Archive for the ‘collaboration’ Category

Conversas Rotterdam #181 starts on Wednesday 16 October at 19:30-21:30

Conversas is a series of bi-weekly informal meetings where people get to know each other and share projects, stories, or interests. Conversas Rotterdam takes place on Wednesdays at 19:30. 

Three Conversadores (those who start the conversation) bring something to share with the group for thirty minutes each. As the title suggests, Conversas (Conversations in Portuguese) aim at a similar setup from which both the Conversadores and the group benefit. After each series of ten Conversas, we collaborate with a designer and edit a printed publication.

Conversas Rotterdam has held more than 180 gatherings in the city. The 19th series of Conversas Rotterdam will take place between October 2024 and February 2025 and is organized by Constança Saraiva, Weronika Zielińska–Klein, and Maurice Suitela. 

Conversas is a project initiated in Lisbon by Constança Saraiva and Mafalda Fernandes in 2012. Nowadays, it’s a project of many people and cities.

Events are open to all, and the entrance is free.

There will be drinks for €2 (donation for the subsequent publication).

Another layer for this series — Conversas, Upominki, and the Maternal

During this series, Weronika and Constança want to reflect together on where the concepts of Conversas and Upominki overlap. As mothers and artists, they are particularly interested in looking at Conversas from the perspective of the maternal, as a practice for care and ethics. Not from traditional views of motherhood or fixed gender roles – but in an attempt to recognise the value of different forms of caregiving, and where care can collectively take different forms, such as holding space for each other’s stories during Conversas. At the end of the series, they reflect together in writing on these concepts using their notes and drawings in the Conversas publication.

Upcoming dates: 30 October, 13 November, 27 November, 11 December, 15 January, 29 January, 12 February, 26 February, 12 March

This series of Conversas is kindly supported by

Thursday, December 16th at 15:00 – 20:00h

In December Emotional Channel is going to Upominki. Emotional Channel Goes Solo is the 4th presentation of the duo. The two artists first got to know each other during a turbulent exhibition trip in 2018. A background to this story was recently shared in their performance Temporal Comfort. After nearly four years together, they decided to focus on their own individual craftsmanships through affirmations and repair. Upominki means gifts. Emotional Channel goes solo share and offers services.

Affirmations
Most people have a difficult relationship with New Year’s resolutions, including Anna herself. Working together with women at different stages of their life, Anna has collected affirmations for the New Year. With the help of Weronika Zielińska and her daughter, Lilly Klein, they are sharing their messages on hand casted porcelain plates made by Anna.

The tradition of collecting porcelain “souvenir plates” was first reserved for monarchs and royalty, but since the XIX century it has spread in homes on a large scale to commemorate important moments of collective life. During Emotional Channel goes solo project you can email your affirmation to channelemotional@gmail.com for your own custom made 2022 affirmation plate, or come by to Upominki and Thanks to Weronika, Lilly, Natalia, and Eva

Anna is a visual artist and works across various mediums. She is interested in the sociological, relational and symbolic meaning of objects made in clay.

Angelica launches Nail it – garment mending and communal repairs. Angelica repairs your clothes and home textiles; change zippers, buttons, fix holes. Do you have any garments that need adjustment or repair? Hand them in at Upominki, Sint-Mariastraat 132B, 3014SR Rotterdam, together with your name and number via this form, and I get in touch. Large items can be dropped in the box outside, smaller ones through the pigeon hole.

Angelica Falkeling works as a visual artist, seamstress, and costume designer. They used to facilitate sewing circles at Tender Center Rotterdam among other things. During the project at Upominki they will conduct clothing repairs and display their handmade clothes and accessories, which can be purchased via depop.com/temporalcomfort, where the temporal comfort continues as a series of size fluid skirts.
Any questions; +31616967544 or e-mail: angelicafalkeling@protonmail.com
Thanks to ZhiZhong Keene for visual identity

Saturday, October 17th at 13:00 – 19:00h

AMIGAS is an art collective established in Bogotá, Colombia in 2017, by Mario Alario, Nicolás Cuestas and Karolina Rojas. This collaborative reflects on its members’ friendship and their own personal and collective experiences by integrating them into concepts of gender, consumption, cultural activism, and independent projects often staged through itinerant installations and pop-up stores.

Still from Stabat Mater Dolorosa. Musical about Death and the Maiden, 2018

~ S C R E E N I N G

Stabat Mater Dolorosa. Musical about Death and the Maiden 61′
The Last Train to Warsaw 22′

DATE: Thursday 27th of February 2020
TIME: 19:00 – 21:00

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Upominki cordially invites you to join them for a double screening by independent Polish artists and filmmakers from the generation of ’80 and ’90.

