For this edition of ADE, Stichting NDSM-werf invited the art and activist group Tools for Action + Floor out to use their site as a public rehearsal space for RÆV REHEARSAL. They invited the audience to rehearse new forms of togetherness. With a Bluetooth speaker system, floating inflatable sculptures and a minimalist techno beat, they moved around the city like a radiant, dancing swarm. The streets became the club, the steps, roundabouts and benches acted as temporary stages.

RÆV REHEARSAL

RÆV REHEARSAL was initiated in Rotterdam in the summer of 2021 by visual artist Artúr van Balen, founder of Tools for Action, and choreographer Floor van Leeuwen. Every week, they rehearsed the dancing swarm in public space with a fixed group of twenty ravers, which in some editions grew to more than eighty people. After two massive editions of Unmute Us, the protest march for a more open event and night culture in Amsterdam, there was a strong need for people to come together, dance and have fun. By dancing, people were able to express their protest in a peaceful way.

‍

Artúr van Balen, founder and artist at Tools for Action, explained: “Actually, this was intended as a new form of manifestation with the potential to become a protest. We used the rehearsal as a format because, from a legal perspective, it gave us the opportunity to meet with more than a hundred people in the open air, regardless of the changing corona rules.” Floor van Leeuwen added: “I saw the rehearsal as a way to practice collective movement together, coordinate, meet new people and even dance with people remotely, even when they were on their balconies.”

Swarms

RÆV REHEARSAL was based on the movement principles of swarms. Like a flock of birds, there was no central point or hierarchically organized movement; the direction was determined by the group as it moved. During each rehearsal, people had to move and dance about three meters apart. Based on these principles, the audience was invited to participate on October 15, 16 and 17 and to rehearse this collective movement together.

Music

RÆV REHEARSAL worked with a different DJ each time. As the swarm moved through public spaces, from iconic places to residential areas, the goal was to find sounds that resonated with the local environment or aroused curiosity. During previous editions, DJs performed such as Sukubratz, a Chilean DJ who combined techno with reggaeton, Cheb Runner, a Moroccan DJ who mixed electronic dance music with chaabi (a style of Moroccan folklore), and DJ Dance Divine, a queer artist from Brussels.

ADE

On October 15, 16 and 17, a group of up to a hundred people gathered at the NDSM shipyard to dance through Amsterdam-Noord. Various collectives, DJs and communities joined this initiative. The line-up was announced later. These were three unforgettable nights where a dancing swarm moved through the city, letting its heartbeat ring during the pandemic and activating spaces with bodies, music and light.

As an echo of the transformations in club culture, RÆV REHEARSAL highlighted the need to explore new forms of sociality and interrelationships by reclaiming and reprogramming public space.

Public Air Filters was one of the two winning entries for the 2021 NDSM Open Call. For this work, artist proposed Anne-Jan Reijn the question is what actually happened in the outside air that we breathe. By filtering air in public spaces, a dichotomy automatically arose: filtered air and unfiltered air. This immediately raised a question: maybe the unfiltered air could not be trusted? The series of sculptures by Anne-Jan was on display between July and October and was changeable during this period. This slow process was, in fact, the essence of the work.

In theory, every cubic meter of filtered air left a residue on the outside of the filters. The artist wanted to play with this residue, creating an archaeology of air filter pollution, where a form of manipulation was allowed. What if that residue on the filters formed the most amazing colored crystals? Did that have a direct psychological effect, making the air we breathed, for example, undesirable or unpleasant? Reijn played with the idea of danger that we couldn't see. Invisible risks that were in the air, such as asbestos or a virus, were scary but could also evoke a form of awe. With this work, the artist offered a different perspective on this issue by materializing the invisible. “We were constantly connected to invisible matter — and therefore the risks — and we systematically tried to eliminate it. At the time, the relationship of trust we had with science and politics was under great pressure,” says Anne-Jan Reijn.

‍

Under no circumstances did the artist claim that filtered air was safer than unfiltered air: “This was really a work of art that played with the idea of distinction.”

‍

Also read the interview with Anne-Jan Reijn in the Digital Depot - Online Magazine.

In the spring of 2021, it was quieter than usual at the NDSM shipyard. This had everything to do with the Corona pandemic that gripped the entire country, and the whole world. Due to social safety restrictions, programming at the outdoor area of the NDSM shipyard was a challenge. Nevertheless, at the NDSM-werf Foundation, we looked for ways to make NDSM's public space as beautiful and accessible as possible, even though it was quieter than previous years during this period.

