Guest editor: the editorial team
Deadline: 18 April
Published: October 2022
In All About Love (1999), bell hooks remarks that values of money and work have replaced love and community. This reverberates to the present tense, when a crisis of compassion has become a hot topic in the healthcare industry. It goes without saying that hooks wishes to reverse this, and “return to love”. Love is a tender dissent to the disarming structures of capitalism.
Location: VU Art Science Gallery, De Boelelaan 1111, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Date: 26 February, 2022, 4-6 pm
Time: TBD
Join us for an evening in the VU Art Science Gallery, amidst the exhibition that inspired it all. This launch is hosted by the guest editor of this issue, Maria Chiara Miccoli, and Kunstlicht’s editors-in-chief, Joyce Poot and Anna Sejbæk Torp-Pedersen.
Meanwhile, Bar Boele will serve drinks infused with sonic bubbles by DJ Zero and the illustrious OMFO.
ZERO Soirée is made possible through VU ART SCIENCE laboratory, and is part of Creative Europe’s Studiotopia programme.
In this issue of Kunstlicht, the reader is invited to investigate how zero has captured the imagination of scientists and philosophers alike. This issue of Kunstlicht compliments the exhibition 0 Starting from Zero, which features the artworks of Jennifer Tee, Jan Robert Leegte, Evelina Domnitch & Dmitry Gelfand and Nicky Assmann, who visualise various aspects of the number zero. The contributions in this issue philosophically expand on the concept of sūnya and zero even further, whilst simultaneously interpreting this concept as a void and /or a fullness.
Location: VU Art Science Gallery, Amsterdam
In this issue of Kunstlicht, the reader is invited to investigate how zero has captured the imagination of scientists and philosophers alike. This issue of Kunstlicht compliments the exhibition 0 Starting from Zero, which features the artworks of Jennifer Tee, Jan Robert Leegte, Evelina Domnitch & Dmitry Gelfand and Nicky Assmann, who visualise various aspects of the number zero. The contributions in this issue philosophically expand on the concept of sūnya and zero even further, whilst simultaneously interpreting this concept as a void and /or a fullness.
The contributors to this issue delve into the complexity of zero from several perspectives, enquiring about social structures, digital constructs, systems of perceptions, and the fields of contemplation and observation. The reader is thus encouraged to approach the concept of zero as a liminal space that overcomes the boundaries between art, philosophy, and science, opening to interdisciplinary analysis.
Please join us for an afternoon in the VU Art Science Gallery, amidst the exhibition that inspired it all. This launch is hosted by the guest editor of this issue, Maria Chiara Miccoli, and Kunstlicht’s editors-in-chief, Joyce Poot and Anna Sejbæk Torp-Pedersen.
Date: Saturday October 16th
Time: 19.30h
Register here for free
In this double issue of Kunstlicht, the reader is invited to investigate the (parallel or displaced in time) relations between, and experiences of, oil nations, or petrostates, if you will. These are countries that are marinating in resources, but also deeply entrenched and engaged in resource conflicts and wars. Those who live on and support themselves off the lands and oceans are directly impacted by this industry, and consequently its economy and politics. The contributors to this issue delve into these complex cultural fields from a wide range of perspectives relating to the past, present and future.
During this launch Kunstlicht will present a reading from Clementine Edwards, and speak with artist Tanja Engelberts and writer Niloufar Nematollahi, all introduced by the guest editors and curators Anne Szefer Karlsen and Helga Nyman. Please join us for an evening in the name of the experiences of oil hosted by Kunstlicht’s editors-in-chief, Joyce Poot and Anna Sejbæk Torp-Pedersen.
Clementine Edwards is a Rotterdam- and Naarm/Melbourne-based artist who works across sculpture, film, performance, writing and jewellery. Her ongoing research line is material kinship, which she locates in the context of climate colonialism. Soon Clementine publishes The Material Kinship Reader, co-edited by Kris Dittel. clementineedwards.com.
Tanja Engelberts is currently a resident at the Rijksakademie voor beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam. She graduated from a master fine art at Chelsea College of Art & Design after studying sculpture and monumental arts in both the Netherlands and Japan. Her works are included in the collections (a.o.) of Clifford Chance (UK), Nationale Nederlanden (NL) and the Ucross Foundation (USA).
