Events — May 11, 2018

Price
€ 3,- (excl. museum entrance)
Location
Stedelijk Museum entrance hall, Teijin Auditorium
Time
May 11, 2018, 7 pm until 9.30 pm
Main language
English
Admission
Performance Sidsel Christensen Tickets
The rest of the program is free of charge

BRACE FOR IMPACT is the final project of De Appel Curatorial Programme 2017–18. The artists in BRACE FOR IMPACT  – an exhibition and a series of public events op various locations – bring attention to the divergent ways in which technological environments shape our affective dispositions. 

In an evening program composed of time-based work, Sidsel Christensen, Jonathan Reus, and Yao Qingmei play with situations surrounding infrastructures and their potential collapses. The works address states of panic induced by imminent technological breakdowns and consider what becomes legible after the crash, when systems that we take for granted fail to operate smoothly.  

Sidsel Christensen opens the lecture performance Swallow the Journey by offering audiences a pill said to contain a nanorobot. Set in an audio-visual scenography of images and flickering lights, the artist narrates the intensifying journey of the nanorobot through the body and intertwines it with a history of nanotechnology. In if this, then that… (iMac Music), Jonathan Reus produces a sonoric landscape from the circuits of the computer itself, stopping only when the machine breaks down. Combining machine aesthetics and free improvisation, Reus surgically manipulates the insides of the iconic iMac G3 to produce melodic noise and glitchy images that assault the senses with an unrecognisable familiarity. Yao Qingmei’s three-channel video The Ecdysiast – Molt offers a comedic and critical inquiry into the logics underpinning the growth of surveillance and control. Taking the security checkpoint as inspiration, Yao presents a parodic choreography of airport procedures, such as a security guard doing robot a dance-security pat down mash-up.

Program

7 PM entrancehall | welkom & receptie
7:15, 8:15 auditorium | Sidsel Christensen Swallow the Journey performance, 40 min
7:15-21:30 entrancehall | Jonathan Reus if this, then that… (iMac Music) performance
7:15-21:30 studio B  | Yao Qingmei The Ecdysiast – Molt, 3-channel video, 9’, loop
9:30 entrancehall | closing remarks

More about the artists

Sidsel Christensen’s (b. 1978. Lives and works in Copenhagen) works explore the production of a subjectivity that unfolds between authenticity and fictional constructs of the self. Through audio-visual installation, performance and text, she unfolds the different possibilities for the imagination to transform the perceived reality for an individual or group. More info: www.sidselchristensen.com

Jonathan Reus (lives and works in The Hague) is an electronic musician, new media artist, teacher, curator, and community organiser. His practice as a whole is syncretic between these disciplines, where core research questions are digested through making, thinking, discussing, and collaborating. More info: www.jonathanreus.com

Yao Qingmei’s (b. 1982. Lives and works in Paris) work frequently features performed action as the foundation of the work with video installation used as the final form. Humor is the signature of her art practice: beneath the surface of her poetic jests that inquire into the definition and assignment of signs is an underlying sense of absurd melancholy.
More info

More about De Appel curatorial program

De Appel Curatorial Programme is an educational platform investigating alternative forms of exhibition making and curatorial activities. Since its inception in 1994, the ten-month program brings together six emerging curators from various academic and experiential backgrounds. Together they develop a project within the framework of De Appel’s newly established theme: modes of de-universalization. Every year the participants of the Curatorial Programme organize an event in collaboration with the Stedelijk Museum that corresponds to their project in different forms.

Stedelijk Stage it!

Stedelijk Stage-it is a new category within our program with performances and interventions in the field of music, performance, dance, theater, film and opera. This program offers opportunities for interdisciplinary collaborations in the field of performing arts, festivals and art education.

Credits

This evening is curated by De Appel Curatorial Programme 2017-18: Sun A Moon, Luay Al Derazi, Jagna Lewandowska, Jo-Lene Ong, Arkadiusz Półtorak and Miriam Wistreich.
The presentation is made possible with the generous support of the Danish Arts Foundation and the Creative Industries Fund NL.