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Fennesz, Knalpot and HudMo a.o. at North Sea Jazz

Juha van 't Zelfde — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 13:22:47 +0000

After weeks of secretiveness and diplomacy, the moment has come that we can finally announce our programme for the North Sea Jazz Festival 2010. The festival is widely acknowledged as the one of the biggest jazz festivals in the world, and has a strong reputation for showcasing many different areas of jazz and improvised music from all eras.

Non-fiction’s Juha has been invited to programme two stages at the 2010 North Sea Jazz Festival, that will take place in Rotterdam from 9-11 July. Having a background and interest in both electroacoustic improvisation and beat-driven electronic music, his programmes consist of musicians – some well-known, others under the radar – who have been at the forefront of their movement for years. The two stages have been branded Hyperrhythm and OK computer.

Hyperrhythm
In the past few years in various cities around the world, scenes of musicians have popped up with a heightened interest in complex rhythmstructures of changing speeds and intensities. These hyperrhythms are created by producers who have grown up in an ocean of sound of ubiquitous media, from computer games to iPhones, and who are connected through a myriad of online networks. More than once, these producers know the hardware and software better than their developers, mutating into architects of complex, gravity-defying structures. Cities as Los Angeles, Glasgow and London are their main protagonists, with labels as Brainfeeder, LuckyMe and Warp. In Amsterdam, Viral Radio has been active as a vehicle for the dissemination of these new electronic musics since 2007, with regular programmes at Trouw and the Bimhuis.

Programme:
Dimlite (CH)
Hudson Mohawke (UK)
Dorian Concept (AU)
Mike Slott (IRE)

OK computer
A completely wired evening of electronic improvisation with world-renowned musicians and exhilirating young sound artists. Faster computers and more sophisticated software have popped up on stage in clubs and concert halls worldwide, creating a next level for improvised music. This programme draws a realtime map of current investigations into computer music, DJ culture and electroacoustic improvisation.

Programme:
Machinefabriek (NL) / Gareth Davis (UK)
Hild Sofie Tafjord (NO) / Philip Jeck
Bown (UK) / Britton (UK) / Arthurs (UK) / Ohlmeier (GER)
Fennesz (AU) / Brandlmayr (AU) / Dafeldecker (AU)
Knalpot (NL)

We’re delighted to have been given this opportunity to work for such an esteemed festival, with all of our favourite musicians. We look forward to seeing you there in Rotterdam in July.

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Electronic music, North Sea Jazz and balcony gardening

Juha van 't Zelfde — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 19:09:30 +0000

Another update from Juha, having just recovered from the flu. Michiel has been ill too – way to go Non-fictionites. These past days have been all about the North Sea Jazz Festival, and a little bit of balcony gardening.

Already after the first time I give up writing a weekly update. I admit, I’m not disciplined enough. I will now rename it “randomly timed update of current affairs.” See, much better.

What happened this time? Apart from discovering that it is possible to garden on a balcony on the 4th floor, and by doing so becoming a Foursquare mayor of my local garden supply store, I have spent most of my time on finishing my proposal for this year’s North Sea Jazz Festival. Although I have a background mostly in beat driven electronic music, playing jungle, dubstep and other asymmetric electronic music as DJ at festivals and club nights, in the years of working for Kadir Selçuk and Huub van Riel in Lantaren/Venster and the Bimhuis since 2005, I have developed an interest in electroacoustic improvised music. Early concerts I did were with Jacob Kirkegaard, Christian Fennesz, Philip Jeck and BJ Nilsen, who are all part of the unsurpassed London music label Touch. Later on I collaborated with Yuri Boselie on inviting abstract beat producers like Flying Lotus and Hudson Mohawke to the Bimhuis on the Beat Dimensions nights. And in between I worked with Alog, Stephen O’Malley and Icarus.

These experiences have led to the invitation by the North Sea Jazz Festival, to programme two stages: one with beat-driven music (Yukon), and one with electroacoustic improvisation (Volga). It’s a great honour to bring my favourite musicians to my old hometown, and I find it incredibly encouraging that such a big and respected festival is open to new developments, and reserves an important part of its line up to these cutting-edge musics. We are in the midst of booking the musicians, and hopefully within a few weeks we can present an allstar line up of stellar artists. The Yukon stage on Friday 9 July will present a new generation of beat makers, the Volga on Sunday 11 July multiple generations of electronically aided improvisors.

As for the garden, it looks stunning. I just hope the grass and bamboo will survive the heavy winds. At least there’s a Moomin looking after them.

