Concerning the Spiritual in Art

Ruchama Noorda (Leiden 1979) is an artist who uses diverse media and materials in performances and installations. In 2015 she received a PhD degree from University of Leiden where she researched the impact across the arts and culture in Europe and the USA of the early 20th century Lebensreform (Life Reform) movement. In her practice Noorda recycles elements of Reform pedagogy, arts, crafts, dance, diet and ritual practices in performance and installation works that both engage and challenge contemporary communitarian and counter-cultural aspirations, practices and beliefs. By highlighting the mystical and magical elements within the Reform tradition along with other undigested and ‘irrational’ material her works perform a séance-function- excavating, the repressed and buried histories within the Modern in ways that set out to complicate hard and fast distinctions between progressive and conservative social and artistic movements. 

Noorda's solo shows and performances have been hosted by De Oude Kerk, Amsterdam (2015), Galerie van Gelder, Amsterdam (2015), High Desert Test Sites, Wonder Valley (2014), Marres Maastricht (2013), Stadhausgalerie/Kunsthalle Münster (2013), Kunstvereniging Diepenheim (2012) Stedelijk Museum de Lakenhal, Leiden (2007) and Museum Het Domein, Sittard (2003).

Ruchama Noorda's performance 'Suspension of disbelief' has been made especially for this programme.

Ann Demeester (BE) has been the director of de Appel arts centre and de Appel Curatorial Programme since 2006. She studied Germanic philology and worked as a cultural journalist for the Belgian newspaper De Morgen and as the literary editor and coordinator for the newspaper De Financieel-Economische Tijd. Demeester was the assistant curator of Jan Hoet in Ghent (Municipal Museum for Contemporary Art, SMAK) and Watou (Poetry summer 2000) and worked as his deputy director in the German Museum MARta Herford.

From 2003 to 2006 she was the director of W139, an exhibition and production centre for contemporary art in Amsterdam. She was a member of the editorial team of the literary journals, Yang, A Prior Magazine and F.R. David, and wrote texts for catalogues on the work of, amongst others, Luc Tuymans, Michael Borremans, Jennifer Tee, Richard Hawkins, Mika Rottenberg and Bjarne Melgaard.

Together with Kestutis Kuizinas she was the curator of the X Baltic Triennial of International Art in Vilnius (Lithuania) in 2009. Ann Demeester is a member of the international commission of OCA (Office for Contemporary Art Norway) and has co-presented the Dutch television programme “4Art” (AVRO) since 2009.

Carolina Ivanescu (Arad, 1979) obtained her Master’s degrees in Cultural Anthropology and Romanian Philology at the Eötvös Loránd University Budapest. For her Cultural Anthropology degree she has conducted fieldwork in Tibetan communities living in exile in India and Nepal, working as a volunteer for Gyudmed Tantric College Dharamsala and the Tibetan Library of Works and Archives. Subsequently she moved to the Netherlands where she completed a Research Master in the Social Sciences at the International School for the Humanities and the Social Sciences, University of Amsterdam. For her MSc degree she conducted research on the sartorial preferences of Pakistani young women in the Netherlands. While in the second year of her Research Master she started her doctoral studies at the Department of Sociology of the Erasmus University Rotterdam. During her doctoral years she has been part of the chair Citizenship and Identity, a cooperation between the City of Rotterdam and the Erasmus University. She has also been involved in the supervision and teaching of students and has been a member of the research group CIMIC. While finalizing her dissertation, she has worked as an academic researcher on the European integration Fund financed project IMPACIM shared between the Sociology and the Public Administration departments of Erasmus University Rotterdam. At present Carolina is Lecturer in Religion and Society at the Department of History, European Studies and Religious Studies, University of Amsterdam.

Karen Archey is Curator of Contemporary art, Time-based Media at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Archey is an American curator and art critic formerly based in Berlin and New York. She came to the Stedelijk Museum from the New York-based organization e-flux, where she worked from 2014–2017 as an editor, founding the participatory web publishing platform e-flux conversations.

