In 2019 we took part in Museum Night again, this time with the theme of death.We approached this theme in interactive ways, including a selfie coffin and quarter-length conversations with artist Irina Birger.We also offered a shroud workshop and ran a peaceful beauty salon where guests could have their faces pampered and immortalized in a "death mask".
De first edition of Night Garden was held in 2006. Night Garden is an event series in which we invite people to share their unique plant-related journeys. Come join us in this parallel universe accompanied by dreamy DJ sets and botanical dancing to keep your winter hearts warm!
Using the series Mediamatic will foster a better understanding and establish communication between people and indoor plants. Learning together through playing, interactive exploration and entertainment.
We had performances and DJ's from Alexandra Duvekot, Yon Eta, LULU, Tomislav Feller & S. M. Schneider, Anastasia Loginova, Michal Mitro, Tony Guarino and DJ Plasticboy. And also with MC's Aroma Jockey Flora Dulleman.
A special thanks to: Maria, Aron en Patrick. Enlarge
We have organized more than 70 workshops in 2019. With these workshops we have given our audience the opportunity to learn and do for themselves.The workshops are an extension of the various program lines such as fermentation, death and smell.We added a number of new workshops to our range this year: Botanikurs 101, Blending a Rose Accord, Creating Cacti, Co-Design with Microbes, Design your own Shroud, Distilling a Scent Bouquet and Sculpting Textiles.In addition, in September we had Dora Goldsmith as a guest, who spoke at Odorama about the smell of Egypt and the next day gave a workshop about the smell of mummification.
Ambergris, Milk - Scent of a Woman, Scent from Heaven, Leather Galore, Mapping Scent, The Male Haze, The Smell that Sells
Who would think that a whale turd could be as valuable as gold?On March 14, we dedicated the first Odorama of the year to the rare perfume ingredientAmbergris.With our speakers we discussed, among other things, the value of the washed up Potvis in 2016 and the image of smell in 16th century paintings.In the 2nd edition of Odorama in 2019 we smoke breast milk.We unraveled the history of the womb as a sense of smell and talked about a future where men breastfeed.
Over the past year, we also looked at the symbolism of fragrance in communities, such as inScent from HeavenorLeather Galore.The word perfume is a corruption of the Latin words per fumum: through smoke.In many ancient belief systems, it was thought that scents were the correct language to match the immaterial state of the gods: invisible, indescribable, and elusive.Egypt and Europe listened to different stories of fragrance as a messenger to the gods.In addition, we unraveledthe secret scent of leatherin Leather Galore.We looked at the symbolism in the fetish community, its use in medicinal practices and the smell of tanning.
In addition, we also connected geography and scent in 2019.Together with Caro Verbeek, Dora Goldsmith, Birthe Leemeijer, Kate McLean and Gayil Nalls, we looked at the different possibilities inMapping Scent.We smelled the scent of Ancient Egypt, collected the polder in a bottle and divided the city into different scent zones.
A real man smells like the Ax commercials, or so we think.The Male Haze distinguished the cultural and biological aspects of "men's scent".DuringThe Smell that Sells, also the last Odorama of the year, we looked at how marketing can make use of scent.
This year for the first time every Friday our doors opened to the curious visitor.During our tours we walked past all our different spaces and installations and gave the visitor an impression of the rich life in the Biotope.
Neo Futurist Dinner
The Eating of People, A La Mano - the Spring Edition, Children of O, The Beauty Dinner After two successful years with Neo Futurist Dinners, we started the year with a controversial dinner: The Eating of People.In May, a total of 154 people, of which more than 60% tried their own blood.Chef Bryce Steba served bread, asparagus and chocolate mousse.He invited guests to add their own blood.The dinner emphasized the philosophical questions that blood entails: why is it permissible to use all creatures for our own purposes and everyone stands on their hind legs when a piece of human is used - even if this human being there totally not suffer?Why does self-consumption provoke resistance?Can it be tasty?Is it contagious?
After the summer, we asked food designer Giulia Soldati and chef Tommaso Buresti to do a spring edition of their A La Mano dinner, a culinary experience in six courses where taste is enriched with touch.Your bare hands explore different temperatures, textures and shapes.Crunchy, fresh, sweet, velvety, warm and cool alternated.
