Scriptings #7 and Scriptings #8 by Achim Lengerer

Sunday, October 25, 7 p.m. at Korsjespoortsteeg 12, Amsterdam, NL.

You are cordially invited to the seventh and eighth edition of Achim Lengerer's Scriptings series with the live-presentation A patient waiter is no loser. by David Bennewith and the release of the Scriptings publication IN/OUT/EITHER/NEITHER by Alexis Blake.
 
- Scriptings #7: A patient waiter is no loser. by David Bennewith
David Bennewith will present his collection of notes surrounding the (visible) dot and its reception. The presentation will be conducted via connected manifestations of the dot — and its activities in relation to text (messages). The outcome of the presentation, helped along by graphic design, will manifest itself in the prospective Scriptings publication A patient waiter is no loser.
 
David Bennewith (Auckland, New Zealand, 1977) is a graphic designer based in Amsterdam. Working under the moniker 'Colophon', since November 2008, David produces and publishes non-commissioned work. Colophon is interested in typography and relies on empirical research into subjects surrounding typographic design. Recent projects include: Public Arena, a publication for Dutch Art collaboration Bik Van der Pol and Joseph Churchward, edited and designed by David Bennewith, co-published with Clouds, Jan Van Eyck Academie and Colophon.
www.colophon.info
 
- Scriptings #8: IN/OUT/EITHER/NEITHER by Alexis Blake
ANNE: "... Yeah, You accept the boundaries that that you have. Maybe you put them up yourself, maybe they come from other things. But if you accept the boundaries, then you can feel quite free, even though you might not be."
 
From July 18-21, 2009, the artist Alexis Blake held four focus group* meetings in the Stedelijk Museum’s De Bouwkeet in the centre of Amsterdam, NL. With the assistance of moderator Stephanie Blake, Ph.D., she examined how individuals reflect upon the notion of choice. The focus group participants were presented with historical and present-day references — images, video clips and text — that used the rhetoric of choice to communicate either a personal or collective set of beliefs, ideals and/or truths. Using dialogue fragments from this focus group research and quotations/equations from her conversations with Michael Franke - a logician and philosopher of rational choice theory - Blake wrote a lecture that will be presented this evening as the publication Scriptings#8: IN/OUT/EITHER/NEITHER.
 
Alexis Blake (US) is a visual artist based in Amsterdam, NL, where she is currently participating in the residency project; RED A.i.R. She received her BA from St.Olaf College in the US and her MA in Fine Art from Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, NL.
 

*A focus group is a qualitative research method that uses a moderator to facilitate group discussion in order to acquire knowledge about a certain topic or product.

Eventless Event #7: Melodrama for Men #2, performance by Meiro Koizumi                (duration 20 min.)
9 September 2009 from 19:00 at Korsjespoortsteeg 12 - 2nd floor.

Eventless Event #7 features Melodrama for Men #2, a new performance developed by the Japanese artist Meiro Koizumi (1976) for RED A.i.R | Redlight Art Amsterdam. In Melodrama for Men #2, Koizumi uses this project to comment on social values, male-female relations, individual obsessions and nationalist uses of human bodies. This performance will raise the question of Japanese sex slavery during World War II through the experiences of Jan Ruff O'Herne, a Dutch woman forced to become a 'comfort woman' for Japanese soldiers. From the end of the war nationalist sentiment required the denial of the existence of these women until the women themselves raised their voices in the 1990s. They declared that they had been forced into prostitution as a method of keeping the soldiers under control. For the performance Koizumi disguises himself as an androgynous creature, creating a setting for the perpetrator and the victim or for the male and the female narrative to meet, as well as for the two cultures participating in this crime.  In this performance Koizumi touches upon motifs of an individual’s inner turmoil, Japanese nationalist war romanticism and the uses women’s bodies were put to within the Japanese wartime social system. Koizumi exposes human nature free of imposed interpretation or direction. When nationalism is once again on the rise around the world, Koizumi feels the need to reveal the cruel value system hidden behind Japanese historical narratives and portrays it in a theatrical work centered upon the female body. Through this performance Koizumi’s ritualistic act will confront the audience with the wartime crimes of those in power in Japan who seek to readjust historical facts as a means to obtain political power in the present day.
 
Meiro Koizumi was born in Maebashi, Gunma, Japan in 1976. He studied in Amsterdam and lived in London before recently relocating to Tokyo. He obtained his BA from the International Christian University, Tokyo, in 1999 and his BFA from the London Institute Chelsea College of Art and Design in the UK in 2002. He was a resident artist at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam in 2005-2007. Presentations of his work have been held at the Stedelijk Museum Bureau in Amsterdam, Tate Modern in London, the Govett Brewster Art Gallery in New Zealand  and more recently in a solo show at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo. He is represented by Dicksmith Gallery and Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery.    