Archey’s writing and curatorial work often focus on issues relating to society and the individual, such as feminism, identity and technology. Her criticism regularly takes form as exhibition reviews, artist profiles, and thematic features in magazines such as frieze and ArtReview, as well as literary and theoretical essays published within anthologies by institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, MIT Press and the New Museum. Archey is a 2015 Creative Capital | Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant recipient for short-form writing.  A regular public speaker, she has recently spoken at Renaissance Society at University of Chicago, Institute of Contemporary Arts London, Museum of Modern Art New York and MoMA PS1.

Lauryn Youden (1989, Vancouver) is a Canadian artist based in Berlin. Her practice is a methodology of performative ceremonies. The objects, installations and writings found in her work are both the traces left behind from these actions as well as tools for providing self-care. These derive from Youden’s lifelong navigation through modern Western medicine and alternative healing practices for the treatment of her own mental illnesses. By publicly presenting her personal experiences, Youden’s work inevitably illuminates repressed, marginalized and forgotten practices and knowledge in medicine and care. Youden was awarded the Berlin Art Prize in 2016 and is co-director of the project space Ashley Berlin. Her recent exhibitions and performances include her series Sacred Serpent Sessions at the Meridian Spa Skyline Plaza, Frankfurt (DE) in collabortation with Reflektor-M and at venues such as Kinderhook & Caracas, Berlin (DE) presented by CONGLOMERATE, Multiplex/Galerie Noah Klink, Berlin (DE), Funkhaus Berlin, Berlin (DE), Pushmi Pullyo, Toronto (CA), Galerie Jerome Pauchant, Paris (FR), Limbo Limbo, London (UK).

For lunch, we serve homemade soup and sandwiches for a small price. You are also welcome to bring your own lunch, if you prefer. 

During lunch there will be a music selection by TeeTee.

Melanie Bonajo (Heerlen, NL, 1978) studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and completed residencies at the Rijksakademie voor Beeldende Kunst in Amsterdam and at ISCP in New York. In her work, Bonajo examines the paradoxes inherent to ideas of comfort with a strong sense for community, equality, and body-politics. Through her videos, performances, photographs and installations, she studies subjects related to how technological advances and commodity-based pleasures increase feelings of alienation, removing a sense of belonging in an individual. Captivated by concepts of the divine, Bonajo explores the spiritual emptiness of her generation, examines peoples’ shifting relationship with nature and tries to understand existential questions by reflecting on our domestic situation, ideas around classification, concepts of home, gender and attitudes towards value.

Bonajo’s work has been exhibited and performed in international art institutions, such as Tate Modern, London; EYE Film Museum, Amsterdam; Rogaland Kunstsenter, Stavanger; De Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam; Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Moscow Biennale; National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul; Fondazione Prada, Milan; PPOW Gallery and PS1/MoMA, New York. Her films have been screened at Kunsthalle Basel, and numerous festivals such as International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) and the Berlinale. Bonajo was shortlisted for Prix de Rome 2017 and for the 57th Venice Biennale, her film Night Soil – Economy of Love was nominated for the IFFR Tiger Awards in 2016. 

Bonajo presented her Night Soil trilogy in a solo show at FOAM, Amsterdam, and was acquired by Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht. The trilogy has been exhibited at Frankfurter Kunstverein, Tate Modern and Haus der Kunst, München. 

Night Soil – Fake Paradise
USA / Netherlands 2015, digital, colour, sound, 32 min

Fake Paradise considers the spiritual, medicinal and social dimensions of ayahuasca, an Amazonian plant with psychedelic properties. Navigating personal stories of experiences and perspectives induced by ayahuasca, the video pays close attention to the female voice, which has traditionally has been neglected in psychedelic research andpopular culture.

Theo Tegelaers is partner and curator at TAAK. He started his own artistic practice in 1987 and experimented with making exhibitions with other artists. After setting up project space BEAM in Nijmegen in 1992, he focused entirely on curating exhibitions. He was the first appointed director of W139, an exhibition space for contemporary art in Amsterdam from 1994 until 1998. After that, he worked as an independent curator in The Netherlands and abroad and spent half a year in New York as a curator at the ISCP (International Studio and Curatorial Program). For four years he worked for the Atelier Rijksbouwmeester as a curator and coordinator of art projects. He was senior curator at SKOR | Foundation for Art and Public Domain from 2006 until 2012.

Theo worked on projects and exhibitions with: Simon Starling, Richard Wright, Fiona Tan, Bik van der Pol, Lara Almarcegui, Monika Sosnowska, Katharina Grosse, Fritz Haeg, HeHe, Job Koelewijn, Michael Beutler, Martijn Engelbregt, Germaine Kruip, Liam Gillick, Amalia Pica, Nicoline van Harskamp and many others.

Theo Tegelaers will give a lecture about Cure Park.

Cure Park was a public manifestation in public space, created in cooperation with researchers, students, artists and guests and focusing on themes such as pain, environment, death, nutrition, body and faith. A spot in the Amsterdamse Bos to meet, exchange ideas and participate, as well as a platform for sharing knowledge, experience and stories about care and healing.

Daniela Bershan a.k.a. Baba Electronica (DE/IL) is a visual artist, DJ, activist and researcher that can best be described as a media-vagabond and fearless sampler. In her work – ranging from sculpture and performance to social organisation and music – she conceptualizes not just the characteristics of her materials but with and through them the skills and objects they can be read with. Sampling and being sampled she dissects choreographies and scores in order to make tangible how they operate; She is committed to create and circulate queering tools. For Daniela object-making, situations, material processes, affective encounters, active study, performance, remixing and choreography are all expressions of sense-making processes, compose potentia-spaces for erotic/aesthetic practices and nonmonotonic thinking.

Bershan co-founded and directed FATFORM (NL), and is co-organizing ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE at Performing Arts Forum (FR). Her works, projects and performances have been presented at amongst others the 29th Sao Paulo Biennale (BR), De Appel Arts Centre (NL), Frankfurter Kunstverein (DE), Museum Katharinenhof (DE), MaerzMusik (DE), KunstenfestivaldesArts (BE), W139 (NL), Portikus (DE), NAS Gallery Sydney (AU), Capacete (BR), Smart Project Space (NL), Paradiso (NL), Künstlerhaus Graz (AT) and Triennale Luxembourg (LUX).

Limited capacity, please pick up your reservation ticket at the Paradiso reception desk. 
We recommend to bring your own blanket.

Price: €3 (with your Symposium ticket)
Location: Teijin Auditorium, Stedelijk Museum
Limited capacity, reservations are advised through the website of Stedelijk Museum (select option Paradiso combi)

'You say I for me' is a performative reading and sound bath by artist Lauryn Youden. This performance includes the reading of Youden’s text Nocebo (2018), which is both a personal narrative about illness and a historical essay. Nocebo depicts the artist's own relationship with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), lucid dreaming as a form of treatment and confronting of personal demons. The artist further presents a timeline of diagnoses related to the changing perception of the female body and plant-based medicine during the growth of monotheistic religions and capitalism.

Sound baths, which are part meditation and part listening exercises, are therapeutic sound healing ceremonies. 'You say I for me' is composed of an immersive light and sound environment, including crystal singing bowls played by Youden. This is accompanied by music produced by artist and musician Florian T M Zeisig from his yet-to-be released album Markings (2018). Designed in dialogue with Youden for her own holistic treatment, the album is composed of subtle frequency modulations of synthesizer and singing bowl recordings.

At the beginning of the performance, mugwort tea (artemisia vulgaris) will be served. The audience is invited to enjoy the tea during the performance while taking a comfortable seat, laying down and closing their eyes. The audience is advised to wear something comfortable and to come well hydrated.

Pinar & Viola - Mother Earth in Paris

Telemagic (Roos Groothuizen, Cyanne van den Houten, Ymer Marinus) - Installations