From this idea, the NDSM Yard Gardens came into being: 30 to 50 garden boxes where NDSM residents could use as a small piece of urban garden. All at least half a meter apart, so that users could garden while respecting social distancing”. It turned out to be a great success: all gardens were immediately used by residents, visitors, artists, neighbours, and some entrepreneurs at and around the NDSM shipyard. From early spring to autumn, flowers, vegetables and other plants were grown in the square between the Y slope and the Noorderlicht. Workshops were also given to small groups of gardeners and at the end of the season, a real NDSM garden community was created.

What should or could a monument be today, for whom, and who decides this? For their programme series (Un) Monumenting, Stichting NDSM-werf invited makers and artists to reflect on these questions by creating a (temporary) work at the shipyard. For (Un) Monumenting #1, the collective Frerara — Frederick Calmes, Raquel van Haver and Raul Balai — invited to make the Drawing Assignment 2020, which they realized for the Amsterdam City Archives, visible at the NDSM shipyard. (Un) monumenting #1 presented Frerara with images from “Breathing of the City”, which focused on understudied Amsterdammers and their stories.

From April 9, 2021, three construction boards at the shipyard showed drawings by Frerara, which they made as part of “Breathing of the City”. The collective saw the city as a “living organ that wakes up every morning and never sleeps in its entirety.” Especially at that precarious time, it became clear who had the luxury of being able to work from home, and who didn't. Cleaners, sex workers, bus drivers; diverse characters starred in the drawings that portrayed, fascinated or embodied the three artists separately. At the building signs, visitors were able to listen to audio clips about the images and/or the people portrayed with their smartphones. The three artists brought together themes such as the archive, transition, art and culture and the city's signature in their work. To do this, they investigated the residents of the city of Amsterdam and specifically into continuing the tradition of keeping the city alive as a ritual. For example, with the drawings, they showed a different face of Amsterdam and created a temporary 'monument' for a number of understudied townspeople. On April 9, not only did the presentation start at the NDSM shipyard, but Frederick, Raul and Raquel also physically handed over the drawings to the City Archives for inclusion. The collection of drawings was published by the City Archives in three separate zines, which could be viewed and purchased, and they worked towards a fine publication that year. What was special was that the topic “Breathing of the City” was submitted by Frerara to the City Archives even before the coronavirus pandemic, and it had only gained in urgency since then.

Continuation of (Un)monumenting

The global conversation about monuments meant that the Foundation used this moment to bring the shipyard's history more to the surface. What could a memorial be, mean, and who had a say in it? And asking who deserved to be present in public spaces and who felt represented (and who didn't)? Based on the wish of the NDSM-werf Foundation for a polyphonic public space, the foundation commissioned several artists to give their views on this on the shipyard. The (Un)monumenting project consisted of several episodes: for each chapter, the foundation invited one or more artists to reflect on the theme of 'monuments' of the future. At that time, work was underway on (Un)monumenting #2, a video work by Turkish-Dutch artist Belit Sağ, in which she highlighted the invisible history of the NDSM shipyard. In the video, a collaboration with the Institute for Sound and Vision, Belit Sağ investigated the role of female Turkish migrant workers at the shipyard using archival material.

Plastic Hypersea is was an interactive, site-specific work by an artist Sissel Marie Tonn commissioned by Sonic Acts and was experienced at the NDSM shipyard in Amsterdam.

‍

Set in 2099, Plastic Hypersea was a guided, spatial and interactive experience that speculated on a possible future in immunology, merged with the topic of environmental health. As listeners explored the terrain, they were invited to imagine the environment as an extension of their immune system and to consider the many ways their bodies intertwined with microplastics in the sediments of Amsterdam's waterways. Ultimately, Plastic Hypersea asked listeners to leave behind the war metaphors that haunted immunology and to think about a more expansive sense of self.

Produced in collaboration with musician Vincenzo Acquaria Castellana and sound and recording artist BJ Nilsen, the localized sound experience was complemented by custom boat sails and ceramic sculptures created by Sissel that acted as “membranes” encoded with material and immaterial data about the hydrophobic, industrial waste that flowed through the waters of the Netherlands.

About the artist

Sissel Marie Tonn was a Danish artist based in The Hague. Her practice focused on the shifts in perception that occurred when people became entangled in their surroundings, blurring the boundaries between body and environment. Her artistic research often resulted in interactive, sensory installations.

‍

Plastic Hypersea was built on Echoes, an interactive GPS-enabled mobile app for audio walks. To access the work, you had to download the app from the App Store or Google Play. They then put on headphones and wandered around the area of the NDSM shipyard while following the sails and ceramic sculptures. The gradual unfolding of the work was activated while walking and exploring the environment.