SIKSA and Dom Mody Limanka carry a certain commonality; with their exceptional autonomous approach they gained a recognition in both: the underground and the institutional context. The meeting of two opposite poles, is precisely what drives their work the most. By bringing these two productions and practices together, we wish to open up a discussion about the current political climate, and the socio-economical problems Poland is facing today. To what extent are they exclusive to their national context? Or are they rather universal concerns that should be discussed on a global scale?

This screening is a first of a few encounters realised in collaboration with emilia dudziec, Upominki’s current guest artist.

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SIKSA. Stabat Mater Dolorosa
Musical about Death and the Maiden

Directed: Piotr Macha + SIKSA
Script: Stabat Mater Dolorosa
Cast: Check yourself
Production: Hardcore DIY
2018, PL

Musical based on SIKSA’s Stabat Mater Dolorosa is a performative dream of making a movie come true, where both the dream and the movie are like chewing gum that has been tasteless for too long. A nostalgic invitation to a dancing story about a girl returning to her childhood, when she dressed up as different women using her mother’s wardrobe, and all the roles she played to please herself. This film is a tool for reconstructing the scenes from the youth, as well as a baroque farewell to all the glitter and unicorns. Stabat Mater Dolorosa is like a bayonet slashing through modern times. She gives us micro-performances with all her body, and at her own risk. SIKSA’s music is the scenario rejected, grinded, spat out, negated and intensified by the characters. Piotr Macha’s camera is one of the murder weapons that SIKSA would like to use to fuck up the modern reality. It’s a language of art that SIKSA has been using almost unnoticed since 2014. A gun, a girl and death – those are the times we live in.

SIKSA
Siksa (Alex Freiheit: scream and lyrics & Piotr Buratyński: bass guitar noises) is the most divisive Polish artist in recent memory, whose radical and brutally honest performances are smashing the patriarchy one gig at a time. Coming from punk, literary and theatre backgrounds, her shows dissect the Polish consciousness. To quote her own words, she’s a girl on a mission.

Production: Dom Mody Limanka, Jakub Dylewski
Camera: Jakub Dylewski
Director’s cooperation: Aleksandra Maciejczyk
Script: Monika Estera Dembińska
Sound and film editing: Asia Szczęsnowicz
Music: Marcel Baliński
2019,  PL

The Last Train to Warsaw is a final video production of the artist collective whose 5 minutes of fame has passed. The main characters are faced with the choice whether to move to the capital – Warsaw, and leave Lodz, a city completely destroyed and troubled by scarcity. Staying in Lodz would mean continuing their utopian project i.e. leading an artistic practice on the periphery.

DOM MODY LIMANKA
aka DML (Limanka’s Fashion House) an artist collective from Łódź (PL) operated between 2017 and 2019. The group’s activities were mostly focused on organising events in a rented flat – previously gynecological practice. In DML’s work art and life were interwoven. Just as in their flat, where the private: home, would always meet the public: a studio, gallery, showroom, or a shooting set for their last video.

emilia dudziec (obite łokcie) – is a visual artist who’s concerns are the permanent anxiety phenomenon, and the aspect of powerlessness in the current state of affairs. Therefore she believes in plant-based cuisine, friendship and collective activities. Emilia graduated from the Faculty of Painting and Sculpture at the Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław and recently she has completed an art residency at the JEST gallery also in Wroclaw. Since 2012 she has been co-creating the DO READ! Word Deconstruction Festival. Together with Agata Lankamer she runs the relax art space in her hometown Częstochowa. Between January and April emilia is assisting with the daily activities at Upominki and developing her own project due in April 2020.

Image: Automated image by the Rib247 camera currently at Upominki, Rotterdam

Rib247 is back online this time looking outward inside Rotterdam’s art initiatives. LIVE footage of seemingly unproductive time, the camera observes a cat, a plant on the windowsill and counts the endless passing of a person going to its studio. Starting with Upominki, followed by Het Wilde Weten and others.

Since 2012, Upominki is a project space located in the house of Rotterdam-based artist Weronika Zielinska and her family.

“As the years go by, with each new project we establish new collaborations. Through (re)searching, practicing and negotiating for new forms of exchange, we learn about the multiple relationships built throughout our creative processes. Upominki means in Polish “gifts”. With our program, we like to explore the concepts of hospitality, reciprocity and gift-giving theory.”

