Wanderings

Recently I took The Stone back to France. I decided that it ought to be in its natural surroundings after having travelled in Europe for some years. I was in France building terraces in a garden with similar stones last week . Before, I imagined that instead of standing in a living room in Den Haag The Stone is better off in a natural function, centrally in a useful construction. So here it is now, overlooking a village and a river, opposite a castle which is strategically placed on a wall next to the river. Underneath you will find a brief history of the stone.

The Stone as it was placed
You might see an cynical expression here
But eventually all is well!

Once there was a stone. It was quietly enjoying the place where it was, in a garden in Vaucluse in France. The owners of the garden also have a garden in Den Haag and, overcome by their imagination they thought it might be a good idea to take the stone to Holland together with some other stones. They gave them a place in their Dutch garden, to put some Provençal colour into their Dutch Eden.
As it happens, the artist’s studio of one of the owners looks out on the garden. Thinking about content for his Malieveld Project his eyes were caught by the sculptural qualities of the stone. So, he took it to the Malieveld and executed a short performance with it:

Kees Koomen: The weight, performance at Malieveld Den Haag – May 2, 2020

In september the female artist of EX-MÊKH was invited for the ‘FeMaler‘ exibition in Berlin. The two remaining male members of EX-MÊKH were invited as antagonists. The owner of the stone, collaborating in EX-MÊKH, decided to dedicate his contribution to the muse. He would make an installation which he opened with a performance using the stone again: He lay beside it and tapped on it to hear the voices of troubadours that it must have experienced, lying along the roads where these poets traveled from castle to castle in the middle ages. After hearing them sing he set up pedestals on which he put paintings of his muses.

Kees Koomen; Knocking on heaven’s door – Berlin, September 11, 2020
Kees Koomen; Knocking on heaven’s door – performance for A-Trans – Berlin, September 11, 2020

After the opening of the exhibition The Stone stayed in Berlin all winter, in the studio of Marian Wijnvoord, a friend of ours and also a member of KRAATZ, an interesting international artists’ collective we work with sometimes. In the early spring of 2021 Platforms Project in Athens stated it was impossible to do a regular fair because of the pandemic. Instead they asked participants to make video’s and pictures, they would open a page on the site of Platforms Project for each of the participants. EX-MÊKH decided to make a video and they also invited friends to contribute to the project which was called Stage Arousal . A-Trans and Kraatz from Berlin were invited to make a video for the website of the Greek Fair. When the KRAATZ-video was sent EX-MÊKH was surprised to see the Stone as protagonist of the video. The artists participating in KRAATZ decided to do little performances with it under the name Idioliths!

In the end of June 2021 KRAATZ invited EX-MÊKH to participate in the exhibition ‘Les Idiolithes’ in EP7 in Paris. It’s building has a facade with sixteen video-screens facing the Avenue de France. We were invited to show video on this wall for two weeks, alternating with KRAATZ and Sabine Bürger who was also invited. KRAATZ showed Idioliths with The Stone for their video:

Video Les Idiolithes by KRAATZ collective

In the opening weekend there was an opportunity to do performances, of which a ritual returning of The Stone from KRAATZ to EX-MÊKH was already planned. This Returning of The Stone was planned the second night and I proposed to do ‘The Weight’ again with the idea that The Stone had gained a soul, traveling from France to Den Haag, to Berlin, to Paris and back to Den Haag. All the more because it got more meaning each time and it would be a real responsibility to take care of it and maybe use it again. Thus it happened: the first evening two performances including the stone had been planned:

Interview with The Stone by Forbes Morlock (KRAATZ)
Improvisation on The Stone with percussion and electronics by Yorgos Dimitriadis

The second night the ritual returning of The Stone to EX-MÊKH was performed:

Kees Koomen – KRAATZ: Remise de la pierre – The Weight

EX-MÊKH also performed separately. Kees Koomen did another performance with The Stone under the title Sentiers d’été, rolling it around in a circle and making works on paper about his hikes in Vaucluse where The Stone originated from.

