Barbara Visser (NL)

The works Barbara Visser has made over the past 10 years show a distinct fascination with concepts like identity, real and unreal, objective and manipulated reproduction. In A Day in Holland / Holland in a Day, too, she plays ingenious games with our notion of perception: historically-accurate reproduction or entertainment, functional space or two-dimensional scenery, an original face or a revised mask? Once more reality and representation are called into question.

Temporary Services (US)

'Dave's Stories'

For Migrating Identity 'Transmission/Reconstruction' Temporary Services is presenting a newly edited CD of recordings our friend Dave Whitman  made for us between 2001 and 2003. It contains over an hour of stories  about Dave and his life on the streets of Chicago.

Also, in cooperation with Z- Magazine, a newly written autobiographical text of Dave Whitman will appear in the May 21st edition, along with drawings of some of his favorite friends.

More information about Dave's Stories

As we live, so we work

Temporary Services is a group of three persons: Brett Bloom, Marc Fischer, and Salem Collo-Julin. We draw on our varied backgrounds and  interests to incorporate our aesthetic practice within our lived experiences. The need to create change within our daily lives translates directly to our public projects.

We champion public projects that are temporary, ephemeral, or that operate outside of conventional or officially sanctioned categories of public expression. We appreciate such diverse activities as makeshift roadside memorials to accident victims, temporary housing encampments designed by homeless people, tree houses fabricated by children, and idiosyncratic public notices that get stuffed inside the display windows of free newspaper boxes. We like outdoor  projects that are encountered by surprise rather than sought out with deliberation  like exhibitions and special events. We especially appreciate those projects  that do not have permission and challenge expected usages.

More information about Temporary Services

To Sang (CN/NL)

To Sang, a local portrait photographer in Amsterdam, presents citizens on their own terms- reflecting their achievements, ambitions, loves and friendships. The collection of photos forms a unique document of the social community of Amsterdam that has changed drastically over the last 30 years.

The photographer To Sang was born 65 years ago in Canton, China and studied photography in Hongkong. Afterwards he lived a short time in Paramaribo, Suriname. To Sang came to Netherlands in 1978 and established himself as a studio photographer in the Albert Cuypstraat. He brought his backgrounds from Hongkong with him: idealized landscapes for his subjects reflecting cultures we recognize as Asia, Afrika and South America.

Martijn Sandberg (NL)

Martijn Sandberg’s contribution for this exhibition is a bright orange poster with the fingerprinted text-‘NO ID’. Sandberg’s message addresses the questions surrounding identification and identity in the public as well as private spheres. Or, as he explains his ‘finger’ print: 'In this era we are not really asking ourselves, ‘to be or not to be’, but rather ‘ID or no ID, that’s the question.’

The poster 'No ID' is on view in the backlit City Information Panel (MUPI) at the Rokin in front of Arti et Amicitiae and inside the exhibition space.

The Amsterdam-based artist Martijn Sandberg (1967) works on the tension between text and image. He has designed his own typography that differs so greatly from most fonts, most people do not recognize it as text. Sandberg abstracts the appearance of the letters, reducing them to their essential structures and foregrounding their strong ornamental quality. The 'image' hides the 'message'- one that can only be decoded upon careful inspection.

Examples of this can be seen in his most recent works that engage with architecture and public spaces. Two of them provoked a bit of controversy- his covering the surface of a transformer station on the Hoofddorpplein in Amsterdam with the repeated phrase 'Power To The People' and the permanent installation 'We're Only In It For The Money' at the SVB Bank, Zaandam NL.

Sandberg’s work is always on the edge between text and image. The image hides the message-only by studying does one decipher the code.

Sharmila Samant (IND)

In her project ‘Hand Picked Rejects’ Sharmila Samant (re)presents clothing bought as rejects from ‘Fashion Street’ in Mumbai. Using her name and insignia she then signs them with thread, so as to give these lesser ‘seconds’ or ‘thirds’ the value of one-of-a-kind and exhibits/markets them in the wardrobe or storefronts of local well-known stores. (Laundry Industry)

Jan Rothuizen (NL)

'In Between Space.'2004 Jan Rothuizen
Sound and light installation dimensions variable.

1 slide projector with 1 b/w slide.
1 CD player with 1 CD looped and 2 active speakers

"Nonetheless, the person who is fully human (l'homme totale) also dwells in a 'lived space'('le  vecu') of the imagination and  Moments which has been kept alive and accessible by the arts and literature.  This 'third'space  not only transcends but has the power to refigure the balance of popular 'perceived space'and the 'conceived space."
Henri Lefebvre, 'Production of Space'

Astrid Proll (DE)

Astrid Proll, a former member of the RAF in the early Seventies, has carefully juxtapositioned media images with pictures from her own archives. Although it is a subjective selection it is neither a glorification of the RAF nor an angry accusation or denial. The author has lived with the consequences of the RAF: escape, prison, career restrictions. Having worked as a picture editor for many years she is aware of the power of image-part of the function of her book is to show how the media helped create the public image of RAF.