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Viral music distribution

Juha van 't Zelfde — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 11:58:36 +0000

Viral Radio is the experimental electronic music vehicle of Non-fiction’s Juha van ‘t Zelfde and Beat Dimensions’ initiator Yuri Boselie (Cinnaman). It has been organising cutting-edge events in TrouwAmsterdam, Paradiso, Bimhuis and other venues across the Netherlands. Its latest interest is investigating new forms of music distribution and interaction via mobile phones, in collaboration with 3voor12 and VURB. Tonight, they organise their monthly night in TrouwAmsterdam.

On this month’s edition Viral Radio presents two artists it has been following for years and years: Dimlite and Jamie Vex’d. Swiss born Dimlite (Dimitri Grimm, 1980) is a master of mosaic textures and imaginative drum patterns. He is one of the most admired artists of his generation and a distinguished performer. His concerts at the Bimhuis in 2008 and 2009 rank among the best given there in the past few years. Englishman Jamie Vex’d (Jamie Teasdale, 1979) has gained critical acclaim as experimental dubstep duo Vex’d. They released the album Degenerate on Planet Mu in 2005, a prescient example of forward thinking bass music. Jamie has released solo works that are closer related to the video game and science fiction cartoons aesthetic of Hudson Mohawke and Rustie. He has created the new avatar Kuedo, that will release its first tracks within weeks.It is one of the most anticipated releases of the year.

The evening starts at 22:30, and tickets are 12 euros. As always, Viral Radio hosts Juha and Cinnaman will play their music straight out of the package. We look forward to welcoming you there.

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Time Out Amsterdam’s 2020 Vision Forum

Juha van 't Zelfde — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 15:41:31 +0000

For its January issue, the Amsterdam branch of the international city chronicle Time Out invited five of the city’s prominent design-minded companies – architectural firm Benthem Crouwel, advertising agency KesselsKramer, arts and leisure consulting firm LAgroup, interior and architectural design company Concrete, and Non-fiction – to present their images of the city of the future: Amsterdam in 2020 (here’s ours).

To broaden the discussion and promote lively debate on the future of the city, Time Out Amsterdam and Non-fiction will be co-hosting a live panel discussion with the participants in the project on Thursday, 28 January. At this “2020 Vision Forum”, designers from each project will talk about how they envision the city’s future, and then Time Out Amsterdam editor Nina Siegal will moderate a discussion between the participating groups and the public.

With contributions from 36 of our dearest friends and heroes, including Ben Cerveny, Nalden, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Saskia Sassen and Winy Maas, our co-created vison of Amsterdam in 2020 appeared in the new year’s edition of Time Out magazine Amsterdam. Read more about our ‘Twitteropolis’ and download it here.

We hope to see you tomorrow in De Verdieping.

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TIME OUT AMSTERDAM 2020 VISION FORUM

WHEN: Thursday 28 January. Doors open at 19.30. Programme starts at 20.15
WHERE: De Verdieping at Trouw Amsterdam, Wibautstraat 131 (463 7788/trouwamsterdam.nl)
ENTRY: €5 payable at the door. Email us to reserve a spot rsvp@timeoutamsterdam.nl, or just show up (and join on Facebook)

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Amsterdam Creative Metropolis #1

Juha van 't Zelfde — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 10:38:14 +0000

We have been invited by the city of Amsterdam and the alderman of culture Caroline Gehrels to participate in a series of public discussion and open brainstorms on the future of the creative industries in Amsterdam. Tonight is the kick off, at 20.00 in Pakhuis de Zwijger in the Eastern Docklands. We hope to see some friendly faces.

Amsterdam Creative Metropolis #1 | January 13 | starts 20.00 | Free entry

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Making things public in Ljubljana

Juha van 't Zelfde — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 16:41:29 +0000

A few weeks ago the Netherlands Institute of Cultural Heritage courteously invited us to join them at the ACCESS2CA seminar in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The long acronym stands for ‘Access to Contemorary Art Conservation’. It was jointly organised with Museo Reina Sofia, and wonderfully hosted by the Moderna galerija. Present were conservators, art historians, museum professionals and students.

We were invited because of an article we had written for Metropolis M (‘Ubiquitous Museum‘), in which we looked at the opportunities for museums that arisen through the vast dissemination of new media and widespread adoption of mobile devices. Our objective was to give an insightful and inspiring 360 panorama of best practices in the museum domain, and to provide an updated context of developments in the fields of ubiquitous computing, gaming and social networking.

The presentation we gave was titled ‘Making Things Public’, and focused on social networking (Twitter in particular), gaming and augmented reality. Examples were used to show the viral reach of Twitter, to underscore the engaging power of gaming (Foursquare, Modern Warfare II), and to illustrate the innovative opportunities AR is offering (through applications like Layar). These general observations were then repeated, but this time with relevant examples from with the cultural realm, by artists, museums and heritage professionals.

