THE ERRANT CIRKLE performs RATIOCINATIONS & REORIENTATION THRU A COMPASS ROSE II
Here now is the concluding half of the project that began with the first day of the Shadow Floriade on April 22, 2022–International Earth Day. It now brings the Shadow Floriade and the piece itself to a kind of conclusion, precisely six months later. The Errant Cirkle, a collective of visual artists and performers, explores the rituals of park life that suggest parallel realities and a space for reimagination and freedom of thought. Thus the Errant Cirkle tries to envision contemporary rituals for the park setting while creating a path of unusual objects that may suggest thoughts.
For this project, two themes from an entwining dialogue: the pharmakon which is the greek term derived from Plato that refers to the indeterminacy of that which is both a poison and a cure as well the sense of reorientation of the world we find symbolized in the compass rose. For this reason a key location for this project is the Herbal Garden which is one of the sections of the Beatrixpark which was created for the 1972 Floriade. The Herbal Garden presents a unique enclosed world which is distinctly set apart from the rest of the park, allowing an idea for isolated interventionist and performative activity. These events will be composed of speech and movement that views the Herbal garden within the context of the pharmakon that we live with in our minds in this time of post pandemic while also providing a space for small visual interventions that will encourage spectators to wander attentively and thoughtfully in the garden to see what thoughts have grown there alongside the herbs. However this garden is also located alongside the wading pool at the kiosk which will provide the basis for variations on the compass rose as a visual motif for the park as well as a guide for a sequence of performative events that will relate themselves to the Compass Rose constructed from floral elements established in the wading pool at the central kiosk in the park.
The Errant Cirkle includes Olivier Keeler, John McGraw, Hiroshi Tatsumi, Keiko Wakamatsu, Heidi Mach, and Illio Kiryos.
FALL BACK: ETERNAL RETURNS October 21—December 12, 2022
The Autumn program of Audio Visual Spatial performances
For the Autumn program The Warp provides the counter balance for the Spring Ahead: The Afterlife program presented earlier this year with Fall Back: Eternal Returns. Just as we are prompted to remember to set the clocks forward by the command to Spring Ahead in the Autumn we know we must always fall back and set the clocks accordingly. For the Warp however, Fall Back means an attempt to return to an apparent new normalcy after the demise of the plans to transform the Kunstkapel into the Conservatory of Amsterdam but also as a reflection of the attempt to readjust after the extended Covid period that began in Spring 2020. With Fall Back: Eternal Returns we explore the recurring aspects that have characterized the work made in the Kunstkapel over the last ten year period.
The concept of the Eternal Return has been with us since Greek Antiquity when the stoics postulated that history was doomed to repeat itself infinitely since the universe and its concomitant energy is recurring. Nietzsche later transforms this into a thought experiment which questions what we would do faced with the information that we could be doomed to repeat ourselves. Nietzsche later had Zarathustra proclaim:
All things are entangled, ensnared, enamored; if you ever wanted one thing twice, if you ever said, ‘You please me, happiness! Abide, moment!’ then you wanted all back … For all joy wants—eternity.
The actual physical reality of the Kunstkapel which we have treated alternately as an instrument, a vessel, a container, a space station, a space of contemplation, a place of madness and at last a place of recovery, is the site of eternal returns and its circular immersive quality provides the perfect object correlative for this proposition. The Autumn program will consist of the regular Audio Visual Spatial spectrum programs that usually combine three performances in a single evening, several ongoing workshops which will produce individual evenings for stand alone performances as well as club nights that create a different context to present a dynamic environment for more impromptu or informal performances.
The Pitfall Ensemble: Writhing, still, Estee Makampo: Rite of Healing, Leela Collective: Retreat to the Trees
For the final event of the Warp summer program three performances are designed to interact with the installation Floris Ex Machina created by Andreas Tegnander as a unique interface between the Shadow Floriade program in the Beatrixpark and the Audio Visual Spatial program in the kunstkapel. However, the date of 9 11 remains a chilling anniversary and for this program each of the projects takes a view of the lives we have lived since this historic boundary line and how it impacts on the life of the trees today.
Henk Wolters, a tree expert and Elodie who knows all about the history of Beatrixpark will join Andreas Tegnander in a conversation about the trees and history of the park. We will gather at 15.45 at the Kiosk (the little drinkhut) close to the kids’ pool.
Flora ex Machina is a sound installation acting as a public sensory organ. It is a new way to experience the Beatrixpark and the complex hidden sounds of its trees. While the park’s soundscape is filled with people talking, birds chirping, trains passing and music playing, there are certain layers of sounds in the park not available to us, because they do not travel through the air.
Each tree is represented by a unique Omnidirectional speaker sculpture, creating an immersive experience that isolates only the sound inside of the trunks of these trees.
The Warp Audio Visual Spatial performances summer program.
Spatial sound exploration in the context of the ‘Flora ex Machina’ sound installation. The installation uses a 6 piece omnidirectional sound system that gets interpreted by our acts.
Anni Nöps // Andreas Tegnander // Pau Sola Masafrets
Waves of sound caress your skin – progress – implode – it´s
ex . p.l…. o. d. . . .i….. . . . ….n g
Get sucked into a VOID and
stay there for a while. . . look around.
reinterpretations of acoustic
sounds and instruments in a space in between time..
Granular, a way of life?
As part of the Shadow Floriade 2022 program The Warp presents
EUREKA! in the Beatrixpark on the weekend of October 1 and 2, in which audiences are invited to take a nighttime journey through the park to experience a visual art and science performance side show. This carnival of wonders is inspired by Edgar Allen Poe’s final work, Eureka!, in which Poe revealed incredible ideas such as an expanding universe, the big bang and black holes which he intuited with the immediacy of a walk in the park… And hence it was decided amongst these artists to engage with what might be considered the first conscious work of art science which placed its primary focus on the ability to Imagine.
This after dark performance installation is enacted by a Collective of ten artists very well known in the burgeoning field of art science:Joost Rekveld, Matthijs Munnik, Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand, Vladimir Grafov, Zalan Szakacs, Daniela De Paulis, Mint Park and BMB con: Justin Bennett & Roelf Toxopeus
Audiences will assemble at the Meeting point located at the Park Kiosk BEA, Beatrixpark 1 off Boerenweteringspad at any time between nightfall and late night.
Promenades will commence every fifteen minutes from the meeting
Point during which audiences will be led on tour to experience eight unique works in the darkness of the park. The entire performance is expected to take eighty minutes. The event is offered free of charge.
This project is presented by The Warp in connection with The Shadow Floriade, fiftieth anniversary celebation in the Beatrixpark, in association with Zone2Source in the Amstelpark. Eureka! is produced with the support of:
Gemeente Stadsdeel Zuid, Stimulerings Creative Industries, Amsterdam Fonds voor de kunst, Mondriaan Foundation, and Prins Bernhard Kultuurfonds.
Summerlessness AudioVisualSpatial programs IV, V, and VI
The Warp continues the AudioVisualSpatial program for Summerlessness with three remaining evenings which push the boundaries about what the concept of lessness can mean and how expansive it can become.
AVS 46 Summerlessness part IV: The Living Daylights (In the Space of Subtractivity by Design)
1 September 18:00
This program commemorates the previous incarnation of the Kunstkapel as a gallery specifically for design concepts rather than fine art following on its previous identity as a part of the Sandberg Art Institute and previously the St. Nicolas catholic school (which prompted Summerlessness I and II). These projects take the lessness decree and apply it to the concept of a laboratory for design.
The Walkback performs Summer Stock
Summer Stock is a very familiar phrase in the theatre world, referring to the production of older or tried and true productions made during the summer months in venues found in more off center or vacation oriented locations. But The Walkback ensemble takes the phrase more literally to gather up literally all familiar actions, gestures and utterances that have become actually so familiar and repetitive as to be deemed stock coming out of the strangely unifying experience of the Covid pandemic particularly in what is perceived as the first summer of apparent freedom. More than ever people seem to find themselves reduced to saying the same things with all new significant and learned gestures to go with it. This would seem to suggest a new unified design for living. As usual, The Walkback takes this research as the starting point for a performative walk back through this new reality in order to observe what this reduction may have done to us and where it might lead. The Walkback includes Dorn Whitlow, Cathy Matthis, Randall Crane, Natalie Telema Bourne and Terry Gornick.
Tensegrity Co-op performs We have designs but Given the Situation We Will Just Have to Make Due
Utilizing drawings and plans shown thru a complex overlay of slide projections and field recordings of construction sites an analysis of design alternatives for the space is offered. This is a timely analysis in the face of the future remaking of the Kunstkapel venue into its new identity as the conservatory of Amsterdam. But this study is made purely within the realm of the provisional which allows the imagination to run wild and thus the presentation puts forward incredible flights of fancy offered within the most limited means of presentation and representation: some very spare drawings which pile up in complexity with more elaborate explanation. The project has developed into a parody of the presentation of architectural renovation plans offered lately for major major venues and locations within Amsterdam which it can be noticed is under constant rebuilding to more fully realize its future as a new real life Disneyland for Europe. Tensegrity Co-Op currently includes Ettiene Minoury, Pascal Wissolu and Hubert Foure.
The Archetechtonic Assembly performs Designing Residue : The Itinerary of Endless Summer Places
The Kunstkapel is again the location of surround cinema and circular sound design which takes its cue from the idea of Summer blockbusters, summertime blues, and the romance of summer places which are far and away from one’s workaday world. All of these ideas are residues at the end of the summer that have contributed to a life lived apart and which must be always bid a bittersweet farewell as part of its very design. In that sense this piece is a kind of elegy for the traditional idea of the summer break particularly in the context of this post pandemic moment. Highly processed imagery is placed in widescreen surround format along with competing soundtracks to produce a highly disturbed memory of this summer idyll. The Archetechtonic Assembly includes Grant Harris, Deborah Lane, and Lee Ellickson.
AVS 47 Summerlessness part V: The Last is the Least (But don’t call it minimal!)
5 September 18:00
The challenge to these performative groups is to take the rule of lessness as absolute principle. Thus a most demanding evening is imagined in which the slightest gesture might have the greatest impact. This program reprises the three groups that contributed to the first event of Summerlessness and these three groups will further refine this state of lessness into the final program of the season.
Ambulant performs Instances are Fewer And Farther Between
This work is a refinement of a continuing project from this group project centered upon social contracts, shared rhythms and perpetual cycles of movement and interaction between bodies in daily life. Having developed a score of basic activity, the attempt here is to apply the rule of lessness by slowing down and establishing intermittency as an operating rule such that we witness a gradual slowing down of physical activity wherein contingent events, gestures and motions occur literally as “fewer and further between”…. Ambulant includes Terrence Franson, Heap Mathers, Abigail Anson, and Nicole Read.
The Discordian Knot performs One Less Action Can Be Lesser Than
The Discordian Knot continues to make examples produced from its rule of five principals in which all performances are entirely developed out of the limitation of five rules without any further planning or scripting. The five rules in this case pertain rather than spurs to greater improvisational possibility more to severe limitation and restriction. The Discordian Knot includes Rory Hernandez, Dawn Porter, Della Rittenal, and Roland Cassel.
The Distraught Foundation performs We Made Very Little of It
This ensemble is formed from a reduced group from many of the refugees who performed in the inaugural event of Summerlessness as well as several of the individuals who are working with them from this side. The refugees are challenged to engage critically with their experience as refugees and the overwhelming impact of statelessness and ambiguity with which they have had to continually adjust themselves. In reducing these experiences to the bare bones, a provocative image of a strange holding pattern in life emerges where every opportunity seems but a provisional projection.
AVS 48 Summerlessness part VI: In the Event that Nothing Happens (Three Renditions)
10-11-12 September 16:00
The title of this final event would apparently speak for itself and its command is taken with great seriousness by the participants who return again from the first and fourth events of Summerlessness in order to push the challenge of lessness to its most provocative interpretation. Each group has developed its own unique interpretation as to how to deal with the challenge of this title. The result of such an enterprise is that the result is invariably marked by longueurs of considerable duration and so therefore the spectator is warned that this is a very demanding event not for the squeamish nor the impatient.
The Distraught Foundation performs First Rendition (In the Event that Nothing Happens)
The third Summerlessness performance created by this amalgam of refugees and compatriots who work with them are challenged to confront the dictum of the event title.
The Distraught Foundation performs Second Rendition (In the Event that Nothing Happens)
Once again the Discordian Knot utilizes its five rule principle to create even greater restriction to produce their interpretation of the event. The Discordian Knot includes Rory Hernandez, Dawn Porter, Della Rittenal, and Roland Cassel.
Ambulant performs Third Rendition (In the Event that Nothing Happens)
What is expected to be the longest rendition of the evening, given the interest in the group in rhythms and perpetual cycles over time, the attempt to stage nothing happening at all would seem an inevitable and natural activity. Ambulant includes Terrence Franson, Heap Mathers, Abigail Anson, and Nicole Read.
The Underwriters’ Labortory performs The Epitome of Spectacular Indifference
29 August 18:00
The Underwriter’s Laboratory has undertaken a most unusual study in its attempts to understand the function of the Warp as an active cultural mechanism in Amsterdam. The object is to make a careful study of the reception and response to the program over the last decade and ruefully subject a series of test performances (consisting of some of the more ambitious, ephemeral or outlandish ideas promoted by the Kunstkapel location) to these auto critiques which are made directly in a call and response fashion by a ring of onlookers. The results may be taken as parody, satire or outright travesty… but directed at the performers or the audience themselves? This becomes the self reflective question as what the study demonstrably shows is that given the general perception the performers discover it would be better for them to do…. Nothing! Thus the overarching theme of a summer of lessness receives its most disturbing and absurdly hilarious rendering in this performance. The surprise performers have been gathered from distant and recent Warp projects such that their actual experiences come to play in the performance. Principal members of the Underwriter’s Laboratory include Christopher Wrener, Dara Navi, Bastien Calla, and Ithey Cornish.
For the first time in its long residency in the Kunstkapel The Warp presents a summer program to dwell particularly on all the elements that are traditionally avoided: long daylight, fewer people in town, and even reduced energies and circumstances… These unusual projects are made as a prelude to Fallouts, the final Warp program in the Kunstkapel presented this autumn from September 21 to December 12 in anticipation of the coming closure of the venue as it enters a winter hibernation of renovation for the coming years.
Summerlessness part I: Ghosts in Broad Daylight (We are Still Referriing to it as a Chapel Are We Not?) 22 August Sunday 2:00
1: The Dischordian Knot & Our Sorrows’’ Two Thirds perfrom Sunday Service
This piece attempts to recreate an actual Sunday Service in recognition of the role the chapel played in the Catholic St Nicholas School for which it was built. While the room was designed as a seminary rehearsal room it did stand in for chapel duties throughout the history of the school. This collaboration brings together two duos: Wilton Carrol and Babette Sauvigny establish a rigorous service based on five dischordian rules while Odile Teretz and Dessy Merrin interlace song sung in Latin.
2: The Distraught Foundation performs The Least We Could Do
A gathering of refugees (from several groups active in Amsterdam with which The Warp has collaborated previously) take up transitory residence in the Chapel, reminding one of another traditional role of the chapel in strong communities. The refugees each offer an image, a sound and position as an act of sharing.
3: Ambulant performs The Mass is Over
A slow summer dissolution to the precedings in this performance which raises the question of where to from here?
Summerlessness part II: Darkness at Noon (Did You Feel Like Ending it All in Art School?) 24 August Tuesday 16:00
1: The IrkSumSet performs Reduced Circumstances (Art School Confidential)
Over the summer period the former Restaurant As has played temporary residence for an initiative uniting the energies of graduates from Amsterdam arts institutions and this project is designed as a free space for their interaction which is laid out in the usual IrkSumSet manner such that all manner of disparate activities occur over several hours and which gradually produces a sense of an orchestrated arrangement of spontaneous actions…
2: Guiser’s Palace performs The Limping Model
A spontaneous show and tell performance by Lee Ellickson which addresses the shifting premises of the Kunstkapel as well as the struggle to keep up with warped spacetime…
3: The Paraneural Record performs Endless Summer
A confounding experience of cinema in broad daylight: the infamous mid sixties Bruce Brown California surfing landmark that graced movie theater screens with a “whole new mode of entertainment” they claimed is here given an unrecognizable makeover both in terms of sound and image… The sounds and images are distributed roundabout the 360 degree space and calls for close attention.
Summerlessness part III: Unus Mundus 27 August Friday 20:00
1: Unfolding, duo with Vilbjørg Broch and Manuela Lucia Tessi
Unfolding – intersection between witchcraft and mathematics- is a work created in 2019. This project is a further exploration of precognition in the arts and in creation. Our media are algorithmic computer music, dance and vocal performance. The electronic music consists of live generated computer music which is created for this project. We deepen the research around the question of training a sensitivity between constructed composition frameworks and intuitive listening. As in ancient divination techniques, a knowledge of events yet to unfold is achieved through the intersection between set frameworks and chaos. We listen to draw knowledge from the silence. Click here for the trailer.
2: Sheet Metal performed by Dead Fish Fuck
This unique project has been in development over many decades and has traveled several continents. Dead Fish Fuck Creator/performer of sound objects utilizing found materials and experimental playing techniques. Sheet Metal: large plate of metal suspended in space and played by rubbing surface with wooden sticks of various sizes. Click here for the more information about this performance.
3: Dust’s Memory performed by Salmon & Broch
Improvised duo piece with Vilbjørg Broch – voice , Miriam Den Boer Salmon – violin.
