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MAY 7, 2008. FROM 22:00 TO 23:45
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Nat Muller
Is an independent curator and critic based in Rotterdam. She has held positions as staff curator at V2_, Institute for Unstable Media(Rotterdam) and De Balie, Centre for Culture and Politics (Amsterdam).
Her main interests include: the intersections of aesthetics, media and politics; (new) media and art in the Middle East. She has published articles in off- and online media; is a regular contributor for Springerin and Bidoun, and has given presentations on the subject of (new) media art (inter)nationally. Her latest projects include The Trans_European Picnic - The Art and Media of Accession (Novi Sad, 2004), DEAF_04: Affective Turbulence: The Art of Open Systems (Rotterdam, 2004); INFRA_ctures (Rotterdam, 2005), Xeno_Sonic: a series of experimental sound performances from the Middle East (Amsterdam, 2005), DEAF07 (Rotterdam, 2007), the workshop "Between a Rock and a Hard Place? Negotiating Artistic Practice, Audiences, Representation and Collaboration within Local and International Frameworks" (Amman, 2007). She has curated video screenings for projects and festivals in a.o. Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Berlin, New York, Istanbul, Copenhagen, Grimstad, Dubai and Beirut. She recently co-edited the Mag.net Reader2: Between Paper and Pixel with Alessandro Ludovico (2007), and is working on Mag.net Reader3: Processual Publishing, Actual Gestures, based on a series of debates organized at Documenta XII. She is co-initiator of the Upgrade! Amsterdam, and has taught at the Willem de Kooning Academy (NL), ALBA (Beirut), the Lebanese American University (Beirut) and the American University of Dubai (UAE). In addition she serves as an advisor on Euro-Med collaborations for the European Cultural Foundation (ECF), and this year was a jury member for the prestigious Berlin-based media festival Transmediale. She is curator-in-residence at the Townhouse Gallery in Cairo from April 2008 to April 2009. |
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Bart Rutten
Bart Rutten (1972) is a leading expert in the field of Dutch Video Art. After graduating from the University of Utrecht on the subject of video art in 1997, he started working as a art historical researcher at the Netherlands Media Art Institute, Montevideo / Time Based Arts (see www.montevideo.nl) and worked there for more than 8 years. He started the media library, was involved in the video art preservation project and worked as head of the presentation department (collection, distribution and exhibitions).
In 2005 he choose to leave this specific world of new media art and turned to a regular museum with broader perspective on the arts, believing that a special paradigm concerning video an media arts is out of time. Now he works as curator for the Stedelijk Museum of ‘s- Hertogenbosch (www.sm-s.nl) where he organised several exhibitions where art of the moving image is integrated in the broader museum practice. Among other shows he organised Post Horizon, a first solo show of Persijn Broersen / Margit Lukács (2006) one of the rising stars in the field of contemporary Dutch art. The Fish Pond Song, a solo exhibition by Jeroen Kooijmans (2008) and Nederclips (2007), a survey of best artistic Dutch Music video clips. This exhibition was reviewed extensively and attracted a big audience.
Besides curating exhibitions he is and has been teaching at several art academies and the University of Utrecht . Now he is connected as a visiting professor to the Sandberg Institute (www.sandberg.nl), the masters department of the Rietveld academy in Amsterdam . The Sandberg Institute is also running the One Minute Foundation (www.theoneminutes.org). Bart Rutten is participating as an advisor for this foundation.
Another side project is the Impakt festival (www.impakt.nl) where he is working as an advisor for the artist in residence programme and is part of the selection committee.
