ART CITIES:Amsterdam-Formation Camp

de Appel presents the final outcomes of the 2020/2021 Curatorial Programme whose participants arrived in Amsterdam during a time of social transformation. Drawing on their respective experiences of history, present and future, each forged new alliances. These now begin to materialise inside de Appel’s and linked sites as the five sessions of Formation Camp.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: de Appel Archive

A formation camp is an anarchist tradition whereby different groups convene every summer to draw ideological blueprints of worlds that are already possible. As a rendering in time and space of  work in de Appel’s Curatorial Programme, this public offering hosts diverse interventions attuned to a common aspiration of making and thinking with community. Àngels Miralda in “SoMeMeR uNSCHooL / SMMR NSCHL / oeeuoo” convenes for memetic workshops, lectures, and plenary discussions on themes such as memetic activism in pedagogical contexts, memory, mimesis as a post-colonial talent, politics and the meme, and the meme as academic life-form. On a daily basis, ideological memers (those who meme for a social/political cause, not just for the LOLZ) contend with the awkward and uncomfortable moments of the thick institutions that they critique, often under obfuscated terms. These institutions wear. They are rigid, opaque, resistant/afraid/hostile to change, mostly due to lack of public accountability. What are the missteps, failures or frustrations, loopholes, victories, and hardships of laboring in this contested frontline? What personal toll does ideological memeing have on those who dedicate their energy to transferring public emotions into concrete institutional reform? MOOOC (Minimal Open Online/Offline Course): Online auditors and voyeurs may follow “SoMeMer’s” curriculum via Zoom. The NSCHL appears for a week of spinal-secretarial documentation, grey literature, and cultural remittance. After 2 days of SoMeMeR programming, a crew of print pirates will turn the uNSCHooL’s research and documentation into a 3-day publication (To sign up for this event, please e-mail somemerunschool@protonmail.com).  “ALI R U OK?” is an ongoing investigation initiated by Edwin Nasr, which summons artists, scholars, and cultural workers in and outside of the Netherlands committed to dismantling carceral systems. The project aims to pull into legibility the pernicious formations that capture and make disappear those among us deemed expendable—and thus orients itself to the future of October 22, 2007, a day when Bilal B., a twenty-two year old Dutch-Moroccan resident of Amsterdam Nieuw-West was savagely murdered by local police officers. Close-by, at de Appel, participants are invited to draw escape routes and articulate a poetics of abolition, i.e. what geographer Ruth Wilson Gilmore terms “a practical program of change rooted in how people sustain and improve their lives”. “een Kamer naar het hart” by Hera Chan is dedicated to builders and fighters. The independence of Suriname in 1975 (also the founding year of de Appel)marked a new era of coalition-building among emancipation movements in The Netherlands and in regions occupied and colonized by Europe. Today, the first European political party founded by a Black woman (Sylvana Simons of BIJ1), holds a seat in the Dutch Second Chamber. The party form can intervene with varied articulations in our collective political language, pulling forth issues otherwise ignored, such as the racially motivated child benefits scandal as well as solidarity efforts with the Palestinian struggle for decolonization. From resistance monuments to monumental forms of resistance, new commissions by Farida Sedoc and Lidwien van de Ven create a platform for a shadow cabinet, which calls for representatives living in our midst. Four chained male figures emerge from a relief titled “Peace”, epitomizing the suffering registered during World War II, and flanking these figures are two members of the Dutch resistance: To the left, resistance by the intelligentsia and, the right, by the working classes. “Dark Black” by Laura Castro is a publication in progress that roams the frontier between history and fantasy, considering anthropocentric historiography as obsolete fiction. Conceived from the premise of land as self, the project revisits the history of the partition of the island of Quisqueya, present day Haiti and the Dominican Republic, to engage in its reconstruction through capacities of doubt, feeling, and imagination. The book making process parts from historical research to investigate the possibility of new narrative systems that transcend merely human discourse, hence affirming the multiple latent ancestries and phenomenal legacies erased by the dominating historical fables. The quest integrates a series of works by contemporary artists, breeding curious associations that revolve its linearity. Initiated by Masha Domracheva, with a graphic interpretation by Austin Redman, “Future everyday life” addresses the lived reality of the WOW artists’ residencies in Amsterdam Nieuw-West. WOW Amsterdam and WOW Lieven as well as other Broedplaatsen in Amsterdam were initially based on the ideas of squatting and grass-roots management. Over time, however, as gentrification proved a profitable business model, the values inherent in creating sustainable communities were lost. Temporary contracts prevent tenants at WOW from forming long-term relationships with each other and the place.

Photo: Bijlmerbajes by Tiemen Rapati, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0. Design by Bassem Saad.

Info: De Appel, Schipluidenlaan 12, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Duration: 7-25/7/2021, Days & Hours: Wed-Sun 12:00-18:00, http://deappel.nl