Mediamatic 2022

Here you will find an overview of our highlights, go here to see the full overview of our 2022 program or here for who we worked with this year.

Tentoonstellingen:

Naast de bestaande tentoonstellingen: Pure Gold, Hard Water, Al Rihla, Twijfel zaaien, Hortus Dijkspark, de Zesvleugelige Kip, Soffito, Radiolaria, het Parfum, Hacking Haeckel, hebben we meerdere nieuwe tentoonstellingen geïnstalleerd. 

Border Ecologies

This project traces the transformation of a small farm in Khuza’a; a Palestinian agricultural village in the Gaza Strip situated along one of the territory’s most militarized borders with Israel. In the past few decades, the four-dunam (or 4,000-square-meter) farm, owned and managed by Abd el Haleem and Khaldya Qudaih, has been attacked, damaged, and destroyed time and again by Israeli air raids, shelling, and patrols.

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Anna Lina observing details in table clothe - Border Ecologies Our programme and events intern Ana is getting a closer look at our exhibition Border Ecologies! This installation collects testimonies of the Qudaih family, who have had to adapt and transform their farming practices due to the restrictions and violences they faced from the Israeli military. It presents photos and videos from the agricultural community of Khuza’a, as well as a tablecloth that narrates chronologically the stories of its farms and its people. Photo taken in March 2nd, 2022.  Andrea Valdivia

Prosthetic X - Isaac Monte

“True beauty comes from within”, a statement that transcends the test of time and often grows stronger as we age. In parallel to this growing sense of beauty is the universal need to nurture ourselves, stay active, and stay healthy.

What if there are new ways for us to keep healthy? To stimulate active living, and balance the inevitable age-related decline of our physical selves? 

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Anemone Movement - PX III – Stimulating daily activity This prosthetic consists of five elements placed on the eyebrow, and is intended to signify and encourage active living. Under the recommendation that we move and take ∼8000 steps a day, this prosthetic responds to steps and movement and 'opens up', incentivising the wearer to keep reaching new goals.  Each time the wearer has reached a new goal, a new element lights up. At the end of the week, the wearer could have five shining elements, showing the wearer's vitality.    materials: UV… Monica Monté, Isaac Monté

If Life gives you Lemons

If Life Gives You Lemons, I Hope They Are Juicy is a one hour process of flexing and extending idealistic thoughts into flesh. Discover the healing powers of the citrus genus to clear bitter energy currents and heal sour memories through movement.

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Massaging with lemons - If life gives you lemons, I hope they're juicy Our guests are massaging their faces with lemons together with lecturer Natasha using some materials to teach them how to concentrate and breathe with intention during our workshop 'If life gives you lemons, I hope they're juicy'.  In this workshop, participants worked with different citrus to clear bitter energy currents and heal sour memories through movement. Here, they learned how to taste the moment, exercise your talent, squeeze their determination, and squint their inspiration. Photo… Andrea Valdivia

Tumulus 3

Tumulus is an enclosed garden installation that functions as a natural ruin, compost heap, soil sculpture, seed bed, earth work, dyeing source, and dunghill. Over the course of several seasons from June 2019 onwards, artist Ruchama Noorda transforms the patch of greenery next to our Sluisdeurenloods into a living sculpture and performance site. The third edition researches urban hermits and decay.

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Ruchama closing the oil drum filled with weeds and herbs from the Tumulus garden and ceramic pieces - photo: Victoria Ushkanova

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Blue Monday performance - Artemisia Moxa from the wormwood growing on the Tumulus Pictures by Victoria Ushkanova

 

Playful Jewelry for the inner world

'Playful Jewelry for the Inner World' is a collection of silver jewelry that invites the wearer to move meditatively. The rhythmic movements bring you closer to your inner world, make you more aware of your body and allow you to process stimuli better.

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Weimin Zhu: playful jewelry for the inner mind - Weimin Zhu

Mari Bastashevski: Pending Xenophora

Pending Xenophora is a multi-layered virtual world designed together with a rout of garden snails. Inside, the world is populated with not yet categorized species from the archive of the London Natural History Museum. With each visit, you explore different worlds and release all kinds of beings. The artwork provides an environment for non-competitive and non-hierarchical relationships, and invites non/human ideas in the practice of world-building. 

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Snail artist. Still from Mari Bastashevski's visualisation for Pending Xenophora, 2022. -

 

All Senses Operative

Mediamatic presented the first example of CD-ROM art BlindRom v0.9, the Prototype. Designed and produced by Gerald van Der Kaap in 1993, BlindRom was created as a prototype of the first interactive multimedia magazine where text, image, video, music, computer animation construct a unique, anarchic and multilayered world. Now, after almost 30 years of technological progress, BlindRom comes alive again and invites us to immerse ourselves into a kaleidoscopic maze full of blind paths. To fully immerse yourself into total hoverty and "chill your brains out" follow the path to Kaap's Chill Cave. An almost religious trip in a dream-like space with endless horizon. 

 

 

Growing Gunya

Gunya is a Ukrainian traditional wool coat, originally worn by Hutsul shepherds in the Carpathian mountains.

Providing physical protection from severe weather and animals, throughout the years it has carried a deep symbolic meaning, serving as an amulet for its owners. Using the classic shepherd’s coat as a template, we tell stories of local materials, natural components and living organisms. The use of different cellulose and protein based materials in combination with natural dyeing techniques show the ample variety of outcomes and possibilities.

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Gunya Boeren Tesselaar 3 - Credits : Stichting Art-East + Art-West  Stichting Narada Dutch Design Foundation   All final photos: Alex Blanco Process: Marjo van Schaik, Dasha Tsapenko

Residencies

3 package deal resident: Philipp Kolmann

 

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Philipp Kolmann - Philipp Kolmann smelling river butter  Philipp Kolmann

3 package deal resident: Margherita Soldati

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Portrait of Margherita Soldati touching Soffitto - Anisa Xhomaqi

Pigeontowers:

The mycelium pigeon tower is a constant process of one state moving into the next. After the mushroom harvest, the old mycelium bricks are used to build a tower, a tower aspiring to become soil, the soil bringing forth the corn, the corn eaten by resident pigeons that fertilize the soil with their droppings while corn foliage is turned into blocks of mycelium substrate to once again grow mushrooms. 

This year was the third year of experimenting with different shapes and methods to build this living cycle, and investigate material decomposition as part of the design process. Decay becomes more and more important as the years go by and the towers erode. It was also the first year we invited real pigeons into the tours. We are proud to host some pigeons at the biotoop.

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Pott at nighttime - photo by Anisa Xhomaqi

Gentle Disco

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Open air gentle disco 17.09 - This photo is part of Gentle Disco . Eszter Jámbor

The pigeons

On the 7th of June 2022, exactly two years after we first started  learning how to build pigeon towers   with waste mycelium, we introduced the first four squab (young pigeons) into their new living spaces.  By: Arne Hendriks

All rights reserved

 

 

Neo Futurist Dinner:

Sin Eaters

Taking its inspiration from the medieval medical, magical and culinary manuscripts of the 12th-century German superstar Hildegard von Bingen, this dinner is a journey into the world of herbalism, early superstition and natural healing.

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The Sin Eaters - Promotie beeld voor het 14e Neo Futurist Dinner: The Sin Eaters, met Alice Héron en Martin Butler.  Foto credits:  Nolwenn Leflanchec

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Performance of Gluttony during The Sin Eaters. -

Ears of Earth

In Ears of Earth, artists Suzanne Bernhardt and Philipp Kolmann explored the flavors of the earth in 8 courses. Using ancient grasses and traditional fermentation techniques from different parts of the world, they went back to the basics of our food.

 

 

 

Knitting for Survival

We are knitting our way to a world where we are not dependent on Putin!

