Chambres des Canaux: The Tolerant Home by amsterdam&partners

c h am bre s de s c an aux

the tolerant home 1 - 17 november 2013 35 contemporary artists 20 classic canal houses

CON TENT S HERENGRACHT 68-I

House with the Heads - KEIZERSGRACHT 123

KEIZERSGRACHT 114

KEIZERSGRACHT 134

WESTERMARKT 14

Westerkerk - PRINSENGRACHT 281

Huis van Brienen - HERENGRACHT 284

Houseboat - PRINSENGRACHT 465-K

LOOIERSGRACHT 60

De Vergulde Ster - KEIZERSGRACHT 387

De Cromhouthuizen/Biblical Museum - HERENGRACHT 366-368

Castrum Peregrini - HERENGRACHT 401

KEIZERSGRACHT 584

Goethe Institut - HERENGRACHT 470

Manifesta - HERENGRACHT 474

De Bazel (Amsterdam City Archives) - VIJZELSTRAAT 32

100

The Mayor’s Official Residence - HERENGRACHT 502

104

HERENGRACHT 520

108

Amstelkerk - AMSTELVELD 10

114

De Uitkijk (cinema) - PRINSENGRACHT 452

118

Herengracht 68-I Built: 1617, renovated in 1765

Artists

â&#x20AC;˘ Matthew Lutz-Kinoy

This building dates from 1617 and was one of the first to be built next to this new canal. The house is named after its first owner and resident, Jan van Alderwerelt (1586-1636), who is still remembered by a gable stone installed above its door in 1939, stating De Wereld (literally: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;). The depiction on this stone takes inspiration from the buildingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s description in the old title deeds. Barend Luyking acquired the house in 1740 and his son-in-law Hendrik Willem Cramer gave the property its current appearance in 1765: a straight cornice with five decorative consoles below, leaving space for four small windows to let in light. Nowadays, the building is split into several apartments. The person currently living in this apartment is an active member of the Amsterdam political scene and a successful businessperson.

herengracht 68-I

Matthew Lutz-Kinoy

1984, New York, USA Studied at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam Lives and works in Berlin

Natsuko Uchino

1983, Kumamoto, Japan Lives and works in Paris

Keramikos 2: The Travelling Dinner Party Performance Courtesy of the artists

In spring 2011, outside of the Rijksakademie’s ceramics workshop, former resident Matthew Lutz-Kinoy and the artist Natsuko Uchino worked on a large-scale banquet set of handmade tableware titled Keramikos 2: The Travelling Dinner Party. The production actually took place during a harsh shift in the Dutch political climate that caused devastating funding cuts to many institutions in the Netherlands. In the wake of a downsizing that was to halve the number of employees and residents of the Rijksakademie, Lutz-Kinoy and Uchino organised a rehearsal dinner to emphasise and give praise to the bounty and beauty of their creative community. This dinner would begin a two-year tour of events, providing a platform to address the people and places that the artists move through. The presentation of Keramikos 2 in The Tolerant Home marks the close of the collection’s tour, coming full circle to the city where the work was created and first used. In Amsterdam, a city that stands on self-made land, Uchino and Lutz-Kinoy ask: “How is the issue of creative and political organisation influenced by the history of land use, and how does this affect the production of social platforms?” Accompanying a formal presentation of the ceramics is a new publication and an event formed around a local trajectory of organised spaces and land use. It brings together a group of individuals from the fields of ecology, music and housing rights, whose work in political and creative fields in Amsterdam creates cultural spaces that thrive on radical positioning and thinking. The artists thank Pieter Kemink for his guidance and expertise. Matthew Lutz-Kinoy is an artist from New York, working in Berlin. His studio method is

interdisciplinary and recent projects take the form of ceramics, printmaking, and large-format painting. Lutz-Kinoy’s work has been shown at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; New Museum, New York; and Hayward Gallery Project Space, London, amongst others. Lutz-Kinoy completed the Rijksakademie international artist residency in 2011 and received his undergraduate degree from The Cooper Union School of Art in 2007. Natsuko Uchino is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Paris. She is a founding member of the Art and Agriculture foundation and from 2007 to 2010 worked as a farmer, ceramicist and filmmaker in the Catskills, NY. She participated in the 2nd Land Art Biennale in Mongolia and the 7th Global Conference in Evian to debate the emerging relationships between art, ecology and agriculture. In 2013, she produced ceramics in the ancient Minguei village, Tamba, Sasayama. These pieces are currently in use at Social Kitchen in Kyoto and have been exhibited by the Rocket Gallery, Cook & Co and Sakumotto. Uchino completed the CCA Kitakyushu research programme in 2012 and received her undergraduate degree from The Cooper Union School of Art in 2007. Sources: Vivian Ziherl/METROPOLISM.COM The artists

herengracht 68-I

Keizersgracht 123 House with the Heads Built: 1622

Artists • • • • • •

Lonnie van Brummelen & Siebren de Haan David Claerbout Guido van der Werve Sara van der Heide Yeal Bartana Atelier Van Lieshout/Joep van Lieshout

Colloquially known as ‘the House with the Heads’, Keizersgracht 123 is one of three surviving examples of an early 17th-century house complete with a smaller coach house attached. The other examples can be found at Singel 140-142 (De Dolphijn, built c. 1600) and Herengracht 170-172 (Huis Bartolotti, built c. 1617). It quickly becomes apparent why the building is known as ‘the House with the Heads’: the six heads at first-floor height on the façade represent Roman/Greek gods. By installing the heads, the resident wanted to implicitly (yet clearly) impress upon people looking at the property that it was home to a powerful person with a fondness for the arts, science and trade.

Keizersgracht 123

Lonnie van Brummelen

1969, Soest, the Netherlands Studied at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam Lives and works in Amsterdam

Siebren de Haan

1966, Dordrecht, the Netherlands Studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie & University of Amsterdam Lives and works in Amsterdam

Monument of Sugar, 2007 16mm film essay, sugar blocks, colour, silent Duration: 67 min Courtesy of the artists and Motive Gallery, Brussels

The installation Monument of Sugar consists of a 16mm silent film essay and a sculptural installation of sugar blocks. It explores the intersection of social and political issues with artistic and aesthetic practices. Monument of Sugar takes the complex nature of sugar trade between Europe and other countries – resulting from subsidy policy – as its point of departure. Having discovered that European sugar is cheaper outside the European Union than within it, the artists decided to investigate the sugar trade between Europe and Nigeria – supposedly one of the biggest buyers of European sugar. They travelled to Lagos with the aim of reversing the flow of the subsidised commodity by purchasing European surplus sugar cheaply in this African country and shipping it back to Europe. In order to avoid the European trade barrier for sugar imports, they transformed the commodity in situ into a work of art: they shaped €1000 worth of sugar into minimalist sculptural blocks and imported these under Harmonization Code 9703, which ensures the duty-free passage of “all monuments and original artworks, irrespective of the material in which they were produced”. The material result of their research – two groups of sugar modules – is shown together with a film essay that charts the artists’ investigations into the sugar trade. Silent documentary-type recordings show the slow and laborious process of producing the blocks, and the landscapes of agriculture, industry, market and transit. These cinematic sequences are intersected by slowly scrolling texts on sugar-white backgrounds. Even though text and image both function as representations of the same project, they remain relatively autonomous, not illustrating, explaining nor justifying the other.

Lonnie van Brummelen and Siebren de Haan studied art at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and philosophy at the University of Amsterdam. Since 2001, they have collaborated on site-specific exhibition projects, essays and film installations. Their silent films peruse the tones, movements and textures of cultural and geopolitical landscapes such as Europe’s new borders (Grossraum, 2005) or the non-sites of cultural heritage (Monument to Another Man’s Fatherland, 2008). These films are often countered by textual supplements, which disclose the contingency of the fieldwork and research. Performing a drifting studio practice, they are involved in all aspects of (re)production, from the handling of the cinema-eye to montage, writing or the graphic design of artist publications. Van Brummelen and De Haan’s work has recently been presented at The Project in Dublin; the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam; the Palais de Tokyo in Paris; Kunsthaus, Zurich; Argos, Brussels; SMBA and De Appel, Amsterdam; CCA, Vilnius; and the Shanghai and Gwangju Biennials. It is included in the public collections of Les Abattoirs, Toulouse; MUDAM, Luxembourg; FRAC, Marseille; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Julia Stoschek Collection, Dusseldorf; and Hoffmann Sammlung, Berlin. and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

Keizersgracht 123

David Claerbout

1969, Kortrijk, Belgium Studied at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam Lives and works in Antwerp and Berlin

Oil workers (from the Shell company of Nigeria) returning home from work, caught in torrential rain, 2013 HD colour animation, silent Duration: endless Courtesy of the artist and galleries Yvon Lambert, Micheline Szwajcer, and Hauser & Wirth

Meticulously reconstructed from a found photograph, this portrait shows a group of Nigerian men as they seek shelter from monsoon rains. At first glance, the hastily taken snapshot seems to show people who will quickly walk away as soon as the rain ends. But sometimes photographs speak twice: a second look reveals a sense that these people are stuck. The video uses 3D computer techniques and simple camera movement, setting loose the original image’s certainties. Of all the manifestations of time, waiting is one of the most difficult, because it involves being unproductive. The price tag that hangs on minutes, hours and days makes time expensive. When time is money it is difficult to see unproductive time as ‘free’; waiting can be a new experience for some, while others cannot stand it. Drought, conflict and poverty surround Africa like a cloud of flies, determining the picture we have of a continent. It is rarely portrayed as wet, which is the central subject of this piece and an ideal point of departure for a story about the oil industry. “I have been painting and drawing since I was seven, and I must blame the art academy for perpetuating the idea that only painting could be art. That’s too heavy for me. I was looking for an art that didn’t consist of objects, so I taught myself film and photography.” David Claerbout works in photography, video, sound and digital art, although he is best known for his large-scale video projections, which often combine moving and still images to unsettle the delineation between past and present. His earliest videos prolong the photographic moment

and stop the momentum of film in order to sculpt the perception of time. In more recent works, time is articulated in a broader, more formal and panoramic way. Claerbout’s work has recently been featured in solo exhibitions at Tel Aviv Museum of Art; Secession, Vienna; Parasol Unit, London (2012); Wiels Centre for Contemporary Art, Brussels; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California (2011); and Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (2010). His work is represented in museum collections worldwide.

Keizersgracht 123

Guido van der Werve

1977, Papendrecht, the Netherlands Studied at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam Lives and works in Hassi, Berlin and Amsterdam

Nummer Negen: The day I didn’t turn with the world, 2007 24-hour performance at 90 degrees latitude, 00 degrees longitude The Geographic North Pole; the north axis of the Earth Time-lapse photography, 9 min, North Pole Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Juliette Jongma, Amsterdam

It seems to me that Van der Werve’s art is built on a set of refusals: the refusal to fully inhabit his cultural moment, to fully accept that a journey, or a transition from one state to another, ever reaches a final end. Such refusals are dramatised in his film Nummer Negen: The day I didn’t turn with the world (2007), for which the artist stood at the Geographic North Pole from 28 to 29 April, a feat chronicled in nine minutes of time-lapse footage. This, of course, is the ultimate solitude – of the 6.76 billion souls on the planet, he was the only one in that 24-hour period who did not rotate around the Earth’s axis, and the only one who stepped outside the tyranny of calendars or ticking clocks. His teeth chattering like a metronome, he did experience a linear sequence of events, and if his is a temporal miracle, it is a minor one and certainly not of the same order as stopping or repealing time.

Guido van der Werve first practised as a classical pianist but switched his focus to visual arts to ultimately dedicate himself to filmmaking. He was educated at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. He is internationally recognised for his films, which he numbers in sequence of completion, and in which he consistently takes the leading role. Satire and seriousness go hand in hand in Van der Werve’s films, while he touches on subjects of melancholia, alienation and self-composed classical music. Van der Werve has won several prizes, amongst them the Charlotte Köhler Prijs in 2012. His work has been shown in the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; De Hallen, Haarlem; Goetz Sammlung, Munich; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC.

There’s a brilliant petulance to Van der Werve’s decision to stand at the pole – the existential equivalent of a teenage boy locking himself in his bedroom, while on the floor below, his parents prepare supper or watch the news, content in the knowledge that he’ll emerge sooner or later, and life as they know it will carry on. Nummer Negen, like all of Van der Werve’s films, turns on the ultimate failure of the grand gesture, and the strange comfort this offers us. We may stand still, but our planet keeps turning all the same, and sooner or later – when the film runs out, or the cold bites too bitterly at our nose – we must once again turn with it. We need this joke world, with its indignities and disappointments. We can’t dream our dreams anywhere else.

Keizersgracht 123

Sara van der Heide

1977, Busan, South Korea Studied at De Ateliers, Amsterdam Lives and works in Amsterdam

Zur Farbenlehre Colour and Background (after Goethe), 2011 Oil paint on linen on a table leg, 2.40 x 2m © Sara van der Heide; photography: Johannes Schwartz Claim to Universality, Colour Theory Exercise no.11 (1-20), 2011-2012 Indian ink and watercolour on paper, 26 x 36cm © Sara van der Heide; photography: Johannes Schwartz

“The work of art […] is first of all genesis; it is never experienced purely as a result.” Paul Klee, Creative Credo, 1920

of the influence of Enlightenment thinking on our own contemporary perceptions of the world.

