On 10 December ADA organizes the first edition of Breakfast at Noon, a new series of public events in which two or more guests are invited to ADA’s breakfast table to reflect on issues concerning the position of the artist and the way one speaks through his or her work.

For this first edition the guests will be the Belgrade based collective Škart and the artist duo Iratxe Jaio & Klaas van Gorkum. Both guests have a practice, which connects exhibition making with working with groups and individuals in specific social contexts. ADA invites Škart, Jaio and van Gorkum to give a brief presentation of their work, and to discuss issues such as the collective art practice, the role of audience participation and the notion of free time in relation to artistic practice.

Škart is a collective founded in 1990 at the Faculty of Architecture in Belgrade. While experimenting through their work, they focus primarily between the medium of poetry and design. “Architecture of the human relationships” is their main concept. Through a constant flux within the collective which has been present since the very beginning, the members collaboratively work to develop new values. They are particularly capable, through the process of making, to embrace 'beautiful’ mistakes and tirelessly strive to combine work with pleasure. Recent exhibitions include the 2010 edition of the Venice Biennale of Architecture; My experience in notebook/Moje iskustvo u svesci, KCB gallery, Belgrade (2010) and The Origin of Wishes, Space Gallery, London (2009). Skart has also conceived and organised numerous workshops, such as Calendar of lies, Igalo, Montenegro (2010) and Protest Poster, with the group Cactus in London and Graz (2010).

Working collectively since 2001, Iratxe Jaio & Klaas van Gorkum have worked with film, actions, publications, and installations to create projects that explore the agency of individuals and communities in the context of particular social and political climates. For Plaatselijke verordening (Local ordinance, 2010), the artists located six wooden billboards erected by the city of Rotterdam each time there are local elections to be used as surfaces for political postering. Having replaced the boards with new structures and transferred the old ones into an exhibition venue, Jaio and van Gorkum showed documentation of the territorial and pictorial struggle that had taken place as rival parties deployed their posters in a bid to win publicity. Solo projects include Quédense dentro y cierren las ventanas/ Stay inside. Close Windows and Doors, produced by Consonni, Bilbao, and Casco – Office for Art, Design and Theory, Utrecht (2008). Group exhibitions include The People United Will Never Be Defeated, TENT Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam (2010); Gure Artea 2008, Sala Rekalde, Bilbao (2008).

Please Note: The breakfast will take place at the Nationaal Onderwijsmuseum in Rotterdam. Due to the limited amount of space available (15 guests maximum) you are kindly requested to reserve a spot via info@adarotterdam.nl. The entrance is free, including food and drinks.

ADA is pleased to host a talk by Dresden based artist Guido Reddersen, the current artist-in-residence at the Goethe Institute, Rotterdam.

In his artistic practice, Reddersen seeks to transform the perception of clearly identifiable objects and shapes by exposing layers of subjective and objective patterns of perception, classification and communication.

During his two-month stay in Rotterdam, Reddersen will be developping a phenomenological comparison between the cities of Dresden and Rotterdam. The results will feed into an installation dealing with what Reddersen calls “the culturally conditioned need to connect to everyday objects.”

Guido Reddersen (Jena, 1980) holds a masters degree from the College of Fine Arts in Dresden. He has participated in group exhibitions such as Hitch Hike, Cars, Omegna (I) and The Darkest Corner of the Whitest Cube, Kunsthaus Dresden, 2011; House Warming, Hopkins Hall, Columbus, USA, 2010. Solo exhibitions include Liebe und böse Objekte at Gallery Doppel De, Dresden, 2009.

ADA begins the new season with the 150th anniversary of an impenetrable chocolate recipe, which is to be found in a recently published book, Tatarî Oğuz Effendi in Basel – Reminiscences of a Journalist by Ben Wineblum.

ADA has invited the author of this inspirational book for a reading and a presentation during which the life and works of Tatarî Oğuz Effendi, the first of the two protagonists in Wineblum’s book and an exceptional Ottoman intellectual and adventurer, will be commemorated in Rotterdam for the first time.