RED A.i.R at de Bouwkeet, the mobile unit of the Stedelijk Museum
12 September 2009 from 12.30 – 14.30; Stedelijk Museum Bouwkeet, Zuidas, Gustav Mahlerplein.

Angela Serino, curator of Red A.i.R will be in conversation with Minke Horn (Vrije Ruimten Zuidas AIR) about Artists in Residence programs. The past years Artists in Residence programs have greatly gained in popularity. Serino and Horn seek to explain what happens when an artist uses a particular place as an inspiration for artworks. Jelle Bouwhuis, Curator of the Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam will moderate the conversation.     

Opening Soon / Opening Now: Public Swimming Pool by Laurence Aëgerter
New public swimming pool in Amsterdam August 22 and 23, 2009; Korsjespoortsteeg 23. Opening hous: from 8am - 8pm.
 
After Public Library and Turkish Snack bar, the last episode of Opening Soon / Opening Now accessible to the public will take place on August 22 and 23. This time, the former brothel on Korsjespoortsteeg 23 will become a public swimming pool.
For two days, visitors of all ages are welcome to recreate in a unique swimming pool, under supervision of professional bath superintendents.
The swimming pool at the ground floor is for recreation, instruction and competition according to thetimetable below. Bring your swimsuit and towel and drop by for some aquarobic, maternity swimming or recreational swimming. Seperate changing rooms and lockers are available on the upper floors.

Time                 Saturday August 22                                           Sunday August 23
 
08:00 - 11:00    Lane Swimming                                                   Lane Swimming
11:00 - 12:00    Stroke training                                                     Aquarobic
12:00 - 15:00    School lessons 14e Montessorischool           Swim and Shape
15:00 - 17:00    Recreational Swimming                                      Recreational Swimming
17:00 - 18:00    Aqua jogging                                                      Maternity Swimming
18:00 - 20:00    Fifty Fit                                                                 Gay swim
 
Recreational Swimming is open to everyone, but children without a certificate are only to enter the pool under adult guidance. We recommend bringing water wings.
Fifty Fit is for everyone over 50.

The pool is accessible until 30 minutes before closing time.

 
Opening Soon / Opening Now is the title of a year project Laurence Aëgerter is developing for RED A.i.R. Korsjespoortsteeg 23 was originally assigned to Aëgerter as a studio. However, she chose not to use the space as a studio, but as a place to question her role as an artist in the city's political plans of gentrification in Amsterdam. To research the transitional character of the location, in between brothel and renovated house, she has applied 8 new public and semi-public functions to the space. Some of the episodes were private performances and installations.

The episodes of Opening Soon / Opening Now:

1. Public Library
2. Golf Club
3. Institute for Cultural Remembrance and Mnemonic Practices
4. Turkish Snack bar
5. Agnostic Temple
6. Symposium for Urban Investment
7. Public Swimming Pool
8. New Wing Anne Frank Museum
  
The final presentation of RED A.i.R. will take place on September 25. At this occasion Laurence Aëgerter will present a database of Opening Soon / Opening Now in an artist book and an installation. Aëgerter has also made a series of eight photographs in connection with the project.
 
Also, a series of posters was developed for Opening Soon / Opening Now in collaboration with graphic designer Jennifer Skupin. These posters play a central part in the project. They inform the passers-by and emphasize the building's continual transformation by graphically showing the sequence of its different functions. Current information is alternately revealed. The series of 18 posters has been made into an edition of silkscreen prints.

 
Laurence Aëgerter (Marseille, 1972) lives and works in Amsterdam. She studied at the Fine Art department of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie Amsterdam and Art History at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. Her body of work is multidisciplinary, consisting of mainly photography, installations, performances and books, or a crossover of those media. Her work makes use of organised chance in order to personify existing systems.
www.laurenceaegerter.com 

Scriptings #4  by Achim Lengerer
July 19, 7.00 - 8.00 p.m. Korsjespoortsteeg 12-1.
 
KULTUR & GESPENSTER
and
The Mock and other superstitions
 
Eventless Event #5:
Scriptings#3 by Achim Lengerer: Kerstin Cmelka's "Microdramas" and Guy de Cointet's Tell me
Saturday July 4, starting at 7pm, Korsjespoortsteeg 9/12.