Helga Nyman is an art historian and curator at Stavanger Art Museum, Norway.
Niloufar Nematollahi is a Rotterdam-based artist and researcher currently studying Middle Eastern studies and international relations. Intrigued by the intersections between culture and politics, Nematollahi studies artifacts such as stories and propaganda in order to construct a truthful representation of people’s entanglements with political dynamics of all sorts. Currently, Nematollahi’s research focuses on the links between the Iranian oil industry, labor movements, and resistance literature in the south of Iran.
Anne Szefer Karlsen is a curator, writer, editor and Professor of Curatorial Practice, currently programme director for MA Curatorial Practice at the Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen, Norway.
Ruby de Vos is a PhD candidate at the University of Groningen, where she is finishing her PhD “Living with Toxicity: Toxic Temporalities in Contemporary Art and Literature”. She writes about art for various platforms, and has curated, among others, Mngrv by Susanne Kriemann at Galerie Block C in 2020, and After Hiroshima: Cultural Responses to the Atomic Bomb, a cultural week about nuclear weapons at various locations in Groningen in 2019.
Contributors: Anna Sejbæk Torp-Pedersen, Joyce Poot, Fabienne Chiang, Dunja Nešović, Fabienne Rachmadiev, Aimilia Efthimiou, Savan Mohammed-Amen, Naomi Collier Broms & Amalia Calderón.
With thanks to Felix Meritis and their Cultural Emergency Hospital. Felix Meritis opens their doors to make their corona-proof facilities available to other cultural institutions or artists who are also struggling due to corona, but want to keep creating. To support that, they are offering our facilities free of charge. That way, Felix Meritis allows others to catch their artistic breaths right in the beautiful center of Amsterdam.
The Magical theme related to ‘spells’ is understood in the widest interpretation possible, as something supernatural, something which goes beyond traditions of rationale or logic. And importantly, Magic also is understood in this issue as something which is at the heart of rationale and logic itself, undermining these epistemologies’ promised security. Why, when, and how do we cast spells? What spells do we need right now? The issue is filled to the brim with contributions answering, nuancing, and broadening our scope.
The language of this program is English. The link to the livestream can be found on this page on the day of the event.
This program is part of the Cultural Emergency Hospital of Felix Meritis: Felix Meritis opens their doors to make their corona-proof facilities available to other cultural institutions or artists who are also struggling due to corona, but want to keep creating. To support that, they are offering our facilities free of charge. That way, Felix Meritis allows others to catch their artistic breaths right in the beautiful center of Amsterdam.
When Sweetman and Sully published the open call for the issue in August of 2020, the aim was to propose different definitions of ‘safe’ and ‘risk’ to work with. For example, within the field of art, how might we come to a mutual and workable understanding of these two terms across so many different agendas and personal experiences and needs? Yet since October 2020, when the first contributions were submitted, a lot has changed. And even before that, back when they first set to work on the topic, neither the editors nor the contributors could have foreseen how timely the topic of safety would become in our lives.
As such, by taking into account the developments of recent events—both locally and internationally—this podcast reflects on what has happened since the issue went to print, translating different forms of contributions to their aural counterpart and inviting you to listen along to what has since been written between the lines. Given that a very real threat to our safety—that of Covid-19—prevented a more traditional launch event, what is presented here could be heard as a launch of sorts. Alongside reflections from the co-editors, the episode includes contributions from artist Anna Daučíková, artist and technician Mark Friedlander, researcher and educator Tom Clark, curator and philosopher Srajana Kaikini and artist Lee Kit.
Image: A pair of medical grip socks (photo taken by Isabelle Sully)
Artist / Organisation: Kunstlicht
Location of the show: Rotterdam, Birmingham, Melbourne, Prague, the west coast of India and Hong Kong
Host: Collette Rayner
Producer: Monty Mouw, Radna Rumping, Joshua Sweetman
Length: 40 min
Language: English
Guest Editors: Helga Nyman and Anne Szefer Karlsen
Deadline for proposals: Closed.
