The Haque On Line
Exhibition: The Unwanted Land at Museum Beelden aan Zee
(Mon 18 October 2010)
From 22 October, the Museum Beelden aan Zee presents a new exhibition featuring International artists and a global concept. The Unwanted Land is the product of the works of 6 different artists from around the world. Read on and find out about the many interesting activities taking place surrounding this exhibition.
In The Unwanted Land six artists reflect upon the theme of migration, based upon their personal experience of moving away from or to the Netherlands. Each of the participating artists emigrated at a young age or later in life. Their personal memories are the basis for art works that explore their experiences in a critical manner.
The artists have built a collective installation - an environment - in which the visitor is invited to participate in the exhibition. The environment changes and grows through the interaction with the public.
The Unwanted Land is accompanied by a varied programme of performances, lectures, workshops, activities for children and special events.
The concept for The Unwanted Land was born in a museum in Ireland, on a site that evoked associations with a ship on its way to an undetermined destination. What would it be like to organise an exhibition that would enable us to see and feel what it is like to be underway? On the way to where? What happens if you don’t know the exact destination, if you are taken as a child to a new country, far away, with another language and new customs? Such an experience lodges itself deep inside you and gives you a different perspective on the world. The Unwanted Land hints at this experience. In the current globalised world, many people live a nomadic existence, whether they want to or not. Many people have settled elsewhere because living conditions are better there. Whatever the reasons for migration, it is a radical event. The things we are familiar with no longer apply. Does your new country want you? And do you understand it? The project The Unwanted Land deals with precisely these questions.
At the centre of The Unwanted Land are new works by six artists made specially for the exhibition: Tiong Ang [Settlements], David Bade [Roots Diarrhoea], Dirk de Bruyn [Dico de Bruijn], Sonja van Kerkhoff [KÄinga a roto], Renée Ridgway [Study into Unbecoming Dutch Part I] and Rudi Struik [Destination Unknown].
Environment
The six artists have built an installation, an art work in the form of an exhibition. It is a dynamic, interactive environment. Each artist has developed his or her own art work, made specially for the exhibition, in consultation with the others. The individual art works are linked by the infrastructure of the whole installation. Installation art has been one of the most popular art forms in recent decades. Its most important characteristics are that it is three-dimensional, temporary, multimedia and encourages the viewer to adopt a specific, active relationship to the work. In essence, The Unwanted Land is an interactive complex of different multimedia installations that together form a single integrated and growing environment. As such, the exhibition is not complete when it opens, but will change during the course of the project as the artists add and alter things and the public makes its own contribution. The public play an active and co-creative role.
Participation
The art works have been made as a kind of artistic laboratory for listening to, looking at and making art. Essential to these art works is that you, the visitor, participate in some way. Works of art are completed by the viewer. You can do this by taking part in one of the performances or events, sometimes together wit the artists. Post your own story on the website. Use your imagination to be inspired by the art work. The Unwanted Land is not just a display of works of art to be looked at, but rather a project tat you can actively participate in.
Process
The Unwanted Land can be characterised as a ‘project exhibition’, focussing not on the individual artists but on their interplay and interaction. There is no single curator steering the project: the six artists - Tiong Ang, David Bade, Dirk de Bruyn, Sonja van Kerkhoff, Renée Ridgway and Rudi Struik - share the curatorship. This does not mean that the decisions within the exhibition are arbitrary. Quite the contrary, the artists have entered into a long-term exchange of ideas about the exhibition’s form, content and aims prior to its realisation. The artists have been invited to approach the exhibition as a collaborative process, but also as individuals. Together with the museum staff and the initiators of the exhibition, artist Rudi Struik and professor of art history at Leiden University Kitty Zijlmans, they have developed sic art works that together form, a sort of urban landscape. Another world, a strange culture, a new perception: an Unwanted Land. Where is the land that lives in you?
Gallery Talks
Lectures, debates and presentations by artists and academics about The Unwanted Land
Lecture: Aspects of Spirituality in New Zealand Maori art
Learn about Maori culture. Sonja van Kerkhoff (Taranaki, New Zealand) demonstrates Maori customs, provides an insight into Maori spirituality, tells Maori stories and shows examples of traditional and contemporary Maori art.
Wednesday 17 November at 19:30 in Dutch and English. Cost: € 5, free with a student pass + admission. Advance booking required via email: theunwantedland@beeldenaanzee.nl or tel 070 358 5857.
Post your own story on the website or in the gallery
You can post your own story on the website www.theunwantedland.com as a video, text or sound clip.
For up-to-date information visit www.beeldenaanzee.nl/agenda.
Reservations for public activities: theunwantedland@beeldenaanzee.nl or tel: +31 (0)70 358 5857.
The Unwanted Land is supported by the Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture (Fonds BKVB), the VSB Fonds, Stroom Den Haag, Friends and Corporate Friends of museum Beelden aan Zee, Sculpture Club, and the BankGiro Loterij.
The Unwanted lecture/workshop
Matisse wanted his paintings to be comfortable, like an old armchair that you can relax in. This workshop presents art from the perspective of the unwanted. The theme is art as a catalyst, beginning with Picasso’s Guernica and ending with contemporary installation art. The lecture will explain that art not only engages with the unwanted (as subject or materials) but that unease or discomfort as a starting point can be a channel for experiences and new directions.
