Monochromatic Transillumination #1

DUSTY & THE ELECTRIC DUB -D.A.T.E.D. - (A.J. GUZMAN AURORA & ADAMS) Paris 2012
Antonio Guzman assembled his live Transillumination # 1 with singing and Voice of Aurora Adams.

This coming Saturday 28th of October as part of the elaborate research done for Project Monochromatic, I’ll be performing Transillumination #1, DNA sequences & Repetitive Compositions, developed with North American singer songwriter Aurora Adams. Performance goes from 4 until 8pm. It’s going to be a beautiful day at Nieuw Dakota, Amsterdam, so come over and grab some roti & drinks.

I’ll be also mixing and experimenting with electronic noise, ambient, abstract glitch, minimal, industrial, electro, dubtropica, drone beats and tracks from artists like Ryoji Ikeda and Philip Glass. Léon Perlee will play the barrel organ.

Transillumination #1 Its been composed together with Alejandro Matamala and Leon Perlee, its been played and arranged with Espíritu Tico and Tatiana Koleva in the marimbas, Heriberto Pinzon in the Piano, Leon Perlee and Organo la Tradición del Milenio in the barrel organs.

This massive transcultural production was part of the 12 Bienal de La Habana Biennial and the Bienal Centroamericana.

This project would not have been possible with out the support from The Mondriaan Fonds and Fundación Alemán Healy.

Programme:

12:00-22:00 Exhibition & Live Set

16:00, 18:00 and 20:00 – Performance by the artist (approx. 15 minutes)

Concert Series & Music for Barrel organ

Duration: continuous exhibition; artist’s performances approx. 15 minutes

24H Amsterdam: This event is part of the 24H Noord programme. 24H Amsterdam offers a chance to discover all that Amsterdam’s neighbourhoods have to offer in a 24-hour period, as theatres, museums, shops, hotels and clubs open their doors and throw up some special surprises. Each edition of 24H is dedicated to a different part of town.

I'am a native foreigner

Aspects of migration in the collection of the Stedelijk Museum.

22 sep 2017 till 2 jun 2018

Lectures and Talks at the Stedelijk Museum about the works of Remy Jungerman, Ulises Carrión, Otobong Nkanga’s and about MOMA’S 2009 show In & Out of Amsterdam: Travels in Conceptual Art, 1960–1976.

The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam is mounting a series of exhibitions in 2017 and 2018 that explore different aspects of the theme migration. “I Am a Native Foreigner” examines migration by focusing on the museum’s collection: what are artists views on migration, and how do they visualise it in their work? This collection presentation considers the effects of migration on artists both past and present, and reveals how they dealt with, and depicted, the impact of displacement. The title “I Am a Native Foreigner” is taken from a statement made by the Mexican artist Ulises Carrión (1941-1989), who settled in Amsterdam in the 1970s.

The work in “I Am a Native Foreigner” ranges from photographs of Dutch immigrants disembarking at New York’s Ellis Island around 1900, and Surinamese-born Dutch who made their home in the Bijlmer in Amsterdam southeast in the late ‘70s, to more recent images of refugees off the coast of southern Spain.

Some artists, like Remy Jungerman and Ed Hart, were once migrants themselves, and articulate that experience in their work. In the 1960s and ‘70s, they left their homeland, Suriname, for Amsterdam. In Jungerman’s work, the squashed toad motif serves “as a metaphor for something or someone who voluntarily steps out of their natural habitat. That step is a risk: you might end up being squashed flat, but you might escape.”

Some artists explore the relationship between migration and the colonial past of the Netherlands. In La Javanaise, Wendelien van Oldenborgh concentrates on ‘Dutch wax’, highlighting the way in which the Dutch appropriated the traditional batik technique to produce fabrics which were – and still are – immensely popular on the African market. Born in South Africa and resident in Amsterdam since 1976, Marlene Dumas scrutinizes the relationship between image and stereotype in Young Men, a series of portraits featuring males of North African appearance.

