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Hans Bossmann: untitled (2016 ~)

      

On October 14, 2020, for the fifth year in a row, stones are suddenly lying on the windowsills in Hingene. Hingene is a village in the province of Antwerp (Belgium) and consists mainly of two main streets that intersect. At the four corners of the junction, you will find: a café, a church, a café-party hall, and a private house. Hans Bossmann, the man behind this activity, says: “Every year I do this on this day. And the windowsills are empty every year, except for one, the stones are all still there. ”

On that tiny windowsill are exact all the stones that Hans Bossmann has placed there over the past four years: five. But there seems to be more. There are also stones on the sill, both outside and inside. The resident says, “I always use those stones to keep the door ajar when I move outside for a moment.”
His neighbor sticks her head out of the doorway: “What does this mean?No photographs! Not even from the facade!” If looks could kill, this piece would not have existed. Why does someone put stones on people’s windowsill?

Why does someone put stones on windowsills?
Hans Bossmann: “This small change in the street scene can make people aware of other details in everyday life. It can raise questions about the meaning of such a small change. Once seen, it becomes an annual tradition that they recognize. There is only one village in the world where stones are placed on windowsills one day a year. Something small can be great. ”

hansbossmann.nl

photos: studio_orimi, Antwerp, BE.

Parallel Scenes

Frans van Lent announces small events that take place at a certain location and at a certain moment in the future. Everyone is invited to be at the exact spot at the exact time to contribute to the scene with his/her own simultaneous activity (or inactivity).

A Scene #22
Frans van Lent:
Saturday 23 May 2020 at 2:20 PM (CEST), Dordrecht, the Netherlands
I stood in the middle of the food market. I looked around until I recognised someone, and while I was looking at this person I grabbed my phone and called him to ask how things are.
After a while, I made clear that I was within visual distance, stopped the conversation and raised my arm to say goodbye. I left the market.

Martine Viale:
Saturday 23 May 2020 at 2:20 PM (CEST), Perpignan, France.
I walked in one direction and asked my husband to take another and to call my mobile phone.
I didn’t answer the phone; he called me ten times. While walking from a definite site to another I recorded the sound of the phone ringing as well as the ambient sounds.

   

A Scene #20
Frans van Lent:
Tuesday, February 18, 2020 at 2:20 PM (CET), in the sky above the Atlantic.
I was standing in the aisle of a flying Boeing 767-300 between the Netherlands and Iceland. With my eyes closed, my arms beside my body, I was for 15 minutes contemplating the enormity of the ocean below.

Trudy Kunkeler:
Tuesday, February 18, 2020 at 2:20 PM (CET),Tibidabo, Barcelona, Spain.
Tibi dabo: ‘This I give you’, the devil would have said to Jesus, ‘if you give me your soul’.
I am standing with my back to the church.
The Inevitable sirens at a distance, dogs barking, the sound of the wind.
Only non-western languages pass by, one language I cannot place at all.
Reykjavik, I think for a moment. I was about 10 years old when I heard that sound from my uncle who was also a priest and my godfather. He might be sent to a parish in Reykjavik. I looked up the city in the atlas. I myself never got further than the Reykjavik airport, on my way to New York.
Difficult to isolate yourself from the environment. I wonder if anyone is wondering what I’m doing there.
If so, I don’t understand.
2:35 PM: I turn around and see a family of Sikhs.

Martine Viale
Trudy Kunkeler
Frans van Lent

 

Nieuwstraat Festival

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The Nieuwstraat is an average street in the city center of Dordrecht, the Netherlands.
The festival will take place in this street on Saturday 20 June 2020, between sunrise and midnight. From the received submissions, a varied program will be compiled. The performances will be carried out by volunteers, unannounced and with no explanation.
Taking place in everyday settings, the performances involve hiding the unusual within the usual. Passersby may perceive these actions, but not recognize them as performance art.

The Open Call:
Please describe your concept in a clear and accessible language, more or less as a manual. The performances will be carried out by (often unexperienced) volunteers.
Don’t forget to mention the preferred time of the day (in relation to the opening and closing of shops, outdoor cafes, the fruit/vegetable-market).
We can only accept your submission if you include links to a website or page with some information about your practice.

Please send your submission to mail@unnoticedart.com.
Deadline: Monday, 1 June 2020, 23:59 (CET).

The Nieuwstraat festival is organised by
UnnoticedArt.com / TheConceptBank.org.

Edmund Felson presents Steve Giasson


From April 26  to April 28 Edmund Felson presents untitled (a living hippopotamus adopted collectively),
an exhibition by Steve Giasson at Gallery Weekend Berlin.

The Edmund Felson Gallery represents and works with internationally acclaimed contemporary artists. Each featured artwork is presented on and/or around the gallerist. Located in public space – on the bustling side walks of international capitals, in front of the most important art fairs of our time, next to renowned museums and collections. 

Off the record, on the QT, and very hush-hush
Sid Hudgens, L.A. Confidential

Ton Kraayeveld: Wall painting Synode (2018)



Ton Kraayeveld’s mural ‘Synode’  was developed as a work in commission. The mural is situated on the façade of the ‘Energiehuis’ in Dordrecht, the Netherlands. The ‘Energiehuis’ is the city’s major cultural centre which is home for various theatre stages and cultural institutions. In the used words, translated as:
So-Later-This-Then-As-Now-Here,
the work relates to the actual moment of being present in time and place in relation to possible moments in past and future, as well as that it points to performances and events acually taking place inside of the building.