Astrid Proll was born in 1947 and became a member of RAF in the late Sixties. She was imprisoned from 1971-1974. Her first trial in 1974 was suspended due to serious health problems. Astrid Proll escaped to England where she was arrested in 1978 and extradited to Germany. In 1980 she had her second trial and was sentenced to five years on probation but released from any charges of attempted murder. Since then she has worked as a picture editor for magazines and newspapers including Tempo and Wochenpost. This book is a narrative picture book covering an important part of German post-war history. It deconstructs the myth of the Red Army Fraction (RAF) and warns against creating more heroes of armed struggles.

Federico d'Orazio

To Avoid the Void is an art project by Federico d'Orazio that begins with a work in public space.

This image To Avoid the Void was recently presented during the manifestation ARTWALK in the Staatsliedenbuurt in Amsterdam and installed near a children's playground. D'Orazio shows a minimal yet realistic image of children playing with guns. Is the image shocking because we know the chance is great that the children in this photograph might really come in contact with violence?

Arthur Neve (NL)

In the 'Het Beest'(The Beast) 2003, Arthur Neve offers his worldweary, beckett-ish alter-ego to the attention of the experts. Soul-bound to Dashiel Hammett's continental (h)op, a figure marooned in physicality and violence, this bunny shares in his deep and irreversable melancholia with the audience in an intimate video installation.

Renée Kool (NL/F)

'Celebration' 1994
The youngest dansers rehearse for the video filming.
Festival a/d Werf 1994
Photo credit: Erik Weeda

'Celebration'

Work consisting of three parts: public staged event, video registration (BVUSP) docu-videoclip, television broadcasting
Duration videoclip: 8 minutes
Produced by the artist and Festival a/d Werf, Utrecht
Recording of the event: 25 May 1994
Broadcasted during the Festival: 25 May - 2 June 1994 (42 times)

'Celebration' is the result of a cooperative working process between the artist, disc-jockey
DNA and 15 male amateur hiphop dancers. The day of the shooting of 'Celebration' was
organised as a public event in which the inhabitants of the neighbourhood were invited to participate.

The 'circus' of activities that usually comes with tv-shooting in public had carefully been
prepared to serve as the opening event of the Utrecht Festival a/d Werf 1994.
The clip was recorded in the new square Amerhof designed by visual artist Hans van Houwelingen. The intention was to make a mark in the collective and individual memory
of the neighbourhood and its inhabitants.

'Celebration' was commissioned by Mark Kremer, curator of the section Visual Arts of the
Festival a/d Werf Utrecht.

Krishna Manjit Kaur is a British/Asian Sikh. She is a writer, novelist as well as multimedia performance artist and film maker. Currently she in development with a film about Micro Credit systems based around the thesis "Does eradicating poverty mean eradicating culture". Her second novel "She's no woman, she's my daughter" is due out in April 2005.

Remy Jungerman (SU/NL)

In the video ‘Territory’ Remy Jungerman presents an intimate portrayal of a freedom fighter, a no-man’s-land advocate and official founder of the ‘dead flattened toad territory’- a dynamic mix of post-colonial Surinamese culture, Winti (a local form of Voodoo) and nomadic mapping.

Iratxe Jaio (ES/NL)

‘A 24 hours a day Revolution’ from Iratxe Jaio shows video interviews of seeming Halloween ghostlike figures, masked participants of Basque nationality, in an attempt to understand how far they would actually go to defend their ideals and political viewpoints.


'Welcome to Belfast' 2004
New video installation

After the peace agreement in 1998, tourism became a developing industry in Belfast. The city had to reconsider its public image. But how can a city with such a history of conflict, that isn't completely over yet, make itself attractive? And what role does the tourist have in the reorganization of this society? "Welcome to Belfast" compiles images of a drummer practicing for a parade, images of different loyalist flags and testimonies of three outsiders explaining their experiences in the city" More work: home.wanadoo.nl/klaasvangorkum/prestige

Ni Haifeng (CN/NL)

Ni Haifeng defines himself as a ‘Made in China’ export by painting texts and imagery on his body that relate to the Chinese/Dutch porcelain trade as well as contemporary marketing and third world production. Since the late nineties Ni Haifeng is preoccupied with photos related to representation(copy vs. original), cultural identity and the meaning of media in an image culture.

Rainer Ganahl (AT/US)

Basic Arabic (Study Sheet), 12/5/03 New York
(work on paper, 9 x 12 inches)

By assimilating different languages and linguistic phrases, Rainer Ganahl transmits different messaging systems through handwritten texts, video statements on media control tactics and performances and group readings of cultural theory. The video ‘Homeland Security’ might then be perceived as a subterfuge warning of the dangers involved.

