Methods10May23

Annotation Partners

On Wednesday (10th May) we will visit the exhibitions at Tent and Melly. This session will be about annotating each other's experience of the exhibitions currently on at Tent and Melly. If you have seen these exhibitions please come anyway, because the aim is to be attentive to how your colleagues experience the work.

11:00 WE WILL MEET AT Piet Zwart, in the aquarium.

Steve will introduce the "annotation partners" note taking methods.

PLEASE BRING YOUR MUSEUM CARD, STUDENT ID OR ROTTERDAM PASS

(If you do not have them we will sort something, but please bring what you have).

A PEN AND NOTEBOOK

or make notes on this pad: https://pad.xpub.nl/p/AnnotationPartners23

The session will be about discussing work; learning from each other's experience; developing methods of annotation so if you have already seen these exhibitions, please come anyway.

Annotation method:

We split into groups of 2 or 3 and look at each work.

Pay close attention to your annotation partner's reaction to each work and make notes of what they say about it.

Ask your annotation partner questions, such as:

How would your annotation partner describe the piece?

What does your annotation partner get from the work ?

Are there themes your annotation partner can relate to?

Are there methods your annotation partner can relate to?

Does your annotation partner recognise a particular connection to their own work?

At the end of each of the five exhibitions: ask your annotation partner about the overall experience of the exhibition. What do they take away from it?

In morning (and possibly continuing into the afternoon) we look at the work in

TENT

https://www.tentrotterdam.nl

SUSTAINING SMALL ACTS

Tent write: "The artists in Sustaining Small Acts develop their work from the connection with their physical environment. Their work often springs from what they find close to home, in the material of their daily surroundings: their own household waste, the weeds in the city, the ground under our feet. This everyday material is entwined with fundamental questions. Questions about humans as the only animals that foul their own nest, with planetary consequences. About the legacies of the western anthropocentric worldview, that can only measure the value of other living beings in terms of human use and gain – claiming and trading ownership and the right to exploit the earth.

Equally important to these artists is the consideration of how they can work from an awareness of the ecological imprint of their actions and nurture a different sensibility. Their work is not only about offering stories and perspectives, it is about more than representation: it is also about the resources, processes and relations they can cultivate, or choose to avoid, halt or redirect in their artistic production. As an inseparable part of their practice, they explore very concrete material, technical, chemical, legal and social possibilities for change—offering what could be seen as action perspectives. Their actions are often deliberately humble–letting a place be, avoiding toxic substances, wasting nothing, repurposing fallen branches, collaborating with a plant. But underlying such small acts is often a consequent commitment, a persistent effort, and a daily practicing of other ways of acting and being in the world."

ROTTERDAM CULTURAL HISTORIES #23. UNDER SIX METERS OF SAND: THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE DE BEER NATURE RESERVE

Tent write: "The port of Rotterdam, where the BP refinery and the ore and coal storage are now located, once was the site of a large nature reserve. The construction of the Nieuwe Waterweg shipping route in the 1860s produced a sand bank which grew into a 1300 hectare jagged dune area. Known as De Beer, the area was a 1300-hectare avian paradise."

LEOPOLD EMMEN: I DREAM ABOUT THIS HOUSE EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE

Tent write: "In their collaborative video installations filmmaker Nanouk Leopold and visual artist Daan Emmen experiment with film as a spatial experience. At TENT they will construct a kaleidoscopic video installation in three parts, in which equal roles are reserved for the characters in the films, the space in which they move, and the architectural settings that envelop the viewer."

In the afternoon we will visit and annotate:

MELLY

https://www.kunstinstituutmelly.nl/en/

Tromarama: Soliloquy

Melly writes: "The collective Tromarama is a Bandung-based artist collective founded in 2006 by Febie Babyrose, Herbert Hans, and Ruddy Hatumena. The three met while studying together, and shortly began to create works that combine video, installation, computer programming, and public participation. Underpinning their art making, is their collective interest in the influence of digital media on society’s perception of its surroundings. Channeling language, text, wit, and interaction, Tromarama reflects on the cornerstones of Indonesia’s political and cultural environment, and on forms of perceptive engagement in our hyperreality that applies globally.

For 84 STEPS, Tromarama presents a site-specific iteration of their work Soliloquy (2018/2022). The installation features some ninety second-hand lamps scattered around the space like islands or entities left in solitude. Each time the hashtag “#kinship” is used on Twitter, the tweet is converted into binary code, triggering their switches and creating a symphony of flickers. The flashing bulbs transcribe layers of human desire, as well as individual stories that manifest users’ connections forged across physical and digital realms. The relationship with language, generally but also especially through the realm of social media, has been an important aspect of Tromarama’s practice. This work encourages us to reconsider everyday conditions, relationships, reasoning, and sensibility in our hyperreality."

Anna Witt: Soft Destructions

Melly write: "German artist Anna Witt is interested in the construction of cultural stereotypes and the place of the individual within social systems. Experimental and performative art forms are essential to her art making. She often works collaboratively, and is particularly interested in forms of care work, and the divergence of social connectivity and detachment. Taking the form of performances, public interventions, and video installations, her works seek to playfully enable communal interaction. To this end, she is as interested in non-verbal forms of communication, such as sound, gesture, and movement, as she is in verbal. In her view, it is these more marginalized and sensorial registers that may offer new definitions of our communal existence.

For 84 STEPS, Witt presents a newly commissioned site-specific installation set to become a stage for live ASMR performances. The term ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) refers to a physical reaction comprised of a pleasant tingling sensation which many people find soothing. It became popular in social media, eventually developing into a community phenomenon in 2010, primarily on YouTube. Mutual care and emotional closeness are the cornerstones of this community, as users share and watch videos to help relieve stress, anxiety, or sleeping disorders, most commonly. The live sound-performances will focus on the auditory and sensory effects of gentle, destructive actions towards the objects spread within the gallery, that make up the installation. The physical debris will remain and accumulate within the space, thereby constantly changing it over the course of the exhibition."

Link to next session:

Methods11May23