With: Vita Buivid, Conny Groenewegen and Kristin Maurer

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Participants during Knitting for Survival - In our Knitting for Survival sessions, we learn how to make our own warm items as an alternative way to stay warm without giving any gas money to Putin. We stand in solidarity with Ukraine and have decided to turn our gas heaters down, so we are learning how to knit guided by volunteer textile artists and designers in this series of free workshops.  Ilya Rabinovich

Inhuman Carnaval

In this project we challenge artists, designers, make up artists, creators and audiences to dress up themselves and each other as the beautiful species our ecosystem consist of. Through  dressing up like other species we try to gain another perspective on life and practice to become more ecocentric.

Costume LAB

 

We created a costume lab where public and artists can experiment with making costumes of other species.

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Georgia & Fred in the costume lab - Andrea Valdivia

 

Museumnacht: Duif

 

For Museumnight we combined two of our programmes into one unforgettable night: The pigeon towers, the pigeons, and the inhuman carnaval. 

Museum night 2022 is dedicated to the peacemaker, fertilizer, symbol of love and innocence and our fellow townsman with many faces; the pigeon. We humans live like we're the center of the earth, alone in the city. We're not, but we're very good at pretending.

Come discover, together with artists, designers and fellow visitors, what we already have in common with the pigeon and what is left to learn. In other words; free your inner pigeon, because yes, we all have one. Pigeonhood is a spectrum.

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Pauline Wiersema during Museumnight Pigeon - Willem Velthoven

A/Artist

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a/Artist banner - Website banner for the a/Artist project CG. Standard pixel dimensions are 960 by 56. #Aartist.  Willem Velthoven

We're developing a platform for neurodiverse artists and designers. We'll be focusing those who identify as/with the ASS (Autism) and ADD spectrum. How can we better value the contributions that makers on "the spectrum" make and how can we better support them/us?

 

A/Artist Round Table Sessions:

We hosted two-weekly Round Table Sessions for neurodivergent artists.

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Footnotes I have never seen - Robin Waart, Footnotes I have never seen , postcard booklet with Alejandro Cesarco, Kajsa Dahlberg, Vincent Fecteau, Goda Palekaitė, Claudia de la Torre and Andrew Witkin (2022) (Photo Ayako Nishibori)  

With: Robin Waart

 

A/Artist Lectures

We hosted a few lectures around neurodivergent artists and workforms.

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Jenny Konrad - Image courtesy of Jenny Konrad Jenny Konrad

With: Jenny Konrad

 

Workshops

We hosted different workshops. 

Here you can find some workshops that we developed this year:

Smelling like another being

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Materials for smelling like another being - Smelling like another being Here, our guests are smelling and combining some scents using lab materials during the workshop 'Smelling like another being' in the aroma lab. In this occasion, the Aroma Lab workshop was staged for the purposes of the photo session.  'Smelling like another being' is a workshop hosted by our lecturer Frank Bloem, which promotes awareness about the diversity of species in our ecosystem by smelling. This workshop consists of creating scents in a lab using different substances based on different… Andrea Valdivia

Penny for your Thoughts

Penny for your Thoughts is our project nursery, where we stimulate and present project proposals.

We invite artists to write down their project proposals. We publish the ones that appeal to us on our website and give the artists a small financial incentive for the publication. This is a great way to claim an idea and it can help realize the project. Not only do we read the proposal, but it is also open to being viewed by our entire network. 

In 2022 we hosted 2 Open Calls. We also hosted three lectures where participants of the Open Call could talk about their proposal in a public setting.

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Pepper, Plate, Magic - Penny for your Thoughts Presentation Night During the first Penny for your Thoughts presentation night, artists, designers and makers share with us their in-development project plans and ideas. This edition explores different perspectives on food.  Photo taken by Daniell Tahor Daniell Tahor

 

Collaborations

Radical imagining of just and green futures

Collaboration with the UVA

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Professor of law at the University of Amsterdam Ivana Isailović prepping the audience for the speeches. - Petra Baturova

Fungi Trail

Collaboration with De Hortus Amsterdam & Artis Micropia around fungi and beauty of decay.

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Mouldy Apple - Moulds are discolouration and a fuzzy appearance that form on food when it fungi start the decomposition process.  This apple is moulding and is part of the imagery used for the collaboration between de Hortus, Mediamatic, and ARTIS-Micropia in the Fungi Trail.