For live footage go to http://www.ribrib.nl/

Date: Wednesday, July 10, 2019
Time: 19:00 – 21:30

Together with the Border Agency collective, we would like to cordially invite you to join and discuss their research titled Liquid Landscapes: what if the ground under your feet can’t be trusted?, through which the concepts of landscape, media, and identity are being addressed. This gathering is a proposition for starting a new conversation, during which each participant will be asked to reflect on the following question: what if the ground under your feet can’t be trusted? 

The participants’ answers will be then collectively discussed through the perspective of this research that questions the experience of a weaponized landscape. How can an everyday landscape become a weapon? Can a certain territory turn against its inhabitants? What strategies can we use in order to access and appropriate a territory that has been already weaponized?

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This activity is a side event of the Border Agency collective solo exhibition at the Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen. You are also invited to visit the exhibition opening on Sunday, July 7, 15.00. Opening speech at 15.30, followed by Q&A, drinks and music by Mayo. The exhibition will run until 1 of September this year. Kunstfort Vijfhuizen Fortwachter 1, 2141 EV Vijfhuizen.

Fort bij Vijfhuizen was part of a 19th cen­tury mil­i­tary strategy which trans­formed land­scape into a weapon by using water as a de­fense line. Con­sid­ering this Stelling van Amsterdam re­mained un­used and thus, in turn, be­came part of the land­scape, col­lec­tive Border Agency con­fronts in their ex­hi­bi­tion vis­i­tors with an “ac­tive” land­scape. For Liquid Landscapes they com­bine their on­going Land­mines Pro­ject with new work. This new in­stal­la­tion, made with local col­lab­o­ra­tors, ques­tions the ex­pe­ri­ence of a weaponized land­scape by linking the Stelling van Amsterdam and the mine­fields in the At­a­cama desert, at the bor­ders of Chile, Ar­gen­tina, Peru and Bo­livia.

Border Agency is an in­ter­na­tional col­lec­tive formed in Chile, which studies the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of land­scape and re­la­tion­ships that are es­tab­lished in dif­ferent com­mu­ni­ties. They use video, audio, dig­ital pho­tog­raphy, draw­ings and in­stal­la­tion. The col­lec­tive is run by Maria-Rosario Mon­tero, Paula Salas and Se­bas­tian Melo.

GALERÍA METROPOLITANA, within the framework of its curatorial program 
2018-2020, Strategies to divert Neoliberalism, presents:
Upominki (residency and research)

Friday 3 May 2019 at 19h

Weronika Zielinska (Upominki, Rotterdam) finishes off her residency in Galería Metropolitana, as part of an intercontinental exchange, which includes two self-guided residency programs between Santiago and Rotterdam. This exchange results from the same interests that both projects share with respect to: autonomy and self-initiative, economy and relationships; reciprocity and care. And, given that the two projects operate from the domestic space, we wish to frame this exchange as an extension of our work’ politics that crosses art and life.

From April 19 to May 2, Weronika conducted a research-based project in collaboration with Bruno, Lilly and Marc Klein, the artist’s closest family. In this period they have been developing meetings and conversations with the local communities of artists, academics, students, neighbours, activists and Mapuche creators in order to learn about the different feminist and other practices.

“Galería Metropolitana is spacious and children friendly with easy access for wheelchairs and strollers. By taking my family on a residency I meant to productively deal with the struggle of balance –between my work and life– without undermining one from another. By making the existing precarious conditions explicit, I used them as opportunities for creating new meanings. Shaped by trust and generosity not by distant prejudices, this project’s main objective was spontaneity and no high expectations. The given conditions weren’t obstacles, hence neither they were counterfeit nor new, for any one. As work is part of life, life becomes part of the work. Finally this project carries the approach through which I claim and make visible the artist-mother’ way, amidst the two modes of her being and operating in the world“. (WZK)

This project is kindly supported by CBK Rotterdam.

’Do I Look Like a Seahorse’? 

Date: Monday, April 8, 2019
Time: 10:00 – 12:00

Rania Atef (1988) is an Egyptian multidisciplinary visual artist whose work explores the notions of play and craft across a wide range of mediums including: painting, sculpture, installation and video. She obtained her Bachelor degree in Product design from the faculty of Applied Arts in 2011 and is currently enrolled in MASS Alexandria 2018/2019 program for Contemporary Art.  Atef has participated in a number of local and international exhibitions and festivals.

On Monday, the 8th of April, in collaboration with m/other voices and Upominki, Rania Atef will present her artistic practice and current project ‘Do I Look Like a Seahorse’ , reflecting on her experiences of motherhood, both as an experience and an institution within her native Arab context.

Please reserve via info@mothervoices.org as places are limited.