Wednesday 24 November at 19:30 in Dutch and English. Cost: € 5, free with a student pass + admission. Advance booking required via email: theunwantedland@beeldenaanzee.nl or tel: 070 358 5857.
Film and lecture: Dirk de Bruyn special screening
Conversations with my Mother (Dirk de Bruyn, 1990, 100 min, 16mm, Optical Sound).
An intense and occasionally disturbing series of meetings between the filmmaker and his mother in which they relive the traumatic years of his childhood and adolescence. Following the family’s emigration to Australia from the Netherlands in the arduous post-war years, they struggled with housing problems, social injustice and de Bruyn’s father’s mental illness.
Wednesday 19 January at 19:30 in English. Cost: € 5 euros; free with a student pass + admission. Advance booking required via email: theunwantedland@beeldenaanzee.nl or tel: 070 358 5857.
Film and lecture: Sonja van Kerkhoff special screening
Three short films by Sonja van Kerkhoff
Wrapping for a Marginal Citizen, 1994, video 13 min,
Athena, 1994, 2 min, performer
Essences and Particularities, 1994, video, 6 min, music Evren Celimni
Wednesday 2 February at 19:30 in Dutch and English. Cost: € 5; free with a student pass + admission. Advance booking required via email: theunwantedland@beeldenaanzee.nl or tel: 070 358 5857.
Special events:
Workshops and activities with artists and experts
Ayurvedic massage
Have an Ayurvedic massage from Ayurvedic practitioner Cibil Jon in the installation Study into Unbecoming Dutch Part I by Renée Ridgway.
13 & 14 November 11:00 - 17:00 continuously
18 & 19 December 11:00 - 17:00 continuously
22 & 23 January 11:00 - 17:00 continuously
5 & 6 February 11:00 - 17:00 continuously
Conducted in English. Participation is free. For more information about Ayurveda visit: www.ayurvedafreaks.net
You can receive an Ayurvedic consultation via skype from Ayurvedic practitioner Thomas Punnen in the installation Study into Unbecoming Dutch Part I by Renée Ridgway.
Saturday 13 November 11:00 - 15:00
Saturday 18 December 11:00 - 15:00
Saturday 5 February 11:00 - 15:00
Conducted in English. Participation is free. For more information about Ayurveda visit: www.rishiwellness.com
Story salons
Personal stories and family history are central to the story salons. Stories and experiences of migration, feeling at home and belonging will be shared through cherished objects and photographs that you bring along. At the end of the story salon you will have an opportunity to write down your most beautiful story or experience.
6 & 20 November 11:00 - 14:00
11 December 11:00 - 14:00
8 & 22 January 11:00 - 14:00
5 & 12 February 11:00 - 14:00
Presented by Yvette Kopijn-Adidi, conducts oral history projects, oral history workshops and presents story salons. Conducted in Dutch. Participation is free. Advance booking required via email: theunwantedland@beeldenaanzee.nl or tel: 070 358 5857. Don’t forget to bring along a photograph and/or object!
The art of Taonga Puoro: Traditional Maori musical instruments workshop
Jerome Kavanagh (of Maori and Irish descent) plays ancient sounds and tells beautiful stories that belong to New Zealand’s oldest form of music: Taonga Puoro. After listening to and hearing about these musical instruments, you can have a go at playing them yourself. Following the workshop Jerome will play several pieces of music in the exhibition space.
For a taster you can listen to Jerome and his band Hui-A: www.myspace.com/putorino and watch a short video.
Thursday 6 January 19:30. Conducted in English. Cost: € 5 + admission. Advance booking required via email: theunwantedland@beeldenaanzee.nl or tel: 070 358 5857.
Material Underfoot
Interactive performance by Sonja van Kerkhoff. With the help of the visitors Sonja van Kerkhoff will make a carpet landscape.
Thursday 15 December at 14:00. Conducted in Dutch and English. Participation is free. Advance booking required via email: theunwantedland@beeldenaanzee.nl or tel: 070 358 5857.
Lanteren-Fanten (50 min, 2010 ) a performance by Dirk de Bruyn
Light show and shadow play with sounds and poetry.
Wednesday 26 January and Thursday 27 January at 19:30 in English. Cost: € 5 + admission. Advance booking required via email: theunwantedland@beeldenaanzee.nl or tel: 070 358 5857.
Children’s activities
Workshops by artists and educators related to the exhibition
Destination Unknown: workshop
Destination Unknown. Go on a hunt through The Unwanted Land with Rudi Struik and his daughter Benita. Follow the questions to search for hidden messages. Search, discover and join in with the two artists. A fun, interactive workshop for children from 6 to 12 years old.
Tuesday 21 December 14:00 - 15:30
Thursday 23 December 14:00 - 15:30
Conducted in English. Cost: € 3. Advance booking required via email: theunwantedland@beeldenaanzee.nl or tel: 070 358 5857.
Sonja van Kerkhoff’s Unwanted Land
Sonja van Kerkhoff, artist/lecturer/designer, born and bred in Tanaki, New Zealand takes you through The Unwanted Land. An interactive, in-depth guided tour with lots of background information about the various works in the exhibition.
Saturday 20 November 15:00 - 16:45. in English. Cost: € 5 + admission. Advance booking required via email: theunwantedland@beeldenaanzee.nl or tel: 070 358 5857.
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