You are cordially invited to the third edition of Achim Lengerer's Scriptings series with the Austrian artist Kerstin Cmelka presenting her Microdramas Supporting movie and Change, starting at 7pm. The same evening Scriptings starts to present a rare selection of artist books by the French artist Guy de Cointet (1934 – 1983) and original video recordings of his performance work in the early eighties as well as recent restagings. The books and videos will be on display at Scriptings until the end of September. Scriptings would like to thank the contemporary art gallery Air de Paris, in Paris, for their kind support.

“Microdramas” by Kerstin Cmelka
"In my collection of 'Microdramas' I use existing dramatic text excerpts as well as clichéd feature film scenes and theatrical shorts that already found their form, function and meaning aswell as their audience in order to rehearse and perform them - for camera and live - with befriended amateur performers. The potential of language, gesture and mimicry in this folk-like theatre play material lies in its rhythmical, bodily rehearsal and repetitive use and mediation and is reinforced and brought onto another plain of meanings and connotations through the hermetic and intimate atmosphere in which it is trained in. Its format is expanded through the coexistence of privacy and the identification with the suggested characters that have to be performed."

Kerstin Cmelka studied at the Städelschule, Frankfurt . She currently lives and works in Berlin and Frankfurt am Main. Recent performances and exhibition participations include: Ein Traum ist alles Leben und die Träume selbst ein Traum, Kunsthalle Lingen, GER; Die Wahrnehmung von Ideen führt zu neuen Ideen, Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf, GER; Schnecke, Vogel, Katze und Qualle, Galerie Mezzanin, AUT and 2nd Moscow Biennale for Contemporary Art, RUS.

Tell me by Guy de Cointet
"Northern California, October 1979. It’s late afternoon at Mary’s. Her house is situated on the bank of the Sacramento River, in that stretch of the river which is as beautiful as the Danube between Ybbs and Melk, east of Vienna. A few miles away is the town of Courtland, a Chinese settlement for many years, where the famous Dr. Sun Yat Sen lived for a time in exile. After her day’s work, Mary is home planning to spend the evening with some of her best friends: Michael, Olive, and hopefully, the elusive Mark. The way these young women behave, talking and listening to each other, how they see and perceive their surroundings interest me. One of these days, I believe, I’m going to drive up North and pay a visit to Mary."

French artist Guy de Cointet (Paris 1934 – Los Angeles 1983) moved to the states in the late 1960s, briefly becoming one of Warhol's Factory visitors in New York, before settling in Los Angeles. His work was well regarded in his lifetime, and remained influential long after his death, particularly to west coast practitioners such as Mike Kelley and Allen Ruppersberg. In the last couple of years his work was rediscovered and featured in shows and re-creations of his performances e.g. at Stuk, Leuven, BE; de Appel, Amsterdam, NL and Tate Modern, London, UK.

The entrance is free but due to limited space please make a reservation via our e-mail address: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it. Thank you.

Eventless Event #4
June 20 & 21; Scriptings #2 by Achim Lengerer

Program schedule:

June 20. From 7-8pm, Korsjespoortsteeg 12-1.
Who You Think You Are; Performance by Dafne Boggeri.

June 20. From 8-9pm , Bergstraat 16.
Secrets From the Street: No Disclosure (part 1); Film screening curated by Francesco Bernardelli.

June 20. From 9-11pm, Bergstraat 14.
Secrets From the Street: No Disclosure (part 2); Film screening curated by Francesco Bernardelli.

June 21. From 8-10pm, Bergstraat 14.
More film screening, for whole film program see below.

On 20 and 21 June, Eventless Event #4 features film screenings, a presentation and a performance. We start on Saturday at 7pm with a presentation by Meris Angioletti, hosted by Achim Lengerer for Scriptings, the temporary show room where writers, graphic-designers, artists and performers, all of whom use the formats of script and text in their production process are regularly invited. We continue at Bergstraat 16 with the performance Who You Think You Are by Dafne Boggeri. Boggeri, whose work explores the body as a site of contested powers, has responded to Francesca Grilli’s invitation to take over her studio space. Following immediately that same evening, we move to the living room of the guesthouse for the first part of Secrets From the Street: No Disclosure, a film screening curated by Francesco Bernardelli with works by Joan Jonas, Trisha Brown, Martha Rosler, Peter Hutchinson, Gabriel Lester, Mike Hoolboom, Todd Solondz and others. As Bernardelli states, “this audio-visual exploration tackles one of the fundamental issues of today urban living: how to read embedded signs mimetically disguised as plain elements of an extensive urban fabric, and at the same time to disentangle them and reinvest them with new functions and a new direction”. The filmic and video works of Secrets From the Street are examples of a re-invention of the urban drift. “They speak of basic personal freedom, but even more of the possibility of a constant re-imagination of our communicative tools, which are continuously being subverted and recreated according to needs and urgencies of the moment.”
The film screening continues on Sunday night, from 8pm on at the guesthouse. You can read the complete film program below. Drinks will be served during the evening. Entrance is free but due to limited space please make a reservation via our e-mail address: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots; you need JavaScript enabled to view it. Thank you. For Eventless Event #4 we would like to thank the Italian Cultural Institute of Amsterdam (Mr.Silvio Marchetti) and the Netherlands Media Art Institute Montevideo (Theus Zwakhals).

