THE RESEARCH AND DESTROY DEPARTMENT OF BLACK MOUNTAIN COLLEGE

For a brief moment the revolutionary ideas on art and living of Black Mountain College resonate in the spaces of W139. The work of more than 30 young conceptual artists meets in an experimental Wunderkammer and engages in a tactile dialogue creating a performative space.

THE RESEARCH AND DESTROY DEPARTMENT OF BLACK MOUNTAIN COLLEGE brings together a group of bricoleurs, conceptual artists whose work share the idea of collecting. The physical shape of the work is determined by the content of their own research. The gathering, or ensemble of different ideas in literary images tells a story, and stands close to the notion of anachronism. In the exhibition mostly three-dimensional works will be presented, forming a dynamic parcours, as a forest of metonymic sculptures and images. The displaying of this anti-digital show will create new conceptual reflections between the different works. With 30+ artists the exhibition spaces of W139 will take on the temporal form of a giant cabin of curiosities, a physical embodiment of knowledge. The unforeseen encounters will be spurring new insights and fuel an active dialogue on exchange, collaboration and collection. Together, the large group of artists will have to overcome the inhuman proportions of the W139 exhibition space and engage in a spatial relationship with each other’s work, In the rear space Thomas Raat will transform the pattern of the mosaic floor of the Radio Kootwijk building into an enormous mural, making the large back wall an impressive rhythmic backdrop of repetitive ornaments.

The title of the exhibition functions as a boutade for the works of a new generation, born in the late seventies and eighties. Research and Destroy is an abbreviation of the cultural cliché research and development. Search and destroy is a military term for heat seeking missiles and small interventions on hostile grounds, and also an amazing punk song by The Stooges (1973). Black Mountain College refers to the experimental college which placed the arts at the centre of all learning processes. Their education methods were revolutionary and have been an inspiration for many ever since.

Spurring the imagination. Challenging habits of seeing. Learning through doing and emphasizing the experimental necessity of progressive education methods. Black Mountain College was not an art school. Focusing on the education of the whole person, the college placed the arts at the centre of the learning process and community life on the campus functioned as an important part of the curriculum. Living and creating together. The college was initiated in 1933 by John Rice and housed its campus under the Blue Ridge Mountains, North Carolina until 1957. The new experimental college was founded at the time of the Great Depression and after the closing down of the Bauhaus. Soon after its doors opened Josef and Anni Albers came to the college and would become its most prominent influences for education, bringing with them the spirit of modernism and the intertwinement of art and living. Although the college only existed for a brief period of time its revolutionary and radical ideals considering education have been resonating for many years and left their traces in many art schools today. This is where this exhibition starts...

Interventions by Rosa Sijben, Jan Hopf & Felicia von Zweigbergk

Special designed posters by Joris Kritis, Stian Adlandsvik, Asger Behncke Jacobson

Logo by Jean Bernard Koeman and Asger Behncke Jacobson, after the College logo door Josef Albers, 1933

Texts by Anne van Oppen and Jean Bernard Koeman

Curated by Jean Bernard Koeman

Artists
Saar Amptmeijer,Leyla Aydoslu, Sara Bjarland, Sven Boel, Kees Boevé, Antonia Breme, Crystal Z Campbell,Melanie Ebenhoch, Johan Henning, Roderick Hietbrink, Jeroen van der Hulst, Saskia Noor van Imhoff, Katrin Kamrau, Daniel vom Keller, Bram Kinsbergen, Linda Lenssen, Mahal de Man, Tim Mathijsen, Sofia Montenegro, Xue Mu, Suat Öğüt, Marc Oosting, Olivia Alders Plessers, Thomas Raat, Natalia Rebelo, Daniel Rödiger, Fabian Schröder, Kema Spencer, Edward Clydesdale Thomson, Britt Vangenechten, Kasper de Vos,Jonas Wijtenburg, Emile Zile

20 Oct – 2 Dec 2012

@ W139

Warmoesstraat 139
1012 JB Amsterdam NL
+31 20 6229434
info@w139.nl

Open Mon–Sun 12–18h00
Free admission

Underconstruction – Berlin

September 27 – November 10, 2012

 

Apartment Project Berlin is a space for collective living, aiming to be a meeting point for international artists towards productions with interdisciplinary approaches. Moving from Istanbul, feeling the urge to come up with new ideas in a new surrounding, geography; the project is trying to take risks, eliminate the great expectations by questioning the notion of success while discontinuously transforming.

The first project to be realized is “Underconstruction Berlin”, focuses on the notions that one may observe in every corner of the beloved city of neoliberal agendas; while reflecting on the memory of revolutions, cabarets, wars and The Wall; migration and its manifestations. Putting two cities, Istanbul and Berlin, in dialogue, examining the relation/translation between two cosmopolitan cities is another attempt. The shop window of the space presenting inside to outside/outside to inside, allows the encounters not just between human beings but also with the daily life and spirit of the city. The artists ask questions, try to find answers and/or solutions while getting lost, changing directions and leading to new possibilities.

Apartment Project Berlin is active since September 2012 as a place for living, studio and exhibition space. During the workshop throughout September, there will be artist talks, presentations and performances – suggesting performing as a way of living - that are in dialogue with each participating artists’s curiosities. Collaboration and idea exchange between artists is mediated through these events. Converted from a motorbike shop, the project accelerates by internalizing the power absorbed by the space itself. The first project Underconstruction is a situation/collaboration/a state of living. The invited artists live, eat, work, exhibit, perform; negotiate, discuss, laugh and fight, change the costumes of the daily life in the same space for the month of September.  What one would see are boxes, books, nylons, drawings and words; heads that are spreading ideas, mentioning margins, radicalization, the political situation of the city as well as the queer culture, the contemporary music scene; channeling potentials from the past, performativity, costumes, cabaret, creating music from the everyday experiences; history and politics of the immigration and the city. The space becoming the skin of the artists, communal living experience allows for intense engagement among the participants and alternative production processes.

We are happy to announce the first exhibition opening with a performance/cabaret on the 27th of September at Hertzbergstrasse 13. We would be glad to share this night with you. A publication documenting the one-month period of producing and compilation CD will be completed and sent to the space once the artists go back to İstanbul.

Freefalling…

Göksu Kunak 

Artists

.-_-., <-x->, Özgür Erkök, everybody is an, Ingo Frischeisen, Lee Garcia, Çiğdem Hasanoğlu, Ha Za Vu Zu - Güçlü Öztekin, Güneş Terkol, Mert Öztekin-, ibrahim, Gözde İlkin, Mehmet Can Koçak, Göksu Kunak, Yasemin Nur, Suat Öğüt, İz Öztat, Bert Perl, Ilgın Seymen, Steffi Weisman, Zişan

The opening exhibition will be on 27th of September, 2012 18:00 – 22.00

Performances: 20.00

Hertzberg str13, 12055, Neukölln, Berlin

Visiting days: Thursday, Friday, and Saturday

Visiting hours: 15-19:30 (Sat. 12-19.00)