Claim to Universality, Colour Theory Exercise 1-20 is based on a 1927 drawing by Lena Bergner, a student of Paul Klee’s at the Bauhaus School. The school was founded in the Weimar Republic and was known for its influential theories on art and design and its liberal way of life. In 1933, the Nazis shut the Bauhaus down.

Sara van der Heide followed the post-graduate programme at De Ateliers in Amsterdam (1999-2001). In 2007, she was a fellow resident at ISCP in New York.

Lena Bergner’s drawing is titled Belichtung / Beschattung and shows a small circle from which several rays of light and colour fan out in a larger circle. In her 20 variations on Bergner’s drawing, Van der Heide sets out to examine the fundamental characteristics of watercolour painting: colour and light. The drawings collectively form a waving line and the space between the exercises are charged with ‘cosmic energy’, a concept from Klee’s methodology. Klee did not just want to show the visible material world, but also the intangible: the world of ideas. Zur Farbenlehre, Colour and Background (after Goethe) is based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Zur Farbenlehre (1805). It is a folded, standing table screen displaying abstract colour fields. The composition and primary colours immediately bring to mind early 20th-century abstract painting, such as that of Mondrian. Zur Farbenlehre is one of Goethe’s colour schemes, developed in relation to Sir Isaac Newton’s discovery that light is made up of particles of different colours. Goethe took a more contextual approach, showing that background colour plays an important role in making other colours visible when light breaks through a prism. This reference to 19th-century science and aesthetics offers a poignant reminder

Van der Heide often uses colour, light and word play (both as material and as subject) to enlarge our current spectrum of ideas on art history and historical political certainties. Amongst others, recent projects include: the intervention Goethe-Institut Reading Room Pyongyang at the Goethe-Institut Amsterdam (2013); the performance series Abstract Background with One or Two Figures at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2012); and the durational work Hollands Kabinet (2010-’12), which was on show at De Appel, Amsterdam (2011) and later at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2012). Sources: Maxine Kopsa – Conceptual Sex; Modernism Acknowledges Colour. The artist

Keizersgracht 123

Yael Bartana

1970, Kfar-Yehezkel, Israel Studied at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam Lives and works in Berlin and Tel Aviv

Low Relief II, 2004 One-channel video installation Video projection, colour Soundtrack by Daniel Meir Duration: 5:30 min Courtesy Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam

“Low Relief II makes a powerful parallel between the open hospitality shown towards Jewish refugees in late 16th-century Amsterdam and the contemporary State of Israel. The film documents a civil demonstration in protest against the [...] building of the ‘separation barrier’ (a term used by the Israeli authorities for the 700km long, eight-metre high concrete wall separating Israel and the Palestinian West Bank). It also provides a record of the exertion of increased military power over a civilian population. The embossed effect achieved in this work [...] recalls classical bas-relief scenes depicting historic wars, and the chronicle of committing the history of the victorious to stone.” – Galit Eilat, exhibition catalogue Wherever I am; Yael Bartana, Emily Jacir, Lee Miller, 2004. Modern Art Oxford, Oxford, 2004. Ad De’lo Yoda, 2003 One-channel video installation Video projection, colour Duration: 3 min, loop Courtesy of Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam Location Keizersgracht 123 (House with the Heads) Ad De’lo Yoda “A boy, standing with his back to the viewer, gazes into a room in which Orthodox Jewish boys and men are dancing in a circle holding hands. While the younger dancers are dressed as Persians, with gold and silver-coloured vests over white shirts, the older dancers are wearing black suits and hats. In a single shot, the camera documents the celebrations on the occasion of the Purim festival – an event commemorating the rescue of the Jewish people from the impending danger in the

Persian diaspora. The celebration takes place in a Yeshiva school in the Orthodox suburb of Bnei Brak. The title of the work, Ad De’lo Yoda, refers to the Purim requirement to celebrate and drink “until one does not know (ad de’lo yoda) the difference between ‘cursed is Haman’ and ‘blessed is Mordechai’”. Purim is the only festival during which Orthodox Jews are permitted to drink alcohol. The boy in the foreground, who is also dressed in Persian fashion, observes the scene with curiosity from the sidelines and seems to be waiting and considering whether he should join in […] ‘Ad De’lo Yoda’ is one of the few video installations by Yael Bartana that forgoes audio elements completely.” – Yael Bartana, exhibition catalogue Kunstverein in Hamburg. Hatje Cantz, 2007. Yael Bartana is a video artist who explores the imagery of cultural identity. In her photographs, films and installations, she critically investigates her native country’s struggle for identity. Bartana studied at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, the School of Visual Arts, New York and the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. Her solo exhibitions include the Moderna Museet, Malmö; the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw; PS1, New York; Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv; and Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven.

Keizersgracht 123

Atelier Van Lieshout / Joep van Lieshout 1963, Ravenstein, the Netherlands Studied at De Ateliers, Amsterdam Lives and works in Rotterdam

Joep van Lieshout, together with his workshop Atelier van Lieshout (AVL), explores the natural intricacies of man’s condition, as well as the circumstances he has created for himself. AVL is specifically fascinated with man’s communal existence. Through his ongoing series titled Slave City (2005-present), Van Lieshout and his workshop examine recurring themes such as the organisation of labour, the structures of power, self-sufficiency, communal values, ethics, aesthetics, morals, food production, energy, economics, management and marketing systems, as well as the conditions of procreation and death. For The Tolerant Home, AVL is showing work at two locations. The large and subversive sculpture Monument (2010) will be shown outdoors on a houseboat at Prinsengracht 465-K. At the House with the Heads, a grouping of several sculptures specifically examine the lamentations of man’s existence – in its need to protect, as much as in its stupefying capability to commit the most horrifying atrocities. Ever since Joep van Lieshout won the Prix de Rome in 1992 he has stood in the international spotlight, receiving nine major awards including the Wilhelminaring in 2000 and more recently the Stankowski Award from the Stankowski Stiftung in Stuttgart in 2009. In 1995, Van Lieshout established Atelier van Lieshout in Rotterdam after studying at the Academy of Modern Art in Rotterdam and then De Ateliers in Amsterdam in 1985-87. Atelier van Lieshout is a workshop situated in a warehouse in the harbour of Rotterdam. The building, Katoenveem,

is an industrial monument, one of the first warehouses built from concrete. The workshop has different departments, including fibreglass, sculpture, wood and metal workshops. AVL has 20 employees who are closely involved in the manufacturing process of each product. The design and production of the artworks all take place in this workshop. Recent solo shows of AVL include: The Butcher I Marseille 2013 at La Friche Belle de Mai in Marseille; Manufactuur/SlaveCity at GRIMM. Amsterdam, in 2012; and the Infernopolis in the Submarine Wharf of the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam, in 2010. His many group shows include: Art-O-Rama I Marseille 2013 at La Friche Belle de Mai, Marseille; and the Gwangju Biennale in Gwangju, Korea in 2011. Joep van Lieshout’s work has been included in the collections of the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. Sources: Grimm Gallery, Amsterdam The artist

Keizersgracht 123

Keizersgracht 114 Built: c. 1800

Artists

• Jan Andriesse • Erik van der Weijde

Despite being situated in one of the earliest areas of city expansion, Keizersgracht 114 dates from around 1800. This canal-side property is classically arranged, with two rooms overlooking the canal, a courtyard and a hall to the rear of the building looking out onto the garden. Nowadays, the building is home to various apartments and offices.

keizersgracht 114

Jan Andriesse

1950, Jakarta, Indonesia Studied at Ateliers ’63 Lives and works in Amsterdam

Torrentius, 2013 Created in collaboration with Maarten de Kroon Duration: 10:55 min Courtesy of the artist Painting: Still life with a bridle, 1614, Johannes Torrentius (1589-1644), Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam In the figure of Johannes Torrentius (Johannes Symoonisz. van der Beeck, 15891644) we find the double standard of tolerance in Dutch society. Although the 17th century was a time when artists and scientists explored humanist and secular ideas, the power of the clergy remained strong, and the Church used extreme measures to keep subjects in check. Torrentius was born and died in Amsterdam, but lived a tumultuous and libertine life – originally in Amsterdam and Haarlem and ultimately in London, as a member of the court of Charles I. In Haarlem, Torrentius was arrested, tortured and sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment, based on false evidence, and it was decreed that all his works be burned. After two years, King Charles I of England came to his rescue. Charles, impressed with Torrentius’s work, appointed him court painter, after which he stayed in England for 12 years.

Music: Variations on Yves Klein, Symphonie Monotone Silence (1949 / 1960), produced and performed by the Qcumber Orchestra Credits: Camera: Sander Snoep, Grip: Andre Plug, Lighting: Erno Das, 1st assistant camera: Flip Bleekrode, Visual effects & grading: Ruud Kouwenberg/Martin Klein, Sound mixing: Ronald & Jeroen Nadorp, Bob Kommer Sound Studios, Production: Get Organised, Special thanks to: Zbigniew Herbert, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Location: Keizersgracht 114, Screening every 15 minutes by the process of looking and the ways the eye captures light. Born in the former Dutch colony of Indonesia, Andriesse grew up in El Salvador and moved to New York as a young adult, where he began painting water. Since coming to the Netherlands, Andriesse has given his full attention to the way Dutch light behaves and the role it plays in Dutch painting from the 17th century onwards.

Ultimately running into more trouble because of his liberal sexual attitudes, Torrentius returned to Amsterdam in 1644 a somewhat broken man, as he never completely recovered from the torture he suffered in Haarlem. A single painting by Torrentius that escaped the flames in Haarlem was rediscovered in 1913 and is now in the collection of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. In this beautiful short film, Dutch painter Jan Andriesse and journalist and filmmaker Maarten de Kroon revisit the life of painter Johannes Torrentius and his sole surviving painting, titled Still life with a bridle. Jan Andriesse Dutch painter Jan Andriesse is fascinated

keizersgracht 114

Erik van der Weijde

1977, Dordrecht, the Netherlands Studied at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam Lives and works in Natal, Brazil

Der Baum Series, 2010 Ink on Photo Rag 50 x 65cm each (8 photos) Courtesy of the artist and CHERT Gallery, Berlin

Erik van der Weijde’s work shines light upon non-spectacular and common images in our daily lives – the houses we live in, the lamps illuminating the street, family portraits and other popular subjects. Through his accurate series of photographs, he is tracing a path between history, culture, education, cliché and everyday habits; thanks to Van der Weijde’s attention to the small, odd details that each of these is hiding behind, each work traces a link between far entities. By collecting and showing images that become a symbol of the subjects they portray, Van der Weijde is showing us the weight and sometimes the forgotten gravity of their existence. Der Baum features 44 photographs of trees, taken by Van der Weijde over the past few years. The list of places where the photographs were taken includes different locations in Europe and Brazil. Their descriptions range from specified historical sites, such as the elementary school Adolf Hitler attended or the street where kidnap victim Natascha Kampusch was held, to unidentified places: ‘school’, ‘road’ or ‘park’. The Der Baum series takes direct inspiration from the book Der Baum im Bilde der Landschaft, a German photo book published in 1931 by KR Langewiesche. This title was part of a book series called Der Eiserne Hammer (The Iron Hammer), which aimed to provide cheap educational tools for the uneducated masses. The series carried the motto ‘Das Gute für Alle (The Good for All)’. Der Baum is published by 4478zine. The series of photographs related to the book was presented in Erik van der Weijde’s solo exhibition Der Baum at CHERT in Berlin, October 2010.

Erik van der Weijde studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and the University of Amsterdam before completing a residency at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in 2008. Van der Weijde’s photographic work is accompanied by many different books and zines – self-published or in collaboration with renowned editors – which in many cases guide the attention to the idea of repetition and consistency in his photographic series, allowing the research to be fully presented through the publications. For this reason, Van der Weijde founded the publishing house 4478zine. Selected solo exhibitions include Niemeyer and my Wife, CHERT, Berlin (2012); Deer Park, the forever ending story presents Erik van der Weijde, Wäscherei, Kunstverein Zürich (2011); and Siedlung, an exhibition at Foam Amsterdam. Sources: The artist

keizersgracht 114

Keizersgracht 134 Built: c. 1755

Artists

• Amalia Pica • Vincent Vulsma • Fiona Tan

Located in one of the earliest areas of city expansion, Keizersgracht 134 dates from about 1755. This canal-side property is classically arranged, with two rooms overlooking the canal, a courtyard and a hall to the rear of the building looking out on the garden. The stucco decoration and sandstone cornice (with crest above the attic hatch) are original features of the building. Nowadays, the building is home to numerous apartments.

