Foto: Rowan Moonlion
Positions: Time Based
Presentation of video works by five artists from The Hague working in an international context who have previously benefited from Stroom's incentive policy.
Location: Stroom, Hogewal 1-9, Den Haag
When: 6 February - 3 April 2022
Opening: Saturday 5 February, 17:00 - 20:00 hrs
Stroom Den Haag proudly presents a new program line titled Positions. The year-round program features artists based in The Hague and showcases new work as well as works-in-progress. This first iteration - Positions: Time-Based - presents video work by five artists who are situated in an international context: Eliane Esther Bots, Hannah Dawn Henderson, Karel van Laere, Tineke van Veen & Barbara Prezelj, and Annemarie Wadlow. Responding to issues on a national as well as international level, the artists invite the audience to explore their position with regards to these current affairs.
The works in the exhibition are:
- Eliane Esther Bots, 'In Flow of Words'
- Hannah Dawn Henderson, 'Testament'
- Karel van Laere, 'Reach'
- Tineke van Veen & Barbara Prezelj, 'Unsettling Dust'
- Annemarie Wadlow, 'I've to think not twice, but twice twice'
Positions: Time-Based is a continuation of former programs at Stroom. This current edition provides a platform to artists that have previously benefitted from our stimulating program. Stroom's stimulating program is intended to support and strengthen The Hague's artistic climate and is aimed at deepening the recipient's practice through the development of new projects, elaborate research, or experimentation.
Throughout the last two years, there has been a renewed focus on video and time-based works, inspiring this exhibition. Positions: Time-Based features five distinctive artistic positions. Certain themes decisively emerge: the enhanced focus on a particular site or place; explorations of the fragility of the human body and its interdependence on social structures; and finally, personal and intimate perspectives by which to enter complicated issues, from the handling of nuclear waste to working within the judicial system.
By bringing together such different voices, Positions: Time-Based captures a snapshot of subjects, approaches and formats in video work today. Using an observational, investigative and experimental approach, the artists find subtle ways to open up new narratives into increasingly complex matters.
Eliane Esther Bots - In Flow of Word
In Flow of Words is a short experimental film about the experiences of three interpreters of the Yugoslavia Tribunal in The Hague, and their position as a channel between speakers and listeners, witnesses and defendants, judges and attendees. The interpreters are born and raised in the former Yugoslavia and lived through the war in the 1990s.
The outline on the floor of the exhibition space shows a scaled floorplan of the Tribunal courtroom in which the interpreters worked. The film focuses on the contrast between the emotional and physical impact of the dramatic stories that the interpreters deal with on the one hand, and the controlled and neutral environment of the Tribunal and its mission on the other. In the process, the interpreters are simultaneously visibly neutral and yet as invisible as possible; to get close to those involved yet keep their distance; to speak out yet be silent. The interpreters align the erratic process of interpretation with the rules that apply in the arena of the Tribunal: dealing with the contrast between inner turmoil and what public display, they find themselves being transformed into human machines. On 31 March 2022 a public program, with Eliane Esther Bots and the translators featured in the film, will contextualise the installation.
The films of Eliane Esther Bots have been screened and exhibited at festivals such as IDFA, Locarno Film Festival, the Berlinale, Cinema du Reel, New York Film Festival, International short film festival Oberhausen, Go Short, International short film festival Curta Cinema Rio de Janeiro, Glasgow Short Film Festival, and Kassel Dokfest. Her latest film, ‘In Flow of Words', has won several awards, among which the Pardi di Domani Best Director - BONALUMI Engineering Award at the Locarno Film Festival. The film is nominated for the European Film Awards.
Hannah Dawn Henderson - Testament
In Testament, a nameless figure wanders through an urban landscape, searching for someone or something that seems familiar. Her scattered gaze scans the neighbourhood — a dense archive of conflicting historical and present-day stories: the sounds of a nearby construction site alongside protest slogans scrawled on the sidewalk., street names honoring a colonial legacy, a monument to migrant workers.
The work Testament paints a poetic picture of the Afrikaanderwijk in Rotterdam by entangling its past and future. By doing so, the film refers to experiences of belonging, as celebrated in monuments, but also to the experience of being excluded. In this way personal narratives and social memory become intertwined and pierced by gaps, elisions, censorship and unrest.
