Viral Radio Festival starts at De Verdieping tonight

Air strike one. Tony on the alley.

UK clubnight CDR takes its successful innovative format overseas with the premiere of a new bi-monthly session at De Verdieping in the basement of TrouwAmsterdam. Joining CDR’s Tony Nwachukwu and Gavin Alexander will be local Dutch deejays and producers Cinnaman (Beat Dimensions/Viral Radio) and Juha (Viral Radio/Beat Dimensions), plus special guest Hudson Mohawke (LuckyMe/Warp) bringing his distinct head-moving electronics.

CDR’s open session invites music producers to bring their tracks along on CD, giving those in attendance the opportunity to hear works-in-progress. In addition the night will begin with a conversation with Hudson Mohawke and Cinnaman about their beat-making ways, plus tales from Tony and Gavin about CDR and the burntprogress story so far. Taking over the booth to close the occasion Beat Dimensions and Red Bull Music Academy alumni Hudson Mohawke and Cinnaman join forces showcasing their crowd-pleasing record selecting skills.

Building on CDR London and Midlands residencies (plus past nights in Paris, Berlin and Sydney!) these new Amsterdam sessions will begin a burntprogress partnership between the UK and Netherlands, with local musical artists crossing the North Sea to check out their neighbours. With free entry for all, get set to savour a taste of underground sounds like no other: crossing genres, changing tempos and inspiring all.

Furthermore, Hepcat Radio host Mamiko Motto will present the Friday artists of the Viral Radio Festival from 8-10 PM at Rooms of Redbull. She will play the best tracks of the CDR night, and host exclusive sets by the guests of the festival. The line up of the Viral Radio Festival consists of Daedelus, Hudson Mohawke, Icarus, Furt, Bullion, the Blessings, Cinnaman and Juha.

Hans Aarsman en Nicoline van Harskamp at Rijksakademie BeamClub tonight

'We don't notice a door opening to the front.' Hans Aarsman

On tonight’s Rijksakademie BeamClub at De Verdieping, photographer, Volkskrant publicist and curator Hans Aarsman will join artist and 2009 Prix de Rome winner Nicoline van Harskamp in showing what inspires them to make their art. Doors will open at 8.30 PM,and the film starts at 9 PM. Entrance is free, and the night will be moderated by Juha van `t Zelfde.

About Hans Aarsman:
An utterly ugly doll, fabricated by his mother in the nursing home that he did not dare throw away, inspired him to reconsider photography. He photographed it and threw away it with a rested heart! A speedcourse in seeing. Or as he says himself: ‘ There is not one truth. There are at least seven.’ Has now (almost) stopped photographing, writes in the Volkskrant on photo’s of others.

About Nicoline van Harskamp:
Won Prix de Rome 2009 with ‘The Power of listening.’ A video installation and panel discussion on the basis of what an audience can remember. In the Beamclub she’ll show Wim T Schippers ‘we’re at home again’ (we zijn weer thuis) with custom made subtitles!

Pictures of DOKU.ARTS at De Verdieping

On Wednesday 11 June De Verdieping had its first collaboration in with the Filmmuseum in Amsterdam. The night was a pre-screening of the documentary ‘Rem Koolhaas – A Kind of Architect’ by director Markus Heidingsfelder, in honor of the DOKU.ARTS festival that is taking place in Amsterdam. Here are some pictures of the night, taken by Sarah van Sonsbeeck with Jelle Spanjaard‘s camera.

May 6 at De Verdieping: Pierre Bastien and Daedelus

Pierre Bastien, Somewhere in the Dark (photo courtesy of the artist)

After the success of Viral Radio and the Brainfeeder attack last Friday, there are two other musicians we would like to present to you tonight at De Verdieping, two of the kindest people of electronic music: Daedelus and Pierre Bastien. The former hails from Santa Monica, played bassoon and clarinet before solitarily enjoying rave music at a young age, and participating in the development of a remarkable music device, the Monome. The latter is a French composer, multi-instrumentalist and literature Phd from Rotterdam, idolised by Squarepusher, Aphex Twin and Icarus, who constructs his own landscapes of automated music machines, forming an orchestra of kinetic instruments.