Christina Erman Widerberg (S)

The Tattooer's Name

A film about a painter, a painting and a title...
Screening at the Palais de Festival, Shortfilm Corner, Festival de Cannes, May 21, 2004

Jn. Ulrick Désert (HT/US/DE)

Jn.Ulrick Désert (HT/US/DE)

Jn.Ulrick Désert creates happenings such as ‘Negerhosen2000’ whereby he portrays himself as a modern Western man, a man of leisure in modified Caucasian skin colored “lederhosen". For this exhibition the artist has created a travelogue series of Postcards utilizing documentary images during the time of his Negerhosen2000 work in Europe. They are placed purposefully juxtaposed against the backdrop of Rokin in Amsterdam Centrum.

Artist’s Statement

Negerhosen2000 is a multi-phased and form project and consists of Performances, Documents, photography/video, installations, objects. The artist wears caucasian flesh colored"Lederhosen" (Traditional folkwear of Germanic territories) provoking discourse on cultural ownership, identity, fantasy and race issues. Negerhosen2000 was initiated as a performative response to having been accosted in Berlin, Mitte. Negerhosen2000 is an interrogation of the rhetoric of skin and identity. It pits stereotypes against iconography. Negerhosen2000 invites representational acts: tourists (as witness) provide the evidentiary documentation for the initial manifestation.  It is an invitation of complicity in appropriation, power, fantasy and fetish in the eye of the beholder. Negerhosen2000 was deployed as a guerilla performance during DocumentaX and Skulpturen Projekt in Kassel and Münster Germany respectively. Negerhosen2000 is made of leather, hair, metal, wool, nakedness and history. Its dimensions are variable and permutations ongoing.

Gary Carsley (AU/NL)

Since immigrating to the Netherlands, Gary Carsley’s series ‘Draguerretypes’ plays on the art of ‘dragging’ and the remapping of colonial scenery using veneer landscapes to refer to and criticize the post-colonial history of his birthplace Australia.

Leigh Bowery † (AU/UK)

Leigh Bowery, periferal in the notion of art practice by combining dandyism and body art, reconstructed his image while performing ‘Walk this Way’- a rendition of Run DMC’s remake of Aerosmith’s original that uses the expression of the ‘other’ to create a form of cultural lip-syncing transvestism.

Copyright- Estate of Leigh Bowery, courtesy of Nicola Bowery and the archive of Dick Jewell.

With special thanks to Gary Carsley

Rob Birza (NL)

The gnawing question in the series ONE IS FREE circulates around the problematic relation between artist and reality. The machine-fabricated textile frames around the paintings accentuate an oriental atmosphere and emphasize a subtle play of colours between paint and textile. Rob Birza problemizes the painting as a window on reality - and while linked to almost psyhedelic-looking frames of textile, high art thus coincides with craft. Power, camouflage and the insertion of almost metaphysical looking colourfields work together demanding that the viwer take a stand, demanding that the viewer awake from his otheriwse accustomed and overly secure relationship with art.

The object, or the desire, the pleasure, frightens us greatly and we speak of threat, of allure, of repulsion, when we have to clarify it to ourselves later on.

(text borrowed from Paul Nouge, Luk Lambrecht)

Joseph Beuys † (DE)

'How the dictatorship of the parties can be overcome'
thanks to  Ritsaert ten Cate


June 1, 1971
Founding of the Organisation for Direct Democracy through Referendum
(a.k.a. Free People's Initiative, Inc.)

In the program of Direct Democracy through Referendum, Beuys places his democratic system of intellectually legal and economic life in relation to the three-structure idea of Rudolf Steiner and the ideals of the French Revolution.
 
thanks to San Paolo Biennale 1979 catalogue

Goetz Adriani, Winfred Konnertz, Karin Thomas

Tiong Ang (IDR/NL)

Tiong Ang, born in Indonsesia to Chinese immigrants and raised in the Netherlands denies any connection to one ethnic group, rather emphasizing his hybrid position. In his video 'Soweto', part of the M.I.T.R. video program, he researches clichés and controversies pertaining to diverse ethnic groups about perception and behavior and uses video fragments to observe distance and participation, silence and mass communication, watching and being watched.

Tiong Ang - Parade, 2001-2004
single channel video installation,
loop dvd, 12' 30
featuring Atone Niane and Pape Dioum

The video shows two African men dressed in elegant suits walking through Amsterdam, while carrying a bright yellow column on their shoulders. Some shots shows the event in real time, the camera following the men without interruption. Other shots show a more cinematic orchestration of the parade, a montage of close-ups, long shots, low angles, jump cuts, dissolves and slow motion that provides a rhythmic counterpoint and accentuates a complex, multi-faceted view on the men’s collaboration.
No explanation is given as to why these men are carrying this column, where they are heading to or coming from. Carrying the column doesn’t appear to be a necessary task or a delivery from one place to another. The men seem to enjoy the seemingly goalless task of carrying a column around on their shoulders for the fun of it. This joyous purposelessness is an event in itself, a ritual or a parade.

originally produced for:
The Art of Waiting, a commission for Schiphol International Airport, supported by Smart Project Space, Amsterdam, 2001

courtesy Lumen Travo Gallery, Amsterdam