'EVERYWHEN’

'EVERYWHEN’

Exhibition: Daan de Jong, Rotterdam Academy of Architecture

Open: 01.03.2024 | 13:00 – 18:00h
Start curator tour: 16:00h

Contact: daandejong_@outlook.com

Hosted by: See Lab

Short description:

‘Kia whakatomuri te haere whakamua.’

‘I walk backwards into the future with my eyes fixed on the past.’

‘'Everywhen’

The project challenges us to rethink our relationship with the future in a quest that is guided by Everywhen: a perception of time in which past, present, and future are interconnected. The project demonstrates how this idea of time can become part of our thinking and the way we perceive the city. Through spatial installations, maps and storytelling, the boundaries of this approach are explored. The exhibition shows us what it is like to experience The Hague through the lens of Everywhen.

Full description:

There is a Māori saying: "I walk backwards into the future with my eyes fixed on the past." Nowadays we show little sensitivity to this wisdom. We live in a world in which the future has no place. Yet the choices made today, will have far-reaching consequences for that future. It is a dead-end road. The climate crisis shows that we can no longer ignore the future. We need to broaden our time horizon. In doing so we are faced with a barrier: the future can be vague and abstract and is clouded by uncertainty. This makes the climate crisis also a crisis of perspective.

To escape this perspective crisis, we need to expand the boundaries of our temporal imagination. Designers have the ability – and the responsibility – to play a key role in this challenge. It requires a fundamentally different design approach, which begins with the realization that the Western idea of time – where the present is isolated from the past and the future – may underlie our shortsightedness. Indigenous cultures, where a different sense of time exists, can help us break this cycle. We can draw inspiration from the belief that past, present, and future are interwoven. This fluid idea of time is referred to by Aboriginals as Everywhen. This graduation project demonstrates how Everywhen can become part of the practice of urban and architectural design.

In this quest, three media forms from the designer's standard repertoire provide guidance. Through maps, models, and narratives, we explore how we can perceive and understand the city in the spirit of Everywhen. This approach focuses on The Hague; a city that is formed by divergent time scales. On one hand, the city is shaped by deep geological layers of sand and peat. On the other hand, the city has a long history as the center of political power, which is constantly changing. These interacting time layers provide the perfect conditions to experience the city through the lens of Everywhen. 

The collected stories about The Hague form the basis for a series of spatial emblemas. These representations of places in The Hague challenge us to broaden our temporal perspective. Do we look at the city as it was, now is, or as it could be in the future? From the spatial installations, maps, and stories, a new image of the city emerges. The boundary between past, present, and future fades until we reach Everywhen.

images: Daan de Jong

Time-r

Duo Exhibition: Time-r
Artist: Kim Ho & Remco Jongejan

Opening:
Friday 6th October
Doors open at 6 - 10 pm.

07 - 22nd October | Saturdays and Sundays
from 1 to 5 pm and from 8 to 10 pm

Short description:

Time-r

There is no time. (I was told
today)
What time is it? When shall we meet? How long is I love you forever…
Look at the sun & moon,
dialling day & night.

Time-r: Isn’t a moment uncountable?

Time-r is an aural installation by Kim Ho & Remco Jongejan, reflecting on the multiplicity of time. In this work, questions on our relationship with time are reframed and pondered, not verbally, but experientially. Communicating through a bodily-oriented experience, this work invites visitors to mind their own time, listen to it at their own pace.

As clock-time system becomes pre-dominant in modern social structure, we (when participated in a society) become habitual to arranging life in segments without aware. Often, time is conceived as a countable object: sometimes a commodity, sometimes a governor of our daily routine. The censorship of time seems out of our hands, while the time in our hands seems like a limited resource, always out of stock.

We become a living time-r.

Welcome to all (time-rs) who’d like to experience a moment of freedom.

We rarely see light itself, but what light shines upon. Is time, as far as we have experienced socially and culturally, not a mere reflection of time? Can we infer time through experiencing different “time”s? What are the possible relationships between a human-being and time: am I the perceiver, the perceived, or somewhere in between? In quest, this project embarks on creating a space where a multispectral temporal experience is possible, both metaphorically and physically, a place where multiple mirrors of time stood against/with/opposite one another where one’s attention are the eyes to sharpen the image. In this work, time is a reflection is explored as a spatial metaphor.

Time-r is constructed as a space composed of multiple “timers” embedded in different materiality. Noteworthily, here, time is not regarded as a life-less, ever-passing substance which leads our everyday decisions to a certain direction—it is treated as a living entity, with whom we can have a dynamic dialogue with. The language we use is not verbal, rather, it is experiential. Walking into this work, a visitor establishes bodily relations with the space through a heightened notion of various temporalities, facilitated by the elements that fortifies the space.

By situating time from an outsider’s perspective to an insider’s experience, it is an experimental ground for where our perception may lead when multiple layers of temporality becomes a tangible and embodied experience. This work intends to research time from as many angles as possible, while being manifested into an installation—a self-aware space—where the visitor (Timer) can view time as time itself.

P.S.

Time-r is a project set off from an experiential enquiry into the nature of time. Often, time is experienced as an entity outside us with a dualistic characteristic—that of which swings between objective and subjective, cyclic and directional, intangible and measurable—Time-r intends to question these pre-conceptions, researching how we (human-beings) as an agency with a multitude of perceptual intuitions (selves) attend to time in different contexts.

