Restructure and Connect II by Transartists/AiR Platform NL

After the online programme Restructure and Connect that took place on 26 June 2021, we will now get together to deepen the discussion, exchange practices and get inspired. This meeting is focused on the future perspectives of artist-in-residencies in the Netherlands: how to implement positive change and sustainable practices in our programmes?

At Gemaal op Zuid, a neighbourhood co-op instigated by artist Jeanne van Heeswijk in 2013, we will look into the everyday practice of working through local economies, and from an approach of slow learning and cumulative change.

Pau Cata, initiator of CeRCCa – a residency in Catalunia, will engage us in a game of tarot: a tool to shift our focus and re-think the art ecologies we are part of. Pau Cata was part of ReShape, a research platform bringing together art organizations from Europe and the Southern Mediterranean. The tarot game is one of the methods they created to construct new narratives of how contemporary art practices in the future can be organised.

Free entry / please RSVP and sign up here (max 25 participants)

When: Friday 25 February 14.00 – 18.30
Where: Gemaal op Zuid, Rotterdam
Optional: Rotterdam Air visits 10.30 – 13.00 hrs.

Programme:
Morning visits Rotterdam AiR (optional)
10.30: Rib with Maziar Afrassiabi
Katendrechtse Lagedijk 490B, Rotterdam
12.00: Paviljoen Charlois aan het water with Kamiel Verschuren
Brielselaan 157, Rotterdam

Afternoonprogramme Gemaal op Zuid
Pretorialaan 141, Rotterdam
13.30: Open
14.00: Welcome by Heidi Vogels (AiR PLatform NL) and round of introductions
14.30: Presentation by Gemaal op Zuid
15.15: Coffee break
15.30: Presentation by Pau Cata (initiator of CeRCCa, residency in Catalunia): introduction to Tarot game
15.45: Tarot sessions in small groups
17.30: Sharing the readings
18.00: Soup and snacks

During the event, we adhere to the current COVID-19 measures issued by the Dutch government.

Background info venues and speakers

Rib is a space for art, founded in 2015 by Maziar Afrassiabi in a former butcher shop in Rotterdam-Charlois. Driven by the vision of the artists and the will to challenge the institutionalizing conditions for the production and presentation of contemporary art, Rib realizes exhibitions, collaborations, recurring (online) residences, long-term projects and off-site interventions.

Paviljoen Charlois aan het water is a project space and cultural platform for local initiatives. In the summer the Paviljoen is a restaurant and meeting spot for local residents, in the winter it turns into an artist-in-residency hosting projects concerning the development of the Maashaven (harbour) and the surrounding neighbourhoods.

Gemaal op Zuid: Rotterdam based artist Jeanne van Heeswijk established in 2014 the Afrikaanderwijk Cooperative at Gemaal op Zuid, a former pumping station. With the mission to make the Afrikaander district a stronger and more financially independent neighbourhood, the co-op, together with residents and various partners, opened up the building as a platform for activities relating to talent development, presence, culture and encounters. For example, the resident-run Wijkkeuken van Zuid brings together all the flavours of the neighbourhood and, twice a week, the SCHOON team cleans up the neighbouring Afrikaandermarkt.

‘The co-op’s main challenge is to be exceedingly aware of how it changes and why. It must always be questioning what agendas are driving it forward and whether it is living up to its values. And because it is self-produced, the vast diversity of cultures, education levels, economic classes, and individual agendas it encompasses must also be self-critical and reflective. This kind of culture, the culture of a neighbourhood that is organized through cooperative methods, can only be built through millions of conversations, millions of interactions, crossing paths, and working together millions of times. It is an intricate dance with no end, the prospect of a self-run organization that can be focused and reliable, flexible and expansive. The importance of slow learning and cumulative change through an open and long-term process is a difficult commitment for communities to retain in the face of the urgency, and even desperation that characterises the ongoing struggle for the right to live well.’

Yank, Sue Bell. ‘From Freehouse to Neighborhood Co-op: The Birth of a New Organizational Form,’ FIELD: A Journal of Socially-Engaged Art Criticism 1, no.1 (spring 2015), pp. 139-168.

Pau Catà is an artist, curator and researcher based in Barcelona. He is the initiator of CeRCCa – Center for Research and Creativity Casamarles, located in Llorenç del Penedes (Catalonia). Since 2017 he is also the co-coordinator of NACMM - North Africa Cultural Mobility Map and Platform Harakat.

His practice, often collaborating amongst groups and networks (such as Tandem Shaml, SouthMed CV and Reshape Network), seeks connections between vernacular and intellectual histories focusing on Mediterranean socio-cultural landscapes. He has recently been awarded a practice led PhD in Art by the University of Edinburgh. His doctoral research is structured in two parts: the dissertation ‘Moving knowledge(s): Towards a Speculative Arab Art Residency Proto-history’ and the visual mediascape ‘An event without its poem is an event that never happened.'

The tarot game Cata presents is a prototype developed in the context of the Reshape Network together with Martinka Bobrikova & Oscar de Carmen, Petr Dlouhy, Heba el-Cheikh, Gjorgje Jovanovik, Marta Keil, Dominika Święcicka, Marine Thévenet and Ingrid Vranken. This group called Transnational and Postnational Practices has been imagining an artworld “after the national” and explore how to put connection before movement in a transnational and postnational art practice. Read more about it here.

Questions? Please contact Heidi Vogels, coordinator of AiR Platform NL.