Created in response to a traumatic hate crime, artist, Venus Patel, explores her emotional journey through several archetypes, each of whom perform with an egg. Using the weapon of the assailant, the egg itself becomes a tool with many psychological and symbolic meanings within it. The power of reincarnation, birth, nature, hope while also pointing to the power it has to utterly humiliate and embarrass if used in a certain way. There is an embrace of the absurdity of these performances while still speaking to the deeper subject matter. By placing the outlandish characters into public spaces, they confront a preconceived notion of pushing true queer expression into only hidden spaces or only at night, into the daylight and into the normal everyday experience.
A 'very intellectual' dirty talk on online sex work and a remix of 23-different-sources on the lookout for the answer to 'What happens to violence when you are not looking at it?' In this new work, EMIRHAKIN traces the parabola of performativity and gauges the unequal distances of labor in performance art and webcam performances from the focus point of body politics.
A dynamic, contemporary dance performance about how it is impossible to explain your deepest wishes or desires... how these can only be expressed in dreams and sleep. In the final sequence, we see the importance of effort and hope in the dancers' attempt to escape gravity. The all-male company performs to the music of David Byrne.
The film focuses on an audition to select an actor that best interprets the role of Jesus, judged by a jury of Vatican members.
A dramatic comedy following a Korean American performance artist who struggles to be authentically heard and seen through her multiple identities in modern Los Angeles.
Three commercials, presented as a short film, for fictional clothing brand 'Death To Straight White Men' by the QnWF-Sociétè. This fictional clothing brand and the ready-for-action poses and portraits of the three models were in many ways the foundation for 'E Kolór Korra' (2017).
"Encouraged by a special encounter between myself and an animal, my research into the “humanimal” began. This is a performative exploration reflecting on the place of animals and humans in their changing relationships throughout time. The research spans from topics like the cohabitation of different human species, the prehuman, the posthuman, to domestication and the numerous animal watching webcams found in zoos and online. Missing Link reflects on the intimacy between the species and how it can be expressed through movement here and now. "
A group of young men waltz in pairs, balancing with a glass between their foreheads. In this captivating setting, director Albert Rask crafts a new code of conduct - an allegory reflecting the experience of growing up. A playful yet poignant exploration that reframes the burdens of responsibility, expectations and the rules of adulthood.
The Concrete Road is a three-channel installation work which was premiered during the Graduation Show 2021 at Gerrit Rietveld Academie. "Landscape shifts, unmodernised desires. This is a story comprising three avatars of myself talking to and interviewing each other, reflecting on memories and weaving a path on coming of age. Sticky childhood memory which never fades. Loosely fitted gender/racial identity struts in juvenile cravings. Self-loathing, negation of the past, and his frowning parents. The tyranny of modernism leaves a leaky path for the protagonist to escape and slobber in a dream of wet summer night. My highest appreciation towards Bertien van Manen, who not only provides images on memory bubbles, but also her images help me to develop the initial script for this work."
A short documentary film made up of archival footage shot in 2003, which was reworked and edited in 2018-2019. The film shows a haphazardly shot, fragmented property viewing and inventarisation through the eyes of a child, featuring a voice over by that same child. Because of having unrestricted access to their family’s camcorder as a child, there were a few instances where the artist's child form had shot ‘full length’ documentary films - with this documentary short being one of those instances. Often these documentations were a call for seeking comfort in a new surrounding, stemming from a deep fear of being forgotten or unheard, and a playful way of documenting one’s thoughts and feelings. In many ways the artist, Mees Joachim, was the original vlogger, before the advent of Youtube.
A peaceful path with grass along the sides is disturbed by a man that is running and screaming.
A recently hatched turtle, made of sand and by hand, returns to the sea.
A silent experimental film, originally made in accompaniment to Josephine Zwaan's '1/4' album release presentation in 2016. The film sees musician Josephine Zwaan persist through a test of endurance, with the foundation of the film being a one-take of her staring deeply into the lens of the camera, haphazardly overlayed and re-framed by graphical elements color-matched to the album's artwork.
A short documentary film functioning as the introduction to the One Minutes x Inter-Architecture Department (Gerrit Rietveld Academy) short-film broadcast episode for Rietveld TV, as aired on SALTO. This broadcast was meant to give an artistic impression of a communal art-project developed by the Inter-Architecture Department for the municipality of Amstelveen, The Netherlands. This short documentary film introduces each duo placed and posing at their respective project-based locations, spread out over Amstelveen, through purposely awkward still-but-moving vignettes. The duo's are reintroduced several times in quick succession, with each consecutive appearance showing more of an awkward inter-personality, meant to evoke a certain liminal playfulness. An overpass, a bridge, a bridge-barrier, a docking port, the border between Amsterdam and Amstelveen, the edges of Amsterdamse Bos, an abandoned railroad.
Performance documentation of Mees Joachim's 'Homophobe', a 10 minute live-reenactment of a scene from 'E Kolór Korrá' (2017). A juxtaposition performed as minimally as possible. A destructively interpretive dance, literally shattering bones whilst forcefully dropping on the ground. A pre-cursor to their 'The Scaphoid Fracture' (2017) performance.
A meditative depiction of a colonial villa in Mungo, Surinam, taken back by nature.
Kappa, a woman in her 30s, finds herself in a facility that promotes social integration to individuals. Soon enough, she witnesses several attempts for interaction, which lead to a somewhat awkward reality. She therefore creates a survival mechanism and allows herself to get captivated within her fantasy world and reality. Caught into creating scenarios, she redefines communication as well as the borders of where a relationship starts and where it ends.
Detested Unrested Attested Arrested' is a video work that deals with the topic of pressure. We constantly have to face pressure In our everyday lives: to perform at school or work, to conform, to fit in, and the pressure that we create for ourselves. 'Detested Unrested Attested Arrested' confronts these points of pressure and looks at how they influence an individual. In a semi-biographical rap performance, different facets of pressure are being explored; like the pressure that comes with the success of your peers, exploring or coming to terms with your own sexuality and the constantly intensifying pressure of unfinished work and overdue deadlines. 'Detested Unrested Attested Arrested' is both minimal in presentation as well as extravagant in its usage of effects.
2-channel film installation 'Die Last meines Namens', wherein Heydt deals with an unpleasant part of his own family history. Heydt’s great-grandfather was a member of the NSDAP and mayor of the small town of Haselünne in Emsland for almost 10 years during the Third Reich. Based on interviews with his grandfather and research in various archives, Heydt develops a personal perspective on the subject. The film deals with how we construct identity from oral retellings, how we process family histories, and how we can find current and personal points of access to German remembrance culture. At the heart of the work are two conversations with his grandfather Heinrich Heydt, recorded at different points in the research process. In them, the grandfather describes his memories of his father, the time, and the two reflect on the subject and the results of the research.
"Inspired by my countless walks in the Middelpolder, the video mirrors my text ‘Dream of a Dutch Sky’, unfolding the Dutch landscape through three different perspectives: the camera’s , the protagonist’s and the plane’s, capturing a wanderer’s stroll."