Keizersgracht 134

Amalia Pica

1978, Neuquén, Argentina Studied at Rijksakademie, Amsterdam Lives and works in London

Unintentional Monument (A Tribute to the Nagoya TV Tower) 1-7, 2010 Replicas of homemade antennas for analogue televisions, found materials Courtesy of Stigter Van Doesburg, Amsterdam

It was possibly the poetically rich and surreal tradition of literature and storytelling in her native Argentina that led Amalia Pica to investigate the idea of communication with the wit and playfulness that she does. But let there be no mistake: as with Latin American literature in general, this seeming ease of mind belies a deep and dark tenor. Pica is interested in communication across cultural boundaries and specifically that of the colonial impact on her native continent. Growing up in Argentina in the 1980s at the tail end of years of revolution and dictatorship explains much of the artist’s interest in instruments of speech and hearing, and her sympathy for global instances of repressed expression. It is within this context that Pica’s interest in the slippage in communication – or even the sheer impossibility of it – should be considered. For The Tolerant Home, Pica is exploring the intricacies of communicating in disputed regions other than her own. In Unintentional Monument (A Tribute to the Nagoya TV Tower), Pica recreates a TV antenna – or more specifically, the type made by Afghanis in an attempt to defeat their inadequate infrastructure and successfully tune into the talent contest Afghan Star. This struggle is not only for entertainment, but, as the accompanying caption points out, to flex, however subtly, their democratic muscle and to engage in a form of communication – the public discourse – which so many of us take for granted. On closer inspection of any of the presented antennas, the ramshackle construction quickly becomes apparent, and hopes for communication dissipate when one realises that only immense silence will emanate from these beautiful fabrications.

Amalia Pica took up a residency at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in 2005 after finishing her studies at Buenos Aires’ Instituto Universitario Nacional del Arte in 2003 and at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes in 2001. Amongst other awards, Pica received the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundationʼs Grants & Commissions Program in 2011. Pica’s most recent shows include When Attitudes Became Form Became Attitudes at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit, and CCA Wattis, San Francisco; Artificial Amsterdam, De Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam; and Ruins in Reverse at the Tate Modern Project Space, London, and the Museo de Arte de Lima, Peru. Amalia Pica has participated in many group shows, including Au Loin, une ile!, Foundation Enterprise Ricard, Paris; FRAC, Bordeaux; and the Incheon Women Artistsʼ Biennale, South Korea. Further shows include the Hayward Gallery, London; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and Museo de Bellas Artes Juan Manuel Blanes, Montevideo, Uruguay. Sources: http://art.newcity.com/2013/05/07/review-amalia-picamuseum-of-contemporary-art/ JACOB PROCTOR Artforum; Amalia Pica/ 02.08.13-04.07.13 MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA http://www.bigredandshiny.com/cgi-bin/BRS. cgi?article=2013-02-25-054309573267140318 #sthash.KK01Drwm.dpuf Galerie Stigter Van Doesburg, Amsterdam The artist

Keizersgracht 134

Vincent Vulsma

1982, Zaandam, the Netherlands Studied at De Ateliers, Amsterdam Lives and works in Amsterdam and Berlin

141 E ̊ , 2010 Plexiglas display case containing one half of a hardwood shield; relief decoration, black, red and white polychromy, Brazza River region, East of Central Asmat Hinterland, Southwestern New Guinea, Papua, Indonesia, date unknown. 230 x 95 x 18cm Photo: © Roy Villevoye, 1995 Courtesy of the artist

The work 141 E ̊ takes its cue from the division of the island of New Guinea by the Dutch in 1848, roughly in equal halves along the 141st meridian. The western half of the island – now called Papua – was claimed by the Netherlands and was under Dutch colonial administration until 1963. It was subsequently incorporated into the Republic of Indonesia as an outcome of decolonisation politics, burdening the Papuan peoples with yet another oppressor. This specific incision into the political flesh of the island, as well as the broader idea of mapping as an instrument for appropriation and the reproduction of claims, has inspired Vincent Vulsma to transpose such procedures to the domain of artistic production. Here it is employed in order to reconfigure and redistribute a Papuan artefact, a type of shield that is commonly found in Dutch households with a taste for ethnography. This particular shield was made by a woodcarver in the Citak village of Amásu, located along the Dairam Hitam River in north-eastern Asmat. Dutch artist Roy Villevoye collected the shield in Amásu on a trip to Asmat in 1995. Villevoye traded it with Piet van Mensvoort, a Dutch missionary based in Merauke. It was then sent to the Missionarissen van het Heilig Hart in Tilburg, who traded such goods for the benefit of their mission in Indonesian New Guinea. The shield subsequently passed through the hands of dealers and collectors before it was acquired by Vulsma in the museum shop of the Wereldmuseum, a museum of ethnography in Rotterdam. Having steadily accumulated market value throughout its displacement among various contexts, the Papua shield was ultimately cut in two according to Vulsma’s instructions. This procedure reminds us of the impact of

our past colonial interventionist tactics and its contemporary resonance. At the same time we are confronted with the shield’s sinister appearance in yet another marketplace. In his elegant yet austere works, Vulsma investigates contextual parameters of art production, specifically the histories and economies of cultural appropriation. Vincent Vulsma graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in 2006 and was a resident at De Ateliers between 2006-’08. Recent exhibitions include: A Sign of Autumn at the Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam; the 6th edition of the Berlin Biennale; ARS NOVA E5305-B at Galerie Cinzia Friedlaender in Berlin; and Birds (an installation by Willem de Rooij) at Cubitt in London. His group shows include: Beyond Imagination at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and Etna Carrara, Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen, Germany. Sources: Ellen de Bruijn Projects, Amsterdam The artist

Keizersgracht 134

Fiona Tan

1966, Pekan Baru, Indonesia Studied at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam Lives and works in Amsterdam

Empty House, 2010 Ten photographs: Sink, Cupboard, Doll, Telephone, Clock, Fan 1, Letters, Broken Glass, Fan 2, Watergod Altar Colour, pigment print on archival paper Dimensions: 41.3 x 27.5cm Courtesy of the artist and Frith Street Gallery, London

“All really inhabited space bears the essence of the notion of home.” – Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space Fiona Tan works within the contested territory of representation: how we represent ourselves and the mechanisms that determine how we interpret the representation of others. Photography and film – made by her, by others or a combination of both – are her media; research, classification and the archive, her strategies. The photographs of the Empty House series touch on the subject of the gaze and the common feeling of impertinence when looking at the intimate world of a stranger’s home. The photographs were taken during the production of Tan’s film Cloud Island on the small islet of Inujima, off the coast of Japan. One of the issues that Fiona Tan plays with in this photo series is abandonment. Kathryn Brown, in her in-depth text on the work, dwells on this aspect when she describes photo four: “As we look down the list and across the page, we see the traces of names and numbers that have been erased. While the telephone places the house within a network of communication, the ever-shortening list implies a shrinking of the group of people with whom it is possible to communicate.” It is this transgression into irrelevance that is the fate of every home that is captured so reverently in this series.

shown at the Photographers Gallery in London (2012). In this series (2006-’12) Tan provides insight into the lives and lifestyles of different groups of people in diverse cities or remote villages through the presentation of hundreds of family-photo-style images. Fiona Tan’s work has been published worldwide and included in many internationally renowned collections, such as the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Don Rubell Family Collection, Miami; Foundation De Pont, Tilburg; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam; the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and the Tate Collection, London. Sources: Kathryn Brown, Photography, Building, and Dwelling: Fiona Tan’s Empty House, Tilburg University, the Netherlands The artist

In 2009, Fiona Tan was chosen to represent the Netherlands for the 53rd Venice Biennale in Italy. More recent solo shows include Cloud Island I, an exhibition shown this year at the Inujima ‘Art House Project’ originally produced for the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale. Further solo shows include the latest addition to the series Vox Populi,

Westermarkt 14 Built: early 17th century

Artists

â&#x20AC;˘ David Haines

This building changed dramatically in the 19th century when the façade was revised in accordance with the prevailing fashion. It was apparently of little concern that this new façade wasn’t entirely in keeping with the existing structure of the house. Willem Bilderdijk was born here on 7 September 1756. Bilderdijk went on to become a renowned Dutch historian, linguist, poet and lawyer. His most resonant impact on Dutch culture was through his work as a private tutor, teaching Dutch history in Leiden. Bilderdijk taught a group of young men who were destined to play a key role in the early 19th century Christian revival as part of a group known in Dutch as ‘Het Réveil’. Willem Bilderdijk is often recognised as the spiritual father of this movement. He was buried in the Westerkerk and is also memorialised there.

Westermarkt 14

David Haines

1969, Nottingham, UK Studied at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam Lives and works in London and Amsterdam

Two Boys Kissing, Kerkstraat, Amsterdam 2011, 2011, Pencil on paper, 12 x 18cm, Private collection No Nacis, 2011, Pencil on paper, 13 x 17cm, framed, Private collection Infinite Equation X and Y, 2009, Pencil on paper, 112 x 120cm, The Ekard Collection Nike Air Sneaker vs Colonel Sanders, 2009 , Pencil on paper, 181 x 140cm, Courtesy Zabludowicz Collection The Boys Next Door, 2001, MiniDV, 18:56 min, colour, stereo, Courtesy of the artist and Upstream Gallery, Amsterdam “David Haines is an artist who lives in and through our world of endless virtualities and turns them into images of his own, dwelling amongst them; strange desires, fantasies and daydreams. He makes drawings, watercolours and videos; he uses pencils, brushes, words, sounds, melodies, voices and actors as materials of his thought. Yet he is also an artist who undoes what we call techniques and media, making them strange and enigmatic, and in this his work is neither traditional nor is it experimental. It looks neither backward nor to the future. It invents an uncanny present even as, in a timeless way, he calls on the imagery of the contemporary world like a Renaissance artist might once have called upon an emblem book, seeking for figures, dreams, symbols. Yet unlike the Renaissance painter he does not reassemble his emblems into a narrative, but puzzles us with his finding of them, his putting them in a frame together. This is an art of actuality; it brings us news of feelings, images and the momentary relations that they make.” – Adrian Rifkin The works selected for The Tolerant Home give insight into Haines’ seemingly hermetic world. He uses both his pencils and, in his video work, his camera as obsessive tools. The video ‘The Boys Next Door’ was made before the advent of mass social networking and YouTube. Here the artist secretly filmed a group of (mostly immigrant) men meeting in an Amsterdam coffee shop over a period of three years. Weaving his own storyline, the work can be seen as both a statement of the artist’s imaginings and desires (bordering on a velveteen psychopathy) and, 12 years after the events depicted, as a time capsule of Amsterdam life. The drawings exhibited share the obsessive nature of the video work. The artist uses

the language of a gay fetish site to create his own self-portrait: his worn-out sneaker becomes a mask, which speaks as much about obfuscation as the unique identity of the dirty shoe itself. Empty bottles of amyl nitrate, the discarded remnants of the artist’s nights out in Amsterdam’s clubs, form a tender, melancholic still life, while an obscure internet meme (in which people attempt to cook a chicken with a cigarette lighter), is re-staged on the artist’s own terms. This begins a crystallising process of visual connections and language, which reveals new, heavy, insistent messages. David Haines studied at Camberwell School of Art in London and attended the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam from 1994 to 1995. His work has been exhibited in the Stedelijk Museum, De Appel and the New Art Space (NASA) in Amsterdam. In the UK he has shown at The Turner Contemporary, MIMA, Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh, the Drawing Room in London and the Bluecoat in Liverpool. In 2011 he exhibited as part of the 12th Istanbul Biennial. He has had solo exhibitions at Upstream Gallery, Amsterdam, and Luisa Strina Gallery, São Paulo. Video festivals in which his work has been shown include the World Wide Video Festival; Impakt; the Kasseler Dokumentarfilm und videofest; and The Pandaemonium Biennial at the Lux Centre, London. He was awarded the Jeanne Oosting Prize in 2012.

