Nieuwe Vide program 2019
From 1st of May 2015 till 31st of January 2019 I was working as director/curator at Nieuwe Vide art space in Haarlem, The Netherlands. (3,5 days a week, on a freelance basis). www.nieuwevide.nl
As a director/curator my tasks a.o. included:
– budgetting
– applying for funds
– drafting contracts for freelancers
– composing a program
– composing and leading a team
– editor-in-chief of a new magazine
– communicating with stakeholders
– curating and designing exhibitions
– stimulating press coverage
I was founder of Nieuwe Vide’s Journal of Humanity as well and came up with the Focus Artist-concept. I also started the Soup Corner in 2016 (weekly eating soup together with people form the neighbourhood and people that hire a studio at Nieuwe Vide).
Topic Program 2019: Absurdism
Program 2019 supported by: Mondriaan Fund, Gemeente Haarlem
Participation at Supermarket Art Fair 2019 supported by: Mondriaan Fund
Below the projects that have been organized as part of my program 2019.
PLANET VIDE – hiphop counterculture.
Dates: 12th – 20nd January 2019 @nieuwevide Haarlem, EXHIBITION | WORKSHOPS | #PBL
Including a collaboration with Triple Threat (an organisation for youth empowerment in Schalkwijk, Haarlem)
Workshops @triplethreat.nl van 22/12/18 t/m 06/01/19
Workshops by @haagshiphopcentrum
Saturday 12/01/19 #PEOPLEBEFORELIKES-7 benefit auction for @voedselbankhaarlem
Curator + initiator: TRIK
Planet Vide’ was a project of 2 months, about the different elements of hip hop culture. It consisted of 3 parts: a workshop program (at Triple Threat location in Schalkwijk, Haarlem), the PeopleBeforeLikes benefit, an exhibition about hip hop culture (including classic Hip Hop movies) in Nieuwe Vide.
During the Christmas Holidays of 2018 5 workshops were given by Haags Hiphop Centrum (H3C). The workshops were meant for youngsters who were affiliated with Triple ThreaT. The topics of the 5 workshops were: Graffiti, Breakdance, Beats creation, Rap and DJ’ing.
The opening of the exhibition and the People Before Likes benefit auction (People Before Likes – 7) were on the 12th of January 2019. The event started at 12.00h and ended at 23.00h. The auction resulted in an amount of money of 2400 euro, which in a later stage was donated to Voedselbank Haarlem.
Photos © Frans Claassen
A World Crafted out of Conspiracy and Cabals
Artist: Damon Packard
Dates: 8th of February – 10th of March 2019
Curator: Lennard Dost
Nieuwe Vide kicked off its program on absurdism with the first international solo exhibition by American filmmaker Damon Packard. Packard is an artist who excels in absurd horror and makes parodies of the work of world-famous directors, such as George Lucas (The Untitled Star Wars Mockumentary, 2003). Packard is an absolute outsider both to the art and the film world. The story goes that after struggling for years to complete films out of his own pocket, he received a large inheritance when a relative died, which he spent on Reflections of Evil (2002), a long treatise on contemporary American paranoia. His work is DIY and accepts no limits. He belongs to the wild fauna of Los Angeles and his films are located somewhere between arthouse cinema and video art.
Packard remains relatively obscure to the public. He is known for his pessimistic view of the movie business, often commenting on how directors have no control of their work and that artistic vision in Hollywood is always sacrificed for profit. He also claims that creativity in film largely vanished after the end of the 1970s.
A strong affiliation to the work of John Waters and the brothers George and Mike Kuchar can be found in Packard’s work. The Kuchar brothers were pioneers in the American underground film scene of the 1960s, being part of the same scene as artist Andy Warhol and filmmaker Stan Brakhage. Their work is campy, low budget and is full of over-the-top satire. While Waters and these other makers, distance themselves from the ‘mainstream’, Packard looks for that mainstream, albeit in a completely idiosyncratic way. Having pop culture, consumerism and the blockbuster as his starting point.
At the opening Cine.nl/Schokkend Nieuws filmjournalist Theodoor Steen gave an introduction on Damon Packard.
