Equinox to Equinox

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Same but Different – Equinox to Equinox is a short duration performance festival taking place on Sunday 22 September from 13:00 to 14:00 at the Hof in Dordrecht.
Everyone is welcome to participate in openness and solidarity, embracing diversity and acknowledging each other’s individual circumstances, difficulties and conflicts.

There is no fixed programme with consecutive performances but everything takes place simultaneously, collaborations can arise spontaneously.
Participants so far: Marita Bullmann, Engel, August S. Geerlings, Ienke Kastelein, Frans van Lent, Christiane Obermayer, Kees Koomen, Jolanda Jansen, Nico Parlevliet, Yvo van der Vat, Yelena Myshko, Annie Abrahams, Yvette Teeuwen, ieke Trinks, Willum Geerts, Topp & Dubio.

Same but Different – Equinox to Equinox is an international event for public action for freedom for all people. It takes place at about the same time in numerous locations worldwide. 
Every year on the Equinox (in March and September), the duration of day and night is roughly equal around the world. In the spirit of cosmic equality, the event is a global connection for people performing together in public space. 
This sharing of time and space brings us closer together, as a temporary (global) community to encourage, through performance art, non-violent expressions for locally specific conditions.
                                                                                 

I will participate with a performance called Tracing the Muse

Equinox

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Equinox was a succes with more then twenty performers on the Hof in Dordrecht. There were moments that the atmosphere was beautiful in slow movements with colour and sound.
My own performance existed of soundbytes that I spread out over the square by speaking them out to people, by writing them on little scraps of paper and hiding them on the square and by listening for sounds of the past on different places of the historic square. The soundbytes were pieces of conversation or cries that I noted during my project Walks to the Malieveld. You can find an account of the afternoon here! And a video by Steef van Lent can be found here!

I did also make two sketches of performers which you can see here:

A man pouring water (Frans van Lent)
A woman manipulating textiles (Marita Bulman)
Briefje met soundbyte

222lodge

Equinox

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Equinox March 23 with Yvo van der Vat and Kathryn Wolkowicz

On March 23 in this year 222 lodge invited performance artists to gather in the Hof in Dordrecht in the Netherlands to celebrate the equinox, the moment the sun passes the equator in spring. There will be a second equinox on September 23. Consequently September 24 there will be another performancefestival in the Hof in Dordrecht. I was not able to attend in spring but this time I will participate with a performance after a new invitation by Frans van Lent.

The first Equinox took place in the rain, I hope this time the weather will be more cooperative. To get an impression of the first Equinox you can watch this!

Wanderings

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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.

The places we were

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Frans van Lent vroeg me enige tijd geleden mee te doen aan een project van hem: The places where we are (or would like to be)

Hij heeft dat nu uitgewerkt in The places we were:

“On 24 July 2018, while walking in the Perigord, I had phone conversations with friends about the places we were at the moment: The places where we are (or would like to be). During these talks, we sent each other pictures of our surroundings.
For me, this occasion connected the conversations to the specific places; they became inextricably linked.
I cannot walk past these places now without thinking of the person I was talking to there, and of the conversation we had. Today, I revisited three places.”

De plek waar Frans was toen hij me sprak, nu in 2023
De plek waar ik was toen Frans me sprak in 2018
Frans en ik in gesprek in 2018

The work The places we were is related to the works:
– The places we are (or would like to be) – 2018
– Memory Allocation – 2021

Frans van Lent

Les Idiolithes

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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

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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

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In the mean time we are in the middle of the Corona-crisis and most cultural activities have been cancelled. For me personally it was a great disappointment Platforms Project 2020 is not happening in Athens this year but the director, Artemis Potamianou, and the board decided to organize it all on the internet. EX-MÊKH was going to do a participation project but now that our booth is goïng to be shown in digital 3D simulation we decided to make a video about trial and error. We went to the Malieveld and shot a video with performances. More news soon, but for now some material to chew on:

The boogieman
Existence 2020

chmkoome’s blog

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I have been making an artblog since 2004. Initially it started as a digital diary but eventually my personal preoccupations about art I find inspiring and art I admire got the upper hand. I started the blog at XS4all, a Dutch provider which had been important and innovative from the start of internet in the Netherlands. They hosted an experimental blogservice that I have been using for eight years after which they stopped. After I downloaded the archive of this blog I restarted chmkoome’s blog on WordPress but I couldn’t get it done to migrate the archive to this blog. It had to be done by hand, day by day.
Now that the Coronavirus stops cultural life and the Conservatory where I work is only active online ànd anticipating on my retirement I think I will try and work on it on regular base. I will both post the oldest posts forward and the latest XS4all-posts backwarts, somewhere in the middle everything will be available sometime.

Here is one of my first posts:

15 juli 2004

Vandaag kreeg ik van mijn zwager een DVD met daarop een videotape die we in 1986 voor het oudjaarsfeest gemaakt hebben samen met een vriend van me. Daarop een samenraapsel van alles waarmee we tot dan toe bezig waren geweest: eigen filmpjes, goede kunstenaars, muziek, San Francisco andermans films etc. Ik was een en ander vergeten, maar een aantal van mijn eigen sentimenten herkende ik feilloos. Persoonlijke geschiedenis en tijdsdocument in een!

Shadowpainting – 1979 (still from a double-8 film)

Kees Koomen