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.

In the window of the ADA building and as part of RAAMTE, Anne-Mari Huttunen (FI) will present an excerpt of her painting laboratory. Interested in the physicality of paint as a material which you can control, Huttunen invents constructions that are spaces functioning as architectural surfaces for the paint in it’s natural and unexpected liquid composition.

You are most welcome to the opening of this very first RAAMTE and to enjoy a drink on the 6th of May at 18.00.

RAAMTE is an ongoing window presentation project organised by Gerwin Luijendijk.

ADA will take a trip to Antwerp to see the exhibition Animism, hosted by the Museum of Contemporary Art (M HKA) and Extra City. The exhibition is curated and organised by Anselm Franke, Edwin Carels and Bart De Baere.

“The project approaches the concept of animism – coined by 19th century anthropologists in the context of the colonial encounter – from a contemporary perspective. It addresses the current increase in interest in animism, which stems from a widespread re-visioning of modernity, by a reflection on aesthetic processes seen through the prism of an exhibition.”

With works by:
Agency, Art & Language, Christian W. Braune & Otto Fischer, Marcel Broodthaers, Paul Chan, Tony Conrad, Didier Demorcy, Walt Disney, Lili Dujourie, Jimmie Durham, Eric Duvivier, Harun Farocki, León Ferrari, Christopher Glembotzky, Victor Grippo, Brion Gysin, Luis Jacob, Ken Jacobs, Darius James, Joachim Koester, Zacharias Kunuk, Louise Lawler, Len Lye, Étienne-Jules Marey, Daria Martin, Angela Melitopoulos & Maurizio Lazzarato, Wesley Meuris, Henri Michaux, Santu Mofokeng, Vincent Monnikendam, Tom Nicholson, Otobong Nkanga, Reto Pulfer, Félix-Louis Regnault, Józef Robakowski, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Paul Sharits, Yutaka Sone, Jan Švankmajer, David G. Tretiakoff, Rosemarie Trockel, Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven, Dziga Vertov, Klaus Weber, Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

The excursion includes a public talk by Laurent Mannoni, organised by M KHA as part of the exhibition. Laurent Mannoni, the scientific director of the Cinémathèque Française, will focus in this lecture on the work and legacy of Étienne-Jules Marey and his méthode graphique.

We will leave Rotterdam Central station at 11:55 and return there at 23:06. The train fare from Rotterdam is €23,00 and entree to the exhibition is between €1,00 – €6,00. If you want to join us on the excursion please notify us by sending an email to the address below.

ADA is pleased to announce a new project: Raamte, a window presentation project organised by Gerwin Luijendijk.

Our new studio building has a big front window on street level at the crossing of Bree and Groene Hilledijk, in the Feyenoord area of Rotterdam.

Starting from April 2010 onwards, we want to give artists the opportunity to use this semi-public space for the making of a presentation in the form of an artwork. The art works will be on view in ADA’s prominent entrance area for the duration of 1 -1,5 month each.

We are looking for artists that work with the body in relation to its surroundings. We are interested in questions such as how do we approach a space and physically relate to it? How do we deal with the materials that surround us?

If you are interested in developing a work for ADA’s window space, feel free to send us a proposal including your CV and a written, or visual, outline of your intended project.

Proposals can be sent at all times to:

A screening of selected early short films of Andy Warhol. Introduction by Jim Turbert. Runtime total programme: 120 mins

Between 1963 and 1968 Andy Warhol produced over 60 films and 472 short black-and-white Screen Tests. His experimental films which emphasise stillness and duration came to be known as structural film.

As a filmmaker, Warhol was a provocateur of duration. Most of the films that were shot during the early sixties were fabled for there epic lengths: Sleep (1963), a five-hour portrait of the young poet John Giorno, and Kiss (1963) a 50-minutes film that exposes non-stop kissing people. The 35-minutes film BlowJob is one continuous shot of the face of DeVeren Bookwalter supposedly receiving oral sex; whilst the camera never tilts down to show it.

Although Warhol’s Screen Tests are short 4-minute portraits of factory visitors, they are also monumental in sum. Shot with his stationary 16 mm Bolex camera on silent black and white, each Screen Test is exactly the same length, lasting as long as the roll of film. In his Screen Tests, Warholl exposes his own selected group of “superstars”. Stars that hypnotize, simply by being themselves and stare at the camera as “living portaits”.

In the March Cinema, artist and photographer Jim Turbert will show a selection of Warhol’s early short films that made a deep impression on him during his studies at the Massachusetts College of Art from 1997- 2001. Turbert’s own art practice deals with the randomness of media exposure and the meaningless void of voyeuristic hedoism.

