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. Valks 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 its 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.