SEXYLAND was an art project in the form of a temporary society. For 365 days, the club had a new owner every day. He was able to implement the program as he wished, ranging from art expressions to sporting events, from gangster rap to stroboscopic light dinners. SEXYLAND was a tabula rasa that could be described in any way. SEXYLAND strived to mark every unknown corner of Amsterdam and show the enormous diversity the city had to offer.

In 2021, Sexyland moved from the NDSM shipyard to the other side of Amsterdam-Noord under the name: Sexyland World. As part of Sexyland's departure, we spoke with stakeholders Aukje Dekker and Samira Ben Messaoud in a podcast episode of NDSM X. Listen to it below.

On the way to school or work, kissing behind a corner of a building, sprinting to the ferry, giggling from a car, chewing gum on the ground, fishing in the dock: daily activities at the NDSM shipyard. In NDSM Nursery Square, a project by Studio Makkink & Bey they looked at daily activities at the NDSM shipyard asking how they could reprogram them through cultural activities.

‍

From October 2019, there was a temporary square to visit where there was space to intervene with a flexible infrastructure and influence the behavior in the shipyard's public space. The square therefore never looked the same, moved with its visitors and was sometimes coloured by artists in residence. For example, park furniture could be borrowed and there were singers and artists who sang to the sailors during rush hour in September.

Artist Antoine Guay built a bread oven in a container, after which the bread baked therein was distributed to visitors on a number of Saturdays in exchange for a nice gesture or action. City poet Gershwin Bonevacia spent a while at Nursery Square as a “poet-in-residence”. A documentary was also shown in the Nursery Square of Nina Swaeny Cherry. And because this was also a public square, by and for Amsterdammers, designer Jurgen Bey and curator Jules van den Langenberg also invited local residents and parties at the shipyard to make their own programming proposals.

The New Zealand Artist Ilke Gers (1981), living in Rotterdam, makes installations, performances and publications in which movement, behavior, social and spatial conditions play a role.

‍

Stichting NDSM-werf asked Ilke Gers to temporarily intervene in the outdoor area of the NDSM-wharf, where a structure of rules and laws — unlike other public places in the Netherlands — is largely missing. Gers looked at the NDSM shipyard beforehand to see what behavior, use and actions are taking place. By working with a 'script' for chalk lines, she came to a temporary visual work. Has the current era changed her view of the behavior and use of public space? The lines were visible until traffic movements or weather prevailed and the work faded. Ilke Gers' outlines, which are normally used for sports fields, made other forms of play, actions and meanings possible in response to the 'public' nature of the NDSM shipyard.

She described her way of working as “site-sensitive” instead of site-specific, where it was important to her how a space feels, what behavior determines and shapes a space. The focus was on its porous aspect. To elements you may not be aware of at first glance.

'Flipping the Bird' was a photographic work by visual artist Jaap Scheeren (1979). Three images of nature were exhibited on 6 x 3 meter billboards spread across the NDSM shipyard. This photo project held up a mirror to the viewer and showed how we related to nature in both a very serious and absurd way.

‍

Whoever went to the northern banks of the IJ encountered a number of rebellious animals. A rat, a swan, a squirrel raising their middle fingers: Scheeren created a world where he followed his own logic, intuition, and rules, always with a humorous twist. With the photo works in public spaces, at the NDSM shipyard and around the Tolhuistuin, the photographer told a story about a person who wanted to make contact with nature. The absurdist images, which also appeared earlier in Het Parool appeared, from October 17, were shown on large construction boards (6 x 3 meters) at various locations on the NDSM shipyard. The title of the work referred to looking at animals and nature differently, but also to the English slang for “raise your middle finger”. Jaap Scheeren: “My goal was to become aware of people's position in relation to nature. How did we naturally become part of it again?”

Scheeren's exhibition was the first in the new program series 'NDSM Billboards', with which the NDSM-werf Foundation provided space for artists on large construction boards: “In addition to the building signs on the western part of the NDSM, we gave artists the opportunity to post their artistic statements on building boards. With its 10 hectares, the shipyard provided a beautiful background for large images. In addition to established names, we also wanted to give young talent a chance on the billboards to make their work highly visible to Amsterdam in response to the context of the NDSM,” says curator Petra Heck.

From Wednesday, October 21 to Sunday, October 25, 2020, the NDSM shipyard hosted a temporary project called 'Because the Night', consisting of two works of art by light artists Boris Acket and Vladimir Grafov. The light installation was an ode to ADE — the events that normally breathed so much life into Amsterdam's night, but were forced to stay a little quieter in 2020. The works could be admired from many points of view, but especially special to see up close, here at the NDSM shipyard.