P for Performance is pleased to announce and host the tenth performative event: Balkony Ceremony by Ania Okrasko.

Ania Okrasko is a Polish artist who recently moved to Rotterdam in order to attend a Fine Arts Master Programme at Piet Zwart Institue. Currently, Ania is developing a project from her interests in the subject of community. The artist’s ideas have grown from her investigation of Rotterdam’s history, the city’s public spaces and its population.

As Ania enters the city, she proposes a ceremony of welcome. She sends an invitation for citizens of Rotterdam to participate in an unconventional and extraordinary welcoming celebration. People are invited to attend this public event on their private balconies.

Ania stresses the almost mythical character of her idea while it is at the same time actually openly publicized. Whether the ceremony takes place or not depends entirely on the citizens’ willingness to participate in the ceremony.

The event at ADA, hosted by P for Performance, offers another opportunity to announce the ceremony of welcome, planned for April the 10th 2010, and giving it more publicity.

Everybody is very welcome!

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. The project Balkony Ceremony is supported by Piet Zwart Institute, Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam, Dienst Kunst en Cultuur & ADA Rotterdam.

Theme:
Constituting Reality; Does The Medium Make The Memory?
March’s The Open Office For Words will take place at Kunsthuis SYB, Beetsterzwaag, Friesland.

Speakers:
Laura Basu (A Doctoral Candidate working in the project The Dynamics of Cultural Remembrance: An Intermedial Perspective). Basu talks about memory and media in relation to the concept of memory dispositif, referring both to Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze.

Steve Rushton (Writer and Editor). In his talk They Came To See Who Came, Rushton talks about media events in relation to Who What Where When & How, his collaborative work together with Rod Dickinson.

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.

P for Performance is pleased to announce a ninth performative event: Talkative Window for Collapsed Items (Proposal for a performance to happen in a former shop window, now ADA’s space), a performance by Roxane Borujerdi.

“In my live performance work, I usually make speeches out of a determined source of language and of already made expressions, which I transpose to another context. Often interacting with “do-it-yourself” props, my performances stage absurd challenges in everyday life spaces, and disrupt the course of events made foreseeable by the specific settings of an urban environment or a manufactured object.”

Roxane Borujerdi graduated from Beaux Arts de Paris in 2006. She is currently doing a residency at Stichting Duende in Rotterdam. With a partiality for mediums that allow mobility, as well the utmost immediacy between an idea and its visual realization, she is developing her practice through performances, drawings and videos. She intends to keep on exploring the contradictions of the common stereotype, using imagery that comes either from minimal art or popular visual culture. Since 2005 she exhibited in various galleries and institutions across Europe and made a year residency at The Hospital Club in London (2008-09). Up coming: solo show Galerie Lucile Corty (Paris).

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.

A Screening of three Kurdish/Armenian films selected by S. Battal Kurt.

Toprakkale (a trailer)
A film project in development.
Director: S.Battal Kurt
Runtime trailer: 9 min.

Vremana Goda (The Seasons)
Release: 1975
Director: Artavazd Pelechian
Runtime: 28 min.

Kilometre Zero
Release: 2005
Director: Hiner Saleem
Runtime: 96 min.

Runtime total programme: 134 min.

In his work the Kurdish filmmaker S. Battal Kurt deals with questions of cultural difference and identity. For his film Toprakkale, Kurt returned for a whole year to his birthplace Toprakkale in eastern Turkey, to film the habits of the village’s inhabitants. Images of landscapes, rural life and the changing of seasons represent the filmmaker’s research into his own memories and identity. In February’s Cinema Sunset, Kurt will both show the trailer for Toprakkale, as well as show two films by the film directors Artavazd Pelechian and Hiner Saleem.

The film Vremada Goda (The Seasons) by Artavazd Pelechian is one of the most important documentary films made in Armenia. Pelechian is renowned for developing a style of cinematographic perspective known as distance montage and his use of candid camera shots of people engaging in mundane tasks. In Vremada Goda, Pelechian depicts in a light, ironic and intimate way the co-existence of nature and the Armenian people.

Kilometre Zero by Hiner Saleem is a tragicomic road trip set in Iraqi Kurdistan, during the Iran-Iraq war in 1988. It tells the story of a young Kurdish man Ako, who is forced to join the Iraqi army to fight against Iran, whilst dreaming of escaping the country. Out in the frontline, the other Iraqi soldiers abuse him due to his Kurdish background. When Ako is given a mission to escort the coffin of a dead Iraqi soldier back to his family, an unexpected opportunity for escaping arises.