Kees Koomen: Sentiers d’été – 2021

After this weekend, The Stone was taken back to Den Haag where it was kept on a little table in the living room for one and a half year.

Les Idiolithes

This past weekend the opening of ‘Les idiolithes’ took place in Paris. After the first performances with ‘Conversation with a Stone about Freud’s Correspondence about Stones’ executed by Forbes Morlock and ‘Sounding the Stone‘ by Yorgos Dimitriades the video’s ‘Les idiolithes’ by KRAATZ,  ‘Soma(2) – Moksha ‘by Sabine Bürger and ‘Stage Arousal‘ by EX MÊKH are shown for the first time on the sixteen screens on the front of the building.

Stage Arousal ( still)
For a report on the first day (in Dutch): click on the picture!

On the second day the ritual return of the stone is executed: the members of Kraatz pass the stone to the members of EX-MÊKH. After a break the performance ‘Sentiers d’été‘ is executed by Kees Koomen and after another break Ex-MÊKH’s Ellen Rodenberg gives a workshop.

Sentiers d’été
For a report on the second day (in Dutch): click on the picture!

Les Idiolithes

in EP7 in Parijs van 3 september t/m 16 september
EP7, 133 avenue de France 75013 Paris

The exhibition on the facade of EP7 Paris (with invited artists Ex-Mêkh and Sabine Bürger) is accompanied by a weekend of performances, workshops, and an official curatorial ceremony around the opening.

According to a dictionary not yet written, an idiolith is a short—sometimes very short—film illustrating a compound word, phrase, or saying that includes a lithic element (such as, in English, “stone” or “rock”).

For EP7, artists’ collective KRAATZ has reimagined an anthology of its simple films as an architectural installation.

Two days of performances, workshops, and ceremonies has been organized around the opening of the exhibition on Friday September 3. For the full programme: scroll down.

KRAATZ is: Louise Crawford, Yorgos Dimitriadis, Stéphan Guéneau, Forbes Morlock, Isolde Nagel and Marian Wijnvoord. The members of KRAATZ share a desire to spur on their own work, to collaborate on each other’s work, and to engage in collective work.

EX-MÊKH is Ellen Rodenberg, Maarten Schepers and Kees Koomen. These artists all have their individual professional practices as an artist but next to that they show their works in their mutual contexts and they try to develop a relationship with the spaces in which exhibitions are held.

KRAATZ: www.kraatzonline.wordpress.com
About Idioliths: https://kraatzonline.wordpress.com/episode-3-idioliths-2/
EP7: www.ep7.paris
KRAATZ invites: Dutch artist collective Ex Mêkh: http://www.ex-mekh.nl
and visual artist Sabine Bürger: http://www.sabine-buerger.de

Program Opening Weekend

Friday September 3rd

19H                  Conversation with a Stone about Freud’s Correspondence about Stones

University professor Forbes Morlock discusses Freud’s journeys to the Dolomites, the Harz Mountains, Rome and Athens with the star of Les Idiolithes

1930H              Sounding the Stone

Experimental musician Yorgos Dimitriadis uses percussion, microphones and electronics to find the stone’s groove

20H                  Opening

Projections by the KRAATZ Collective and invited guests start on the facade of EP7

Saturday September 4th

16-17H &          Workshops

1715-1815H      A chance to work in small groups with members of KRAATZ to produce your own “idiolith.” The short films made in these workshops will appear on the big screens of EP7 later in the exhibition.

Maximum 10 people per workshop. Participants should bring a sense of play and, if possible, a smartphone, and clothes in solid dark colours (ideally black).

