critical culture for us is a metaphor for a critical moment on a timeline, a crisis between points of view, collision of times and spaces. We develop projects and researches with the aim of reaching out to a micro / medium geographic range*, wanting to connect with people on a human-size level through discussions and collaborations, aiming to sensitize to non capitalistic bodies and minds. We consider it important to create a multidisciplinary environment where a variety of artistic practices can question each other and their relation to contemporary art and society. We believe in a culture that is not elitist and therefore should be free and accessible to all. We like to interact and engage with artistic research, attempting to do it with consciousness and a critical mind-set, connecting with people on a personal level as well as globally.� Artists&curator Irina Baldini Giacomo Cardoni Masako Matsushita Paolo Paggi
Shuffle project
provides a ground for the
Music, Photography, Film or Hybrid) during a week long project based in the Gallery c/o the OT301. Each participant is invited to run one day of the week’s workshop and take part in the sessions hosted by the others during the week. You can propose a problem, a question or a thought that you would like to look at from different perspectives. 4bid gives you the space to experiment and use the group dynamic, develop collaborations, offers to assist you with the delivery of the workshop (or other format of sharing) helping to lead each session. During the week the timing and length of each session can be dictated by the leader of that day. We encourage a discussion and feedback sessions at end of each workshop. A catalogue will be produced at the end of each Shuffle, documenting the individual session and the outcomes of the week.
17th to 23rd March 2014 4bid gallery, OT301 Overtoom 301 Amsterdam Guest partecipants: Sarah Bulton Suvi Itkonen Frauke
4bid partecipants: Irina Baldini Giacomo Cardoni Paolo Paggi
4bid documentator Masako Matsushita
Open Show presented on Sunday the 23rd at 4bid Gallery to see more about it check the following link:
DAY1 Paolo Paggi
DAY2 Frauke
DAY3 Suvi Itkonen DAY4 Irina Baldini
DAY5 Sarah Bulton
DAY6 Giacomo Cardoni
DAY1 Workshop lead by Paolo Paggi Title: Alchemic meeting through senses The workshop focused on aesthetic stimulation of imagination through the ‘encounter’. The participants were invited, throughout tasks, to experience the encounter through the senses. After each step it was asked to write some notes on a small individual note book, referring to images and sensations triggered by the exercise. The aim was that of gathering a series of visual information that were generated via the encounter of senses between six people who do or do not know each other. Paolo Paggi He graduated in 2009 in visual art at the Academy of fine art of Carrara, Italy. In the same year he lived in Lisbon and got close to the curatorial practice linked to glocal thinking, thanks to some curators like Carlos Alcobia and Lucia Marquez and also thanks to a project with Priscilla Carbone and C.e.m. of Lisbon. In 2011 he participated as young curator to the project SACS Milano and the residency project for curators by Dena Foundation for Contemporary Art in Paris. In the same period he worked with the association FARE in Milan and with Fart Gallery of Turin. In 2012 he gained a post-graduate degree at Academy of fine art of Brera in Communication and Organization of Contemporary Art, whilst he was creator and curator of the international residency project “Mitologie Urbane” in the space of Fondazione Centro Arti Visive Pescheria of Pesaro. From the end of 2012 to 2013 he worked on several performances and installations in various countries in Europe with the artist Giacomo Cardoni around the concept of “relationship”. He is now part of a group in charge of the gallery space in the OT301 with three other creatives.
DAY2 Workshop lead by Frauke the purpose of the workshop is to explore an artistic process where the ego is erased, where art is its own entity and cannot be traced back to the artist’s social being. The method used in the workshop is the butoh dance, a dance form that originates from Japan after World War II as a counter-movement to both Western and traditional Japanese dance. In butoh, the dance is born from an empty bodya body available for transformation. The butohdancer differentiates between the social body and the dancing body. There is no hierarchy in butoh, the dance transforms all parts of the body. The dance material occurs in, on and around the body and the face. Frauke is interacting non symbolically (without an intent from an artist subject) and directly with the world - with black, with radioactivity, with soot, with extinction, with light, with trees and water - she embraces their qualities and behaviors and makes body of them. Meanwhile, the traditional Western ideals of “beauty” are far away. The workshop was held partly outside in Vondel park to establish the relationship between the body and the “big world” as well as bringing the awareness to the different materials that surrounds us. The workshop aimed to expand the idea of shifting the body/ erasing and being blurred in order to invite a new condition to be born. Twisting power, slime and electric particles were the three conditions introduced to the group and in the end of the day an informal viewing was held. The viewing is an exploration of the relationship to space and time. In butoh, time is considered as a physical experience, and based on a reflexive perspective of space. In butoh the body is carried by the space. The viewing is also a development of the conditions where every artist can bring her/ his own point of entering, adding new perspective and dimensions to the dance. Frauke The body, and the emptiness of the conscious will, are the premises on which the dance form butoh is based. To attempt to move outside oneself, to empty the body and become something different- a tree for example, a wind or wild weather- and then by means of characteristic movements and small controlled gestures have the material completely take over. The costume and the white paint reinforce the impression and erase the social ego in the dance. For Frauke it’s a matter of dancing, from the body’s smallest cell to the air around it. The butoh dancer and choreographer Caroline Lundblad practices under her artist name Frauke. Following studies in dance at the Laban Centre in London she lived in Japan studying butoh ( the dance of darkness). Butoh is a form of dance that arose in Japan after the Second World War as a counterweight to both western and traditional Japanese dance forms. Lundblad is one of the leading practitioners of butoh in both Sweden and abroad, and has created for herself and entirely special genre of the dance form. She has been acclaimed internationally with awards from The Standard Bank Ovation Award, The Sunday Independent, for her performances in the Dance Umbrella in Johannesburg and the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, South Africa. http:// www.frauke.se/
DAY3 Workshop by Suvi Itkonen Solidart workshop is for learning unity and “tribalness� through unifying artistic practises and philosophical analysis. The workshop concentrates on performance, writing and illustration as well as reasoning solidarity and consciousness. It aims to teach ways of reasoning to the participants and think ways of performing conscious and educational topics for instance through poetry, drama or dancing. An activist, social reformist and an artist. Thats the background of Suvi who was born in Finland in 1980. Art is a her livity. Making poetry, spiritual paintings and felted crafts are part of her work. Suvi Itkonen has written pieces of poetry on controversial topics like the Apartheid reality of South Africa and used poetry as a research method in her academic research in which she was looking into the link between education and oppression amongst the youths in Cape Town suburbia in 2007. Solidart is a concept which was born in Finland amongst a small group of artists in 2006. The movement combines solidarity work and arts creativity finding ways to educate and market conscious livity. Suvi has been working in Kenya, Ethiopia and Finland in past four years with arts workshops and teaching. (valonlapsi.com)
DAY4 Workshop by Irina Baldini Title: “6 easy pieces” The workshop I proposed consisted in six tasks addressing a number of themes: interpretation/self-presentation/copy/re-production/translation and politics of ‘performable’ activities. Through a strict time-managed structure some of these tasks were to be developed individually, others in pairs or as a group negotiating time, choosing facings, forms, and mediums through which to express the intention of each instruction.The outcome of each section of the workshop was filmed, questioning how this affected the performances themselves, the way we present our identity for others, the quality of the work produced when aimed to documentation VS for the sake of the process. It was meant to suggest the participants to think about permission (perhaps to ‘act differently’). Irina Baldini Born in Florence, Finnish-Italian dance and movement artist, living and working across Europe. She works independently as well as collaboratively with artists of various mediums. Studies: After earning a 1st Class BA(Hons) in Dance Theatre from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, London, she has worked as a performer at various art galleries such as the Hayward Gallery, Institute of Contemporary Art, White Cube in London and lately shown work at the Southbank Centre UK, Centro Fondazione Arti Visive la Pescheria, Hangart IT, The Secret Theatre NY, C&H Art Space and OT301 NL deepening her interests though artist residencies across different countries including UK, Italy, Finland, Sweden, Spain, US and the Netherlands. http://www.irinaosterberg.com/
DAY5 Workshop by Sarah Boulton Title: An Eyelash, Please. The workshop took the participants on a journey through ideas on how to self-mediate (M.I.Y), on attachment, on being the interior or core of a work of art yet to be realised, and on ‘knowing’ such things. It dealt in - and through - honey and dialogue (as materials, perhaps) and posed questions about invisible existence, as well as the sticky fluidity that flows in between a physical, imagined and virtual place. Where is the work? Sarah Boulton (b. 1989) is studying for an MFA in Fine Art Media at the Slade School of Art in London. Her work deals in imagined physicality, D.I.Y re-mediation and dialogue. It deals with the registration and existence of artworks as well as experiences and physical things themselves. The works crave to meet multiple interfaces – both online and In Real Life - and to be carried by many. Can an artwork have its own life span? Sarah is currently thinking about the power of invisibility, the act of embedding, and the fact that birds need gravity to swallow. She has shown work in Manchester, Glasgow and London. saraboulton.tumblr.com
DAY6 Workshop by Giacomo Cardoni Around the world, fables, stories and fairy tales are present in every culture, wherever we go. Their structure, the main characters, the moral behind the words, are brought to new generations throughout the centuries and help us in our personal growth. There seems to be a link between the different types. They appear to be the same stories, yet they are different. They seem linkable to our dreams as well, with a connection inside our imagination, our deep memories. The experimental workshop to become Fable Makers was given to take that time, to enter in a mood that facilitates inspiration, like watching the sunrise and thinking about our dreams. Discovering characters developed throughout time as a possible base schedule and build theirs one by one, trying to build their shape with clay shifting between our imagination, memories and feelings Giacomo Cardoni Ask him directly for his bio, he’ll tell you the story with pleasure! giacomocardoni@gmail.com
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