Film program Secrets From the Street: No Disclosure, devised by F.Bernardelli:

Saturday June 20. From 9pm till midnight, Bergstraat 14.
Posterama (1980) by Lous America, David Garcia, Henk Wijnen & Annie Wrightthe. The Netherlands, sound, colour, 11:39
Excerpts from Wild Style (1982/83) by Charlie Ahearn. USA, sound, colour, 82:00
Secrets From the Street: No Disclosure (1980) by Martha Rosler. USA, sound, colour, 10:45
Song Delay (1973) by Joan Jonas. USA, sound, b/w, 18:35, 16 mm. film on video
Midnight Movie: The Girl from Monday (2005) by Hal Hartley. USA, sound, colour, 84:00

Sunday June 21. From 8pm till midnight, Bergstraat 14.
Shorts (1973) by Peter Hutchinson. Germany, sound, colour, 17:50
Urban Surface (2005) by Gabriel Lester. The Netherlands, sound, b/w, 10:40
Horizontal Silence (2003) by Seoungho Cho. USA, sound, b/w - colour, 8:31
What I'm Looking For (2004) by Shelly Silver. USA, sound, colour, 15:00
Mapping a City of Fragments (1997) by Chip Lord. USA, sound, colour, 9:30
Public Lighting (2004) by Mike Hoolboom. Canada, sound, colour, 76:00
Midnight Movie: First Episode from Storytelling (2001) by Todd Solondz. USA, sound, colour, 90:00
    

Eventless Event #3 by Niels Vis, Barbora Klímová and with Achim Lengerer's opening of Scriptings with Paul Gangloff
June 6, Korsjespoortsteeg 12.

Program:

Les Salons by Niels Vis
A dialogue with Barbora Klímová
Korsjespoortsteeg 12 (ground floor)
5 – 7 pm
 
Scriptings #1 by Achim Lengerer
Presentation with Paul Gangloff
Korsjespoortsteeg 12-1
7 – 8 pm 

This Saturday, 6 June, Eventless Events will feature the second Salon organized by Niels Vis as well as the opening of Scriptings, the temporary showroom by Achim Lengerer at Korsjespoortsteeg 12.
For the second Salon Niels Vis has invited Czech artist Barbora Klímová (b.1977, Brno) to take part in a dialogue about Famous Brno Villas II. (2006), her ongoing personal research project in the field of individual family housing in Brno in the Czech Republic, during the period of normalization between 1968 and 1989. In this dialogue Vis will contrast Klímová's research with Dutch and Western architectural experience in the same period by focusing on varying expressions of the modernist ideal of architectural transparency in villa architecture.
Following immediately that same evening, on the first floor of Korsjespoortsteeg 12, Achim Lengerer will open Scriptings with Amsterdam-based graphic designer Paul Gangloff. Scriptings is a discursive platform parallel and additional to Lengerer’s writing and performance project Songs#. In the coming months Lengerer will regularly host artists, writers, graphic-designers, performers and publishers, all of whom use the formats of script and text in their production process. The presentations at Korsjespoortsteeg 9 and 12 will be live events (talk, discussion, reading, display, performance), plus an immediately-published magazine that will contain textual and visual materials provided by the participants. The magazine is designed in collaboration with the Lithuanian graphic designer Goda Budvytyte.
Drinks and soup will be served during the evening.

Eventless Event #2 by Laurence Aëgerter, Ahmet Ögüt, Niels Vis
15, 16, 17 and 23 May.

What, where and when:

Public Library by Laurence Aëgerter:
Korsjespoortsteeg 23
Friday 15 May: 10 am - 5 pm.
Saturday 16 May: 11 am - 11 pm.
Screening selected by Ahmet Ögüt:
Korsjespoortsteeg 12
Sunday 17 May: 10 am - 5 pm.
Les Salons by Niels Vis
Korsjespoortsteeg 12
Saturday 15 May: 5 - 7pm.
Saturday 23 May: 5 - 7pm.

The May program of Eventless Events features the opening of Public Library by Laurence Aëgerter from 15 May till 17 May, a screening program selected by Ahmet Ögüt on 16 May and the first Salon organized by Niels Vis on 23 May.