"I Am a Native Foreigner” is one of a series of exhibitions on the theme of migration staged by the Stedelijk in 2017 and 2018. As director Beatrix Ruf noted earlier this year: “It is important to always tell new stories, both with our collection and with separate exhibitions.”

ARTISTS
"I Am a Native Foreigner” is curated by Stedelijk curator Leontine Coelewij and includes work by:

Peter Alma (ID, 1886 – NL, 1969) | Halil Altindere (TR, 1971) | Francis Alys (BE, 1959) | Kors van Bennekom (NL, 1933 – 2016) | Rossella Biscotti (IT, 1979)| Miguel-Ángel Cárdenas (CO, 1934 – NL, 2015) | Ulises Carrión (MX, 1941 – NL, 1989) | Ad van Denderen (NL, 1943) | Rineke Dijkstra (NL, 1959) | Agoes Djaya (ID, 1913 – 1994) | Otto Djaya (ID, 1916 – 2002) | Marlene Dumas (ZA, 1953) | Aslan Gaisumov (Chechnya, 1991) | Gillion Grantsaan (SR, 1968) | Ed Hart (SR, 1936) | Nola Hatterman (NL, 1899 – SR, 1984) | Lewis Hine (US, 1874 – 1940) | Remy Jungerman ( SR, 1959) | Aart Klein (NL, 1909 – 2001) | Bertien van Manen (NL, 1942) | Meredith Monk (PE, 1942) | Otobong Nkanga (NG, 1974) | Wendelien van Oldenborgh (NL, 1962) | Michiel Schuurman (NL, 1974) | Barbara Visser (NL, 1966)

black achievers wall

Atelier GF Workstation is very pleased to announce that we are participating with Hamaquera from the Hogon Series, at the 30 year anniversary exhibition from the CBK Centre for Visual Arts Amsterdam Southeast. Featuring the works by 140 artists that have worked with CBK over the past 30 years.

Ontmoet en bekijk het werk van prominente kunstenaars die als Black Achievers de wereld van de beeldende kunst in Nederland kleur geven. Centrum Beeldende Kunst Zuidoost licht hun werk uit met een speciaal event: de Black Achievers Wall.

In het kunstcafé besprak master of ceremony Nicole Terborg -zelf journalist, programmamaker en presentator- de kunstwerken.  Ze deed dit met de kunstenaars zelf, speciale gasten en natuurlijk het publiek. Ook werd er gekeken naar en gesproken over Black Achievers die ontbreken en wie de Black Achievers van de toekomst zijn. Aanwezig waren:

Annet Zondervan, kunsthistoricus, directeur CBK Zuidoost

Ricardo Burgzorg, kunstverzamelaar, cultureel ondernemer

Neil Fortune, beeldend kunstenaar

Antonio Jose Guzman, beeldend kunstenaar

Raquel van Haver, beeldend kunstenaar

Remy Jungerman,  beeldend kunstenaar

Vincent van Velsen, curator, kunstcriticus

Met een muzikaal intermezzo van artiest Joya Mooi, waarbij zij zelf geïnterviewd zal worden.

De Black Achievers Wall is onderdeel van de jubileumtentoonstelling ‘30 x 30’, waarmee CBK Zuidoost haar 30-jarige bestaan viert.

Kunstcafé Black Achievers Wall – – zaterdag 7 oktober

Locatie: CBK Zuidoost

monochromatic

Latin American Cartographies

Curated by Antonio Jose Guzman
Art, Social Cohesion and Urban Landscapes
19 MAY ’17 — 15 AUGUST ’17

BOZAR/Centre for Fine Arts
Support: European Commission
Collaboration: Recyclart Fabrik, Zinneke, Atelier GF Workstation

Opening hours
Tue – Sun, 10 am – 6 pm (14.07.2017, 10 am – 5 pm)
Thu, 10 am – 9 pm (Till 6 pm from 21.07 till 15.08)
Closed on Monday