Together with the Food non Food department, we wondered what happens when a water shortage occurs and playfully investigated the effects of climate change on our food culture and on our relationship to water.In an all too credible dystopian scenario, they created The Children of O, the people who stayed in Amsterdam with the aim of finding solutions to the lack of fresh water.To celebrate their water ingenuity, they invite their fellow survivors to an annual ceremony at Mediamatic.
What is the connection between cosmetics and food?Shouldn't everything you eat be just as safe for your skin?Margherita Soldati, Alice Héron and Krisztina Czika developed the last dinner of the year at Mediamatic, which was half a beauty salon and half a delicious dinner.The 8 courses were performed playfully among the guests.Face masks could be eaten in combination with a dish and at the same time cared for the skin.Cleansing, Moisturizing, Exfoliating, Nourishing, Detoxing, Steaming and Cooling were all part of the treatment.
Artist Isabel Burr Ray worked during the winter and spring to her Beauty Kit Female Farm in the summer.During the Beauty Kit Focus Group, she presented beauty products made from woman-body substances, and subsequently asked the public to respond critically.In the month of August, nine women finally took part in the week-long and theatrical 'farm'.
The participants learned how to harvest their own sexual liquids and how to use them to produce transpersonal unisex cosmetic products.The activities they did combined contemporary and ancient techniques designed to increase the vitality of sexual fluids.They questioned their bodies, their sexuality, their discomfort and explored their limits.On the last day, the 'farm' opened its door to the curious and you could ask questions to some of the participants and the 'patrona', Isabel Burr Raty.
Composteren, Resomation, Saponification and Taxidermy, Death Architecture
This year we started our collaboration with Susanne Duijvestein and started our new program about death, Still Life.Subjects such as composting or resomizing the human body were discussed.As a final part of one of the evenings we composted a muskrat in our own garden.In the third edition of Still Life, we looked at how architecture can affect death.What a funeral looks like and where it happens can have an immense effect on how we relate to death as a community.In combination with giving shroud workshops and our museum night program, we tried to make death a more discussed and approachable topic.
Liza Witte, Amber Veel, Robin Beers, Rowin Snijder, David Rademacher, Theun Karelse and Stichting Metamorfose, among others, came to speak.
What is actually swimming in the Oosterdok?This educational collection was created together with artist Mandy Den Elzen.In her art practice she uses animal material and transforms it into beautiful sculptures.The collection of 17 Amsterdam fish gills surrounds our Aquaponics greenhouse and with its special shapes invites passers-by to come and discover.Most gills are freshwater fish often found in estuaries or coastal waters, just like the IJ and the docks.Some are also known as food items, such as bream, cod, perch or whiting.
How well do you know the nature around you?Many different plants grow around our Biotope, from healing to poisonous, from dark green to purple.Hortus Dijkspark is a project with which we want to teach people about the medicinal properties of the plants.
Together with Timberland and 150 other people, we learned more about making the city greener. We hosted workshops and organized a volunteer day in our garden. Together we prepared the Dijkspark for the winter.
As part of a longer-term project, Ruchama Noorda launched the Tumulus in June 2019.A living installation that continuously changes shape and will continue to change until February 2023. The Tumulus is a bounded garden installation that functions as a natural ruin, compost pile, cement and earth sculpture, seed bed, earthworks, lo-tech fountain, drinking / paint well, and dunghill. The Tumulus will go through 5 phases including Blue Monday, a closing ceremony where the Wede that has grown on the Tumulus over the past year will be turned into a blue war paint.
Our Cleanlab provides space in the city for research into microorganisms, fungi, fermentation and chemical processes.This year we tried out various gastronomic studies with our Cleanlab team.Could you normally use poisonous acorns in bitterballen?And what shapes can you make from tempeh?We expanded our knowledge of fermentation and participated in the pop-up dinner of Mikkel Karstad andA La Mano: The Spring Edition.
In collaboration with Brewery Oedipus, Zeger Reyers went round the year with the elderberry.Under the leadership of head brewer Sander Nederveen and with the help of the fascination of Zeger Reyers, we brewed four beers with the main ingredient Sambucus nigra, or the common elderberry.On the trial-and-test evenings that we organized in 2018, we examined the blossoms and branches of the elderberry with weeder and sommelier Carlo Pellati.This year it was the turn of the other two seasonal ingredients: elderberry and the Judas ear.Together with Philipp Kolmann we discussed the use of (weed) herbs in the brewing process and the locality of flavor.
After going four times through the taste of the season, the collaboration resulted in a Mediamatic cuvée: the taste of the year.During the presentation evening at the Oedipus brewery, we tasted the spicy drink that is reminiscent of a herbal aperitif, with notes of fruit, liquorice and earthy mushrooms.
At the end of September, we opened the Aroma Lab every Thursday as a workshop.Led by Frank Bloem and Niklaus Mettler, we hope to be a Lab where all people, from novice to professional, can come use our fragrance library.
In 2022, a major exhibition about the history of the Oosterdok will take place in Amsterdam;the eastern part of the old port of the city.In 2019, we will take the first research steps in the form of a number of openly published blogs led by Irene Craen.Drugs, herring, nutmeg, mothballs, bread and gunpowder: in theOHO blogs, various topics are exposed with smell as an angle.In addition, after the Open Call, a number of artists came to our Biotoop to conduct research, including Masuma Halai Khwaja, Jonas Klinkenberg and Jan Jedenak.
For Life in Plastic is not Fantastic by AMFI's label iNDiViDUALS, GENERATION26 transformed our Sluisdeurenloods into a supermarket where you could not only buy food.In addition to some apples and milk cartons, they also showed various future scenarios, a critical look at the fashion industry and waste production.Designer Zyanya Keizer is also inspired by fungi, trees, fungi and other pieces of nature.Between the work of Lizan Freijsen, she showed her new collection CONATUS 1, about the survival instinct of every living being.
This year, we developed a gift card with our team to share experiences.The Bonwas born from the idea that giving a gift can be more fun and easier than sending a bottle of wine.Sharing knowledge and experiences is central to Mediamatic and this can be done in various ways.We wanted that flexibility and diversity with our Bon. Making it accessible to our customers and their loved ones.The Boncan be purchased through our website and is cashed in by booking a workshop or presentation or by buying a dinner of your choice.In addition, the Bon.a gift in itself, it can be folded with instructions into a beautiful gift card.
Autistic designer Asefeh Tayebani wants to use her work to increase understanding about her neurological disorder.Her work allows the wearer to physically experience what being on the spectrum can feel like.An electric shock to the arm or an unbearably sharp sound in your ear when the train passes by is the daily reality of a large group of people around us.Tayebani is convinced that understanding the environment can make themselves and perhaps other people with a disease feel that they matter and that their condition should not be hidden away. Tayebani's work is exhibited in our Plant Room and can be felt every Friday during the Open Tour.
Education
Blindfolded drawing an oyster and trusting your nose with what you smell.During various school visits from, among others, the Alan Turingschool and the Orion College, we explored the Biotope with our senses.
Uitvist, Ever Green, Nomadic Picnic The different pop-up dinners each showed in their own way alternatives to form an equal relationship with nature.Is it time to rethink our food traditions?For example, is there a plant-based alternative to the fish menu?Can we learn to include the seasons more consciously in our diet?Would it help to get to know ourselves better by eating together in silence?
We are proud of our collaborations in 2019 with these partners: Alan Turingschool, AMFI - iNDiViDUALS, APRA, Dance Divine + Elisa Lind, DAY Collective, Design Academy Eindhoven - Food non-Food, Ecomare, Expeditie Oosterdok, Marres, Mocca Amsterdam, Mycophilia , N8, Nachtlab Agency, Nemo - Weekend van de Science, Oedipus Brewing, Orion College, PLANTMOM, Plastic Whale, Soulpicks, Voice of the Night, KIBII Foundation, Metamorfose Foundation, susanne at farewell, The Dutch Institute of Food & Design, Timberland , Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Fish Out, We Make the City, Wellant College
All Mediamatic activities have been made possible in part by the Creative Industries Fund NL, Amsterdam Fund for the Arts and Mondriaan Fund.
