DCR Guest Studio's: 2011

Hello – Goodbye

At the end of 2008 Janneke and I started the DCR Guest studios with a lot of enthousiasm, and in 2010 Caroline joined us.
We hosted more than 80 guests, national- and international artists, curators, dancers and offered a part of them a special programm.
We introduced them to the cultural and creative city of The Hague, and collaborated with many vivid and young arts-initiatives, settled in The Hague.
After this very interesting, but intensive period we want to thank all the guests for the inspiring times and we like to give it a follow-up and introduce hereby the new organization.
We wish Puck Verkade and her collegues a lot of succes!!

Tineke van Veen,
Caroline Grijsen,
Janneke Hendriks

Guest studio 3: Salifou Lindou (CM)

A short interview with Salifou about his residency:
What was the added value to stay in the city of The Hague?
The calmness and the beauty of the city helped me to start my work on site with a positive attitude.
The facilities in term of printmaking that were available in the city (the grafische werkplaats) helped to realise a dream that I brought along to discover and learn to master the dry needle technique amongst others.
I have learned the graphic techniques and it has been possible to be part of the development of Present Perfect! which will result in future works.
I hope to be able to transport an etching machine to Douala to be able to start a printworkshop myself so I can produce my own works and create an atelier for other artists to learn and use the technique.

Are there follow-ups concerning contacts; exchanges or cooparations with other institutes/artists from The Hague?
Yes, The project Present Perfect! will be presented at NEST in 2013. I will keep up the contact with the Grafische Werkplaats.
I made contact with the artist who is the director of Chiefs and Spirits which might result in a possible collaboration in the future.

Ruth Afane Belinga is working as art historian (Institut de Beaux Arts, Foumban), curator and artist. Her phd project deals with the history of painting in 20th century Cameroon, a pioneer research in a country whose art history hasn’t been written. As curator of ArtBakery she’ll present an exhibition on Goddy Leye at the 2011 Bamako Biennale. Her painting and video practice draws upon myths and initiation rites to show childhood as a contested space in Africa.

Salifou Lindou’s aesthetic research is inspired by the poetics of the everyday and of common materials. His public art project “Face à l’eau” (2010), shows his sensitivity for formal aesthetics and the politics of the locale: The paravent installation at the riverbank in his neighborhood in Douala is also protecting the men that come there for bathing from the glances of people enjoying the panaroma. Since 2000 he is regularily collaborating with Berlin-based artist and curator Christian Hanussek.

Notice: Unfortunately Achillekà Komguem could not come to The Netherlands.

Coming up: Present Perfect!

The residency of Ruth Afane Belinga, Achillekà Komguem and Salifou Lindou from Cameroon at DCR Gueststudios is opening the project „Present Perfect!“ initiated by Enough Room for Space

During their residency the guests will help to re-fashion the Cameroonian artist journal diARTgonale as a platform for a series of newly produced works on the relation of Europe and Cameroon. These works are realised collaboratively by European and Cameroonian artists and published in diArtgonale throughout 2012. In 2013 they will be presented in an exhibition at NEST, The Hague, together with other artists’ recent explorations of these intercontinental relations.

Opening Studio and Screening/Performance

DCR Guest Studio residents Douglas Morland and Christian Newby hosted an informal open studio screening and performance of a new work-in-progress. They screened a video with live musical accompaniment by Morland.

Papa Oom Mow Mow

Newby and Morland have spent the past month experimenting with video and sound as a way of interfacing their experiences and explorations of Den Haag into a kind of superimposed travelogue. Absurdity, disparity and incongruity form key elements of their approach, with the slippage and scrambling of cultural bodies of knowledge during this process of exchange and investigation, they interlace a broken narrative of both fact and fiction.

Guest studio 3: Christian Newby (UK)

In between: Newby marbling (huge!) for next exhibition (Transmission Gallery in Glasgow, gallery 2), with the help of his collegue-guests.

Guest studio 2&3: Douglas Morland and Christian Newby (UK)

Visiting artists seek collaborators…

Glasgow-based artists Douglas Morland and Christian Newby are undertaking a residency project in The Hague at DCR Gueststudio during August and are looking for artists, musicians and other creative people based in the city with whom to exchange ideas or collaborate.

As artists who also make music and whose practices draw heavily upon the lexicon of popular culture, its aesthetics, imagery and ephemera, Morland and Newby are interested in navigating The Hague via a kind of psychogeographic investigation of the city. This will take in an exploration of the local networks of underground musicians, visual artists, those involved in ‘DIY’ youth culture, past and present, and the points where these areas come together.

Alice Nikitinova (CZ) and Lucia Nimcova (SK) in Billytown

Invitation and

sneak preview (work in progress, Nikitinova).

Guest studio 1: Ville Raasakka (FI)

At the DCR I am working on a new composition for Piano Trio, that was commissioned from Denmark, and will be premiered in Copenhagen in 2012. The work will be in the genre of "Vanitas", originated in the 16th century still life painting of Flanders and the Netherlands.

Gueststudio 1: Izabela Oldak (PL)

Opening at of the mural project made during Izabelas stay at the DCR Guest Studios made possible by Steadion, Stroom and Gemeente Den Haag. It's around the corner, in the Newtonstraat 54/56, side of the Verademing park, Den Haag!
more pictures here >

Artbomb at DCR Gueststudios

This visual act is a sign of resistance against the growing disdain for the arts within societies and governments worldwide, and a sign of support for colleagues who face major cutbacks. An international tribute to art.
www.artbom.nl

read an article about the (political) developments in the Netherlands in Frieze magazine here>

Artist talk: Tita Salina & Irwan Ahmett (ID)

(photos by Electric Palm Tree)

Alice Nikitinova (CZ) and Lucia Nimcova (SK) in Billytown

In July, Alice and Lucia will finish their residency with a show in artist initiative Billytown. Lucia will stay one more month in DCR Guest Studio 2, while Alice stays and works in the brand new residence of Billytown.
The opening is planned on friday 29th July in the gym of the old school Billytown has moved in recently.