In the afternoon, the presentation was followed by a workshop with the same title. After a brief summary of the morning’s presentation and an introduction on the how and why of the workshop, we challenged the audience to form groups and use all the instruments and media that had been presented (besides Twitter, games and AR, also Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, TV, Wikipedia and books) to think about a public strategy for one of five art works that were part of ‘Inside Installations’, a previous INCCA project. The underlying idea, inspired by website usability testing, was simple and effective: try to think from the audience’s perspective about your daily practice, and use the new public infrastructure and related behaviours and expectations to make your work really public.

The workshop exercise gave the audience a first hand experience of the opportunities and threats of the rapid developments online. Surprising and some hilarious results were presented by some of the groups. A remarkable one was: micro-financing elements of a Thomas Hirschhorn work, crowd-funding the conservation of a fragile and complex piece existing of many different parts. One of the constructive outcomes for the INCCA network was the discussion on how to use the various social networking to share knowledge and stay in touch in between public events like ACCESS2CA. Linkedin, Facebook or Ning? Twitter yes or no? For us it was equally rewarding to hear that some of the participants wanted to use this workshop for their own students or colleagues.

The outcome of the seminar was twofold positive: (new) insights into the workings of the ubiquitous web, and through these insights new ideas how to organise the professional INCCA network. This is a wonderful base to work upon, towards the next event in 2010: Contemporary Art Who Cares. This will take place at the Royal Tropical Institute in Amsterdam. For us working with the organisation was a very interesting and highly enjoyable experience. Also, being in a country where your name means ‘soup’ made it extra saucy.

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De Verdieping starts 2010 with Machinefabriek

Juha van 't Zelfde — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 16:40:30 +0000

Machinefabriek live at Aura in Castrum Peregrini (photo: Jelle Spanjaard)

On a Thursday night in September in 2006, multi-instrumentalist Rutger Zuydervelt performed under his moniker Machinefabriek on the 700th birthday at the Oude Kerk, the oldest building of Amsterdam that is located in the heart of the Red Light District. It was a night I organised when I was still working at the n8 foundation, the collaborative museum platform that works for the Amsterdam museums. This was the beginning of an ongoing love affair with one of the Netherlands’ most productive and imaginative young composers and musicians. Since this concert we have worked together numerous times at the Bimhuis, Lantaren/Venster, Castrum Peregrini, and once even in my appartment in Amsterdam, together with Danish sound artist Jacob Kirkegaard. Machinefabriek, a natural improviser who never performs the same work twice, and has an Olympic amount of releases and bootlegs swerving around. Even when I write, Michiel is listening to his music (and while you are peeking at his Last.fm account, have a look where Machinefabriek stands in my top artists list).

So it should not come as a surprise when we announce that the first artist we have asked to perform in 2010 is our dear friend Machinefabriek. We will celebrate the opening of the new year in De Verdieping with a special performance on Wednesday 6 January at 8 pm. We will also celebrate the proud fact that we have been granted a generous 2-year financial support from the Amsterdam Art Fund to upgrade the organisation and become a more professional cultural institution. The support enables us to notch up our activities and broaden our reach. We are delighted about this and look forward to inviting you to more adventurous programmes on the Wibautstraat in 2010.

We look forward to seeing you next Wednesday and toasting on the new decade. In the mean time, follow De Verdieping on Facebook and Twitter. Drive and shoot straight on New Year’s Eve.

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The networked museum marathon

Juha van 't Zelfde — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:48:17 +0000

Here is a first reaction after our 5 hour interview marathon that took place during last Saturday’s Amsterdam museumnacht. We first would like to thank all our guests from the various institutions, our visitors in De Verdieping, and the n8 organisation for kindly letting us participate in the 10th museumnacht. We are very happy with the start of this ongoing discussion on the (changing) role of museums in 21st century cities, and the influence of networked urban environments on museums. We will take our time to write up a summary of the event, and hope to update soon.

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Curating the city, a museumnacht marathon on metropolitan museums, responsive heritage and the city as cultural platform

Juha van 't Zelfde — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:45:12 +0000

Doug Aitken's Sleepwalker was projected on the exterior walls of the MoMA

This Saturday the 10th annual museumnacht (museum night) will be organised in our hometown Amsterdam. Non-fiction will take part with a special marathon on museums and the city, in their basecamp De Verdieping. A wide group of institutions, designers and thinkers will join us at the table to discuss how pervasive urban museums are, and how the city can become a interactive museosphere.

The programme starts at 7 pm and goes on to 12, after which Viral Radio will take over with wall-surpassing bass and rhythm collections compiled by Juha & Cinnaman with Mamiko Motto. Outside, the facade of the building will be used as an urban screen for the duration of the museumnacht by students of MediaLAB Amsterdam. Inside, artists Amie Dicke and Sarah van Sonsbeeck will host the workshop ‘Build your own mobile museum’.