Graphic design exhibition:
Elina Alekseeva

Photography: Anke van den Berg

Water Portraits

open:
Saturdays and Sundays
11 am - 18 pm

Weekdays upon request via janaromanova.studio@gmail.com

Short description:
In the "Water Portraits" project, Jana Romanova invites participants to consecutively reuse one liter of freshwater until it's depleted. After each use, she freezes the water and takes its portrait. These frozen portraits receive the names of their users, along with a recipe for how the water was repurposed. As one cycle concludes due to the depletion of water, a new cycle begins.

This exhibition at See Lab features approximately 80 works that document this ongoing process for the last two years. "Water Portraits" delves into the interconnectedness of our actions, temporary ownership of resources, and the evocative passage of time.

Public program:

10 and 16 of September from 11.00 to 17.00 signup is required via this form.

"The Last Submarine" role-playing game designed and facilitated by Jana Romanova and Sophie Allerding

In the "Water Portraits" project, Jana Romanova invites participants to consecutively reuse one liter of freshwater until it's depleted. After each use, she freezes the water and takes its portrait. These frozen portraits receive the names of their users, along with a recipe for how the water was repurposed. As one cycle concludes due to the depletion of water, a new cycle begins.

This exhibition at See Lab features approximately 80 works that document this ongoing process for the last two years. "Water Portraits" delves into the interconnectedness of our actions, temporary ownership of resources, and the evocative passage of time

Photos opening: Lili Berger

Bio Jana Romanova:

Jana Romanova is a multidisciplinary artist inspired by misunderstandings. She works with performance and game practices, using photography and video as tools to discover gaps between what we say and what we do. She takes these breaches in communication as possibilities for being together, whatever that could mean.

Her long-term projects were exhibited at various international exhibitions and festivals such as Copenhagen PhotoFestival (Denmark), Format (Derby, UK), Chobi Mela (Dakha, Bangladesh), Cortona on the Move (Italy), Encontros da Imagem (Braga, Portugal), the Backlight Festival (Tampere, Finland), Encuentros Abietros Festival (Buenos Aires, Argentina) and many others, and she’s got several prizes and honorable mentions in photography and art all over the world.

For about nine years Jana has been active as a game designer for live-action role-playing games (LARP). Currently, she is researching how different game mechanics, gamification and playfulness can become tools for creating meaningful connections. She designs and facilitates larps and all sorts of games.

She teaches multiple courses at The Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, including methods for designing game experiences, performance and participatory practices, and organizes the Movement Lab.

More info

Installation design: Johannes Equizi
Graphic design: Sonya Umanskaya

Financially supported by / Met dank aan :

MIAP Foundation
Stroom Den Haag

Along with
Mondriaan Fonds
support of Jana Romanova's practice in 2022-2023

LES GUIDES

LES GUIDES

Exhibition by: Curators: Idil Samatar and Fayo Said and collaborators: Afro Student Association
Open: 17-18th of June | 12.00 - 17.00 H
Opening: Friday 16th of June | Doors open: 18:30-21:00

Short description:
When arriving in Senegal you are immersed by photographs, stickers and paintings of their spiritual guides, who are called Serignes in Wolof. As a majority Muslim country, most of its population belong to a Sufi order, one of the most significant being Murridiyyah (Mouride). The exhibition Les Guides takes you on a spiritual path, and follows the research question: What are the current views on the images of the Serignes by the followers of Mouridism in Senegal? There is a belief that imagery is prohibited in Islam because Muslims are often perceived as not having icons, idols or pictures of God or religious heroes. However, there are Muslim communities in the world that embrace imagery such as the one in Senegal. The exhibition includes photography, glass paintings and calligraphy from a research trip to Senegal.

OPENING NIGHT: Friday 16th of JUNE | DOORS OPEN: 18:30-21:00On the opening night, Mayke Kagg, who is an expert on Islam in Senegal, will give you a brief insight on Islam in Senegal. In addition to that, the curator Idil Samatar will explain her research from Senegal.

Funded by:

THE BLUE OF THE FAR DISTANCE

THE BLUE OF THE FAR DISTANCE
Exhibition by: Emilia Martin
Open: June 24th -July 02 | 12:00-17:00 H
Opening: June 24th at 20.00 H

Short description:
“The blue of the far distance” is a long term research into the topic of human relationship with the starry night sky in times marked by light pollution. Throughout her research and making processes Emilia visited amateur observatories where light pollution was too strong to see anything in the sky above, hand crafted planetariums built in the intimate settings of living rooms, farms, sheds. Inspired by the notion of hand crafted skies Emilia weaves different universes into a new one - a hopeful speculation. “The blue of the far distance” is a place of positive escape accessible and democratically available, a constellation of stargazers, of darknesses and surreal landscapes, of ancient orreries and universes in human scales, a clash between mundane and sublime.

About the artist:
Emilia Martin is an artist passionate about storytelling and myths, primarily working with media of photography, sound and writing. She grew up between two radically different realities: her grandmother's remote, rural farm filled with ancient myths and magic in Eastern Poland, and her hometown, Silesia – a heavy industry coal mining region in the Western Poland marked by extractivism and patriarchy. A clash between these two realities formed a place which continues to nurture her artistic practice. Emilia’s work explores the power of speculation and reimagining the realities we inhabit.

Funded by: