Shaw Gardens (August 1915)
Between 30 December and 3 January ADA will create a winter garden in ‘t Gemaal as part of the exhibition Florida organised by Tent.
People are invited to view the surrounding botanical display and to use the garden for coming together, meeting, talking, relaxing and reflection. The garden in ‘t Gemaal forms a thematic point of departure for a number of activities.
On all days a diaporama can be viewed and listened to in the garden. The diaporama consists of a series of slides by Matts Leiderstam (Gothenburg, 1956), and is accompanied by an audio recording of a lecture by him. Leiderstam researches the complex relationship between landscape and seeing and the genre of landscape painting. He adopts different roles by researching (art-) historical documents, copying paintings and looking through historical, optical instruments. In his work Leiderstam brings together these different gazes, asking us to look at well-known landscape images anew. In his lecture, Leiderstam will talk about these issues in relation to recent work, amongst which is the project Grand Tour.
The Winter Garden programme in ‘t Gemaal:
Saturday 2 January 2010 | 17.30 – 20.30
17.30 Kitchen Lecture, a performance by Deirdre M. Donoghue, hosted by P for Performance.
The performance is accompanied by a meal.
19.00 Interior Arcadias. A lecture on video by artist/designer/writer Mark Pimlott on the architecture of interior public spaces.
Sunday 3 January 2010 | 15.00 – 18.00
15.00 The Symbolics of Swimming Pools in Classical Cinema. A presentation of research by video artist Margo Onnes.
Coffee Break.
16.00 Poetrying, an open poetry reading organised by artist duo SKART and Maja Bekan for P for Performance. To participate with your poems please send your name, date of birth and 2 poems to: pforperformance[at]gmail[dot]com
17.45 Music for the Plants. A ‘garden concert’ specially composed for plants by Gerwin Luijendijk.
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Kitchen Lecture by Deirdre M. Donoghue
Kitchen Lecture
Whilst preparing dinner for her family, Deirdre M. Donoghue presents the viewer with a talk on the history of gesture studies and her own research interests evolving around language, gesture and becoming. All at once she prepares meatballs and mashed potato, presents visual material, and is interrupted by her children walking in and out of the kitchen, at times demanding her attention, at times joining in in the activities.
By setting herself this physically demanding task of giving an artist’s-talk while preparing her family a meal, she makes transparent the conditions of the artistic production of many female artists. Rather than separating the two different roles; the role of an artist and the role of a mother, she allows them to collapse together in the video performance entitled Kitchen Lecture.
New York US 2005 © Mark Pimlott
Interior Arcadias
Fragments of nature captured in an interior, particularly when they are alien or exotic, provide pleasure to its occupants. When brought indoors, nature imposes its own character and order, and the interior typically concedes in a fundamental way to its contents, and loses much of its substance. The story of such an interior is bound up with Enlightenment-born ideas regarding the categorization, possession and domination of the world’s natural contents. The nineteenth century witnessed an explosion of expressions of these ideas, which yielded the various building typologies we continue to be familiar with: the crystal palace, the arcade, the department store, the mall, and the atrium.
In an illustrated lecture, Mark Pimlott will give an account and a critical appraisal of the interior’s embrace of nature, from its first grand expression at the 1851’s Great Exhibition’s Crystal Palace to its commonplace manifestations in shopping centres, airports, and corporate office buildings. The story of these interiors is intertwined with those of the development of cities in modernity, their innovations, entrapments and the public spaces with which they are most identified.
Sunset Boulevard starring William Holden.
The Symbolics of Swimming Pools in Classical Cinema
In her talk The Symbolics of Swimming Pools in Classical Cinema, Margo Onnes will reflect on some of the most well known swimming pool scenes from classical cinema that inspired her for her short film Muze. Scenes from La Piscine (1969), The Swimmer (1968), Diabolique (1955), Cat People (1942) and Sunset Boulevard (1950) all depict the swimming pool as a dark place in the subconscious of the stories’ protagonists. In these deeply psychological dramas the swimming pool functions as a foreboding enigma; “One can hardly get a grip on what precisely is going on between the main characters, but it is obvious that something really bad is going to happen. It seems as if the answers to the characters secret’s are to be found somewhere deep down in the pool.”
Poetrying by SKART
Poetrying
Poetrying is a collaboration between the artist duo SKART from Belgrade (RS) and Maja Bekan, P for Performance (NL). For this unique ‘open mike’ poetry reading in the winter garden at ‘t Gemaal, P for Performance is appropriating Skart’s monthly event Poetrying (Pesnicenje), a poetry reading.
We would like to invite enthusiastic creative poets to participate. The term ‘poetry’ is to be used very loosely and creatively, so feel free to apply by sending your name and your potential contribution (poems, short texts, music, plays, etc.) at: pforperformance[at]gmail[dot]com.
Music for the Plants.
Music for the Plants
In 1973, Dorothy Retallack published a small book called The Sound of Music and Plants. Her book detailed experiments that she had been conducting with plants. Mrs. Retallack discovered astonishing results. By playing music through speakers for plants, she discovered how music influenced the growth of these plants. When she played soothing ‘middle-of-the-road’ music to one group of plants, and rock music and no music at all to two other groups for three hours a day, she noticed drastic differences. After a while, the plants that had to listen to the ‘soothing’ music were much bigger and greener than the ‘silent plants’, while the ‘rock plants’ were dying. The ‘middle-of-the-road music plants’ were even growing towards the speakers, while the ‘rock plants’ were bending the opposite way.
To ease the stay of the plants in ‘t Gemaal, Gerwin Luijendijk will play soothing songs especially written for the plants. “It is good to let people enjoy the beauty of plant life, but what about the plants themselves?”
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Practical Information:
Winter Garden opening times:
Wednesday 30 December 11.00 – 17.00
Thursday 31 December 11.00 – 17.00
Saturday 02 January 11.00 – 20.30
Sunday 03 January 11.00 – 18.00
Winter Garden Programme:
Saturday 02 January 17.30 – 20.30 (including food)
Sunday 03 January 15.00 – 18.00
Location:
‘t Gemaal | Pretorialaan 141 | 3072 EL | Rotterdam
The Winter Garden will be beautifully made by GREENHOUSE, groenverhuur en decoraties.