1930H              Cérémonie de la remise officielle du monolithe

The formal return by KRAATZ of the stone at the centre of the Les Idiolithes installation to the Dutch artists’ group EX-MÊKH.

to be followed by

20H                  Arousal—the Workshop

An interactive performance by EX-MÊKH’s Ellen Rodenberg, introducing the group’s intervention @ EP7

&  The Weight and Brief Encounters

Two performances by EX-MÊKH’s Kees Koomen, the first with the newly returned stone and the second mixing the myth of Sisyphus with the artist’s experiences in France this summer.

KRAATZ: www.kraatzonline.wordpress.com
About Idioliths: https://kraatzonline.wordpress.com/episode-3-idioliths-2/
EP7: www.ep7.paris
Ex Mêkh: http://www.ex-mekh.nl
Sabine Bürger: http://www.sabine-buerger.de

Platforms Project NET 2021

This year also EX-MÊKH participates in the on-line Platforms Project again , it’s the art-fair in Athens for independent art-platforms all over the world. This time we decided to collaborate with the international Artist Collective KRAATZ and with the Berlin based independent art platform A TRANS, both of which we have worked with before.
KRAATZ shows the video Idioliths which I interpret as an inspired contemplation on elements in our exhibition FEMALER in Berlin last fall. We also collaborate with the independent Berlin based art-platform A-TRANS that compiled its activities in video. EX-MÊKH produced a video in which their working method is shown: Stage Arousal ! It shows how we have a place to exhibit and build up a show. We decided to include performance, because video is time-based, as is performance. Please click under the picture underneath to visit the EX-MÊKH page. Video’s can be seen from May 27!

EX-MÊKH – Stage Arousal

PROBE

A trans featuring EX-MÊKH: PROBE

Haus der Statistik, Berlin (D), December 8 until December 31, 2019
The exhibition  and weekend of performances are featured by A TRANS at the Haus Statistik as part of the ‚Pioneer Uses‘ program organized by The Network of the independent Berlin Project Spaces and Initiatives in collaboration with Haus der Statistik.
In this exhibition EX-MÊKH will show their inspiration and working method, the themes that have always been important to the collective. The preceding acts together with the collective of KRAATZ during the performance weekend will be used as fertilizer for the process that will eventually result in an exhibition about the creating of an exhibition.

A Weekend of Performance

Saturday December 6
16.00 h- KRAATZ (Marian Wijnvoord and Forbes Morlock): Writing on Art

17.00 h – Kees Koomen: Tssssss K-BAM
In the context of writing The Diaries and writing down what enters my senses I will now try to visualize the sounds that I hear. Working together with improvising musician Yorgos Dimitriades who will improvise on percussion I will try  to translate this sound into images.

17:30 Ellen Rodenberg and Yorgos Dimitriadis: Feed
In this “In between time”- space of the Haus der Statistiek I want to do a performance in which I will show a working attitude. It originates from a barrel full of experiences in my studio, daily life and education which I feel to be socially and constructively useful in my functioning as a human being.

18.00 h – Saturday December 6 – Maarten Schepers: Stelle

Can we live in any place on Earth and call it Home? What is home? Is it the stuff that keeps us warm? Is it our past we recognize in our surroundings? Is it in the place we act to keep on living? Schepers will try to elaborate on this question in the performance he proposes.

18:30 Yorgos Dimitriadis DUO: Das Sahnehäubchen

Sunday December 7 – EX-MÊKH: The Act

EX-MÊKH was invited to make an exhibition in the space on the invitation of A-Trans which will be shown during the month of December. We came together as a collective that wants to think about the nature and process of making exhibitions. For this occasion the opening of the exhibition will be a theatrical performance about our practice.  We will start a process in front of the public culminating in an exhibition.

In this exhibition EX-MÊKH will show their inspiration and working method, the themes that have always been important to the collective. The preceding acts during the performance weekend will be used as fertilizer for the process that will eventually result in an exhibition about the creating of an exhibition.

www.ex-mekh.nl

Marian Wijnvoord

www.yorgosdimitriadis.com

www.projektraeume-berlin.net

www.hausderstatistik.org/veranstaltungen