Hannah Dawn Henderson is an artist and writer based between The Hague, Amsterdam, and Manchester (UK). She has participated in exhibitions and projects internationally, and her texts have been published internationally, and have been featured in collaborative performance events, seminars and readings. She is a current resident at Rijksakademie Amsterdam. ‘Testament' was produced in the context of the exhibition series Wider Perspectives at Het Gemaal op Zuid (2019, Rotterdam), and commissioned by Afrikaanderwijk Coöperatie, in collaboration with Furtado Melville.
Karel van Laere - Reach
In the development of the work Reach, Karel van Laere collaborated with surgeons, taking a number of ‘laparoscopic' surgical instruments on loan. During laparoscopic, or ‘keyhole' surgery operations, internal cameras show the surgeons' actions live on large screens. The surgeons only ever gain a partial view of the abdomen, they are often working ‘blind'. The patient is surrendered to the skill of the surgeon, the haptic feedback they receive through their hands, and the visual feedback broadcasted on digital screens.
In the installation, the audience is invited to interact with mirrors to reflect a video onto the surrounding surfaces. Dissecting delicate objects, the installation replicates the partial view, the distance from- or even absence of - the body, that surgeons encounter using those same tools.
It is this vulnerability, intimacy and even beauty, concealed within medical procedures, that is highlighted by Reach.
Karel van Laere is a performance and video artist with a background in the performing arts. He has performed and exhibited internationally, including at the MMCA in Seoul as well as Nuit Blanch in Tapei. In 2014, he was awarded the Piket Kunstprijs. Reach is part of Open Space; a co-production of The Grey Space in the Middle and Stichting Largo, on view in May 2022
Tineke van Veen & Barbara Prezelj - Unsettling Dust
The pandemic has been marked by a renewed focus on air. Our own human senses and understanding fail to comprehend the scale and effects of potential contagion. It is precisely this gap in understanding, that Unsettling Dust tackles by changing scale: instead of the detachment and spectacle that commonly characterizes nuclear landscapes, the project wishes to focus on the intimate and the sense of alienation.
Unsettling Dust explores the lived, bodily experience of radiation by focusing on the relationship between post-nuclear landscapes and radioactive dust. It takes as its starting point the post-nuclear landscape of Vaujours, a commune in the northeastern suburbs of Paris, where the first nuclear tests of France took place. The site is earmarked to become a quarry for gypsum, a fertilizer and the main constituent of plaster and drywall, spreading nuclear particles all over Europe.
Tineke van Veen is a visual artist who researches and visualizes the concept of safety. In her recent work she explores how safety correlates with the disturbed relationship between humans and the environment.
Barbara Prezelj is a landscape architect, designer and researcher. She is currently in the first year of her PhD which explores landscape's qualitative metrics. Her MSc graduation project ‘Unfamiliar Territory: Approaching Posthuman Landscapes' won Archiprix Nederland 2018 Second Prize.
Annemarie Wadlow - I've to think not twice, but twice twice
Over the past few years, Annemarie Wadlow has been exploring and digitizing her grandfather's substantial archives. Wadlow's grandparents were German Jews who were exiled during the 1930s by the Nazi regime, and went to America before settling in Great Britain. Families were broken apart, shattering into multiple narratives throughout the century. I've to think not twice, but twice twice, is a quote from her grandfather's writing, who prolifically documented his memoirs in letters, diaries, manuscripts, as well as documents and photos. To contextualize these materials, Wadlow travelled to Poland, to visit her family grave as well as the city of Wroc?aw (formerly Breslau) where much of her family was living. In her work, Wadlow is continuing the lineage of scattered narratives, by documenting her travels, connecting them through voice over of her and her mother reading out part of her grandfather's archive. In this way, I've to think not twice, but twice twice poetically blends site-specific images that explore shifting notions of belonging, home, and lineage.
Annemarie Wadlow is a research-based artist working between moving-image, photography & writing. She is a co-founder of Nice Flaps, a local artist initiative that hosts experimental life drawing sessions. Her thesis, ‘Women Looking at Women Looking at Women: Reclaiming histories of women in the arts and proposing models to facilitate future friendships', will be published by Page Not Found this year.
Public Program Positions: Situated
During the public program Positions: Situated, two events will take place in conjunction with the exhibition Positions: Time Based (see below for more information). Here, context, references or archival material will be presented related to the work of the artists in the exhibition. During these events, each artist will have the opportunity to provide a 'situated context' for the work they are showing in the form of performances, lectures and screenings.
'Positions: Situated' (1)
24 March 2022
'Positions: Situated' (2)
31 March 2022
This exhibition is made possible by the kind support of The City of The Hague.
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Video presentatie