Westermarkt 14

Prinsengracht 281 Westerkerk Built: 1620-1631

Artists

â&#x20AC;˘ Alicia Framis

For many, the Protestant Westerkerk on the Prinsengracht symbolises old Amsterdam. The city council commissioned this monumental building, which was designed by architect Hendrick de Keyser. The church was put into use on Whit Sunday in 1631. While it wasn’t the first church to be built in Amsterdam, it was the largest Protestant church built in the city. In 1489, Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I gave Amsterdam permission to include his imperial crown in its city coat of arms. This crown still sits proudly atop the church tower – known locally as the ‘Ouwe Wester’ – which at 85 metres is the tallest tower in Amsterdam. For more information, visit the Westerkerk website: www.westerkerk.nl

Prinsengracht 281

Alicia Framis

1967, Barcelona, Spain Studied at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam Lives and works in Amsterdam and Barcelona

Room to Forget, 2012/2013 Glass, Metyrapone Courtesy of the artist and Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam

Early in her career Alicia Framis would create works that attempted to connect with her audience. In Dreamkeeper (1998), for example, she offered her company during sleeping hours. In 2013, the artist produced a work called Room to Forget, which consists of a transparent space filled with Metyrapone. This is a chemical product that has the effect of making people forget, blocking memories with an emotional content but leaving neutral memories unaffected. It is especially beneficial in the treatment of victims of conflict and soldiers returning from war. It could potentially be applied to anyone who has suffered intense trauma – with one reservation: is everyone prepared to forget? Do our personal and collective dramas not form part of what we need to live through in order to go on and remember that which must not be repeated, that which must not happen again? The Room to Forget represents a space completely contrary to the rhetoric of the monument exhibited by Western cities in the past few decades. Peter Eiseman’s Holocaust memorial in Berlin, for example, with its massive multiplication of rectangular volumes that exceed the human scale, proposes a rhetoric parallel to that of the Metyrapone: the monument is so insurmountable within the landscape of the city that it comes to perform the role of the trauma. The monument does the work of remembering for the city’s residents, eliminating their need to work through their grief, thus carrying out the role of forgetting in itself. What Alicia Framis is proposing with her room is to return citizens to a moral position in which they must choose whether to confront memory or to eliminate from their lives a part of their experience, doing so permanently

and via artificial means, with unknown and incalculable effects on the structure of their psyche. The Room to Forget is part of a beautiful labyrinth of rooms on which Framis is presently working. Alicia Framis studied Fine Arts at the Barcelona University and at Ecole de Beaux Arts in Paris. She completed her Master’s degree at the Institut d’Hautes Etudes, Paris and completed a residency at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam. Framis is a multidisciplinary artist who blends architecture, design, fashion and performance. Her work is project-based and focuses on different aspects of human existence within contemporary urban society. Framis often starts out from actual social dilemmas to develop fictional settings. Collaborating with artists from other disciplines she then develops platforms for interaction. Recent solo exhibitions include the Instituto Cervates, Pekin; the CIAXA Forum, Barcelona; the Santa Monica Art Center, Barcelona; and the Museum of Design, Zurich. Alicia Framis has been awarded the 2000 Prix Lleida Contemporary Art (Spain) and the 1997 Prix de Rome (the Netherlands).

Herengracht 284 Huis van Brienen Built: 1728-1733

Artists

• David Jablonowski • Germaine Kruip • Ina van Zyl

The interior of this unique Amsterdam canal-side property is ranked as one of the 100 most significant in the country. It is almost as if time has stood still inside the house. The last actual resident, AngĂŠlique van Brienen, only used the property at Christmastime. In 1933, her son ensured the future of the house by donating it to the Hendrick de Keyser Foundation â&#x20AC;&#x201C; an organisation dedicated to preserving buildings of architectural or historical value in the Netherlands, named after the leading sculptor and master builder of the 17th century. The foundation acquires buildings and restores them to their former glory before letting them out. For more information, visit the Hendrick de Keyser Foundation website: www.hendrickdekeyser.nl

Herengracht 284

David Jablonowski

1982, Bochum, Germany Studied at De Ateliers, Amsterdam Lives and works in Amsterdam

The Golden Rules of Flaming, 2011-2013 Mixed media installation, origin: Unknown, Revision 1: Dec 2, 1987 by Joe Talmadge Courtesy of the artist, Galerie Fons Welters & Lüttgenmeijer Berlin

“Flaming, also known as bashing, is hostile and insulting interaction between internet users, often involving the use of profanity.” – Wikipedia, 2013 David Jablonowski: “In the time I have been posting to the net, I have encountered flame wars of epic proportions (Brahms Gang vs. Tim Maroney), and flame wars of a more modest nature (MIT vs. CIT). Flaming has evolved into a highly stylised art form, complete with unwritten rules and guidelines. Here, I have attempted to document the Art of Flaming: 1. Make things up about your opponent: it’s important to make your lies sound true. Preface your argument with the word ‘clearly’. 2. Be an armchair psychologist: You’re a smart person. You’ve heard of Freud. Clearly, you’re qualified to psychoanalyse your opponent. 3. Cross-post your flames: everyone on the net is just waiting for the next literary masterpiece to leave your terminal. 4. Conspiracies abound: if everyone’s against you, the reason can’t possibly be that you’re a fuckhead. There’s obviously a conspiracy against you, and you will be doing the entire net a favour by exposing it. 5. Lawsuit threats: this is the reverse of Rule #4. Threatening a lawsuit is always considered good form. 6. Force them to document their claims: even if Harry Hoinkus states outright that he likes tomato sauce on his pasta, if Newsweek hasn’t written an article on it, then Harry’s obviously lying. 7. Use foreign phrases: French is good, but Latin is the lingua franca of flaming. 8. Tell ’em how smart you are: why use intelligent arguments to convince them you’re smart when all you have to do is tell them?

9. Accuse your opponent of censorship. It is your right as an (American) citizen to post whatever the hell you want to the net. 10. Doubt their existence: you’ve never actually seen your opponent, have you? And since you’re the centre of the universe, you should have seen them by now, shouldn’t you? Therefore, THEY DON’T EXIST! This is the beauty of flamers’ logic. 11. Lie, cheat, steal, leave the toilet seat up. 12. When in doubt, insult: if you forget the other 11 rules, remember this one. At some point during your wonderful career as a flamer you will undoubtedly end up in a flame war with someone who is better than you. This person will expose your lies, tear apart your arguments, and make you look generally like a bozo. At this point, there’s only one thing to do: insult the dirtbag!!! ‘Oh yeah? Well, your mother does strange things with vegetables.’” David Jablonowski studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in Germany, De Ateliers in Amsterdam and the ISCP in New York. Jablonowski is recognised as an important voice in dealing with contemporary digital culture and has exhibited extensively since 2007. His exhibition Prosumer recently opened up at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag as part of De Ateliers’ ‘Debuut Serie’. Source: The artist

Herengracht 284

Germaine Kruip

1970, Castricum, the Netherlands Studied at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam Lives and works in Amsterdam and Brussels

Aesthetics as a way of survival, 2013 Mixed media Installation Courtesy of the artist and The Approach Gallery, London

Aesthetics as a way of survival is an exploration of the dichotomy between the glorification and rejection of cultural elements in modern-day society. Although we are often instantly prepared to accept financial or medical expertise as socially relevant, cultural manifestations are still viewed as marginal. That’s why culture has taken one of the biggest hits in the financial cutbacks of recent years. One salient point history teaches us is that it is in fact the cultural aspects of a society – art and sculpture, architecture and music – that are ultimately preserved and protected, and that are viewed by subsequent generations as characteristic of a period. While travelling in Australia, Germaine Kruip filmed the bewitching behaviour exhibited by a bowerbird. Instead of using his handsome feathers or melodious song to attract a mate, this male bird decorates his nest (bower). The bowerbird arranges twigs and decorates the small construction with colourful designs made up of flowers, berries, leaves and other materials he finds in the human habitat. The theatrical courtship ritual (a process in which the bowerbird skilfully remains out of the limelight) symbolises his expertise and originality. Considered use of colour, composition, symmetry, shape and a strong sense of individuality all help to win a mate. The project saw Germaine Kruip work together with local ornithologists Cliff and Dawn Frith, biologists with 30 years of experience in researching these fascinating birds. Kruip was intrigued by the idea that aesthetics and representation in the natural world are manifested as a way of survival and by the designs this gives rise to. This notion opens up new opportunities and ways of appreciating art. The necessity of art is often measured according to instantly quantifiable

degrees of social and practical value. However, the bowerbird’s completely natural behaviour illustrates that aesthetic quality is required in order to survive. The recorded material has been edited chronologically, so that the film turns on and off. Audio serves as a constant element in the film, also playing when the screen is black. Recurrent themes in Germaine Kruip’s work include light, the passage and perception of time, nature versus culture, her long-standing fascination with De Stijl movement and the explicit use of the characteristics of architectural spaces. Kruip’s work has recently been exhibited at: Parra & Romero, Madrid; List Visual Arts Center at MIT, Boston; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Art Basel 41, Basel; The Approach, London; Museum De Paviljoens, Almere; Centro Cultural Montehermoso, Vitoria-Gasteiz; Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf; the David Roberts Art Foundation, London; the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; The Drawing Center, New York; and the MARZ-Galeria, Lisbon, among others.

Herengracht 284 Ina van Zyl

1971, Ceres, South Africa Studied at De Ateliers, Amsterdam Lives and works in Amsterdam

Schoot 2012, oil on linen, 60 x 60cm,Collection De Heus-Zomer Dick by Dawn 2009, oil on canvas, 60 x 50cm, Private collection Siblings 2011, oil on linen, 50 x 100cm, Private Collection Instinct 2011, oil on linen, 60 x 100cm, Private Collection Tunnel 2009, oil on linen, 24 x 30cm, Private collection Retour Just as an elephant seal undergoes annual moulting, I am subjected to a self-portrait once a year. And each year I paint myself from a different perspective: frontally, in profile, from behind, with closed eyes, in a reclining position. By doing this I register my manner of painting from one year to the next, and thus record the lapsing of my time.” – Ina van Zyl Much like the haunting memories of dreams, remembered shortly after having woken but already slipping away, Ina van Zyl’s fragmented and deeply hued paintings give us an insight into the untapped emotional world lurking underneath our consciousness. Unhindered by social conventions or taboos, as dreams can be, so are the subjects Van Zyl touches upon. Often born out of insignificant incidents in her life, she broods and contemplates for a long time before she takes up the subject. At that point Ina van Zyl sees these living and lifeless things she paints as situated “beyond any context”; they are portrayed in isolation and in an objective way. Her shapes are heavy, clear and recognisable, sometimes geometric. The entire surface of the canvas is saturated, full of paint. Any sense of action is absent, and yet every painting, to her, is an implosion of turbulence – desires and memories, sorrow and drunkenness. Every painted object withdraws into itself. As Van Zyl describes it: “Each thing has just enough legroom to exist. Only the essentials remain: just enough food and water, a cup to drink from.” Ina van Zyl has lived and worked in Amsterdam since coming to the Netherlands in the mid-1990s. She studied at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa and De Ateliers in Amsterdam. Van Zyl has won numerous awards, including the Koninklijke Subsidie voor Vrije Schilderkunst & Publieksprijs 1998, and the Wim Izaksprijs in 2009. Her solo exhibitions include: Schaamstukken / Shame

2011, oil on linen, 50 x 60cm, Private collection Untitled 2013, oil on linen, 70 x 50cm Die Mond 2012, oil on linen, 50 x 90cm The Road 2010, oil on linen, 30 x 30cm Pramberg 2012, oil on linen, 60 x 80cm Baken 2011, oil on linen, 50 x 50cm Lul 2010, oil on linen, 60 x 40cm Sy-val 2012, oil in linen, 75 x 60cm Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Onrust, Amsterdam

Pieces at the Gemeentemuseum in Den Haag; Ina van Zyl La painter à fleur de peau, Institut Néerlandais in Paris; Ina van Zyl, Dordrechts Museum; and Ina van Zyl Drawing, The Planet Contemporary Art Site in Cape Town. Besides being a well-recognised painter, Ina van Zyl is also a prolific comic artist.

Herengracht 284

Prinsengracht 465-K Houseboat Built: 1917

Artists

• Atelier Van Lieshout/ Joep van Lieshout • León & Cociña

Houseboats began taking their place as a permanent part of the cityscape in the 1950s, a period of intense housing shortages. Somewhere in the region of 2,400 Amsterdam households now live aboard houseboats â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 750 of which are located within the historical Canal Ring. In its previous life, Prinsengracht 465-K was an inland barge, and little has actually changed between then and its current incarnation as a houseboat. At 24 metres long, this houseboat is the same size as an average Amsterdam apartment.

Prinsengracht 465-K

Atelier Van Lieshout / Joep van Lieshout 1963, Ravenstein, the Netherlands Studied at De Ateliers, Amsterdam Lives and works in Rotterdam

Atelier van Lieshout is a workshop situated in a warehouse in the harbour of Rotterdam. The building, Katoenveem,

Prinsengracht 465-K

Cristóbal León

1980, Santiago, Chile Studied at De Ateliers, Amsterdam Lives and works in Santiago, Chile

LUIS By Joaquín Cociña, Cristóbal León & Niles Atallah, 2008 Duration: 4 min Courtesy of Upstream Gallery, Amsterdam

Joaquín Cociña

1980, Concepción, Chile Lives and works in Santiago, Chile

LUCIA By Joaquín Cociña, Cristóbal León & Niles Atallah, 2007 Duration: 3:50 min Courtesy of Upstream Gallery, Amsterdam

Lucia, Luis & el Lobo is a video installation comprised of two short animated videos. Shot respectively in 2007 and 2008, the works are the result of the collaboration between Chilean artists Cristobal León and Joaquin Cociña. The diptych deals in a variety of ways with the dual facets of a classic human love affair – concern and gossip; anger and fear; judgement; destruction and love – all played out through the male / female dichotomy. The two videos are the two sides of this love story, expressed in passing, inconclusive thoughts. Animated in a unique combination of stage-set film and drawing techniques, the imagery underlines the trepidations of love, the attempts to tolerate, accept and cherish the other party, and the inability to communicate any of this. In many projects León and Cociña work together with the filmmaker Niles Atallah (California, 1978), sharing equal roles in the production and post-production of their film animations. All three act as the directors, screenwriters, cartoonists, photographers and editors. By combining drawing, sculpture and moving image techniques, they have created a body of artworks that, with their own language, contribute to cinematic expression and thinking. León & Cociña have exhibited extensively in Europe, the Americas and China, and recently showed at the 55th Venice Biennale as part of the Latin Pavilion. They have received numerous awards, amongst them the ‘Grand Prix’ and ‘Audience Award’ at the Festival Court-Bouillon in France (2010). Cristobal León was born in Chile in 1980.

