PSR Unverifiable Realities
Departing from the notion of “unverifiable realities” as a concept through which to attend to and explore the current times, Andrea Božić and Julia Willms (TILT) and Veem House have co-curated a programme (between the 7 and 10 July) presenting a constellation of artistic works across performance and visual art. We have invited artists whose work playfully merges gameplay, art and the world from very different perspectives, creating a situation of ‘unverifiable reality’ between these fields. Throughout the program the works on show propose transformative modes of engaging with and re-imagining the world through art while developing new artistic languages and unclassifiable forms of spectatorship.
Programme:
July 6th + 7th | Open Studio: How To Exit a Reality (Attempt 1 of 19)
July 8th | Open Studio with Billy Mullaney
July 9th + 10th | Unverifiable Realities with Tchelet Pear Weisstub, Clara Garcia Fraile, Tom K. Kemp
July 6th + 7th | Open Studio: How To Exit a Reality (Attempt 1 of 19)
Andrea Božić and Julia Willms | TILT in collaboration with the Moon
During a residency at Veem House, Andrea Božić and Julia Willms (TILT) will continue the research for their new performance How To Exit a Reality (Attempt 1 of 19). A performance in collaboration with the Moon based on the Metonic cycle: a cycle where the Moon returns to exactly the same place in the sky and against the same backdrop of the night sky star constellations every 19 years.
”We use this repetitive pattern to construct a spacetime journey through distinct realities – dreams, memories, scientific models and witchcraft rituals, future projections and SF fictions, all relating to the moon, spanning from far past to deep time future, situating them into the space of the theatre and overlapping them so they all take place at the same time here and now. We create a loophole between them pursuing an (impossible) attempt to exit its logic.”
The performance is based on the escape room principle: we are looking for an exit but every time we find one, we end up in yet another reality. We work with dream logic and virtual game and play strategies applying them to the world as an existential virtual game – one that we can navigate, transform, shift and play, or attempt to exit its logic.
Join Andrea and Julia in their ongoing research during our Open Studio on the 6th and 7th of July!
July 8th | Open Studio with Billy Mullaney
Billy Mullaney is currently in residency in Veem House to continue his research for Never Never Never Ever Never Never Ever Never Ever Ever EVER Ever EVER Give Up Unless It Gets Too Hard 2. This upcoming performance consists of filming and editing a promotional trailer for the performance itself. A crew painstakingly sets up a pre-scripted series of shots onstage, records them, and delivers the footage to an editor who assembles the trailer live.
NNNENNENEEEEEGUUIG2H2 responds to (by playing along with) the labor obligatorily required to generate online presence and outreach. The piece was inspired by the ways in which we curate and perform flattering versions of ourselves online, through social media platforms and beyond.
A spiritual predecessor of the work was devised at Das Arts, where Billy was selected as a finalist for the AHK graduation prize. That work was presented at Veem House for Performance as well as selected for both Spoormakers Festival and Makersdag at Het Huis Utrecht.
July 9th + 10th | Unverifiable Realities with Tchelet Pearl Weisstub, Clara Garcia Fraile, Tom K. Kemp
On the 9th and 10th of July, the work of artists Tchelet Pearl Weisstub, Tom K. Kemp and Clara García Fraile will be spread throughout Veem House, inviting you into an encounter with, and a journey through the performances and the building. Guided by your own attention, you will see a film documenting a search for unseen animals, a performative installation featuring a silent galop of a fragmented horse, and a role play game unpacking the images of the inner human body as a vast industrialised city.
All the works in the programme propose a different mode of encounter or alternative engagements with the reality we might take as fixed. Come explore, wander and journey through encounters with art!
Report
We invited TILT, artists Andrea Bozic and Julia Willms, to work in our space, do an Open Studio sharing of their work in progress/research and co-curate two evenings with us.
TILT is a strong partner and representative of the mid career artists; a mature voice taken seriously in the Amsterdam field, with an international presence. They represent many artists who visit Veem House who work in a more experimental way, pushing the boundaries of disciplines especially between dance, visual arts and theatre. Their work takes a special interest in dream research which we also notice has been a topic of interest in 2021 (also seen in The Greenery September 2021). Working with TILT as a co-curator gave us the chance to reach out to artists working across discipline lines, like Clara Garcia Fraile, Tchelet Weistub and Tom K Kemp (all artists whose relationship to theatre is coupled with work in the visual arts field or other). Our co-curated evenings called, “Unverifiable Realities”, took thematics present in TILT’s work and created connections to artists also looking at “unverifiable realities” and gave us access to the communities of visual arts specifically, with Tchelet being an alumni of Rijksakademie and Tom K Kemp being a Sandberg graduate. These (visual arts) audiences don’t always know us and it’s been fruitful to gather more exposure in this field as there are many overlaps in the audience interest but not necessarily in the networks. We were able to stage works by artists with some kinship with TILT and give the chance to show ‘experimental work’ in a mature and polished way, taking care to situate these art works in our building in order to maximise their viewership. Besides connecting Veem with new audiences TILT also reinforces the connection with many of the audiences who have been visiting Veem for years, some of the older generations who may have lost touch with Veem; maintaining that connection with interdisciplinarity.
It was unfortunately timed that the Delta variant was spreading wildly at the time of our collaboration with TILT, we were unable to reach as many audiences as we hoped, which we understood was a shared experience at that time. We planned to accommodate people safely by allowing audiences to enter the building in groups and wander around at the own feeling, incorporating Veem’s goals of always strategising and thinking outside of the box and aiming to create a warm and safe environment for audiences.