Imagining Liquification
Charl Landvreugd
Charl Landvreugd. Photo: René Bosch
Imagining Liquification
In conversation with the artists Joy Mariama Smith and Tarek Lakhrissi, Charl Landvreugd took the invitation to curate a day for Studium Generale Rietveld Academie as an opportunity to collaboratively think through questions of Queerness as a form of Liquification happening in Oceanic Imaginaries.
Definition:
Liquification can be a change from a gas to a liquid through condensation, usually by cooling, or a change from a solid to a liquid through melting, usually by heating or by grinding and blending with another liquid to induce dissolution.
The liquification process happens in three steps.
1. By playing with bias based on appearance, the performance The Utopia of Normal Space by Landvreugd unnerves ideas of normality that are based on assumptions.
2. The performance MISS ME? by Lakhrissi stages an intimate discussion with Landvreugd on black and brown queerness in the European context and shifts into a poetry session by the artist in collaboration with musician Yara Said.
3. dis/solution (dis solution) is a thirty-minute immersive ritual performance installation where the artist Joy Mariama Smith is absent. Working with dissolution as a healing practice for minoritarian body working, dis/solution intentionally works with salt, charcoal and water as detoxing elements-detoxing from past experiences.
While all works are autonomous pieces, the day should be understood as working towards a collaborative form of Liquefaction.
Definition:
Liquefaction is a phenomenon in which the strength and stiffness of a soil is reduced by earthquake shaking or other rapid loading…
Liquefaction occurs in saturated soils, that is, soils in which the space between individual particles is completely filled with water.
Charl Landvreugd, artist / researcher / educator, grew up in Rotterdam in an environment and time when many different migrant communities were making the Netherlands their home. Being part of this vibrant space, he advocates for local continental European concepts and language coming out of these spaces, that have the potential to speak about the sensibilities specific to the area. Using a broad range of artistic disciplines, he applies the results of his research to think about citizenship and belonging and how this is expressed in the visual arts in continental Europe. As a Goldsmiths, University of London (BA), Fulbright and Columbia University (MA) alumnus he completed his PhD in Curating Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art in London. Landvreugd is head of research & curatorial practice at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. He is on the supervisory board of the Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst and the board of the Akademie van Kunsten. Next to that he is connected to the Masters Institute of Visual Cultures AKV| St. Joost as Pathway Leader for Visual Arts & Post-Contemporary Practices. He has been a fellow at BAK – basis voor actuele kunst (2018–19), Utrecht and Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (Deviant Practice, 2017–18). He advised the Dutch Council for Culture and the Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst. His work has been published by: Open Arts Journal (UK), Small Axe Magazine (USA), ARC Magazine (St. Vincent and the Grenadines), Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (NL), Uprising Art (FR), NRC Handelsblad(NL), KIT Publishers (NL), Dominion of New York NY (USA), De Unie Rotterdam (NL), TENT Rotterdam (NL), Volkskrant (NL), HYCIDE Magazine (USA),* Metropolis M* (NL), Antilliaans Dagblad (CW), and NTR Kunststof (NL) among others.
March 26 Day Programme on conference website:
https://oceanicimaginaries.rietveldacademie.nl/conference-festival/day-4