He finished his bachelor’s degree in design at the Universidad Católica de Chile, obtained a grant from the DAAD in 2007 and left for Berlin for a one-year programme at the UdK in 2009. In 2011, Leon became a participating artist at De Ateliers, Amsterdam. Joaquín Cociña was also born in Chile in the same year. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in fine arts at the Universidad Católica de Chile. He has participated in various exhibitions in Chile and beyond and also worked as a writer, illustrator and a set designer for the theatre.

Prinsengracht 465-K

Looiersgracht 60 Built: 19th century

Artists • • • • •

William Monk Charlotte Dumas Nathaniel Mellors Daya Cahen Gert Jan Kocken

The Die Port van Cleve beer bottling plant was originally housed at Looiersgracht 58-62. Architectural highlights of this piece of industrial heritage include the huge arched doorway (used by the horses and carts loaded up with beer), the historical lift installation and the steel basement floor, which formed part of a cooling system that used ice blocks taken from the Zuiderzee to cool the beer. In 1894, it became home to J.F, Schwendemannâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cardboard and advertising cards factory. Following extensive restoration and refurbishment, number 60 is now home to a new project space for art, design and architecture. For more information, visit: www.looiersgracht60.org

Looiersgracht 60

William Monk

1977, London, UK Studied at De Ateliers, Amsterdam Lives and works in London

How to Stop Whining and Start Living, 2005 Watercolour on paper 187 x 212cm (203 x 228cm) Loan: ING Collectie Nederland

To fold his ideas deeply within his work is one of the true aims of British painter William Monk. In that respect, his works have become more and more abstract over the years. How to Stop Whining and Start Living (2005) can therefore be seen as a rare moment in which Monk is explicit, since however elusive the information may be, it still appears. The work can be viewed as an examination of political stance, based on four disparate images. In our contemporary society, such an amalgamation is not unusual, for we are fed a continuous stream of imagery and are used to navigating our way through such images and their obtuse relationships. The title of the work is taken from an Australian pamphlet on anarchism, composed by a mysterious collective called The Question Mark, and which carries the elusive subtitle How to make Trouble and Influence People. The anarchistic reference of its title is directly juxtaposed by the harmonious group of 19th-century settlers holding hands around a sequoia tree, presumably celebrating the new world they have recently helped to create (or conquer at the expense of native inhabitants). The field of oil drills in the background could be read as a direct threat to this celebration, both from an ecological and a geo-political point of view. Because the introduction of the combustion engine has created an insatiable need for oil, this commodity has been the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s prime, if not sole, antagonist in world politics. The fourth and final image, or set of images, is that of a physical world atlas. Monk chose to use the index of the atlas rather than the maps, using them as backdrop to the worldview he has painted.

William Monk studied fine art at Kingston University and was a resident at De Ateliers in Amsterdam (2004-â&#x20AC;&#x2122;06). He received the Jerwood Contemporary Painting Prize in 2009 and the Koninklijke prijs voor Vrije Schilderkunst in 2005. He has exhibited at the Fries Museum, Leeuwarden; Jerwood Space, London; the Gemeentemuseum, The Hague; and the Van Gogh Museum and the Franken

Looiersgracht 60

Charlotte Dumas

1977, Vlaardingen, the Netherlands Studied at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam Lives and works in New York and Amsterdam

Anima, 2012 Film and photos Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Paul Andriesse

Last year Charlotte Dumas photographed a series of horses in their stables. The grace and vulnerability of the animals is captured in reduced light and acute timing. Their different resting poses speak of their individuality, and the photos capture each horse in all his or her detail, indiscriminate of beauty or blemish. It turns out that the horses belong to the 3rd Infantry Regiment, and are based at the Arlington National Cemetery, in Washington, in the United States. These are funeral horses, they draw the carriages of deceased military men, and others who served the United States, to their final resting ground. Later in 2012, Dumas produced a video work based on film footage she shot while photographing the horses. It is in the video work, shown here, that the uncanny yet precious moment of falling asleep is truly captured. It is here that we can see that rare moment when a being transgresses into a realm of which we know nothing, a state so reminiscent of death. Beyond their individual intrinsic quality, the photographs and the video work collectively capture an even more loaded realm; they show the dichotomy between the non-judgemental position of animals and the convolutions and tainted values embedded in both human warfare and politics alike. In 2002, Charlotte Dumas completed her first major project entitled Four Horses, in which she photographed four working police horses in Rotterdam. This project served to inspire her next series of photographs in 2004, Day is Done, in which she photographed horses from the Carabinieri a cavallo in Rome. Dumas returned to the

subject of horses once again in 2006, photographing racehorses in Palermo. In 2005, Dumas shifted her focus to wolves, travelling to Norway and Sweden to create portraits of the majestic canines in the series Reverie. Despite her close physical proximity to the wolves, in her photographs Dumas reveals the vast distance between her world and theirs, portraying the wolf as an enigmatic, imperceptible being. For the projects, Heart-Shaped Hole (2008) and Heart of a Dog (2009), Dumas photographed stray dogs in Palermo and New York City. In 2011, Dumas set out to photograph 15 of the remaining search and rescue dogs deployed by FEMA to the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, DC. Ten years after the terrorist attacks Dumas located the dogs and photographed them in their homes, where they still live with their handlers across the United States. The resulting series was called â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Retrievedâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. Charlotte Dumas is currently working on a project featuring the wild horses of Nevada that roam the inhabited areas of the desert. Oodee publishers in London will publish a book of this work in the autumn. Sources Galerie Paul Andriesse, the artist

Looiersgracht 60

Nathaniel Mellors

1974, Doncaster, UK Studied at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam Lives and works in Amsterdam and London

The Saprophage, 2012 Film Duration: 10:08 min Courtesy of the artist and Stigter Van Doesburg, Amsterdam

“I […] see Pasolini as a kind of visionary in his reading of Western European society; he predicted a lot of things that we are dealing with in the Western economy and Western society now, following the collapse of neo-liberalism and the banks, he was talking about these things – what happens if capitalism goes unregulated?” – Nathaniel Mellors A saprophage, or detrivore, is the generic name for organisms that feed on decaying and decomposed natural matter, such as earthworms. Distinct from organisms like fungi, the saprophage has the ability to absorb and digest actual food. British artist Nathaniel Mellors is very much inspired by the Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-’75). Mellors claims he was working with a simple idea from Pasolini – that of the saint bringing spirituality to America – for this work. It was first shown three weeks before the heralded ‘end of the world’ on 21 December 2012. It is a kind of post-apocalypse cut-and-paste, shot entirely on iPhones in collaboration with Gwendoline Christie, Johnny Vivash and David Birkin in Los Angeles, London and Greece. The video revolves around the character of The Saprophage (played by David Birkin) – a preacher based on Saint Paul in Pasolini’s unfinished film – who wishes to bring spiritual values to America and who feeds on decomposing matter. As the action in Mellors’ tribute to the Italian director shifts seamlessly from Saint Paul’s Bay in Lindos on the island of Rhodes, to Los Angeles, to a backyard in East London, the characters played by Christie (Shemihaza the Nephilim) and Vivash (Terry) bemoan the passing of a ‘cultural apocalypse’, of

which they suppose they might be the only survivors. Nathaniel Mellors’ work combines experimentation in different fields of artistic research, including film, video, music, sculptures, performance and writing. He was included in ILLUMInations, the 54th Venice Biennale, Venice; the British Art Show 7, Hayward Gallery, London & UK tour (2010); Altermodern, Tate Triennial, Tate Britain, London (2009); and Art Now, Tate Britain, London (2008). In 2002, Mellors co-founded Junior Aspirin Records, a not-for-profit record label releasing music by artists in limited editions. Mellors plays bass in the art rock group Skill 7 Stamina 12 with Dan Fox, Ashley Marlowe and Maaike Schoorel, and has also released music with Toilet, God in Hackney, Mysterius Horse and under his own name. Sources Frieze / Mike Watson

Looiersgracht 60

Daya Cahen

1969, Amsterdam, the Netherlands Lives and works in Amsterdam

Nashi (De Onzen), 2008 HD video Duration: 26 min

On the 11th of September of this year, Russian president Vladimir Putin published an article in the New York Times as an op-ed contributor. He felt the need to circumvent President Barack Obama and all diplomatic decorum in order to address the American people directly on the subject of Syria. Apart from being an unprecedented action in terms of the intricate dance that world leaders make to advance their cause, this opinion piece contained a remarkable conclusion: “…we must not forget that God created us equal.” This observation is in stark contrast to the anti-homosexuality laws that Putin had signed into effect just a month previous, as well as his general view of the supremacy of white native Russians. Dutch artist Daya Cahen was allowed to film inside a summer training camp held by Nashi, Putin’s radical youth brigade, who’re known for using violence against his opponents. It is a camp from which you can easily get thrown out for using alcohol or drugs, while good education and leadership skills are highly prized, along with traditional values, paramilitary discipline, unity towards the leader and the common goal of instilling Russia as the world’s greatest empire. In her video work Nashi, Cahen splits the screen to visually multiply the already looming impression of impending fascism, revealing how a seemingly innocent summer camp can become an important tool for indoctrination and radicalisation. Her film provides insight into the forge of the system’s leaders and the system itself. Biography:

Daya Cahen was born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where she studied photography at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie (2002-2006). She produces photographs, video and audio installations and, since recently, also small paintings. The main themes of her work are propaganda, indoctrination and the manipulation of mass media. Cahen explores the iconography and symbolism of power and politics, as well as the roles of the crowd and the individual. She exposes links between politics and everyday individual lives, using archival and contemporary footage, often blurring the boundary between fact and fiction. Her work has been shown in various exhibitions in the Netherlands and abroad, including the Nederlands Fotomuseum (Rotterdam); Moscow Museum of Modern Art; MKgalerie (Rotterdam); National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts; and Kunstmuseum Bonn. She has participated in various international film festivals and film screenings, including at de Appel arts centre (Amsterdam); WIELS Contemporary Art Centre (Brussels); Platform Garanti (Istanbul); International Short Film Festival Oberhausen; International Film Festival Rotterdam; and Rencontres Internationales Paris/ Berlin/Madrid. She was also nominated for a Golden Bear (short film) at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2007.

Looiersgracht 60

Gert Jan Kocken

1971, Ravenstein, the Netherlands Studied at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam Lives and works in Amsterdam

DEPICTIONS OF AMSTERDAM 1940-1945, 2010 C-print 296 x 392 x 27.5cm On loan from the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, courtesy of the artist Photo: Stedelijk Museum

Gert Jan Kocken’s work is an ongoing research into the remembrance and visual representation of pivotal episodes in world history. When these episodes are committed to our collective memory, they form intricate constellations of facts, interpretations, opinions and visual impressions. This process of memorisation is influenced by official chronicles and mass media, which offer clear-cut accounts of inherently ambiguous events. Kocken critically engages with these accounts, and offers multiple viewpoints that encourage the contemplation of alternative readings and counterfactual histories. Central in his engagements with these accounts is the turning point in the historical episode, the moment in which history took a radical turn, or at least had the potential to take a radical turn. DEPICTIONS OF AMSTERDAM 1940-1945 comprises 50 maps of the city made and used by the Germans, the Dutch resistance and the Allied Forces, collectively depicting the atrocities carried out in the city during the occupation. Bianca Stigter writes about the work: “During the Second World War, quite a lot of maps were made or re-worked that provided other than the usual information […] The most notorious example is the stippenkaart, the ‘dot map’. In 1941, the Municipal Bureau of Statistics put dots on the map of Amsterdam, with each dot representing ten Jews. On another map, zealous public servants indicated the distribution of Jews per neighbourhood by colour. The redder the district, the more Jews living there – until 1943, by which time Jews had vanished from the streets.”