This exhibition is a visual laboratory, a journey into the realities of a vibrant continent through different points of view and mediums: from video to sounds or installations. Artists, cultural platforms and activists are today at the forefront of generating new perspectives around violence, learning, memory, resilience or mobility. What critical role can they play in their urban contexts? In El Salvador, they organised a football game between the former army and the guerrilla members. Peruvian activists display the city as a non-formal learning space. A Mexican collective critically explores how a Belgian architect contributed to Medellín’s urban development in the 1920s. Brazil based artists propose a new city questioning waste and water management, accessibility and mobility. From Colombia, activists and artists place the issue of the air at the heart of resilient cities. It is part of the EU project ‘LAIC – Culture and Arts Supporting Social Cohesion in Latin American Cities’, developed by Interarts and BOZAR and funded by DG DEVCO of the European Commission.

Works by The Fire Theory, Bijari, La Ciudad Verde, EscueLab.org, LAALvaca, Método Salgari, Oscar Leone Moyano, Dália Rosenthal, Federico Martínez Montoya, Fernando Escobar, Charlotte Charbonnel, Deúniti, Goto, Mister Basurama, Cine de Plano, Guillermo Araujo, Maximiliano Nulchis Graffitti, Gris Perú, EPA!, minipimer.tv, Cartografías del Azar, Regina José Galindo, Humberto Vélez, Raquel van Haver.

Curator: Antonio José Guzman
Scientific Committee: Paul Dujardin, Mercedes Giovinazzo, Toni Cots (LAIC Project Coordinator), Sophie Lauwers and Conrado Uribe (LAIC expert)

Monochromatic - Ajrakh DNA pattern sequences

In collaboration with Textiel Factorij, Iva Jankovic (Mids), Sukor and Sufiyan Khatri, Mondriaan Fonds

A decade ago Guzman joined the Genographic Project, an initiative of National Geographic that studies the DNA of thousands of people, helping them to find their ancestry. Guzman found his roots are African, Sephardi Jew and Native American. For a presentation at the Habana Biennial, the artist constructed with Amsterdam’s barrel organist Leon Perlee an organ book with his DNA. The barrel organ book was scanned, and the artist made banners and sculptures with extracts of his DNA sequence, which is exactly the same sequence that Guzman used for block prints in India.

The artist did extensive research on the Spakenburg Indian chintz kraplap, a women’s traditional cloth that formed an integral part of the traditional wear for women in the villages of Spakenburg and Bunschoten. The selected kraplappen, part of the collection of the Zuiderzee Museum, are made of indigo painted patterns and red madras.

The Monochromatic series will be shown coming fall in Nieuw Dakota together with the Dukkha Series. The installation at Nieuw Dakota shows us a fascinating universe in which cultural influences from all over the globe come together: the enigmatic anatomy drawings by Jean-Michel Basquiat meet geometrical textile prints from northern India, which merge with the ritual ‘cosmos drawings’ by Günther Uecker as well as the nail patterns in Congolese Nkisi figures.

Bienal Centroamericana

ADN Soundsistema & El Cielo de Mi Memoria

Urbanlab Medellin

LAIC: Cities in both Latin America and in Europe have become major global actors and strategic territories where tremendous social, political, economic, environmental and cultural changes are currently taking place. Both the EU and Latin America witness a myriad of public and private examples to regenerate public spaces and local communities. In that framework, culture and creativity can offer new perspectives and alternatives to challenges raised by social exclusion and urban development.

Exhibition: Latin American Cartographies BOZAR, Brussels,  May – July 2017

Curator: Antonio Jose Guzman | Organizers – Founders: Bozar, Interarts, European Union

Participants include Carlos Cadena Gaitán, from the arts collective ‘La Ciudad Verde’ in Medellín, Mariela Velasco, from the LAALvaca collective in Puebla, Juan Camilo Lema from the Escuelab project in Lima, Mauricio Brandão, from the Centro Bijari in Sao Paulo and Curitiba, as well as Melissa Guevara from The Fire Theory in San Salvador, joined by other artists and cultural actors from Latin America and Europe.