For one weekend the former brothel at the Korsjespoortsteeg 23 will be transformed into Public Library, an installation by Laurence Aëgerter. On the ground floor 40 meters of classified books will be on display on shelves. During opening hours a librarian will be in attendance for visitors while she carries out research into methods of book classification, several of which will be tested at the temporary library, including renowned systems of classification such as Harvard's, as well as alternative systems using principles from mathematics or game theory. On Saturday 16 May, a 12-hour private reading performance will take place in the Reading Room on the second floor. Aëgerter has invited 24 men and 24 women who have never previously met. Each man will be asked to bring a book and to read an extract aloud from it to one of the women for fifteen minutes. The chosen extracts will be collected in an artist’s book. Public Library is the first part of Opening Soon/Opening Now, a series of transformations of Aëgerter’s studio into spaces with different public designations.
In the same weekend, on Saturday 16 May, Ahmet Ögüt will screen a selection of videos, starting with Random Rules: A Channel of Artists’ Selections from You Tube, followed by Underground (1976) by Emilie de Antonio, a documentary which combines interviews with and archival footage of the Weatherman, the militant faction of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) who fought the U.S. government during the 1960s and 1970s.
Eventless Event #2 continues on 23 May with Les Salons by Niels Vis. The first Salon kicks off with an ongoing visual dialog between Niels Vis and Alexis Blake, which will be shown in the front space of their shared studio. Continuing with a brief verbal dialog, they will address an aspect of Blake's research - the rhetoric of images constructed collectively through means of focus groups. In this discussion Vis will look at the specific spatial setting of these focus groups.

Eventless Event #1
Saturday, April 18. 8pm, Korsjespoortsteeg 11 & 12.
 
Eventless Event #1 summons curators and artists, who have previously worked in a situation where they were expected to react to a particular environment/space/circumstance, as a way to generate a dialogue about the complexities of producing within a certain framework.
 
We start at Mounira Al Sohl's studio where Maaike Gouwenberg will present Mostly It Happens At Night, the project she recently organized in the Bijlmer for FLAT Foundation, in collaboration with Sandra van Dongen. Afterwards, we will hear from the artists Constant Dullaart, whose project "bijlmer.me" was an anthropological research on services offered in the Amsterdam suburb, and Maurice Bogaert, who developed the work Mostly Nothing Happens at All.
Furthermore, the participants of the De Appel Curatorial Programme 08/09 will introduce Weak Signals Wild Cards, their upcoming project which takes place between the 27th June and the 26th of July 2009 in Amsterdam Noord. In this project thirteen artists and seven multidisciplinary thinkers will be commissioned to imagine and respond to the future of Amsterdam Noord, the ‘creative city’.
 
The evening will be continued at Alexis Blake and Niels Vis' studio with the screening of the documentary Grey Gardens (1975) - a story of a mother and daughter, who defied the norm by living as recluses in their dilapidated 28-room mansion. Some called them crazy, while others believed them to be prophets.
 
RED A.i.R Open Studios
Free admission

Program:
March 20 11:00-18:00 Open Studios
March 21 11:00-18:00 Open Studios
                  19:00-21:00 Drinks and Music at the Guesthouse

Locations:
Studios, Bergstraat 16 / Korsjespoortsteeg 9,11, 12 and 23.
Guesthouse, Bergstraat 14.

On March 20 and March 21 the resident artists of RED A.i.R., Laurence Aëgerter, Mounira Al Solh, Alexis Blake, Egle Budvytyte, Francesca Grilli, Achim Lengerer, Ahmet Ögüt and Niels Vis will open their doors to the public. Come and visit the former brothels, which are now used as working spaces.
 
Special event: Nine lives, performance/installation by artists Francesca Grilli and Anna Franceschini.
Location: Bergstraat 16, March 20 and 21, 18:00-20:00

Bergstraat 16 was featured in the news in May 1959, when a prostitute was murdered. The prostitute was the 45-year old Truus Krieger. That same week, another prostitute was nearly strangled in the nearby Oude Nieuwstraat. Fortunately, “Pretty Hetty” had resisted fiercely and was luckier than Truus. Truus’ murder was solved only in 1963, thanks to Ria, another prostitute.
For the occasion of Nine lives, we invite Ria and Pretty Hetty to take possession of the Studio of Bergstraat 16. RED A.i.R. is curated by Angela Serino for Redlight Art Amsterdam which is organized by the City of Amsterdam and the housing corporation De Key/Principaal, in collaboration with Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam and Kunsternaars&CO. The project comprises a residency program, a series of events and a final presentation throughout this year.