Ivo van Hove directs this staging of Janácek’s The Diary of One Who Disappeared. The song cycle tells the story of a boy who has fallen in love with a gypsy girl, Zefka, and decides to leave his family and village to be with her. Janácek’s inspiration came from his friend and late love Kamila Stösslová, who was also the inspiration for Katya in Kát’a Kabanová and Emilia Marty in The Makropulos Affair.

There are 22 songs for tenor and piano, with three songs for a small choir of women, with a mezzo soprano representing Zefka. Tony-Award winning director Ivo van Hove directs a brilliant cast including Ed Lyon and Marie Hamard, with actor Wim van der Grijn. This staging brings a new element to Janácek’s original song cycle, its love story now extended through a touching coda, with music by Belgian composer Annelies Van Parys.

Production Muziektheater Transparant 
Co-production with Toneelgroep Amsterdam, De Munt/La Monnaie, Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg Klarafestival, Kaaitheater, Operadagen Rotterdam, Beijing Music Festival

Royal Opera House
Annelies Van Parys

Until 9 June 2019

The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.
(Samuel Beckett, Murphy)

In the installation DETAIL, a large and massive boulder hangs on the ceiling. It is hanging on a steel cable, on a ball bearing, allowing it to fully turn around its axis. The ball bearing is put in motion by a steel wheel rotated by a motor which takes its energy from solar panels. The whole chain leads to a relatively simple situation: whenever the sun shines, the boulder turns around its axis. Once the sun shines, and therefore the stone starts to revolve, the mechanism is simultaneously unrelenting: the fatalism of a world that has to and will turn. A mobile with sunlight. A surreal image with an undertone of danger and yet fascinating at the same time. 

The whole (complicated) technical construction has no other goal than to have the “poetry” of a heavy colossus float and turn around. DETAIL is in this sense a pointless use of knowledge and material which makes it even all the more alienating. The question can also be put forward as to whether many other developments that we call ‘technical progress’ really do help the world. The destructive potential of ever greater, faster, more efficient and automatic algorithms, processors, motors and fire power assert their influence on a daily basis in wars and in the depletion of our planet. Where is technological knowledge taking us and does it make us able to handle the problems of our age for the most part caused by ‘technological progress’? DETAIL is then also a stationary situation: frozen, hanging in the air, turning in circles in a vacuum.

The TENDENCIES exhibition focuses on works that question scientific and technological innovations as much as they incorporate them. For this fourth edition, it looks at our relationship with possible futures, be they dystopian or utopian. Curated by Raphaël Stevens.

TENDENCIES '19
Kris Verdonck

With rare exceptions, art objects are created to be experienced visually. The Other Four is an exhibition experience that negates the visually dominant art experience hierarchy by presenting artwork designed specifically to engage the other four senses. Visitors to The Other Four will be able to touch the other side of the world, listen to conversations in the walls of the museum, feel and react to life-like cellular signals through handheld mechanical devices, and listen to unique sounds emitted by each planet in our solar system. Curated by John Schuerman.

David Bowen, the other side
Once every week his installation creates a three-dimensional carving of the current ocean surface conditions and cloud formations on the opposite side of the earth from the location of the gallery space. Using satellite data from the Nasa Earth Observing Information System and the GPS coordinates of the gallery, the installation obtains a current image of an approximately six hundred square mile area on the opposite side of the earth from its location. Using custom software this image is converted into a three-dimensional model which is then carved in pink foam by a CNC machine hanging upside down in the gallery space. Every week a new carving is created and displayed on the gallery walls adjacent to the installation. Viewers are encouraged to touch the foam carvings giving them the ability to touch the opposite side of the earth during the exhibition.

Plains Art Museum
David Bowen

The exhibition brings together the creations of five artists inspired by nature that have been modified and co-produced by AI. Their work questions how we work with machines to establish new forms of relationship beyond the utilitarian and explores innovative ways of expression that produce new ways of seeing. Curated by Blanca Pérez Ferrer, supported by Falmouth University.

tele-present wind - 2018 - This installation consists of a series of 126 x/y tilting mechanical devices connected to thin dried plant stalks installed in a gallery and a dried plant stalk connected to an accelerometer installed outdoors. When the wind blows it causes the stalk outside to sway. The accelerometer detects this movement transmitting the motion to the grouping of devices in the gallery. Therefore the stalks in the gallery space move in real-time and in unison based on the movement of the wind outside.

