WORDS FAIL ME

The perfomance program Words fail me was realised as the outcome of See Lab member Neva Lukić residency in artist initiative Het Wilde Weten in Rotterdam. All authors of the performances, as designers are members of See Lab. Words fail me endeavours to explore „the word“ and „the symbol“ throughout different media and various artistic expressions. This performance event was structured around three points which create the podium where the language exists, metamorphosing and disappearing by means of various artistic qualities and sensibilities. These points were the philosophical writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein, short stories and poems by Neva Lukić and performance pieces by Cathleen Owens, Katerina Sidorova and Masaaki Oyamada (performed by Judith Moss). Booklet design Anke van den Berg and Masaaki Oyamada. The program was ended with a great concert by Medium!

more info: www.hetwildeweten.nl

Opening new Studio's

In the past time we’ve been working together with the See Lab board and Gemeente Den Haag on a plan to realise an additional seven workspaces on the unique attic floor of the See Lab building. Today the opening of the beautiful studio’s was celebrated!! We thank Joris Wijsmuller, Stef Katwijk, Luciano Diancone, Mark Beste, Cultuur Ondernemen, Modus Architecten en ingenieurs & Stroom The Hague for their support!!

photos: Anke van den Berg

THE STORY WITHIN AND BEYOND 4B: ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE

THE STORY WITHIN AND BEYOND

ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE

PART IVb: Natalie Fyfe & Katerina Sidorova
MAY 30TH - JUNE 1ST
PERFORMANCES: FRIDAY, JUNE 1ST, 19:00 H

The performances of Natalie Fyfe actually do not focus on the face alone but on our mouth as the stage where actually happens everything that makes us human – the food is being chewed, the language (sound) is being created, and we are being connected with others via words or touch. In Choreography of the Mouth-Nil by Mouth, the mouth performs (the whole face except the mouth is in a fetishist way covered with a mask) a choreography which almost, just as in Shakespeare's As you like it, brings us to different ages of our life: to the scream which brought us to life, to the infant, to the lover and to our animalistic side which is with us all the time. In Bite, Chew, Spit the artist creates the intimate space of a ritual by masticated chewing gums. The small „chewed sculptures“ form the circles in the exhibition space, where they actually become an „archaeology of the mouth.“ In a metaphorical way,  Katerina Sidorova  focuses on the object as the centre point of a performance. „The object“ are

the unbaked clay vessels where anonymous performers are pouring water in silence, until naturally, clay either craks or is dissolved by water. In this performance the actual human body, the body of the performer, becomes insignificant, because it is being aligned with the material which it is concentrated on –  clay. The stage becomes the place for human and civilizational disappearance, the stage where a historical analogy of human physical body and clay as the protomaterial stand together side by side in „ashes to ashes“, „dust to dust.“ The vessels loose shape, just like an old human, in the seventh stage of his life, in the last scene of all, where only mere oblivion remains, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Text: Neva Lukić
photos: Anke van den Berg

---

''The Story Within and Beyond'  is a project of: Neva Lukić & Anke van den Berg.  Please take a look at  the full program  at ISSUU and here. The Story Within and Beyond is Made possible with the help of all See Lab members. Financial supported by Gemeente Den Haag, Stroom Den Haag and See Lab.

THE STORY WITHIN AND BEYOND 4A: ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE

THE STORY WITHIN AND BEYOND

ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE

PART IVa: Emilie Ruitinga & Nienke Sikkema
MAY 4TH - MAY 20TH
OPENING: FRIDAY, MAY 4th, 19:00 H
OPEN: FRI - SUN | 13:00 - 17:00 H

All the World's a Stage part IVa exhibition (Nienke Sikkema, Emilie Ruitinga) and part IVb the performance program (Natalie Fyfe, Katerina Sidorova) focus on "the stage" as a possible place for creating and recreating stories, lives and identities, reversing an inner world stage into an outer (public) world stage and vice versa. It also examines the fragility of the human body and the exposure of one's intimacy to the outside world.

Nienke Sikkema brings three different stages into the exhibition space, actually three „stage like sculptures“ which invite the viewer to think about the possibilities and impossibilities of the presentation of oneself in public.
One stage is made of metal, one of glass and one of fabric (plush/velvet), so they also affect the performer in different ways. One of the stages, the yellow one made of fabric, also gives the possibility to the performer to hide in the forest of its big, yellow sticks, therefore it allows the performer to hide their face and perform more freely, to expose their intimate world. On Sikkema's stages the performer almost becomes one with the stage, he/she merges with it, making the stage an active, equal participant in the presentation.

Emilie Ruitinga in her video installation creates the intimate red room which becomes a kind of peep show for the animation My Girl.  My Girl is a surreal  animation piece quite focused on a body and the division and deconstruction of the body and its face parts. For thist reason the red room, where the viewer is situated and where we peep through the hole into the My Girl animation, evokes the color of the inside of our bodies. In this work we become a kind of voyeurs into somebody else's world of the subconscious, and since we peep and our faces remain hidden, we can do with them whatever we want while confronting the surreal shapes and the intimidating sounds coming from the animation.

"The poetry performance for the opening of "All the World's a Stage" by singer-poet Nicole Jordan , writer and poet Neva Lukic, visual artist and poet  Brigitte Spiegeler. 

text: Neva Lukic
photos: Anke van den Berg

---

''The Story Within and Beyond'  is a project of: Neva Lukić & Anke van den Berg.  Please take a look at  the full program  at ISSUU and here. The Story Within and Beyond is Made possible with the help of all See Lab members. Financial supported by Gemeente Den Haag, Stroom Den Haag and See Lab.

THE STORY WITHIN AND BEYOND 3: REMOTE PASSAGES

THE STORY WITHIN AND BEYOND

REMOTE PASSAGES

Annija Muižule & Katarina Petrović
APRIL 6TH - APRIL 22TH
OPENING: FRIDAY, APRIL 6TH, 19:00 H
OPEN: FRI - SUN | 13:00 - 17:00 H

In Remote Passages, the third exhibition within The Story Within and Beyond project, both Annija Muižule and Katarina Petrović use impersonal narratives in the interdisciplinary way in order to create an interplay within the different media and to criticize the capitalist techno-marketing society.
In a dystopian way Petrović uses J.L. Borges's Two English poems (1934) as the input text to deconstruct the language and to decipher Jupiter planetary emissions. More precisely, the artist uses one of the Borges's verses – „we talked and you have forgotten the words“, to start Lexicon Liber Novus, an alghoritmically generated book. Radio emissions coming from Jupiter, the signal obtained from

NASA amateur radio community, is translated into words as a form of automated poetry, and then projected into „the black water cube.“
On the contrary, Muižule transforms the visual medium of photography into textual exploration of existential image culture (using descriptions of photographs from Bigstock, the online website that sells images via a credit-based system), and vice versa – she transforms certain words into thousands of images found while entering the terms for feelings (anger, happiness, etc.) into a search bar on the internet. From them then she composes a kind of „tapestry“, a kind of a new version of automated poetry, where each pixel is one image, the whole world in

itself... She also does a similar thing with the „strawberry“, being interested in it as a (capitalist) symbol, and the difference between a representation and reality.
What is interesting is the fact that these works actually, medium or material wise, always go a step beyond, so none of the artworks is actually as it seems, they are all actually something else – the verse made by a human (Borges) is transformed into the automated poetry made by a computer, a photograph is actually a text, a text is a photograph, and the strawberries are actually plastic decorative stawberries ordered from China... It seems as if we were standing in a kind of here

futuristic, post-apocalyptic surroundings, where words are not anymore uttered by us, but by computers, and the way we express ourselves is by images, like in the Middle Ages, only that now internet is our church. Fruit is not anymore only wrapped into plastic like today, but it has become plastic itself .., the symbol of a time forgotten, when „we talked and you have forgotten the words.“ Everything had to start again, to be projected in black.

Text: Neva Lukić, art historian
Photos: Anke van den Berg

---

ARTIST TALK #02

Katarina Petrović

APRIL 8TH 2018 | 14:00 - 17:00
A journey through the mind of artist Katarina Petrović. Hear from the artists herself about her practice and key moments across her works.
read more

---

ARTIST TALK #03 /Exhibition Finissage

Annija Muižule

APRIL 22TH 2018 | 20:00 - 23:00
A journey through the mind of artist Annija Muižule. Hear from the artists herself about her practice and key moments across her works.
read more

---

''The Story Within and Beyond'  is a project of: Neva Lukić & Anke van den Berg.  Please take a look at  the full program  at ISSUU and here. The Story Within and Beyond is Made possible with the help of all See Lab members. Financial supported by Gemeente Den Haag, Stroom Den Haag and See Lab.