What

The City of Amsterdam is removing the underlying criminality and achieving greater balance in the famous Red Light District, and housing corporations are purchasing buildings currently used for prostitution. Nevertheless, prostitution without the underlying criminality will remain in this district, as it is legal in the Netherlands. Before the purchased buildings are given a permanent function, the City of Amsterdam will give national and international top talents from the creative industry a unique chance to display their creations in the famous windows for the duration of one year.

In January 2008 the City of Amsterdam started Redlight Fashion, together with housing corporation NV Stadsgoed and HTNK, who selected the fashion designers. This project brought enormous worldwide publicity to Amsterdam, the talented fashion designers and the fashion industry in Amsterdam as a whole. This project has been extended until the summer of 2009.

In September 2008 the City of Amsterdam, Droog and Ymere presented Redlight Design, a project that connects the work of seven young jewellery designers with the Amsterdam Red Light district, and a full-commitment task, since the designers will be living and working in houses formerly used by prostitutes. Redlight Design is open to the public from September 2008 until September 2009. And now the City of Amsterdam together with the housing corporation De Key - De Principaal, and the art organizations Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam and Kunstenaars & Co are presenting Redlight Art Amsterdam. Upon invitation of these institutions, and within the framework of Redlight Art Amsterdam, the curator Angela
Serino has developed Red A.i.R, an international artists in residence in Bergstraat and Korsjespoorsteeg.

For this occasion, a selected group of artists has been invited to reside in the former brothels and use the hosting space as an inspiring site for their research and artistic practices. Along the year, a program of public activities involving guest artists and cultural practitioners, and a final presentation of new works will take place in the area, for which we warmly invite you to follow up the future programs via this website.

RED A.i.R., Artists-in-Residence program in the Red Light district. (January-September 2009)

Between January and October 2009, eight artists have used some former brothels in the Bergstraat and the Korsjespoortsteeg as their studios. The resident artists invited to this project were Laurence Aëgerter, Mounira Al Solh, Alexis Blake, Egly Budvytyte, Francesca Grilli, Achim Lengerer, Ahmet Ögüt and Niels Vis. Each has his or her own method, research interests and uses of media ranging from film and video to photography, performance and print. But for about nine months they have shared the same experience of occupying spaces under redefinition. For this limited period, the artists were invited to reflect on the context of the project through their artistic practise, meaning both the physical space of the studios (with its stories and architecture) and the symbolic space, represented by the process of this part of the city and of the public image of Amsterdam.

This experience resulted in eight new works shown in the final presentation A Second Exchange (25, 26 and 27 September).

From March till September, a series of public presentations, film screenings and talks were held under the title Eventless Events, in the studio spaces of the resident artists, featuring activities directly related to the production of new work, inspirational material or contributions by other artists and cultural practitioners focused on specific aspects of the artits' proposals and research interests.


You can find the complete programme of Eventless Events, the descriptions of the activities and information on the guests in the file "Eventless Event calendar", in the section PICS & PRESS & DOWNLOAD.