Tickets are available through n8.nl, make sure you get them soon: the previous 7 editions sold out before the start.

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Programme:

19 – 00 Interview Marathon >> with Michiel van Iersel and Juha van ‘t Zelfde
We will navigate through the night together with our guests, visitors, Hyvers and Twitterati, to try to articulate the future of museums in the city.

19 – 20 MyMuseum >> Blikopeners, Zichtbaar Afwezig and Urban Screens
Students of the Rietveld, Sandberg, UvA and HvA will talk about appropriating, editing and remixing the museum.

20 – 21 Museums And The City >> Stedelijk Museum
Curators Bart Rutten, Leontine Coelewij and Marten Jongema will look back at Stedelijk in de Stad and will look ahead towards a new Stedelijk Museum.

21 – 2 The Mobile Museum >> De Appel, Platform21/Supermaker, NIMk, Mediamatic
Representatives of various art institutions in Amsterdam will talk about their transient adventures in pop-up structures and mobile pavillions.

22 – 23 The Digital City >> VURB, The Mobile City, Nationaal Historisch Museum, Habbekrats
Now things will get unphysical, with VURB and The Mobile City talking about urban informatics and the city as an interaction platform. The Nationaal Historisch Museum will talk about being a distributed museum, and design firm Habbekrats will elaborate on how cities are embedded in (music) videos on YouTube.

23 – 00 Museum = City >> everybody everywhere
How will the museums in the future inhabit the city? How can it go beyond its walls? What is a museum without a building? How can visitors become users and producers of a museum? Can a city be a museum? These questions will be addressed in the round-up discussion with all logged in.

00 – 05 Viral Radio x Beat Dimensions >> Juha & Cinnaman and Mamiko Motto.
Rhythmculture, bass experimentation and computer improvisation to ground the night after such abstraction. With Amsterdam’s digital duo Juha & Cinnaman, and the one-woman social music revolution Mamiko Motto.

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Monthly film night The Great Dictators

Michiel van Iersel — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 21:34:10 +0000

The Great Dictators is a new monthly film night at De Verdieping, the cultural project space of TrouwAmsterdam, focussing on ‘the vanity of evil’. Each night centers around one absolute ruler, both past and present, and shows how tyrants and populist leaders are (re)presented in (documentary) films. Non-fiction’s Michiel van Iersel is curating this series.

# 00 | Wednesday, September 16, 2009, Wibautstraat 127, doors open 20:30h | film starts 21:00h

The Great Dictator (1940)

The Great Dictator is a comedy film directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin. It was Chaplin’s first true talking picture, and more importantly was the only major film of its period to bitterly satirize Nazism and Adolf Hitler. Chaplin began filming in September 1939, one week after the beginning of World War II when the United States were still at peace with Nazi Germany. He finished filming almost six months later. In his autobiography, Chaplin stated that he would not have been able to make such jokes about the Nazi regime had the extent of their horrors been known. After 1945 it took over twenty years before any other films dared to satirize the era.

In this movie, Chaplin plays Adenoid Hynkel, the great and autocratic dictator of Tomania. He was satirizing both Hitler and Nazi Germany. Chaplin also plays a second character, a Jewish barber, who is an Adenoid Hynkel look-alike. Hynkel’s rival is Napaloni (a mixture of Mussolini and Napoleon), dictator of Bacteria (Italy).

Almost every scene in The Great Dictator is perfect: the iconic globe dance, Hynkle’s poorly-translated address to the Tomanian people, the musical shaving scene, an upside-down airplane, all capped by Chaplin’s heartrending final plea for peace.

The film was sent to Hitler, and an eyewitness confirmed he saw it twice. Chaplin, after being told Hitler saw the movie, replied: “I’d give anything to know what he thought of it. Several similarities between Hitler and Chaplin have been noted and may have been a pivotal factor in Chaplin’s decision to make The Great Dictator. Chaplin and Hitler had superficially similar looks, most famously their toothbrush moustaches. Furthermore, the two men were born only four days apart in 1889.

Join us for the next GREAT DICTATORS film night on October 14, starting at 20:30h
Focus on Idi Amin Dada (1925 –2003). Commonly known as Idi Amin, he was an African military dictator and President of Uganda from 1971 to 1979. He is portrayed in various books, films and documentaries, including General Idi Amin Dada: A Self Portrait (1974), Raid on Entebbe (1977) and The Last King of Scotland (2006).

For more information about De Verdieping and about upcoming activities and more, please check De Verdieping website. And why don’t you follow us on Facebook?

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