Urbanlab Medellin

The Colombian city of Medellín is currently hosting a series of encounters between artists and cultural activists to explore the role of the arts vis-a-vis social cohesion in Latin America.

Focusing on crucial contemporary challenges such as mobility, education, memory, violence or sustainability in urban contexts, the laboratory will offer a unique opportunity to experience and explore interdisciplinary and hybrid proposals, methodologies, cartographies, artworks and performances. To achieve this, five international groups – ‘nodos’ –  will be working across Medellín in the coming days to confront the challenges that one encounters in the cities of Puebla (Mexico), Lima (Peru), Curitiba (Brasil), San Salvador (El Salvador) and  Medellín.

Taking place between November 15th and 19th, UrbanLab is part of the EU-funded Project ‘LAIC – Latin American arts for Inclusive Cities’, developed by Interarts (Spain) and the Centre for Fine Arts (BOZAR). The LAIC project aims at promoting the role of arts and culture as a catalyst for inclusive and sustainable development as well as a vehicle to facilitate exchanges and joint actions between the EU and Latin America.

LAIC will culminate with an exhibition at BOZAR, in Brussels, in May-July 2017. A previous LAIC seminar at BOZAR in June 2016 already paved the way for UrbanLab.

Artez Psychogeographic Mapping Research

A project at BEAR Arnhem guided by teacher / visual artist: Antonio Jose Guzman, focussing on psychogeographical mapping.

Base for Experiment Art and Research
Psychogeographical Mapping.

Project by Antonio Jose Guzman
Theoretical guidance by Laura Van Grinsven

PSY investigates the urban identity and the social interaction between different groups in the city; the project provides a cultural analysis of the spatial mobility and mapping of the Netherlands, the Benelux, the German Ruhrgebied, Paris, Berlin and other European cities, the project is in constant transformation.

PSY examines the psychological and socio-cultural social landscape. What is the socio-cultural mapping of the cities we are investigating? How do different population groups move through the city? With the use of data visualization, mapping and Debord’s psycho-geographical theories, we try to achieve these objectives. The new maps, which I will develop for this project, are based on socio-demographic data and the daily routes of the population. The primary goal of the project is to create a social and critical idea.

Guy Debord’s Naked City; present the most radical departure from the grid. In reaction to the rational city models embraced by Parisian postwar planners in the 1950s, he and his colleagues co-opted the map of Paris, reconfiguring the experience of the city through its authority. By manipulating the map itself, they intervened in the logic of the city, constructing an alternative geography that favored the marginalized, and often threatened, spaces of the urban grid.

Participating students:

Nina Kersaan
Eleonora Johanna Remmen
Jaap van Klinken
Zaid Al-Lozi
Matthijs Homs
Melanie Maria
Harriet Caldwell
Laura Daniels
Gioele Pomante
Nora Welgraven
Bram Groeneveld
Hester Louter
Samuel du Chatinier
Constanze C. Schreiber
Lotte Kwee
Chris Beunk

x Bienal Centroamericana

Antonio José GUZMAN
El cielo de mi memoria, 2015 / 2016
Instalación
Con la colaboración de Mondriaan Fund (Ámsterdam), Articruz (Panamá), Fundación Alemán Healy (Panamá), Atelier GF Workstation (Ámsterdam), The State of L3 (Ámsterdam)

SOBRE LA OBRA
EL CIELO DE MI MEMORIA, 2015 / 2016

El “cielo” y el “tiempo” son temas primordiales en mis investigaciones. La pérdida de memoria representa un fenómeno preocupante en nuestra civilización; en momentos que olvidamos los desastres y genocidios del pasado, nuestras comunidades se encuentran aún más polarizadas y derechistas que antes. El pasado, tan directo, no parece hacernos aprender de nuestros errores. Mi trabajo se define como una obra dedicada a las estéticas migratorias, a la genómica y al fenómeno de apropiación cultural. Mi obra presentada en la última Bienal de la Habana, ELOO-El órgano oriental, nos muestra la nomenclatura de sonidos del ADN A de mi familia materna; A es un ADN indígena que se encuentra en Asia, Mongolia, Siberia, Alaska, y en todas las Américas.

El cielo de mi memoria –nombre inspirado en una Poesía de Proust– utiliza las partituras obtenidas gracias al sonido del ADN generado por el órgano oriental. Estas partituras serán usadas para ser tocadas con una marimba. Lo interesante de la marimba es que es un instrumento que nuestros ancestros indígenas apropiaron culturalmente gracias al intercambio migratorio con africanos que vinieron a las Américas con la esclavitud. La marimba, para mi, define lo que el escritor inglés Paul Gilroy llama “El Atlántico negro”. A-J.G.

dukka double dip

Is summer time and Atelier GF Workstation is delighted to announce that the DUKKHA series will be shown at:

Dukkha (Double Dip), Galerie 23, Amsterdam, The Netherlands / Opening 29 May (16hrs)

Dukkha (Double Dip), Mon Capitaine, Middelburg, The Netherlands / Opening 5 June (16hrs)

Dukkha Double Dip is an ongoing series of events that brings together a series of multidisciplinary presentations in the Netherlands, Panama / MAC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo and Costa Rica / Bienal Centroamericana. Dukkha engages the public in a dialogue with the field of Genetics, textiles, Africania, animism, migratory aesthetics, soundscapes, Pan Africanism and Postcolonial theory.

For Dukkha I’ve been working my way through old photos. Scratching, painting and using nails on them with acrylics, wax and threads.

Atelier Gf Workstation is a globetrotting studio that exists in different circumstances and spaces like The Veluwe, Amsterdam Oost, AIR Open Ateliers Zuidoost, Cope, Panama City and Dakar. The Atelier developed Dukkha during residencies at Art Omi International Arts Center, New York,Windward School, Los Angeles and Lectures at The New School, New York.

Proudly sponsored by the The Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst (AFK) & The Mondriaan Fonds

http://www.aguzman.com

Photography by visual artist: Hester Louter

“In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends”. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Artslant Desks

It’s so complicated to describe my desk, or desks, that I don’t know were to start or which desk to show. The above photos are of my favorite desk located in the Veluwe. My real desk is actually more less my iPhone and a little Moleskine book I bring everywhere. That is where the ideas always originate, especially when I’m sitting on a train, boat, car, or an airplane.

Atelier GF Workstation is divided across four desks: my main desk is in the Veluwe, one of the most beautiful natural forests in the Netherlands. This is were I keep all my work, but I only work there in the weekends and from spring to fall, because it is too cold in the winter; the use of the heating system for such a large space is too expensive. The other desks are in Amsterdam, Dakar, and Panama. The last two are where I spend one or two months a year photographing and sketching the material that I will be developing the rest of the year in the Netherlands. This process is similar to the nomadic cycle of my projects, researching my DNA ancestry.

I know that this all seems very attractive, but in reality I spend most of the time in Amsterdam. Since my son was born two years ago, there is not so much time to move from one place to the other, and I want to be closer to him. So all my projects are thought up, as I said before, on my iPhone and Moleskine notebook.

All of my desks are a portrait an Afro-futuristic universe. That is because I work using Pan-African principles, DNA, cultural appropriation, and architecture. I believe that everyone should create his or her own universe to go thorough life. The projects I do in tropical climates are what keep me warm the rest of the year in the west. The ideas and the cultures from Dakar and Panama are of great influence in my work, and it is because of this way of working that my projects develop in such a transcultural way.

Right now during the winter, I’m doing less physical work than the work that I do in the Veluwe studio from spring to fall, using wood, paint, and iron nails. These days I spend mostly in Amsterdam editing videos, looking for grants, cataloguing my portfolio, contacting possible places to display my work, designing installations, Photoshopping, reading books, writing ideas, and parenting our beautiful son.

Antonio Jose Guzman is presented by Framer Framed, Amsterdam, in Intersections, a sector for international project spaces and artists’ initiatives at Art Rotterdam.

http://www.artslant.com/ind/articles/show/45058