The Jewish Museum in Waterlooplen is exhibiting this work by William Kentridge about the German colonialism in South West Africa (now Namibia) and the massacres of the Herero and Nama peoples between 1904 and 1907. The Black box/Chambre Noire was commissioned by the Deutsche Guggenheim.

Its this automated theater construction with moving parts and projections of his drawings. Chambre Noire is french for darkroom and also translates to camera obscura in Latin. All the drawings used in the projections are out for viewing, I became inflamed with inspiration.

I met some friends at De Appel this evening for simultaneous solo opening of a Belgian photographer/filmmaker Dirk Braeckman and the British artist . It was enjoyable, just look at the foyer installation.

Skies over Snaefell
Allard van Hoorn
Longest staying installation in De Appel

I mostly enjoyed the 35 minute film by Zarina Bhimji, played on a continuous loop, people would constantly walk in or stand up and go. It gave the theater a strange atmosphere, these bodies in transition in contrast with the encapsulating empty scenes of India and Pakistan. The Belgian artists work was nice, we were refused wine because we didn’t actually know the artist personally so that was a bummer, although the artist did look very much like a tree kabouter.

One of the first films we watched, was a 35 minute silent filmpje of the Oude Kerk bell ringing, on a big screen it was very effective. I cannot remember the name of the artist so I will have to go back later this week to De Appel and update this section of this post..but here is snippet I captured earlier.

De Bloem Joker from Liam Lijnes on Vimeo.

The Stedelijk has officially reopened in Amsterdam, after almost nine years. Great!!

I met my aunt in the foyer of the museum in October, I’ve visited occasionally when it was temporarily open with my mother and some friends. I’d say I am frequent visitor.

Ken Zeph and DOGtimers

On Thursday my lecturers, Manel Esparbé i Gasca and Ken Zeph took the DOGtimers around the rooms on a high energy discourse. Starting outside, beside the massive “Sight Point” by Richard Serra, then arriving inside in first room. This room set the bar for the rest of the evenings meanderings, its significance of this first room, was explained, it is the room to be in. From then on it was a visual audio sensation that changed the way I view this gallery, this archive of stuff and non-stuff.

Nature Girls
van Martha Rosler

Frankfurt 2007
Andreas Gursky

One of my favorite rooms includes …

Wall Painting
Sol-Lewitt

and

Bruce Nauman

And of course a real Rauschenberg

Charlene 1954
Robert Rauschenberg

We were asked to make a sculpture/installation about any news we found over the herfst vacation. On Tuesday 24th October Maartje Prinsma and I made a 175kg dough ball, an attempt to see what it would take to break the Guinness book of records for the largest dough ball. It just so happened that on the same day, a bakery in the northern city of Aleppo, Syria, was bombed by government forces killing at least 20 people, women and children. REUTERS

BloemBomb
Flour, electric circuits, LED display

I was unsatisfied with this because the process went so quickly and I didn’t feel I had learnt anything, so I continued to explore the subject a bit more. Why did the Syrian Government shell a bakery, a community of place, bread of life? They could have stopped the delivery of flour, confiscated the flour, but no! They intended to take the lives of innocent people!?

The critical observation I see is that the Syrian government is using fear as a means to reconnect the people to itself but predictably the two polarities are moving away from each other.

More importantly for me, I was satisfied by occupying a space with a work, getting people to view a work from different angles and how these different perspectives challenge the discussion.

Insalt
Wood, salt, acrylic paint

Insalt
Wood, salt, acrylic paint

Documenting my study with Lawrence Weiner. His pieces are conceptual, unusual words saying something about the world. He likes to make statements allowing him to judge his relationship with the world.

The work is imperative to the location, placed on or inside a structure, where it functions as a dialogue between the artist and the world, allowing the artist to understand the relationship.

The artists process starts with a question, it needs to find a place, it shakes the ground and once it has made a space it stops becoming art, it becomes an object, something people can use to enrich their daily life.

I studied the following statement by Lawrence Weiner:

MANY COLOURED OBJECTS PLACED SIDE BY SIDE
TO FORM A ROW OF MANY COLOURED OBJECTS

Here the artist uses words as the tool to sculpt the object in the minds eye of the viewer, the viewers mind is the material. I can appreciate the visualization of the process, The coloured objects are anything the viewer chooses them to be, and then we visualize these objects positioned side by side. In the following instance, ‘side by side’ for me indicates the reshaping of the existing relationship, the objects are either facing each other or opposing each other. In conclusion, the finality of this visualisation ends with the formation of a row of the coloured objects, unifying the sum of the coloured objects.

Below I show a literal manifestation of the statement as it appeared in my mind.

A row of many coloured objects
paper and ink
a study

For me, the moment of transformation occurred when I changed the content of the objects and the context of their space, a juxtaposition. I can think of topics such as branding the mind; political discourse, cultural clashes but I think in essence, it reveals itself as a key to understanding the relationships between things, more specifically “A Disagreement of Objects.

A disagreement of objects
paper and ink, plastic, toiletry objects, cloth

We live in a democratic society, democracy is all about entitlement, every human being is on the same level as everybody else and has the same rights as the next person, side by side, in a row. In an Hierarchy, where someone thinks they are better than someone else, there is no democracy, but there is an opportunity for someone to make art and change the way we see the world.

Flour being my material of choice, things got a little bit “flour on the face”, if you know what I mean.

De Bloem Joker from Liam Lijnes on Vimeo.

After their acoustic session at the Fame cafe, 3rd Floor magic beautified the Dam for a pocket full of cash.

Inbetween moments of preparing my xmas harvests for the good people of Amsterdam, the God of Apples manifested onto my kitchen floor, bearing handfuls of apples.

She then started to transcend new postions in a sort of Apsara dance, describing in detail the recipe for a Nutella and Apple Calzone, garnished with fresh mint and a shower of icing sugar.

Nutella and Apple Calzone

Splat happens when you least need want it…when noones looking! This is evidence of my unseen but now seen splats. I call it misplat [my-splat], a binary of mistake and my splat.

Pizza Fail

This last Sunday at the Paradiso, Amsterdam. Was ah haah baby!

They are the city hollers (http://www.dirtyhabit.nl/)