As an addition to Wineblum’s reading, each guest will find the chance to indulge in the magical chocolate The Lore, which is produced by Beschle Chocolatier Suisse according to Tatarî’s yet-unseen recipe. Depending on the number of the guests, everyone will receive either one or two chocolate truffles as a gift. Following the reading and a discussion session, we will visit a collectively chosen site in the city to put the effect of The Lore to the test through an interpretation by Ben Wineblum:

You can enjoy the best from The Lore while you are listening to a concert, while watching a play, opera, or ballet, while reading a novel, a story, a poem, a petit tale, while viewing a painting, a sculpture, a performance. In short, at any moment, and in any place, where art is there to be experienced. Could you please reach in to your pockets, and feel the crate that is keeping The Lore safe and secure? If you could do this, then you are seconds away from enriching your experience. (From: Tatarî Oğuz Effendi in Basel – Reminiscences of a Journalist, Ben Wineblum, 2010.)

Should you wish to have more prelimenary information on the life of this Ottoman intellectual, please visit the Wikipedia link.

Ben Wineblum’s book and The Lore will be on sale only during the event. Therefore we urge you to come to the event on time, or even early.

Ben Wineblum (b.1981, Berlin) is an art critic and a freelance journalist who works for a variety of independent media agencies based in New York and California. He studied in South Africa and the USA, has won several awards and fellowships for his outstanding research and influential publications written extensively on the relationship between contemporary art, culture, and everyday life. For the past five years he has been working as a Europe media correspondent. In September 2010, he relocated and is now reporting from Australia, Brisbane. This is his first book.

In the month of August Cinema Sunset will be screening four must-see black and white film classics. The films will start around sunset without an introduction. So bring your after-sun lotion and your friends to settle down for the evening…

Programme
Wednesday August 3 | The Servant | 21:00
Wednesday August 10 | Le Quatre Cents Coups | 21:00
Wednesday August 17 | The Spiral Staircase | 21:00
Wednesday August 24 | The Seventh Seal | 21:00

August 3 | 21:00 -23:00
The Servant
Release: 1963
Runtime: 112 mins
Director: Joseph Losey
Cast: Dirk Bogarde, Sarah Miles and Wendey Craig

The dainty Oxbridge twit aristocrat Tony moves to London and hires a servant Hugo Barret. Tony’s prudish girlfriend Susan senses something sinister about Barrett and her contentious relationship with him begins to affect her romance with Tony. As their relationship falters, Barret starts to expand his powers over his “master”. Via an intricate turning of the tables Tony slowly loses his authority and becomes enslaved to his own employee.

August 10 | 21:00 -23:00
Les Quatre Cents Coups
Release: 1959
Runtime: 99 mins
Director: Francois Truffaut
Cast: Jean-Pierre Léaud, Albert Rémy and Claire Maurier

The young Parisian boy Antoine Doinel who is misunderstood by his parents and schoolteachers, dashes into a life of crime. Like most kids, he gets into more trouble for trying to do good rather than for his actual trespasses. He skips school, sneaks into movies, ans runs away from home. For his feature-film debut, critic-turned-director François Truffaut drew inspiration from his own troubled childhood. Originally intended as a 20-minute short, Les Quatre Cents Coups was expanded into a feature when Truffaut decided to elaborate on his self-analysis. The film has been named the cradle of the French New Wave Cinema and displays many of the characteristic traits of the movement.

August 17 | 21:00 -23:00
The Spiral Staircase
Release: 1945
Runtime: 83 mins
Director: Robert Siodmak
Cast: Dorothy McGuire, George Brent and Ethel Barrymore

The young beautiful Helen, mute because of a childhood trauma, works in the household of Mrs. Warren. Warren’s two sons Steven and Albert also live in the house and Helen develops a crush on the latter. Mrs. Warren becomes concerned for Helen’s safety when a rash of murders involving 'women with afflictions’ hits the neighborhood. When the murderer enters the house Helen’s life is in serious danger. Director Robert Siodmak well known for his atmospheric suspense films used all kinds of innovative plot devices to increase a sense of foreboding. Throughout the story Helen is observed through the eyes of her stalker, who the audience sees only as a pair of menacing eyes.

August 24 | 21:00 -23:00
The Seventh Seal
Release: 1957
Runtime: 96 mins
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Cast: Max von Sydow, Gunnar Björnstrand and Bengt Ekerot

Set in the 14th century, a medieval knight and his squire return home after ten years in the Crusades to find their land ravaged by the Plague. The Black Death arrives to take the knight’s life but the latter succeeds in challenging Death to a chess game. During their game the knight becomes determined to find answers to his questions about life, death and the existence of God. The Seventh Seal has been declared Bergman’s masterpiece and became an often-cited classic in world cinema.

ADA’s reading group continues as a series of exercises intended to enable a collaborative exploration of themes and issues that supersede the individual artistic practice.

ADA resumes its reading group with a session evolving around an essay by Boris Groys, Art in the Age of Biopolitics: From Artwork to Art Documentation, taken from his book Art Power, published in 2008 by MIT Press.

The reading group is a continuation of the ADA project About Games and Being Serious, which took place at Duende last April. During this project we collectively explored six texts focusing amongst other things on art as a collaborative practice and on the political positioning of the artist. Readings at this occasion included texts such as Walter Benjamin’s The Artist as Producer and Liam Gillick’s Maybe it would be better if we worked in groups of three? A full list of texts read at Duende can be found here.

Please note that there will not be a full reading of the text during the reading group, so you are kindly requested to read it in advance. You can download the text here.

If you like this text, please support the writer by buying the book, for instance at Amazon.

Update 25 June 2011
Because of the recent developments around the protests against the cuts in the arts budget we decided to move the reading group from its original date to 4 July 2011 19:30.

As part of ADA’s investigation into collaborative and participatory practices, ADA initiates a short-term reading group for the duration of it’s work period at BRAK#3 in Duende, in the month of April.

During six-sessions, texts reflecting on artistic production, modes of communication, political positioning and the meaning produced, will be jointly and actively explored in a friendly and relaxed environment. This short-term exercise is intended to enable practical exploration of the collective endeavor to encounter each other through a collaborative working practice. The subject matter of the reading group acts as an introduction to ADA’s current inquiry, which it will continue reflecting on in the coming year through its public program.

ADA cordially invites you to join in the reading of the following texts:

Session 1
Tuesday 5th of April | 19:30-22:30
The Author as Producer, by Walter Benjamin. And in addition the short text The Artist as Producer in Times of Crisis by Okwui Enwezor.

Session 2
Sunday 10th of April | 15:00-18:00
The Emancipated Spectator, pp. 1-23, by Jacques Rancière.

Session 3
Monday 11th of April | 19:30-22:30
The Collaborative Turn, by Maria Lind.

Session 4
Wednesday 13th of April | 19:30-22:30
The Demands and Challenges of Committed Participation, by Mika Hannula.

Session 5
Thursday 21st of April | 19:30-22:30
Maybe it would be better if we worked in groups of three? Part 1 & 2 of The Discursive, by Liam Gillick.

Session 6
Monday 25th of April | 19:30-22:30
Tolerance as an Ideological Category, by Slavoj Žižek.

Please Note: read the text before attending the reading session. There will not be a full reading of the text during the session but a discussion on sections of the texts brought up by anyone who is taking part in the reading group.

Additionally to the activity of exploring the texts together, a beautiful, brand new, state-of-the-art, ping-pong table is made available by ADA for all level of sporting and recreational fun. The studio is open to use daily for play and reading from 10:00-19:30.

Practical Information:
Monday 04 April – Sunday 01 May 2011
Duende | the Hessen Studio
Tamboerstraat 9, 3034 PT, Rotterdam

ADA cordially invites you to an afternoon focusing on the position of the artist within the visual arts discourse, featuring Show & Tell: The Politics of Silence and the Power of Discourse, a documentary film by recent Piet Zwart Institute Master of Fine Art graduates, and an interview with artist Edgar Schmitz.

Show & Tell is a documentary film which charts the current status of discourse production in the field of art making. Currently there appears to be an overwhelming presence of symposia, artist talks and panel discussions, that accompany presentations of visual arts. Simply speaking, there is the seeming paradox of a visual field being preoccupied by talking. Does this reflect an urgency to articulate a new set of criteria, positions, players or centers? Are these discursive occasions expanding, bypassing or replacing our ideas of the exhibition, and our ability to imagine the art-work? In the film artists such as Martha Rosler, Jeff Wall and Pierre Bismuth, as well as curators and critics such as Jan Verwoert and Anselm Franke describe their position within artistic discourse and their take on these questions. Show and Tell is a Piet Zwart Institute production and was produced as a collaborative project by students and documentary film maker Hila Peleg.