Artist talk: Tita Salina & Irwan Ahmett (ID)

EPT on the road 2:
HAPPY POTLUCK STUDIO

Tuesday, June 21, 6:00 - 9:00pm
DCR Guest Studios (guest studio 3)

Please meet Irwan Ahmett and Tita Salina for their talk HAPPY POTLUCK STUDIO (and please bring something to eat and/or drink)!

Dear all,
After two months I got all the permissions and I started to work on the mural. Here you can follow the progress.
If you will have time, you are more than welcome to come to the Newtonstraat 56 (from the park side) and see me working.

Best regards
Izabela Ołdak

Guest studio 2: Tita Salina & Irwan Ahmett (ID)

Dearest all,
Here is the result video of Organism (Luchtalarm) - Play in The Hague on Monday 6th of June, 2011.
In total, we have got 40 volunteers to play with us, fantastic!! Thank you very much for your participation!

Special thanks to David Smeulders for video footage and Dwi Tirtadji for helping us to realize the project.

Warmest Regards,
Tita & Irwan

Guest studio 2: Tita Salina & Irwan Ahmett (ID)

Some pictures of today!

Izabela: 'Very hot beautiful day. I was having the idea to finish the painting but an intervention of the police freeze my action. With the document written by the director of HML school, apparently I still was not allowed to paint this mural. I needed to explain my self in the police office, after a phone call from the director of the school I was free to go. The work is not finished until now. The director is still in process of negotiating.'

DCR Guests @ Hoogtij

James Geurts, Tita Salina & Irwan Ahmett, Izabela Oldak

Guest studio 2: Tita Salina & Irwan Ahmett (ID)

Looking for volunteers for play in The Hague

Dear all,

We are looking for volunteers for our art project: Organism. This will be our third project out of five for Urban Play The Hague, a project affiliated with the DCR Guest Studio.

The idea for Organism is inspired by the sound of the country's Luchtalarm which is tested every first Monday of the month at 12 O'clock. During the 1.5 minutes of alarm testing, we want to surprise the city with an action in the heart of The Hague's city centre. In order for the surprise to work, we will need your help. We've included a short video explaining what we would like to do.

DCR Guests @ Hoogtij

27.05.11 | 19:00 - 23:00h
Tita Salina & Irwan Ahmett, James Geurts and Izabela Oldak, will present their works in the projectspace at the entrance of the DCR during the HOOGTIJ art event.
HOOGTIJ is a cultural route through The Hague; a night tour of galleries, artist-initiatives and art institutions.
Click here to download the flyer and the map of the full programm (pdf). Location: same building as Nest, #20 on the map.

Guest studio 2: Tita Salina & Irwan Ahmett (ID)

Dear all,
We are looking for volunteers for our art project: Halte in je Hoofd (Tram-stop stuck in your Head). This is the second project out of five for Urban Play The Hague, a project affiliated with the DCR Guest Studio.

Gueststudio 1: Izabela Oldak

Cadavre Exquis workshop
13.05.2011, Haags Montessori Lyceum (HML)

During art lessons in one of the classroom I have done the workshop with teenagers.
I asked them to play the Cadavre Exquis (Exquisite Corpse) which was a favourite surrealist game from the mid-1920s onwards. I started the game, by drawing little pattern, after that I covered the picture leaving merely a small part for another person to continue from this point on. In the end every person created a drawing on one surface a big roll of paper without knowing the input of another.
The experience of the game has a references to the mural I would like to do in the back of the school. Where I asked children to leave me little notes, drawing of their wishes according to the final design of the mural.
The result is a collaboration with strong sense of individualism and a surprise.

After doing the project "Never take life seriously, nobody gets out alive anyway" (Urban Play) in Jakarta, Indonesia, Irwan Ahmett and Tita Salina are invited by DCR Guest Studios in The Hague to have a residency for 3 months. Within that time, they will analyze the issue of the daily routine of public life in The Hague and respond to it by creating some concept of collective games. Through improvisation of object and situation which they find in the place they will play. The goal is to offer intervention towards daily routine by forming the public trust and building enjoyable experiences of each participant involved in their project.

Guest studio 1: Izabela Ołdak

Kunst Voor een Beter Leven is a social project for a mural to be made in a public space.
This work will be preceded by the research of the place and interviews with people.
So that I can express ( through patterns and symbols) a cultural background of the people living in the neighbourhood.
Ideal places to make the project:

A really nice lunch, made by
James Geurts
Tita Salina & Irwan Ahmett
Isabela Oldak
David Horvitz

Invited:
Cristina Ampatzidou
Ambassador of Indonesia in the Netherlands
and Cultural attaché
Manon Bovenkerk
Thomas Klaui
Jan Korbes
Guiseppe Licari
Jacqueline Heerema
Jane Huldman
André Kruysen
Maarten Schepers
Dwi Tirtadji
...and more

Hello,
I am writing from my little office in the DCR, where I have just arrived via London from New York (originally from Los Angeles). I am guest-curating this season's Cinema at the Sea, which will be at Badgast in Scheveningen on the first three Thursdays in April: April 7th, 14th, and 21st. The program will be announced soon. All of the films directly or indirectly relate to the sea - and each night will have a different thematic structure.

On another note. There is no kitchen where I am staying. If you let me into your kitchen, I will cook you dinner! (I am serious.)
And also - I brought with me a lot of Japanese green tea. If you come to my room I will make you a cup.

Here is a recent project I finished earlier this year (about the Pacific Ocean)

Maybe I will See You,
- David