Bart Rutten writes regularly for the art magazine Metropolis M and the film magazine Skrien. He also writes biographies for exhibition catalogues worldwide (mostly on artists working with film or video). In 2003 he published in collaboration with Jeroen Boomgaard the book: The Magnetic Era, video art in the Nedetherlands 1970 -1985. |
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With thanks to
Netherlands Media Art Institute
MonteVideo/Time Based Arts
Amsterdam |
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Seasonal Cuts
Curated by Bart Rutten & Nat Muller
The “seasonal” has been a recurring and tried subject within the arts, especially in the visual arts and film. In its more mimetic forms it spans from realist painting to landscape photography (very recognisable within the Dutch canon). Even in Hollywood film it functions mainly as a recognisable metaphor for the change of time. Prime features of these approaches have been considerations with light, colour and the symbolism of typical issues such as the barren of winter, the rebirth of spring, the joys of summer, and autumnal harvesting. With “Seasonal Cuts” we stretch and twist the idea of the seasonal by redirecting the passage of time into the realm of politics and the realm of the playfully absurd. In addition, the works presented each share a concern with the technical and aesthetic properties of the moving image, so that the edits and cuts become carefully crafted indicators of moments where the slippage of time marks a condition of stasis, or the other way round, where inertia signifies change. |
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Driessens Verstappen (NL) “ Frankendael 2001”, 2002, loop
In their work, the artist couple Driessens and Verstappen explore a meta-creative system in which aesthetic expression and experience are uncoupled from the individual artist. To achieve this, they investigate algorithms – either physical, chemical or computer-based – for the development of image generating processes and artificial universes. ‘Frankendael 2001’ is a software-based installation for which nine locations in Amsterdam’s Frankendael park were documented for one year. Nine different scenes or perspectives were photographed daily, from the same viewpoint and always at noon. Using software developed for the purpose, these shots were edited into a flowing movement which reveals the changes in the season and the transformations of the landscape. Nature reveals itself as an artificial life system, or as a universe whose natural qualities can only be exposed through artificial and artistic means. |
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Guido van de Werve (NL), Nummer Negen (The day I didn't turn with the world)”, 2007, excerpt
What happens when you take a day off, refusing to turn along with the world? Such a motionless and actionless day has no consequences, one would think. Van der Werve took this question literally enough and left for the North Pole, where he spent 24 hours on the axis of the world. For one whole day he did not move along with the Earth, but the planet rather revolved around him; just look at his shadow. This almost Copernican inversion is both cool and pathetic, absurd and poetic, grotesque and moving. A tiny man in the middle of a white icy plane full of swirling powder snow. |
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Yane Calovski (MK) & Fos (DK), “An Early Lost Play”, 2006, 11’42”
An Early Lost Play is comprised of series of public actions performed by a character - a young woman, Tanja - dealing with her own indifference in the wake of the current political situation in Denmark. They are recorded on video and produced as 8 short episodes understood as interventions in the media. As the real situation evolves and progresses, the character's existential connection to reality, built upon a certain kind of social idealism, devalues and she loses the constraints as an individual submitted to accepted codes of social behaviour. The work attempts to deconstruct these existential codes and bring up and provoke issues of social morality, escapism, non-compliance and humanity. The actions performed by the character are linked to, and hint of, demystifying social ideology, through individual demonstrations against the conservative and liberal norms and standards. |
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Adel Abidin (IQ/FI), “Vacuum”, 2006, 8’55”
Having suffered enough of the interminably harsh winter in Finland, Adel finally decided to act. With a waterproof vacuum cleaner and a video camera, he went to the frozen sea and started to work… |
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Michael Blum (AT), “The Three Failures”, 2006, 22’4”
A fairytale about communism, social democracy, and capitalism. |
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Meiya Lin (CN/NL) “Lost Paradise”, 2007, loop
The soundtrack - a very popular communist Chinese song - is key to this video. It is sung in praise of beautiful flora and the pleasant blowing spring breeze; its tone bright and cheerful. The song is about how to enjoy time outdoors in a perfect communist society,. In addition, it heralds a bright our future. Lin choose to structure the video according to the structure of the song, whereby she creates a non-existing environment in a nowhere space,: a space of lost paradise. |
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Manuel Saiz (ES/JP), “Parallel Paradises”, 2007, 4'
'Parallel Paradises' starts with sparkling images of a young forest in autumn colours. The forest is portrayed in just a few shots: thin trunks, the ground covered with needles and leaves, sunlight finding its way through the foliage. Then two girls are standing there, out of the blue, each wearing a flower in her black hair. Has the Spanish artist Manuel Saiz, just as Paul Gauguin a century ago, become obsessed with exoticism? If he wanted to reflect the seductive eroticism of the scantily dressed girls onto the woods, his choice of season is strange, to say the least. Spring or summer would be much more suitable for sensual connotations. Moreover, the choice of a temperate-zone forest rather than a tropical rainforest and the fact that their pink and white high-heels are totally out of place in these surroundings suggest that this is about something else. And finally, the dance that the two girls carry out perfectly synchronously is too quick and contemporary to pass off as ancient and traditional. The title points to the artist's main intention: two very different worlds momentarily entering into a symbiosis. Nature documentary meets 'Saturday Night Fever'. These Japanese beauties are dancing the parapara, a popular disco trend in Japan. The crown of sunlight around their heads replaces the pulsating disco lights. The rhythmical sound of their steps is an accompaniment to the bird songs. |
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Guido van de Werve (NL), “Nummer acht (Everything is going to be alright)”, 2007, 8’36
A frozen sea with nothing on the horizon, except for a large ship that is forcing its way through the ice. A tiny figure is walking a few metres ahead of this icebreaker, as if it has to lead the way. A more monumental image could hardly be imagined. Van der Werve, wearing an ordinary coat that hangs loosely around his body as if he has just left his house, has ventured onto thin ice. The distance between his footsteps on the ice and the channel opening up behind him is sometimes so slight that it makes you hold your breath. But looking behind him could be fatal. The sight of that colossus of a ship and the knowledge that it could swallow him up at any moment could suddenly make his knees go weak. Reality, with all its disasters and terrifying tricks, could be breathing down his neck. Walking on imperturbably is his only chance, and as long as he keeps up his pace, everything is going to be alright. |
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(c) FIFVC 2004-09
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