Following the screening of the film, artist Marnie Slater, a key collaborator on the film, interviews London based artist Edgar Schmitz about his work. Schmitz, has described himself as ‘an artist working on the politics of confusion and ambient attitudes’. In his work he explores the new possibilities that open up when the sites and insitutional structures of artistic and curatorial production are reconfigured. He is also the co-director of the platform A Conversation in Many Parts, an international discursive platform for contemporary art. Recent exhibitions include British Art Show 7 – In The Days of the Comet, Hayward Gallery and touring (2010/11), extra added bonus material, FormContent (2010), Dictionary of War, Steirischer Herbst Graz (2006); A-C-A-D-E-M-Y, Vanabbemuseum Eindhoven (2006); and Liam Gillick: ‘Edgar Schmitz’, ICA London (2005). He has also written extensively on contemporary art, with contributions to Kunstforum international, Texte zur Kunst and artforum as well as contemporary, tema celeste and numerous catalogue essays, including texts on Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Phil Collins, on Brian Jungen’s animalities, on humour in Deleuze and Slominski, and on Sarah Morris’ LA. His book on Ambient Attitudes is under negotiation with Sternberg Press, Berlin/ NY.

With thanks to the Master of Fine Art at the Piet Zwart Institute, Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam University for their kind permission to screen the film.

During Art Rotterdam ADA participates in the side programme of RAiR #3 Guest House, taking place at the Zuiderster building next to the Rijnhaven metro station. The exhibition brings together the works of former residents of the Rotterdam based artist initiatives.

On 12 February from noon to 6pm, ADA presents an archive of projects that they have developed during the past two years. The archive can be browsed by means of objects that associatively represent the original projects. ADA’s members are present to talk about the projects and to show the material to the visitors. Amongst other things it is possible to see video lectures of artist and theorist Mark Pimlott and artist Matts Leiderstam. There are also publications on display, as well as an audio tour, all made by the members of ADA.

An artist talk by: Emily Donnini
Introduction by: Sils Project Space

On the 18th of January, ADA will open its doors for the artist Emily Donnini, who is spending a 4-week period in Rotterdam through the new residency exchange program organised by Sils together with The Embassy Gallery in Edinburgh.

Emily Donnini’s practice explores the room for fluctuation within the study of understanding and hermeneutics, through its simultaneous relationship with antiquity and contemporary methodology and technology. She achieves a non-hierarchical reading of information, codes, and texts by taking a more playful role in the utilization of this tradition. Tampering with history, Donnini makes plausible narratives with falsified information, playing on the expectations of a collective consciousness.
From embedding the rings of a vinyl record into a carved boulder, to cataloguing information from Google through the construction of hand-made paper models, Emily Doninni utilizes a wide array of materials and mediums. Her various materials suggest alternative histories or understandings of the world, manifested in individual and temporal experience. By working with information containers such as Internet search engine statistics, phonetics of languages, and the fringes of sound technology, a disruption of proximities and distances emerges. Often, Emily’s work is drawn to the failures within these systems. The futility and impossibility, or impracticality of preservation becomes a confrontation with the limits of the known.

Emily Donnini is an artist currently working in Glasgow. After receiving a Post-Baccalaureate degree from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, she completed her MFA at Glasgow School of Art.

ADA organises an excursion to Brussels to visit Francis Alÿs’s solo exhibition A Story of Deception at Wiels, Brussels. During the afternoon we will also visit some of Brussels’ smaller art venues.

Francis Alÿs is a Belgium born artist (1959) who lives and works in Mexico City. The exhibition in Wiels has a retrospective character, presenting both iconic and recent works. Among them are paintings, drawings, video, animation and installation, some of which are shown for the first time.

Francis Alÿs’s work often starts with a simple act, either by him or others, which is then documented in a range of media. Working in urban settings and dramatic landscapes, he creates interventions, which frequently address a historical or political concern attached to a specific site. Alÿs moved to Mexico City in the mid 1980s at a time of political unrest. He began to make work which recorded every day life there, capturing images of street sleepers and workers. [Quoted from Wiels’s press text.]

After seeing the show in Wiels, ADA’s tour will continue with visits to some of Brussels many galleries and project spaces, such as Jan Mot Gallery and Établissement d’en Face.

Note:
The train to Brussels South departs at 9:55 from Rotterdam central station. We will arrive in Brussels at 11:42. Anyone who wants to make their own way to Brussels is free to join us there. Please let us know and we will arrange a meeting point.