Photos © Lennard Dost
EXTRA
On Saturday afternoon, 9 March, Theodoor Steen gave a presentation entitled: ‘Theo Talks Trash’. Plus the film Doggie Woggiez! Poochie Woochiez! by Everything is Terrible was screened. Theodoor Steen is a film journalist and programmer with extensive knowledge of Trash Cinema. Until recently he was working as programmer for Breda B-, Underground and Trash Filmfestival. At the moment he writes for Cine.nl and Schokkend Nieuws. He is mainly interested in how image language can be used to convey messages. Doggie Woggiez! Poochie Woochiez! is a surrealist remake of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1973 film, “The Holy Mountain,” consisting entirely of borrowed clips from countless dog films.
Press: Cine.nl, Jegens & Tevens
Nieuwe Vide at Supermarket 2019
Artist: Data Bosma
Location: Supermarket Art Fair, Stockholm (Sweden)
Dates: 4-7 April 2019
Curator: Lennard Dost
Nieuwe Vide presented artist Data Bosma at Supermarket Art Fair 2019, Stockholm, Sweden. Bosma uses a large variety of media in her installations which results in creating a space or atmosphere. Her work researches the humane aspect in technology and on the web. Often the work is about desire or obsession shown afterwards in offline sculptures and spaces with the same intensity. Her most recent works go into the habit to observe certain online images constantly, within the security of their home, in search of things to feel a certain emotion or revisiting a certain memory. The spaces she creates evoke the same emotions but in a exaggerated manner, resulting into sometimes absurd or conflicting ambiences. Earlier she ao. curated the Pavillon: PINK PINK MOON for The wrong in 2018. FYI: The Wrong is the largest and most comprehensive biennale celebrating digital art today. https://thewrong.org/
SUPERMARKET is an international artist-run art fair that provides a showcase of artists’ initiatives from all over the world with the aim to display their unique projects and ideas, create opportunities for new networks on the Swedish and international art scene, and share the passion and vitality that are present in this sphere of the art world. https://www.supermarketartfair.com/
The presentation of Data Bosma won the Super M award for best fair stand.
Press: a.o. Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, TV4
The world of K., or the prophecy of the excesses of modern bureaucracy
Artists: Michiel Westbeek, Daniël Dennis de Wit, Ivette ‘Mrova’ Zub, Elly Scheele & Carlijn Voorneveld
Dates: 26th April- 23rd June 2019
Curator: Lennard Dost
The world of K., or the prophecy of the excesses of modern bureaucracy’ was based on Franz Kafka’s book Der Prozess. Kafka (1883-1924) wrote the book between 1914 -15 and it was posthumously published in 1925. Der Prozess tells the story of bank clerk Jozef K who is arrested one morning without any apparent reason. Unclear legal proceedings are taken against him and he ends up in an absurdist world of obscure law court attendants and endless bureaucracy.
How can we read and interpret a book like Der Prozess in this day and age? What is the role of absurdism within the context of our current political situation? Or is politics itself perhaps becoming a Kafkaesque scenario? The artists in ‘The world of K., or the prophecy of the excesses of modern bureaucracy’, all reflected in their own way on themes from Kafka’s work. Specially for this exhibition they created new work in which both literature and social responsibility played a role.
Press: Haarlems Dagblad
Invisible Man
Artists: Coco Duivenvoorde, Quinsy Gario & Jörgen Gario, Patricia Kaersenhout, We Sell Reality
Texts by: Kalib Batta
Dates: 6th of September – 3rd of November 2019
Concept: Lennard Dost
Selection artists: Lennard Dost
Curator: Liebeth Visee
Photos above and first two photos below © Bogdan Andrei Bordeianu. Photo below completely on the right © Quinsy Gario & Jörgen Gario
Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952) is a complex, layered story of an anonymous black man who tries to find his way in early 20thcentury America. This existential bildungsroman is about the search for identity in a society that tries to make the individual assume all kinds of roles. The protagonist feels invisible because people around him refuse or are incapable of seeing his true self. This is played out against a backdrop of a racist society in which the main character struggles with contrasting visions and stereotypes of what a black man is or how he should behave.
Invisible Man touched on themes that are still topical today, also in the Netherlands. Who is invisible in our society? Who has history made invisible? The power structures that dominate processes of (in)visibility are omnipresent but do we recognize them?
In this exhibition artists took a critical look at the themes of Invisible Man in relation to our contemporary society. The exhibition wanted to stimulate a decolonial dialogue and created new concepts about how we can break the conventions and stereotypes that still control our actions and thinking. Decolonial means that one thinks about alternative ways to organize society; it dismisses current structures that are still influenced by colonial ways of thinking. This sometimes feels uncomfortable or challenging – we feel less safe when conventions fall away. But it creates room for new possibilities and stimulates discussion about an alternative future.