Straver Fonds (NL) in 2011. His most recent exhibition is titled The Glorious Rise and Fall… at KW14 in ’s-Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands. The name is indicative of the long list of exhibitions that characterises Kocken’s thinking and his field of inquisition. Amongst the most recent are: Identity, Samlung Hoffman, Berlin; How much Fascism, Gallery Nova, Zagreb; Extra City, Antwerp; Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2012; Positions, Stedelijk Museum, Schiedam (2010); and Monumentalism, Municipal Acquisitions, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2010). His work is included in the collection of Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, Huis Marseille Amsterdam and Sammlung Hoffmann in Berlin, among others. Kocken received the 2002 Encouragement Award Amsterdam fund for the arts, THE OFFICE invited him for the series The world according to…, in which an artist is invited to uncover the research processes that precede his actual artistic work. The World According to Gert Jan Kocken was published by argobooks, Berlin, and released in 2012. Sources: Bianca Stigter, DEPICTIONS OF AMSTERDAM 1940-1945, 2010 Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam The artist

Gert Jan Kocken attended the Rijksakademie residency programme (2011-’12). He received a fellowship from Teva Europe in 2012, as well as the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds –

Keizersgracht 387 De Vergulde Ster Built: 1668

Artists

• Amie Dicke • Carlos Amorales

Commissioned by Coenraad Segers and Catharina van Heyst, this building was completed in 1668. The property was home to a succession of residents in the following years and still exudes the character of the various periods. Behind the 17th-century faĂ§ade, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll find an exquisite 19th-century interior. In 1955, Mrs. Worst-Kalff bequeathed the house to the Hendrik de Keyser Foundation in her will. For more information, visit the Hendrick de Keyser Foundation website: www.hendrickdekeyser.nl

Keizersgracht 387

Amie Dicke

1978, Rotterdam, the Netherlands Lives and works in Amsterdam

Butterflies IV, 2006 (Corrected Artwork I) 2011, courtesy of the artist Butterflies III, 2006 (Corrected Artwork II) 2012, private collection Butterflies II, 2006 (Corrected Artwork III) 2013, courtesy of the artist The Background Men, 2012, on loan from Gemeentemuseum Den Haag The Ring and the Finger, 2012, private collection, Amsterdam X-173- Key, 2013, courtesy of the artist Courtesy of Stigter Van Doesburg, Amsterdam and Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles

There is an ideal world out there that can be seen as the representation of our combined desires. It is fed by our need for improvement and progress, our fear of death and our fetish for beauty and power and ego. This world, in constant flux to keep up with our fickle collective mind, reveals itself best in fashion magazines and lifestyle glossies. It is not only the world of luxury and youth and Botox beauty, but also the world of yoga and healthfood diets – and even contemporary religion and business. It is a world that has become the codex to our happiness.

Since 2000, Amie Dicke’s work has been heavily sought after by curators and museum directors. This culminated recently in a comprehensive show titled Nabeeld (Afterimage) at the GEM Museum of Contemporary Art in The Hague (2012).

It’s a catch-22. For as much as this world is created by us, it becomes an autonomous benchmark to which we then aspire, and by which, either by our own condemnation or that of others, we suffer no end in our failure to live up to its standards.

Amie Dicke also has an ongoing collaboration with Foundation Castrum Peregrini.

Amie Dicke works to uncover the myths and trepidations of this illusory world. Taking images from magazines, she penetrates their beauty with nails and sharp objects. She burns and contorts these images and also uses cut-away techniques to remove eyes and with them their ‘siren-esque’ gaze – actions not entirely unlike those of a voodoo practitioner. In the works for this exhibition, Dicke explores these familiar themes, but has gone further to address the illusions embedded in the memory of both place and image. Where ‘The Background Men’ – as well as the other photographic works – deals with this theme in Dicke’s familiar act of erasure, in the large-scale works such as ‘Butterflies VI, 2006 (Corrected Artwork I) 2011’, she uses Bic biro ink to conceal imagery. Dicke blows the ink from its plastic tubes on to the surface with her own breath, using several thousand pens to complete an artwork.

Other solo and group shows include Zabludowicz Collection, London (2011); Hiromi Yoshii Gallery, Tokyo (2010); Museum of Old and New Art, Tasmania (2010); Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Arnhem (2009); and Tate Modern, London (2004).

Keizersgracht 387

Carlos Amorales

1970, Mexico City, Mexico Studied at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam Lives and works in Mexico City

Amsterdam, 2013 Digital film Black and white, with sound Duration: 21 min Collection of Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam

‘Amsterdam’ is a fictional film created from a screenplay written in collaboration with Argentinian author Reinaldo Laddaga. It researched and used the non-semantic languages that he has explored in previous works. The obstruction of understandable language allowed for the actors and the director to improvise when shooting the scenes. As spoken language and text became more and more abstract through the filming process, the actors’ physical expressions became the predominant form of communication. Under this premise, the act of filmmaking allows you to experience a “state of exception” comparable to a moment of social anarchy.

performances at the Tate Modern, London (2003); SF MOMA, San Francisco (2003); and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2001). Solo exhibitions include: Germinal, Museo Tamayo, Mexico; Supprimer, modifier et preserver, Mac / Val, Val-De-Marne (2011); Remix, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome (2010); Discarded Spider, Cincinnati Art Center and Orange County Museum (2008-9); and Four Animations, Five Drawings and a Plague, Philadelphia Art Museum (2008). Group shows include biennials such as Manifesta 09, Genk (2012); Performa, New York (2007); and the Venice Biennial (2003).

Carlos Amorales studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, and the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten (199697) before completing a fellowship at SARF (Smithsonian Artists Research Fellowship), in Washington DC (2011), and a Production Residency at Mac / Val, Val-De-Marne in France in 2012. Since 2008, he has been an adviser to the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam, and from 2008-’11, he was a member of the National System of Art Creators in Mexico City. From 1996 to 2003, Carlos Amorales worked on a series of performance projects related to the wrestling world and the use of fictional identities. In 2003, Amorales established a studio in Mexico City that has evolved into a collaboration with graphic designers, writers, a psychoanalyst and musicians. Consequently, his work developed into researching and making film animations, storytelling and installation. In parallel, from 2003 to 2009 he realised the project Nuevos Ricos, a record label that published pop music and organised concerts in different countries. Since 2010 his interests have focused on abstraction, language and typography. He has presented

Herengracht 366-368 De Cromhouthuizen/ Bijbels Musuem Built: 1662

Artists

â&#x20AC;˘ Viviane Sassen

Commissioned by Jacob Cromhout and designed by architect Philips Vingboons, these houses were completed in 1662. The Cromhout family lived in the houses until well into the 18th century. The Dutch Bible Society acquired number 366 in 1887, adding the neighbouring number 368 in 1904. After being located at numerous locations since the 19th century, the Biblical Museum moved into the Cromhouthuizen in 1975. For more information, visit the websites www.cromhouthuizen.nl and www.bijbelsmuseum.nl

Herengracht 366-368

Viviane Sassen

1972, Amsterdam, the Netherlands Studied at De Ateliers, Amsterdam Lives and works in Amsterdam

Photographs: Arusha, 65 x 80cm Bokkie, 65 x 80cm Darkuman Junction, 65 x 80cm Entebbe, 65 x 80cm Francisca, 65 x 80cm Lilac, 80 x 100 cm Traveller, 80 x 100cm CMYK, 100 x 125cm Victoria, 100 x 125cm “In the tropics one must before everything keep calm.” ― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness In a successful amalgamation of her social and visual concerns, Viviane Sassen has built up a very compelling collection of images and a unique idiom. Sassen’s practice of alternating between the highly composed and the purely coincidental adds to the surreal aura that this amalgamation creates. Her early childhood experiences in Kenya have inspired her return to Africa as a photographer, and she uses the continent as her main source of inspiration. In each of her works, shadow typically features strongly. Of shadow, Sassen says: “The play of shadows allows for multiple interpretations. You can read them at different levels. You should always be able to judge a photograph on different grounds – on political, social, emotional, but also personal grounds.” For The Tolerant Home exhibition, a selection was made from two different groups of images, paying tribute to the female subject in Sassen’s Africa. In each of the portraits, her approach, in which she morphs notions of sculpture with graphics and social issues, reveal Sassen’s quest to delve into the core of Africa, into its stillness and its impenetrability. It is especially in the female portraits that this quest becomes most tangible, most reverent, for the female carries this quest by definition; she is the mystery and the subject of the male gaze and cause of his confusion. Viviane Sassen was born in Amsterdam, where she still lives. Part of her youth was spent in Africa, which explains her deep fascination for the visual and social culture of the continent. She studied fashion at ArtEZ Institute of the Arts in Arnhem and art at the HKU in Utrecht, before taking up a residency at De Ateliers in 1996-’97. Sassen has won the International

Mimosa, 110 x 125cm Menthe, 120 x 150cm Rudebo, 120 x 150cm Spring of the Nile, 120 x 150cm All courtesy of the artist

Centre for Photography’s Infinity Award (2011) and the prestigious Prix de Rome (2007). Her many exhibitions include New Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2011) and the exhibition In and Out of Fashion at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam (2012). This show yielded a comprehensive catalogue of the same title. Her work is in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris; Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland; and the Centre National des Art Plastiques, Paris. Her publications include Flamboya (Contrasto, Rome, 2007); Parasomnia (Prestel, Munich, 2011); Die Son Sien Alles (Libraryman, Sweden, 2012); and Roxane (Oodee, London, 2012). Sassen is also a prolific fashion photographer and works on commissions for fashion and fashion-related brands such as Missoni, Diesel and Stella McCartney, as well as creating high-end editorials for publications including Dazed & Confused and Wallpaper.

Herengracht 366-368

Herengracht 401 Castrum Peregrini Built pre-1677, altered in 1724 &1745 en 1919

Artists

• Ahmet Öğüt

This impressive corner house dates back to the 17th century and has been altered numerous times over the years. Castrum Peregrini was used as a hiding place during World War II and nowadays it is a cultural centre bursting with history, books and art. The themes of freedom, friendship and culture form the bridge that connects its various generations and disciplines. Founders of the cultural centre GisĂ¨le van Waterschoot van der Gracht and Wolfgang Frommel took up the role of educators, protectors and friends. They are key to the physical and spiritual survival of the group and any further developments at Castrum Peregrini. For more information, visit the Castrum Peregrini website: www.castrumperegrini.org

Herengracht 401

Ahmet Öğüt

1981, Diyarbakir, Turkey Studied at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam Lives and works in Amsterdam and Berlin

Between Waiting and Hiding, 2013 Site-specific banner 215 x 60cm Courtesy of the artist

He works with a broad range of media including video, photography, installation, drawing and printed media. In 2009, he represented Turkey in the Pavilion of Turkey at the 53rd International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennial. Öğüt received his BA from the Fine Arts Faculty of Hacettepe University in 2003, and his MFA from the Art and Design Faculty of Yildiz Technical University in 2006. Öğüt was a guest artist at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam in 2007-’08.

Usually Öğüt’s interventions are more profound than this little prank, but the sweet irony and fun that is embedded in his work is often used to help the medicine go down. For The Tolerant Home, Ahmet Öğüt has created an intervention at the Foundation Castrum Peregrini. This location was a WWII hiding place on the Herengracht in Amsterdam, and for more than six decades since, the community of artists and scholars that emerged from the underground circle that lived and worked there has edited a literary review and organised high-quality, small-scale cultural events. In his installation, which is partly visible on the façade and partly located on the ground floor of the foundation, Öğüt draws a parallel between the young people hiding at the house they named Castrum Peregrini and the treatment of contemporary asylum seekers in the Netherlands in view of the radical shift in attitude which has emerged both in official proceedings and in popular viewpoint in the last decade. Ahmet Öğüt is a conceptual artist living and working in Amsterdam and Berlin.

Keizersgracht 584 Built: 1687

Artists

â&#x20AC;˘ Marlene Dumas

Keizersgracht 584 and 586 are two of four typical Amsterdam canal-side properties built in 1687. Much of the interior of the house has remained in its original state. The current resident of the house is a fervent supporter of the Amsterdam cultural scene and has been awarded a royal honour this year. The private Nihon no Hanga museum is also located in the building, featuring an impressive collection of nearly 2,000 Japanese prints (the name of the museum is Japanese for â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Japanese printsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;). The museum provides an extensive overview of 20th-century Japanese printing with a particular focus on the pre-war period. For more information, visit the museum website: www.nihon-no-hanga.nl

Keizersgracht 584

Marlene Dumas

1953, Cape Town, South Africa Studied at Ateliers ’63 Lives and works in Amsterdam

Selected works from the series M D-light, 1999 Love 2013 Oil on canvas 100 x 56cm Courtesy of the artist Turkish Girl 1999 Oil on canvas

100 x 56cm Private collection M-D-light It’s the pleasures of painting the poses of pleasure the privilege of being looked at the play of seduction the light of the night it’s nothing personal it’s plain delight

“Someone once remarked that I could not be a South African artist and a Dutch artist, that I could not have it both ways. I don’t want it both ways. I want it more ways.” – Marlene Dumas

Her sparring partners for the 1996 exhibition Distemper: Dissonant Themes in the Art of the 1990s at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC included Mike Kelley, Thomas Schütte, Robert Gober and Rachel Whiteread.

Marlene Dumas grew up in Jacobsdal, a small farming town in the Free State province of South Africa. She began studying at the University of Cape Town in 1972 and graduated with a BA in Fine Arts. She was awarded a two-year scholarship and set her sights on Europe, and more specifically the Netherlands, because of the language similarity. Alongside visual art, language is a significant means of expression for Dumas.