‍

Light and sound artist Boris Acket (1988), known for his lighting works at DGTL Festival, created the lighting work 'BAKEN'. In a rudderless time, this installation, created in collaboration with Chris van Meer, Lumus Instruments, Ampco Flashlight, brought Think! AV & Van Ham Tenten and Podia, a little sigh of relief, a sign of life. The light 'beat' softly in the rhythm of a heartbeat, like a lighthouse. Anyone who watched the work from a distance could see the heartbeat without hearing it. For example, the work emphasized the deafening silence of ADE 2020 and literally and figuratively encouraged the night and festival sector and all Amsterdammers. The work was meant to be a relaxing spot on the horizon — seen from different places — but those who experienced 'BEAKEN' up close could actually hear the heart beating softly. Especially for ADE, the heart rate was built from the kicks (bass drums) of the most used drum computers in dance music.

The second work of 'Because the Night' was by light artist Vladimir Grafov (1964), who used lasers in his installation 'Invincible Sun' to create an abstract and autonomous interplay of lines on the Y-slope where ships used to roll into the IJ. The laser lights, inextricably linked to the atmosphere and decor of dance parties, formed the basis for his work and depicted how daylight gave way to the light of the night after sunset. In his work, Grafov linked science and technology to create new experiences in the field of form, color and sound.

‍

'Because the Night' took place at the same time as NDSM Music Digital x ADE 2020, where a music program was broadcast live on stream for five days. During these five days, the audience was able to watch and listen to more than 50 hours of top artists, labels and the latest talents in house and techno music. Due to the new measures, Covid-19-proof digital dance parties were organized to dance together from the living room by videoconferencing worldwide.

When the reins were allowed to loosen again in the summer of 2020 as part of the measures concerning the Corona pandemic, we were happy to be able to open with the Zomerwerf. By spatial design agency Offenders W a multi-functional grid was designed for the Load Out at NDSM. Within this grid, space was created for sports and games, picnics, small-scale performances, not to mention our NDSM citygardens. Another part was the first basketball court of 3X3 Units at NDSM and the tournament they organized this specific summer. Another striking element was the punching bag by Boogieland, so that people could (kick) box outdoors. We, Stichting NDSM-werf, were glad that, with all the space we had 'left over', we were able to give something to the city.

In June of that year, at the initiative of Jur Jacobs and the Slow Food Youth Network Netherlands in cooperation with Foundation Together Against Food Waste 20,000 kilos of potatoes poured out at the shipyard. Via the Too Good To Go app, Amsterdammers were able to come and make beepers at the Load Out, near Pllek, for a moment. The action was a great success and the mountain was gone by the end of the afternoon. We suspect that a lot of fries, stews and potato gratins were eaten last week.

‍

Slow Food Youth Network (SFYN) is an international youth movement that works for a good and fair food system. The organization believes that young people should play an important role in the future of food production and consumption. That's why they're trying to bring young consumers, producers, farmers, chefs and students closer together. They do this through eat-ins, tastings and events such as World Disco Soup Day. “Together, we need to work on a more resilient food system where less food is wasted, farmers get a fair price and where good food is available for everyone,” says Lianne de Bie, director of Slow Food Youth Network Netherlands.

There was a nice mix of people: from Old Northerners to people with Teslas from't Gooi.

‍

The organization was very satisfied with the turnout of a very diverse audience and estimated that potatoes were sold to more than 600 people in Amsterdam, spread across the day. Co-initiator Jur Jacobs: “What I personally liked the most is that there was a nice mix of audiences, from Old Northerners to people with Teslas from't Gooi. All ages, origins and groups were present.”

‍

Last Saturday's action is not an isolated one. There are many surpluses of food in the Netherlands, it's not just about the potatoes that have been saved from waste. The Samen Tegen Voedselverspilling Foundation wants to create more awareness about food waste in general: “In the Netherlands, there are surpluses due to COVID-19 right now, while large parts of Africa are facing imminent hunger. This is something we need to solve together,” says Toine Timmermans, director of the Samen Tegen Voedselverspilling Foundation.

‍

The NDSM-werf Foundation believes the underlying problem is very important and is pleased that it has been able to contribute to raising awareness about this theme. In addition, the organization has the ambition to become a testing ground with the shipyard for sustainability, circularity and greening, also in relation to the city and a half meter. Over the past few weeks, the foundation itself has been working on an intelligent opening up of the site and has taken the first step with the Yard garden: vegetable garden planters for Amsterdammers who don't have a garden themselves. To do this, the Foundation works with partners such as De Onkruidenier. This way, people can safely grow their own vegetables and herbs on site, provided with a specially designed grid that secures the one and a half meter measures. More actions may be set up in the future.