TonKraayeveld.nl
photo © FvL

Frans van Lent: Geo (2003)

BregenzBiennale2018

THE MAP IS THE TERRITORY

For the 4th edition of the BregenzBiennale French curator Sophie Lapalu and  Austrian artist Albert Allgaier, co-founder of the BregenzBiennale, invited 46 international artists to create site-specific invisible interventions in and around Bregenz, Austria.
The biennale’s motto THE MAP IS THE TERRITORY reconciles radical conceptualism with subversive performance through a guide map that also works as the exhibition catalogue. Ranging from shamanistic rituals in the Casino to watering flowers with LSD, the works presented at the BregenzBiennale2018 juxtapose the poetic everyday with the mysterious and metaphysical. 

List of participating artists:

Lina Aušra, Francisco Babo, Samuel Bich, Simone Borghi, Elena Borghi, Godomira Buroskwy, Kevin Desbouis, Damien Dion, Victoria Durnak, Jona Einarson, Stefano Faoro,FAXEN, Romain Gandolphe, Steve Giasson, Akba Gurundi, Token Black Guy, Tim Hartmann, Stefanie Heine, Robert Huber, Florence Jung, Fatmir Mustafa Karlo, Stefan Klein, Marika Konstantinidou, Mikko Kuorinki, Sophie Lingg, Mmmmmegumi, José Oliveira, Will Owen, Alice Pamuk, Philipp Preuss, Anahita Rahzmi, Christopher Richmond, Valentine Ridde, Karl Salzmann, Liv Schulman, Driton Selmani, Lena Sieder-Semlitsch, Semino Spataro, Martin Sturm, Andreas Trobollowitsch, Emmanuel Troy, Salvatore Viviano, Robin Waart, Dimitri Waschkov, Noboru Watanabe & Bernhard Weber.

The catalogue of the BregenzBiennale2018 is published by Mark Pezinger.

The BregenzBiennale is supported by Land Vorarlberg and Bundeskanzleramt Österreich.

BregenzBiennale2018

Museum Reinickendorf: Interventionen

Joshua Schwebel was invited to participate in the group show ‘Interventionen’ at the Heimatmuseum Reinickendorf in Berlin. Schwebel proposed to work with the museum’s Nazi artefacts. A video was made of the museum director handling and discussing these objects. Schwebel then addressed a letter to the director, proposing an artistic-symbolic reparation:


Dear Frau Dr. Gerner, Director, Museum Reinickendorf:

I am writing to follow-up from our interview last week, and to add a further act to my work. This letter and your response will become part of the work I will display in the upcoming exhibition.

I have been thinking ceaselessly about the objects we discussed in our conversation. How these glittering swastikas and adorned certificates made me tremble. They sat before us in archival envelopes as we talked, and I spoke with you about them as though I, too, recognized their historical value.

In our conversation you described how these objects were ‘donated’ to the museum anonymously and without adequate historical information, and that this lack of correct and complete data is disappointing from a museological perspective. Either the donors felt ashamed to have these souvenirs of NS times in their family’s possession, or else they wished that these objects endure as historical artifacts of the region. In either case, the artifacts themselves ​do​ still endure, and because they are under the aegis of the museum, they survive and are protected. I certainly recognize the importance of documenting, discussing, and acknowledging the historical events from this time, however, I cannot understand why it is necessary to preserve its objects.

I cannot but feel angry that I see no equivalent artifacts of Jewish culture and its everyday history existing in your museum. It is quite evident that there ​were​ Jews living in Reinickendorf, at least until NS times. But Jewish objects did not find their way into museum collections because they were stripped from bodies, which were also melted, burned, or otherwise rendered into fuel for war, hatred, and Capital. Jews are represented by death markers here.

In response to this asymmetry, I wish to work with you to perform a gesture of reversal: A repatriative extraction. Working together with you, I want to arrange for the long-term removal of one of the many Nazi artifacts from your museum. While this extraction can only serve a symbolic purpose, its effect would introduce a real absence into your collection; an absence which speaks more broadly to the collecting activities of museums, many of which retain similar problematic objects also justified by their historical value. The particular artifact and the exact extraction protocol can be negotiated with you, either a long-term loan or bequeathment, but on the agreed-upon date I will put an object in my pocket and leave the museum. I will not photograph, exhibit or sell the object, nor will I destroy it. I will act as a vehicle for the object’s release from the museum, its removal from the historical remembrance it does not deserve, and relieve the museum of the burden of its preservation. The absence remaining in its place – an empty glassine envelope and description of the no-longer present object – will bookend the absence pertaining to the provenance of these objects, and the representational absence of Jewish life in the district.

I look forward to your response,

April 16, 2018
Yours,
Joshua Schwebel

As a result the museum has closed communication with the artist, and refuses to allow the artist to exhibit his letter. Schwebel’s work has been subsequently excluded from the exhibition, and Schwebel has received no response as to whether the museum will honour its contract to pay the artist for his work.
His name is no longer listed online amongst the contributing artists.

Joshua Schwebel
Museum Reinickendorf

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