The artist’s oeuvre now spans a period of more than 30 years. In 2001, Jonas Storsve of the Centre Pompidou in Paris staged the first retrospective of her works on paper, which subsequently travelled to the New Museum in New York and Museum De Pont in Tilburg. Between 2007 and 2009, a varying composition of works drawn from her complete oeuvre toured three continents. Presented in South Africa as Intimate Relations, it was the first large exhibition of her work displayed on her native soil.

In the Netherlands, she worked at Ateliers ’63 in Haarlem from 1976 to 1978. Twenty years later she returned to take up a permanent position at De Ateliers art school, now based in Amsterdam. Marlene Dumas has also taught at various other Dutch art institutes. Her work was exhibited for the first time in 1978, at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Entitled Atelier 15 (10 Young Artists), the exhibition also featured work by René Daniëls and Ansuya Blom. In 1984, the Centraal Museum in Utrecht was the first to invite her for a solo exhibition. In 1989, The Question of Human Pink, her first major international solo exhibition, opened in the Kunsthalle in Bern just three months after the birth of her daughter. And in 1992, all of the exhibition spaces at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven were devoted to her exhibition Miss Interpreted. In 1995, Dumas was one of three artists selected as the Dutch contribution to the Venice Biennale.

Keizersgracht 584

Herengracht 470 Goethe-Institut Built pre-1677, renovated 19th century

Artists

â&#x20AC;˘ Zachary Formwalt â&#x20AC;˘ Sara van der Heide

Herengracht 470 was built simultaneously with number 468 in 1669. For many years, the façades of these twin houses were a single visual entity stretching the length of ten windows. This unity was dramatically split in around 1875 when number 468 received a stucco façade. The building has had 16 different owners since 1669, including city mayor and chairman of the Dutch East India Company Mr Jacob Jacobsz Hinlopen (1644-1705). The last private owners were Carolina Janssen and Heinrich Carl Rehbock. When the widow Carolina Rehbock-Janssen moved to the Oranje Nassaulaan in 1939, the building was repurposed as office space. The Federal Republic of Germany acquired the property in 1970 and following renovation, the Goethe-Institut took up residence in the building in 1976. For more information, visit the Goethe-Institut’s website: www.goethe.de/amsterdam

Herengracht 470

Sara van der Heide

1977, Busan, South Korea Studied at De Ateliers, Amsterdam Lives and works in Amsterdam

“The work of art […] is first of all genesis; it is never experienced purely as a result.” Paul Klee, Creative Credo, 1920

of the influence of Enlightenment thinking on our own contemporary perceptions of the world.

Sara van der Heide followed the post-graduate programme at De Ateliers in Amsterdam (1999-2001). In 2007, she was a fellow resident at ISCP in New York.

Herengracht 470

Ahmet Öğüt

1981, Diyarbakir, Turkey Studied at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam Lives and works in Amsterdam and Berlin

Between Waiting and Hiding, 2013 Site-specific banner 215 x 60cm Courtesy of the artist

Ahmet Öğüt is interested in finding ways of disrupting social protocols by making minor shifts in their basic form. For example, in one work he took the standard security signage that you find in public places and altered a single character so that it anomalously read ‘THIS AREA IS UNDER 23 HOURS VIDEO AND AUDIO SURVEILLANCE’. The confused conversation that emerged bounced around the internet, where the possibility that the announcement was a work of art took a long time to arise. Usually Öğüt’s interventions are more profound than this little prank, but the sweet irony and fun that is embedded in his work is often used to help the medicine go down. For The Tolerant Home, Ahmet Öğüt has created an intervention at the Foundation Castrum Peregrini. This location was a WWII hiding place on the Herengracht in Amsterdam, and for more than six decades since, the community of artists and scholars that emerged from the underground circle that lived and worked there has edited a literary review and organised high-quality, small-scale cultural events. In his installation, which is partly visible on the façade and partly located on the ground floor of the foundation, Öğüt draws a parallel between the young people hiding at the house they named Castrum Peregrini and the treatment of contemporary asylum seekers in the Netherlands in view of the radical shift in attitude which has emerged both in official proceedings and in popular viewpoint in the last decade. Ahmet Öğüt is a conceptual artist living and working in Amsterdam and Berlin.

Herengracht 470

Herengracht 474 Manifesta Built: 1669

Artists

â&#x20AC;˘ Julika Rudelius â&#x20AC;˘ Jan Rothuizen

Built on a lot acquired in 1665 for 7,400 Dutch guilders, this property was completed in 1669. It is the only â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;single houseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; (a normal-width house) in this section of the renowned Golden Bend on the Herengracht. The Dutch State acquired the building in 1979, although the Dutch Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies had already taken up residence here in 1950. After the institute moved to Herengracht 380-382, the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds acquired Herengracht 474 (the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds itself is located in the neighbouring building, number 476). Manifesta, the European Biennial of Contemporary Art, currently calls Herengracht 474 home, as does DutchCulture, Centre for International Cooperation. For more information, visit the Manifesta website: www.manifesta.org and www.dutchculture.nl.

Herengracht 474

Julika Rudelius

1968, Cologne, Germany Studied at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam Lives and works in New York and Amsterdam

The Embodiment, 2013 HD video English spoken Duration: 12 min Courtesy of the artist

Julika Rudelius’s cinematic work about the dynamics between power and dependency, as well as fame and vulnerability, has led to an interest in the ways in which the idea of androgyny is shifting. Rudelius says of her new film The Embodiment, which premieres as part of the The Tolerant Home: “I’m interested in the way some young transgender women are creating new exuberant, voluptuous and decadent ideas of what androgynous personas can look like. This look exists across sexual preferences: both straight and gay, transgender women pre- and post-operation, and cisgender women, or anyone sporting this new, excessively ornate, voluptuous and decadent feminine persona. It’s a look popularised with transgender women and frequently labelled in the past as ‘drag’. But it is also an extravagant and baroque beauty ideal that I’ve seen sported by straight women outside transgender communities.”

Julika Rudelius is a video and performance artist who has exhibited internationally. Her work has been featured at the Tate Modern, London; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the ZKM, Karlsruhe; the Brooklyn Museum, New York; and MoCA North Miami. In 2009, she participated in the International Center of Photography Triennial, the International Incheon Women Artists’ Biennale and the Heartland Exhibition at the Smart Museum, Chicago. She has held solo exhibitions at the Swiss Institute of Contemporary Art; the Centre Culturel Suisse; the Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam; and the Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem. Julika Rudelius won the Amsterdamprijs voor de Kunsten in 2008. She studied photography at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, and completed residencies at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten and the International Studio and Curatorial Program in New York. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn and Amsterdam.

Could there be a new middle ground where the two genders meet – a place that’s voluptuous and ultra feminine as opposed to leaning toward the dominant masculine meeting point that has long held sway? Regardless of their commonplace aspirations, Rudelius finds this young group responsible for forming a strong new aesthetic – a fiercely feminine beauty standard. Instead of the polarised and gendered dichotomies – such as the old transgender man putting on mascara, performing in seedy clubs and trying to look female – this new movement is immodest and made by women who want to be expressive irrespective of economic and social status.

Herengracht 474

Jan Rothuizen

1968, Amsterdam, the Netherlands Studied at De Ateliers, Amsterdam Lives and works in Amsterdam

Woongroep Vredenburgh 2011 Ink on paper 50 x 65cm Slaapkamer gesneuvelde soldaat 2011 ink on paper 50 x 65cm

In 1983, the Amsterdam-based photographer Ed van der Elsken (1925-1990) made a beautiful documentary of Amsterdam in the heyday of its liberal and free-loving spirit. The film, entirely shot on the street, shows the world of drug pushers and hippies and bon vivants among regular Amsterdam inhabitants. Van der Elsken switched back and forth between the people and long shots of himself passing through the city (at an accelerated speed), commenting on the locations along the way. Soon after the film was made, gentrification of the city started to change the image of Amsterdam for ever, transforming it into a neatly renovated tourist destination, and much of the extreme freedom for which Amsterdam had been known since the 1960s evaporated – no more sleeping in the Vondelpark, for example. In 2011, Jan Rothuizen took sections of the film and reshot Van der Elsken’s entire route through the city. The result was a very compelling diptych, in which a clear comparison can be made between this demise in freedom of spirit and the gentrification that has taken place. Artist Jan Rothuizen was born, raised and presently lives, as he notes, in reasonable happiness in Amsterdam. He attended the Gerrit Rietveld Academie before taking up a residency at De Ateliers (1992-’94). Between 1995 and 1998 Rothuizen lived in New York, where ten years later he was involved in the exhibition cycle Museum as Hub at the New Museum (2008). Rothuizen is a prolific collaborator and observer. He is best known for his elaborate and playful topographical stories, which are based on his walks through cities and buildings. Over the years he has created a great variety of maps of cities and drawings of spaces and other forms of reality. Well-known examples are Beyroutes (2009), where he mapped the city of Beirut as part of

Slaapkamer Sylvia Willink 2009 ink on paper 50 x 65cm Chinees illegaal 2009 ink on paper 50 x 65cm All courtesy of the artist Location Herengracht 474 (Manifesta) the rejuvenation of the inner city, and recently the routing for the new Rijksmuseum. Other mediums include film, book publications and animations. Rothuizen has worked on many projects worldwide, amongst them in Guangzhou, China (2004) and Cairo, Egypt (2008) on The Last Tourist. His works are brought together in the publication On a clear day you see forever, which is available for online viewing. Sources: The artist

Herengracht 474

Vijzelstraat 32 De Bazel (Amsterdam City Archives) Built: 1919-1926

Artists

â&#x20AC;˘ Marien Schouten

Named after its architect, KPC de Bazel (1869-1923), De Bazel was built between 1919 and 1926. It was commissioned by the Dutch Trading Society, a predecessor of ABN AMRO bank. The building is seen as the apogee of De Bazelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s oeuvre, and was awarded listed building status in March 1991. The City Archives are Amsterdamâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s primary historical documentation centre, home to 35 kilometres of archives, a historical topographical collection of millions of maps, drawings and prints, a library and extensive audio as well as film and photography archives. For more information, visit the Amsterdam City Archives website: www.stadsarchief.amsterdam.nl

Vijzelstraat 32

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Vijzelstraat 32

Marien Schouten

1956, Andel, the Netherlands Studied at Ateliers ’63 Lives and works in Amsterdam

Kamer, 2013 Mixed media installation Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Paul Andriesse, Amsterdam

“Whether we are thinking of the myth of Creation from the book of Genesis or of the hypotheses of modern physics, division lies at the beginning of the world as we know it. But if division is the archetype of creation and the tragic aspect under which we find the world and ourselves, then a desire for reunification will never completely lose its hold on us.” – Marcel Vos, Division and Unification in the Work of Marien Schouten Marien Schouten has been scrutinising sculpture, ceramics and painting over the last three decades, exploring the boundaries in a search for their transgressive potential. Where in his earlier work Schouten looked for forms of transgression between the media that captured him, his increasing fascination with the notion of boundary as object has taken a physical form in more recent works. With his installation at the Stedelijk Museum, Schouten introduced both an idiom of the prison as boundary for the first time, and boundaries that were based on notions of translucency. For The Tolerant Home, Schouten pushes his prison idiom to its limits by creating a hermetically sealed cell. Other boundaries play off this powerful gesture. What we are offered here is a denial of entry. We are forced into the position of the spectator, while only our gaze is able to penetrate the interior. Inside we find a collection of re-contextualised themes. Most notably Marien Schouten’s large-scale ceramic beast acts as a catalyst for the more abstract gestures he makes, glazing partitions, painting. The beast becomes sculpture, trophy or saved savage.

Haarlem in the Netherlands and is presently a faculty member of De Ateliers – the continuation of this institute in Amsterdam. Schouten is also a board member of the European Ceramic Work Centre in ’s-Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands. Schouten works and lives in Amsterdam. Amongst his many exhibitions, recent examples include: Nepheline, nieuwe beelden at Galerie Paul Andriesse, Amsterdam; and the group show De Nederlandse identiteit? at De Paviljoens, Almere, with Job Koelewijn and David Jablonowski (2009). Schouten’s ceramic installations have been shown at the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, and De Pont, Tilburg, and have been included in the renowned De Pont collection. Other publications include Marien Schouten in Kunsthalle Bern (exhibition catalogue, texts by Ulrich Loock and Marcel Vos), and Het vieze tafeltje / The dirty table, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (exhibition catalogue, texts by Rudi Fuchs and Marcel Vos), 1997. Sources Marcel Vos, Division and Unification in the Work of Marien Schouten, 1992, Kunsthalle Bern The artist

Marien Schouten studied at Ateliers ’63 in

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Herengracht 502 The Major’s Official Residence Built: 1672

Artists

• Sarah van Sonsbeeck & John Snijders

Paulus Godin, merchant and administrator of the Dutch West India Company, bought the lot Herengracht 502 in 1671. Work started immediately on the property, which was finished a year later in 1672. Renowned architect Adriaan Dortsman is the presumed designer of the building. In 1907, then owner Jacob Theodoor Cremer commissioned architect HJM Walenkamp to convert the building and bring it in line with contemporary living standards. Cornelis Johannes Karel van Aalst, the director of the Netherlands Trading Society, bought the house in 1913. In 1926, he gifted the building to the City of Amsterdam, to be used as the Mayorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Official Residence.

