Proximity Music: Sensing After Thought is an exhibition which invites visitors to experience focus and distraction, to act and to contemplate. What happens when we stop thinking and start doing and perceiving? Is complexity better grasped intuitively or analytically? Can it help to delegate thinking to machines?
Featuring: Angelo Custódio, Arvid & Marie, Davide Tidoni, Gemma Luz Bosch & Jurriaan de Vos, Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork, Jesus Canuto Iglesias, Kaffe Matthews, Kexin Hao, Mihalis Shammas, Mint Park & Quiet Ensemble, Soyun Park & Wellsgoodness.
iii and Rewire present a selection of artworks by international and local artists in and around the new Amare cultural centre in The Hague. Performances and installations temporarily inhabit the multi-layered foyers and the surrounding streets, producing incidental events that function both as discontinuities or disturbances as well as channels to create new connections.
In a famous conversation between John Cage and Morton Feldman in 1966 the two composers consider the question “is intrusion a distraction or is it culture?” and what it means to be “deep in thought”. They suggest how being interrupted can help us move out of thought and into experience. The english word “afterthought” is usually employed in a negative sense, something of secondary importance. What could After Thought mean for us today, amongst all our mindless thinking machines and mindfulness gurus?
Kaffe Matthews presents a new piece for a sonic bicycle-bed on which visitors are wheeled on tour around the central district of The Hague while lying with eyes towards the sky, immersed in a site-specific musical soundscape. Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork, Soyun Park & Inwoo Jung explore artificial intelligence to stage surreal theatrical dramaturgies. Kexin Hao invites us to dance in an aerobics class imitating gestures extracted from historical archives documenting pre-industrial, hard physical labour. A monumental mechanical sound sculpture by Gemma Luz Bosch & Jurriaan de Vos dances in the air, creating three dimensional animated geometry and music. Mihalis Shammas reinvents the harp combining it with electronics to create a mesmerising sound world that carries listeners into another time dimension. Mint Park and Quiet Ensemble attempt to govern the fluid dynamics of a miniature ecosystem using sound, light and smoke. A polished steel bench fitted with industrial engines by Jesus Canuto Iglesias vibrates with a tactile composition while a pimped-up massage chair by Arvid & Marie offers mechanical intimacy. These and other works will be part of Proximity Music: Sensing After Thought.