For a period of two weeks Esmé Valk presents a preview of her recent project Showcasing Today’s Essentials. Esmé has observed the changing window display of Anders dan Anderen, a shop specialised in home textiles. The shop’s display windows have formed the starting point for her research into the relationship between commerce and idealism, the body and geometry and the viewer and the performer. She is interested in investigating a direct link between theatre, avant-garde artists and the shop window, as well as in asking how the contemporary use by commerce of modernistic imagery has shifted its meaning.

For RAAMTE Esmé Valk will present a site specific sculpture that uses the stage-like window display of ADA. With light, movable, two-dimensional materials she makes a layered set that aims to be 'visually tactile’.

You are all welcome at the opening of this third RAAMTE presentation and to enjoy a drink together. The work will be on view until the 8th of August.

Due to unexpected circumstances tomorrows performance with Katarina Zdjelar and Jan Verwoert is canceled. We’re very sorry to notify you on such a short notice.

P for Performance is pleased to announce as its thirteenth performative event:

Deserters’ Heartland, a performance by Katarina Zdjelar and Jan Verwoert

Katarina Zdjelar (Belgrade, 1979) is an artist based in Rotterdam. Her practice consists of making video, sound and text pieces, performances, book projects and creating different platforms for speculation, knowledge building and exchange. Her work explores notions of identity, authority and community and revolve around individuals who challenged by simultaneous inhabitation of different languages, perform themselves through practicing, remembering or reinventing themselves.

Jan Verwoert is a Berlin based, internationally renowned art critic and sometimes curator. He is a member of the advisory board of the Munich Kunstverein and has been a guest professor of Contemporary Art and Theory at the Academy of Umeå, Sweden, and the Royal College of Art, London. Since 2005 he has been a tutor and leader of the Imagined Communities seminar at the Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam. Verwoert is a contributing editor to Frieze magazine and also writes regularly about contemporary art for Afterall, Metropolis M, Springerin, and artists’ catalogues.

P for Performance is part of an ongoing project by Maja Bekan, entitled Secret Powers for Identity, Security and Self-respect in Troubling Times.
The aim of these performance events is to try to critically engage with the investigation of the artist’s role as a producer and advertiser.

Spend a lazy Sunday afternoon at ADA with a movie marathon, outside games and fresh party food. With good weather we will spend the time outside, watching movies and enjoying freshly prepared summer food.

Program:
15:00 Chinatown, Roman Polanski, 1974, 130 min
17:10 The Sacrifice, Andrei Tarkovski, 1986, 149 min
20:00 Volver, Pedro Almodóvar, 2006, 121 min
22:00 You The Living, Roy Andersson, 2007, 95 min

Chinatown
Jake Gittes, a private detective, is hired by a woman who claimes to be Mrs. Mulwray. She suspects her husband, the builder of the city’s watersupply system, of having an affair. Shortly after Jack Gittes is hired the real Mrs Mulwray appears on stage and Jack discovers that he has been hired by an imposterer. When Mr Mulwray is found dead, Jake gets into a complex web of deceit involving murder, incest and corruption. Chinatown is a multi-layered psychological drama that features many elements of the film noir -genre.

The Sacrifice(Offret)
Alexander, a journalist and philosopher, celebrates his birthday at his cottage in the countryside. The news that a nuclear war between the superpowers has started disturbs the celebration. As his family attempts to cope, Alexander is troubled by extraordinary dreams. To save the world he decides to sacrifice all he loves. The Sacrifice, Tarkovski’s final masterwork, is remarkable for it’s long tracking shots.

Volver
The two sisters Raimunda and Sole are struggling with life after having lost their parents in a tragic fire four years ago. Their elderly aunt who lives alone speaks as if Raimunda’s and Sole’s mother is still alive and taking care of her in a small Spanish village. After the aunt’s death, Sole’s mother “appears” again to fix the situations that she couldn’t resolve during her life. Volver is a ghost story that combines drama and absurdist comedy.

You The Living
Set in a décor of a miserable colourless nowhere-town, You The Living follows the lives of an overweight woman, a disgruntled psychiatrist, a heartbroken groupie, a carpenter, a business consultant, an elementary school teacher with emotional issues and her rug selling husband. Anderson spent three years on the set that was completely built for the film. This tragicomic story that explores the “grandeur of existence” is reminiscent of the Buster Keaton and Jaques Tati films.

Eric Martijn’s work seeks to create a new set of spatial agreements wherein architecture seizes to be that superimposed structure and becomes the object of man centred measurement itself.

Creating sculptural constructions, mostly as spatial obstructions, Eric Martijn questions existing parameters and the experience of space. In this process he is inspired by the materials that construct space, with concept and sculpture in mind.

For this second RAAMTE presentation, Eric Martijn will make a sculptural intervention in the window space, which will be an interpretation of the ADA building facade and its literal corner function.

You are all welcome at the opening of this second RAAMTE presentation and to enjoy a drink and “Hollandsche Nieuwe” (salt herring).

Due to health problems we had to cancel the screening of Kenjac again. We appology for any inconvenience caused.

A screening of the film Kenjac with an introduction by Monique Scuric.

Kenjac
Release: 2009
Director: Antonio Nuic
Runtime: 90 min.

While Croatia is at war, the stubborn Boro takes his family back to his village of birth, Drinovci in Herzegovina, after seven years. Once there, he gets confronted with his brother, who has to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair and his father whom he holds guilty for the death of his mother. Although Boro doesn’t want to talk to his father, a confrontation is inevitable. When a donkey appears on stage finally the macho men gain some self-awareness, which they had lacked for a long time. The sweltering heat and bleached cinematograpy (Nuic removed all the green from the landscapes) create an oppressive and alienating atmosphere.

Guest speaker for April’s cinema; visual artist Monique Scuric (who has her family roots in Croatia) got inspired by the movie Kenjac when she saw it at the IFFR 2010. In her own work Scuric deals with the subject of attachment felt by people for their home, a place, a country and how this emotional bond can be construed from environments, interiors, photo’s, symbols, rites and rituals.

“Live, work, laugh, cry, essential, simple, accessible, human, everyday, playing, ironic, die.” C. H.

P for Performance is pleased to announce as a twelfth performative event: The Ritual by Charlott Hendrikson.

Charlott Henrikson (Sweden) is an artist based in Amsterdam. Her work investigates human behavior and collective awareness. By re-using and re-arranging everyday materials in a new context, her work is questioning social norms in a humorous way. Through staging actions she is opening a dialogue with the viewer providing space for interpersonal exchange.

Henrikson‘s work employs a broad array of methods ranging from photography to installations and performances. Her work has been shown among other places at 1646, Den Haag and Expodium, Utrecht.

For more information, you can soon visit www.charlotthenrikson.com (currently under construction).

P for Performance is part of an ongoing project by Maja Bekan, entitled Secret Powers for Identity, Security and Self-respect in Troubling Times. The aim of these performance events is to try to critically engage with the investigation of the artist’s role as a producer and advertiser.

Studio Bread is pleased to present a TEDx Satellite Location at ADA on Friday, 4th of June. The event will give the opportunity for people to view a live screening of the TEDxRotterdam, being held at the Nieuwe Luxor Theatre on the same day.

TED is a non-profit organization devoted to ‘Ideas Worth Spreading,’ with a focus on technology, design, science and art. It was started as a four-day conference in California 25 years ago and since then TED has grown and expanded with various events throughout the world. The format allows the world’s leading thinkers and doers 18 minutes to share their ideas and stories. Previous speakers at TED have included Philippe Starck, Bill Gates, Joshua Prince-Ramus, Theo Jansen, Ursus Wehril, Mathieu Lehanneur, Al Gore, and many others.

In 2010 the inaugural TEDxRotterdam event will showcase such people as Bart Weetjens, a pioneer in landmine detection; Jan Rothuizen, an artist making ‘soft maps’ of cities; Jan Bor, renowned philosophy author; Noisia, world-class drum and bass producers; Frances Gouda, a leading expert on gender issues; Igor Nikolic, who is dramatically remodelling harbour systems; Julian Oliver, an artist working with new approaches to augmented reality; Ton van der Steen, an innovative heart technician; Besim Hoti, Rotterdam’s wunderkind dancer; and many more. The complete list can be viewed at tedxrotterdam.com.

It is hoped that the varied nature and the high calibre of talks and performances throughout the day will provide a great starting point for further discussion and stimulating dialogue between the attendees.

Studio Bread is an initiative begun by Ashley Holwell aiming to provide events and services to local communities. The studio is currently providing furniture remaking services, working with Delfshaven Gemeente on public art projects, and creating public architecture for cities throughout the world.

P for Performance is pleased to announce as the eleventh performative event:
Lesson; a conversation between a moth and a cockroach, a performance by Nina Yuen.

Nina Yuen (Hawaii) completed a residency at The Rijksakademie, Amsterdam in 2009. in her films Clean and White Blindness, Yuen has previously focused on daily routine; sleeping, cleaning, eating and washing. Her work circles around faulty personal memories and collective untruths both belonging to herself and others. In 2009 Yuen’s work was shown amongst other places in Juliette Jongma Gallery, Amsterdam and Lombard-Freid Projects, New York.

P for Performance is part of an ongoing project by Maja Bekan, entitled Secret Powers for Identity, Security and Self-respect in Troubling Times. The aim of these performance events is to try to critically engage with the investigation of the artist’s role as a producer and advertiser.

Cinema Sunset presents: selected films from 1952-1972 by Charles and Ray Eames with an introduction by Esmé Valk.

Part I
Introduction
House, After Five Years of Living (1955)
Parade: or Here They Come Down Our Street (1952)
S-73 (Sofa Compact) (1954)
Solar Do-Nothing Machine (1957)
Day of the Dead (1957)

Part II
Tops (1969)
Aquarium (National Fisheries Center and Aquarium) (1967)
Kaleidoscope Jazz Chair (1960)
SX-70 (1972)
The Expanding Airport (1958)

Runtime total program: 93 mins

Besides their major contributions to modern architecture and furniture, the American designer couple Charles and Ray Eames also worked in the fields of fine art, graphic design and film. From the 1950’s to the 1970’s the Eameses created over eighty-five short films, often featuring their own designs and explanations of advanced mathematical and scientific concepts. The couple approached filmmaking much as they approached their design work by putting the same depth of research, insistence on quality and attention to detail into it. They applied a self-developed and an incredibly time-consuming way of printing to their films, which gave them a unique color quality.

Their most well known film The Powers of Ten used as an educational film in schools gives a dramatic demonstration of orders of magnitude by zooming out of the earth. This film is not part of the screening, but can be seen here

House, After Five Years of Living was made as an exercise in looking at and experiencing the architecture of their own ‘Eames house’ through the medium of film. Just like House the short film Day of Dead uses still images in a filmic way to create an intense experience, in this case the day-of-the-dead celebrations in Mexico. In Tops, the Eameses show their skill of turning an observing way of looking into a visual spectacle. Tops and many others of the their films feature Elmer Bernstein’s music that turns the movies into “visual tone poems”.

For the May Cinema Sunset, artist and ADA member Esmé Valk selected a special program of the Eameses’ films. Valk’s interest in their work lays in the tactile quality with which they portray materials and how their films defy categorization. In her own work Esmé Valk has been researching social choreography as a medium to study movement through a multitude of media.

Please note: Due to the increasing light conditions we start half an hour later to the usual 19:30.

In May, The Open Office For Words returns to its original format of a reading room and a collective library, serving fresh coffee, tea and cakes. The premise of The Open Office for Words is to function as a momentary culmination and dissemination of knowledge made possible by the collective act of sharing once texts, whether part of a literary or theoretical tradition, or indeed texts in the larger sense of the word; including any work whether visual or written.

The theme for May is performativity and texts considering relations between performance, identity and performativity in the fields of arts, philosophy, media and gender studies are welcomed. Thinking About Performativity begins a series of sessions relating to aspects of performativity as they present themselves in the work of the participants.

You are cordially invited to search through your resources and to see whether you perhaps might have something to contribute to the above themes. Books, journals, research papers and images related, whether from the field of arts or science are all welcome, as are art-works, documentaries and interviews in a dvd-format.