5twigs - 2017 - This installation consists of 5 found twigs that were three dimensionally scanned and then printed in translucent plastic. Each original twig was then mounted in opposition to its artificial counterpart.

Eden Project - Artificial Creators: inspired by nature
David Bowen

tele-present wind - 2019 - This installation consists of a series of 84 x/y tilting mechanical devices connected to thin dried plant stalks installed in a gallery and a dried plant stalk connected to an accelerometer installed outdoors. When the wind blows it causes the stalk outside to sway. The accelerometer detects this movement transmitting the motion to the grouping of devices in the gallery. Therefore the stalks in the gallery space move in real-time and in unison based on the movement of the wind outside.

David Bowen Artist Talk: 21 June 2019 at 18:30 

New Media Gallery
David Bowen

Without us being aware, the body continuously adjusts itself to the gravitational pull. Artist Teun Vonk created an installation that lets you experience gravity anew. Immerse yourself in the transforming space of A Sense of Gravity and explore how your body reacts to the visual, tactile and bodily sensations. As you set foot on solid ground afterwards, your sense of gravity changes in a spectacular yet subtle way.

Teun Vonk asked himself: How can I challenge the perception of gravity?

With A Sense of Gravity, artist Teun Vonk created an installation that lets you experience gravity anew. For two years, Vonk researched how our human bodies perceive and react to gravity. Without us being aware, the body continuously adjusts itself to the gravitational pull and keeps itself in balance. This process seems effortless and self-evident. 

Teun Vonk asked himself: How can I challenge the logic of gravity, of the bodily perception of gravity, with a machine or installation? Can I expand the boundaries of our everyday perception of gravity?

Lying on his back on an elevated, floating platform in his studio, Vonk reflected on gravity and weightlessness. He realised that our bodies anticipate and adjust to what you see around you and the surface you walk on. It seems self-evident, especially since we spend most of our everyday life in interior spaces, with levelled floors. The artist set out to create a space that is not static, but that changes in size and shape. This interferes with the logic of spatial perception, ‘waking up’ your body’s sensory system and influencing gravity perception. Vonk experimented with visual and bodily sensations, taking his own physical reactions as a starting point. In close collaboration with designers and programmers, the artist developed the prototype for this immersive installation.

This technological, futuristic looking machine harbours a dynamic, soft space that invites the viewer to submit to a very personal physical experience. The entire body’s sensibility is engaged, an awareness that changes the viewer’s sense of gravity in a spectacular yet subtle way.

A Sense of Gravity is developed with support of CBK Rotterdam, Mondriaan Fonds, V2_lab for the unstable media and STRP.

https://www.teunvonk.nl/a-sense-of-gravity/
https://file.org.br

Until 28 July 2019

Solo-exhibition curated by Chen Yunbing

Nemo Observatorium 02002 - Styrofoam particles are blown around in a big transparent PVC cylinder by 5 strong fans. Visitors can take place one by one on the armchair in the middle of the whirlpool or observe from the outside. On the chair, in the eye of the storm it is calm and safe.Spectacular at first sight, this installation turns out to mesmerise as a kind of meditation machine. One can follow the seemingly cyclic patterns, focus on the different layers of 3D pixels or listen to its waterfall sound. One could call it a training device, challenging the visitor to stay centred and find peace in a fast changing environment. After a while the space seems to expand and one's sense of time deludes.

Shrink 01995 - Two large, transparent plastic sheets and a device that gradually sucks the air out from between them leave the body vacuum-packed and vertically suspended. The transparent tube inserted between the two surfaces allows the person inside the installation to regulate the flow of air. As a result of the increasing pressure between the plastic sheets, the surface of the packed body gradually freezes into multiple micro-folds. For the duration of the performance the person inside moves slowly and changes positions, which vary from an almost embryonic position to one resembling a crucified body. 
At IOMA Beijing there will be 5 Shrinks and the bodies of 5 performers.

The Archaeologies are remains of the creation process of various projects. Lawrence Malstaf constructs nearly all projects from A to Z in his own studio. This requires a lot of technical research often through a challenging process of trial and error. Yet it is precisely in these errors he finds inspiration and ideas for new projects. 
With the care of an archaeologist he presents artefacts and traces of these errors, objects found on the floor and in the corners of his studio and he exhibits these artefacts as a pseudo-archaeological documentation. Each cabinet documents a different installation presented in a video. 
Next to exhibitions, several installations have been integrated in stage-performances. The text fragments on the drawings are quotes from these theatre- and dance performances. 

Lawrence Malstaf