Bastien will premier new work, while Daedelus will perform with, and talk about the Monome in a sitdown with Juha. This event takes place in De Verdieping, the underground basement of Trouw Amsterdam. Doors open at 8.30 PM, and admission is a mere 8 euros. Cinnaman and Juha will play surrounding music. Here are the links for Last FM and Facebook.

We hope to see you there.

Blinded by the fiction of an audio addiction

Although it has always been our intention to slowly and gradually open De Verdieping for the public, fate has begged us to differ. Tonight’s Viral Radio event has been ordered downstairs due to unforseen leaks in the walls upstairs.

This means that we would like to invite you to our opening night with Kode9 and the Spaceape tonight at 10 PM at De Verdieping at Wibautstraat 131 in Amsterdam. Doors open at 10 PM, and we advise you to come early, before midnight. We expect a full house since carriers of the Hyperdub virus are in great demand.

We look forward to welcoming you into our new site.

Data as architecture

In the Air is a visualisation of microscopic and invisible agents in Madrid´s air (http://www.intheair.es)

With only 6 entries in Google at time of writing, ‘data as architecture’ is either a mistake of my tourist-mind, or it opens a new way of thinking about the convergence of the physical and the virtual. Now that the field of data visualisation is rapidly taking over the world (have a look at the New York Times’ VizLab, Stamen and Visualizar), it is possible to add layers of information to spaces that interact with its occupants.

For De Verdieping, the cultural addon of Trouw, Non-fiction is looking for brave new ideas for data visualisations in the context of architecture, media, art and politics.

Please get in touch with juha at non-fiction.nl, or just post a comment. Thank you very much in advance.

Big up to Trouw!

We are currently working on an event programme for Trouw Amsterdam, a club, restaurant and cultural space in Amsterdam. This new venue was named after a well known Dutch daily newspaper Trouw who used to have its office space and printing facilities in the building before moving to a new location in 2007.

The newspaper uses the word ‘Verdieping’ (or ‘deepening’ in English, as in ‘deepening your knowledge’) as its tagline, and we decided to preserve the term to emphasize the depth of the programme and the fact that the event space is situated below street level.

The newspaper Trouw dates back to World War II and is rooted in the Dutch Protestant resistance. It aims to be a source of contemplation and inspiration for everyone. We don’t believe in any particular god or religion, but we do strive to be a source of inspiration and reflection and we support the spirit of resistance, so we are happy to pay homage to Trouw.

In return, the newspaper has given its ‘sign of approval’ this week by running an article about its namesake. The author expresses her amazement for the fact that an ‘extremely hip club’ has adopted their name and ends her story with an endorsement: “go check it out”. We appreciate that, so big up to Trouw!

Read the article in Trouw (in Dutch).

It’s not where you from, it’s where you at

Today we visited Trouw and de Verdieping to talk with the Academy of Architecture in Amsterdam about a possible collaboration. We are pretty excited about the prospect of aggregating organisations to create new projects at de Verdieping.

One would be the role of architecture in hip hop aesthetics, an idea pondered by Michiel and subscribed to by Victor Ponten of Habbekrats. “It’s not where you from, it’s where you at” (sic). If anyone has some examples of this perceived relationship please let me know, we appreciate your candor.

And before I forget, here are some more pictures of Trouw 15 days before opening.

Another day at Trouw/De Verdieping

Today we had a few meetings at Trouw/De Verdieping with people from municipality and ARCAM. Here are some photos and videos of the site.

Site improvement: added projects

After running into Theo Watson on Saturday I decided to improve our site. Theo lectured me on the absense of images and a portfolio on this site. Point taken, Sir. I added an extra page with current projects we are working on, and will add some previous things too for context (like the n8, Boijmans Van Beuningen and Lantaren/Venster).

Michiel and I had a great brainstorm about de Verdieping on Sunday, and we will elaborate on this soon. We listened to quite some music, mostly Radiohead, Hieroglyphics, Dabrye, Flying Lotus and Saelors. And finally we confirmed Flying Lotus and Samiyam on Viral Radio on 1 May, Joker on Viral Radio on 5 June, and Hudson Mohawke, Dimlite and Kode9 & the Spaceape at Beat Dimensions on 24 April.