Herengracht 502

Sarah van Sonsbeek

1976, Amsterdam, the Netherlands Studied at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam

John Snijders 1963, Heemskerk, the Netherlands

Increasing Decreasing, 2013 Performance commissioned for The Tolerant Home Concept: Sarah van Sonsbeeck Composition and performance: John Snijders Courtesy of the artists and Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam

Tolerance often flows from a heightened state of awareness and a conscious ability to contemplate the multitude of perspectives that surround a particular issue. Artist Sarah van Sonsbeeck and pianist John Snijder address this in their new collaboration. Visitors will be led into a stately room where they will be left in relative darkness, the only illumination coming from a number of glow-inthe-dark works created by Van Sonsbeeck. In the adjacent space, the pianist will then perform John Snijders’ new piece for piano. As the light emanating from the glow-in-the-dark works diminishes, so will the music. Silence and a heightened awareness of the room will prevail. It is this acute sense of consciousness that both artist and composer are searching for. Sarah van Sonsbeeck Known as an architect of anti-sound and a master of disconnection, Sarah van Sonsbeeck portrays silence and makes us aware of a lack of it. In her work she concentrates on defining and appropriating space: back in 2008 she wrote a letter to her neighbours asking them to pay 80 per cent of her rent since their noise pollution took up 80 per cent of her living space. Since then she has occupied herself with the meaning of sound, or its absence. Van Sonsbeeck studied at TU-Delft and the Gerrit Rietveld Academie before completing a residency at the Rijksakademie (2008-’09). John Snijders In 1981, John Snijders began studying piano under Geoffrey Madge at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, and graduated eight years later. Snijders was awarded first prize in the Berlage Competition for Dutch chamber music in 1985 and in August 2008 he won the Muziekgebouw Prijs for his rendition of Richard

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Rijnvos’ NYConcerto, a three-part concerto for piano and chamber orchestra. Over the years, he has taken the stage as a soloist alongside numerous orchestras. Major names including Christopher Fox, Richard Rijnvos, Gerard Brophy, Ivo van Emmerik, Rodney Sharman, Richard Ayres and Clarence Barlow have all composed works especially for Snijders. Snijders is particularly interested in drawing connections between contemporary music and contemporary art. He also has a passion for the American avant-garde, particularly for the musical legacy of Morton Feldman and John Cage. From 1988 to 2013, Snijders was the resident pianist of the acclaimed Nieuw Ensemble. He also founded the Ives Ensemble, where he is now artistic director and resident pianist. In 2013, Snijders was appointed Reader in Music Performance at Durham University (United Kingdom). Sources: Nicola Bozzi, MetropolisM, #1 2012 The artists

Herengracht 502

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Herengracht 520 Built: 1686, renovated in 1726-1727

Artists

â&#x20AC;˘ Carlos Amorales â&#x20AC;˘ Rossella Biscotti

This ‘double house’ was built in 1686 and converted in 1726-’27. The coat of arms in the middle of the cornice was altered in 1781 when Hendrik Hoeufft and Margaretha Geelvinck moved in. City guides often tell the anecdote that Louis Napoléon Bonaparte stayed here before moving to what was then City Hall (now the Royal Palace) on Dam Square. The building is now privately owned and is let out as office space.

Herengracht 520

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Herengracht 520

Carlos Amorales

1970, Mexico City, Mexico Studied at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam Lives and works in Mexico City

Coal Drawing Machine, 2012 Installation with plotter printer, paper and charcoal, variable dimensions Courtesy of Collection All Art, Amsterdam

Exhibited for the first time in a former coal mine in Belgium as part of Manifesta 9 (themed The Deep of the Modern), this paper labyrinth is generated by a machine that draws with coal. Suggesting an analogy between the coal mine’s excavated underground and Hell, the drawings consist of repetitive patterns of esoteric symbols that can perhaps invoke demons – but which also resemble complex electronic circuit boards used in computers. The machine functions throughout the duration of the exhibition, its output accumulating day after day. The Coal Drawing Machine creates tension between the hand-made quality of the coal drawings and the fact that these particular illustrations are industrially produced. It is a piece that recalls the myth of robots and machines becoming sentient – as in the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick, later filmed as Blade Runner.

installation. In parallel, from 2003 to 2009 he realised the project Nuevos Ricos, a record label that published pop music and organised concerts in different countries. Since 2010 his interests have focused on abstraction, language and typography. He has presented performances at the Tate Modern, London (2003); SF MOMA, San Francisco (2003); and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2001). Solo exhibitions include: Germinal, Museo Tamayo, Mexico; Supprimer, modifier et preserver, Mac / Val, Val-De-Marne (2011); Remix, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome (2010); Discarded Spider, Cincinnati Art Center and Orange County Museum (2008-9); and Four Animations, Five Drawings and a Plague, Philadelphia Art Museum (2008). Group shows include biennials such as Manifesta 09, Genk (2012); Performa, New York (2007); and the Venice Biennial (2003).

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Herengracht 520

Rossella Biscotti

1978, Molfetta, Italy Studied at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam Lives and works in Amsterdam

We Will Be Here Forever, 2006 Sound installation MP3 player and file, active speakers Courtesy of Wilfried Lentz Gallery, Rotterdam

We Will Be Here Forever is a re-enactment of a sentence by African-American activist rapper KRS-One (Lawrence Krisna Parker), repeated until the end of the tape. “We will be here forever. Do you understand that? We will be here forever and ever...” repeats the voice, articulating tension and expressing a passive resistance based on the physical presence over time. Biscotti’s work encompasses videos, photographs and occasionally sculptures. They often illuminate the history and stories of people who have become a source of reflection on individual or collective identity and memory – people who have, through their action or critical position, determined important socio-political changes in society. In Biscotti’s art, the starting point of a work is always a social or political event – possibly one in the distant past – which the artist encounters, for example, in the form of documentation or a newspaper snippet and subsequently meticulously investigates. Biscotti employs her works to transpose these found documents in a subtle interplay between concealed or multiple identities, fiction and reality, and overlapping layers of time. Her production interprets the sharing of stories that have been banned or forgotten by our history. The artist is interested in the potential of new narratives in the moment in which they start to circulate again within society. Biscotti has had solo exhibitions at CAC, Vilnius (2012); Fondazione Galleria Civica di Trento (2010) and the Nomas Foundation, Rome (2009). Group exhibitions include dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel; Manifesta 9, Genk (2012); MAXXI National Museum for 21st Century Art, Rome (2010-’11); Witte de With, Rotterdam (2010); and Museu Serralves, Porto (2010).

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Biscotti received the Premio Italia Arte Contemporanea Award (2010).

Herengracht 520

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Amstelveld 10 Amstelkerk Built: 1668-1670

Artists

â&#x20AC;˘ Jan Rothuizen

This temporary church was built on the Amstelveld in 1668 to address a pressing need for pastoral care in the city. The Amstelkerk is the only remaining temporary wooden church in Amsterdam. It was designed by city architect Daniel Stalpaert (1616-â&#x20AC;&#x2122;76), who was one of the four churchwardens. Nowadays, the church is home to the offices of Stadsherstel Amsterdam â&#x20AC;&#x201C; an organisation founded to promote the preservation and restoration of monumental buildings in the city. The central area of the church regularly hosts cultural and commercial activities and concerts. For more information, visit the Stadsherstel website: www.stadsherstel.nl

Amstelveld 10

Jan Rothuizen

1968, Amsterdam, the Netherlands Studied at De Ateliers, Amsterdam Lives and works in Amsterdam

My Amsterdam (nog een keer), 1983-2011 Film Duration: 11:55 min Crew 2011: Jan Rothuizen, Stijn van Santen and Wendela Scheltema With thanks to: Ed van der Elsken, Camalot Audiovisual Facilities, Limboland TV and Pakhuis de Zwijger Courtesy of the artist In 1983, the Amsterdam-based photographer Ed van der Elsken (1925-1990) made a beautiful documentary of Amsterdam in the heyday of its liberal and free-loving spirit. The film, entirely shot on the street, shows the world of drug pushers and hippies and bon vivants among regular Amsterdam inhabitants. Van der Elsken switched back and forth between the people and long shots of himself passing through the city (at an accelerated speed), commenting on the locations along the way. Soon after the film was made, gentrification of the city started to change the image of Amsterdam for ever, transforming it into a neatly renovated tourist destination, and much of the extreme freedom for which Amsterdam had been known since the 1960s evaporated – no more sleeping in the Vondelpark, for example. In 2011, Jan Rothuizen took sections of the film and reshot Van der Elsken’s entire route through the city. The result was a very compelling diptych, in which a clear comparison can be made between this demise in freedom of spirit and the gentrification that has taken place. Artist Jan Rothuizen was born, raised and presently lives, as he notes, in reasonable happiness in Amsterdam. He attended the Gerrit Rietveld Academie before taking up a residency at De Ateliers (1992-’94). Between 1995 and 1998 Rothuizen lived in New York, where ten years later he was involved in the exhibition cycle Museum as Hub at the New Museum (2008). Rothuizen is a prolific collaborator and observer. He is best known for his elaborate and playful topographical stories, which are based on his walks through cities and buildings. Over the years he has created a great variety of maps of cities and drawings of spaces and other forms of reality. Well-known examples are Beyroutes (2009), where he mapped the city of Beirut as part of

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the rejuvenation of the inner city, and recently the routing for the new Rijksmuseum. Other mediums include film, book publications and animations. Rothuizen has worked on many projects worldwide, amongst them in Guangzhou, China (2004) and Cairo, Egypt (2008) on The Last Tourist. His works are brought together in the publication On a clear day you see forever, which is available for online viewing. Sources: The artist

Amstelveld 10

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Prinsengracht 452 Cinema De Uitkijk Built: 1630-1631

Artists

â&#x20AC;˘ Steve McQueen

De Uitkijk is the oldest art-house film theatre in continuous use in the Netherlands. It was established in 1912 as the City Bioscoop. In 1929, an avant-garde film organisation called the Filmliga acquired it and changed the name to De Uitkijk (meaning ‘the lookout’). Mannus Franken, the director, had great things in mind for the cinema. The films screened at De Uitkijk were to be selected by actors and film connoisseurs in order to ensure that only the best films hit the screens. Franken wanted to “create a film theatre instead of a cinema – a theatre that didn’t just entertain, but displayed art”. This is an ideal that has endured the test of time and De Uitkijk is still committed to screening high-quality cinematic offerings to film lovers in Amsterdam. Since 2007, De Uitkijk has been run by a group of dedicated students. For more information, visit De Uitkijk’s website: www.uitkijk.nl

Prinsengracht 452

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Prinsengracht 452

Steve McQueen

1969, London, UK Lives and works in Amsterdam and London

Hunger, 2008 Duration: 96 min Shame, 2011, Duration: 101 min

In The Tolerant Home, two of British artist/ filmmaker Steve McQueen’s feature films are shown in a historic canal-side cinema. The first deals with the intolerance embedded in religious dogma in Northern Ireland, while the second addresses social stigmas and the prejudices surrounding addiction. In both of these films, McQueen concentrates on the human condition rather than a socio-political perspective. Hunger takes place in 1981 and it is based on a true story from the Maze Prison in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Political prisoner status was taken away from the inmates (IRA detainees) and they were deemed common criminals so they protested – by not leaving their cells or washing. This came to be known as the blanket protest, or the dirty protest. The film premiered at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. McQueen received the Caméra d’Or Award for Hunger – the first British director thus honoured. Shame features Michael Fassbender as a New York-based professional and sex addict. Based on the premise that porn is the catalyst for detached sexual behaviour, the film looks at a successful urbanite slipping into a life of sexually obsessive behaviour and personal isolation. Further fed by the media’s promotion that an active sex life is the measure of success and popularity, the film ultimately deals with the fact that society’s greatest taboo today is not sex, but rather loneliness – to which few sufferers openly admit.

Film Prize, Sydney Film Festival (2008); and the Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2011. He has participated in Documenta X (1997), XI (2002) and XII (2007) and in the Venice Biennale (2013, 2009 and 2003). He has had a number of international solo exhibitions, including at the National Portrait Gallery, London (2010); the Art Institute in Chicago (2009); the Fondazione Prada, Milan (2005); the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris (2003); and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1998). A retrospective of his work was recently exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago (2012) and the Schaulager, Basel (2013). McQueen’s latest film, 12 Years a Slave, starring Brad Pitt and Michael Fassbender, deals with the 19th-century practice of kidnapping free Afro-Americans living in the northern states of America and selling them into slavery in the south. Sources: Marian Goodman Gallery Paris / New York The Telegraph, London

Steve McQueen CBE trained at the Chelsea School of Art, London, Goldsmiths College, London, and at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. He was the recipient of an ICA Futures Award in (1996); a DAAD Artist in Residence Grant in Berlin (1999); the Turner Prize, Tate Gallery, London (1999); the Sydney

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