Closing event for Koen Kloosterhuis – Spaghetti Rain
Turning to Dust and Bones, part 2
Sunday 31 July, 17 -19 hrs

Bar open: 17 hrs
Commissioned text by Çağlar Köseoğlu
Performance by Mica Pan at [removed] hrs:

“There is such a thing as remembering without recognising the memory in it,” he [removed];
                             —George MacDonald, Lilith: A Romance

But for in the past these differences conceal contemporaneousness: how are we to distinguish difference in time from difference in space? 
                             —Richard Fortey, Life

Mica Pan is interested in the subconscious, the idea of “nothingness” in contrast with “something-ness”. As a site-specific performance artist, different structures of architecture and spaces often serve as a material and starting point for her idea to manifest into a form, while everyday actions and objects often appear as a medium to merge with space in a minimalistic way. She aims to create a subtle intersection of narrative and feeling/sensation in a space, allowing the audience to enter a realm where they can get in touch with their own subconscious in an immersive atmosphere and be aware of the now-ness of the [removed];

Çağlar Köseoğlu was invited to write an autonomous piece of work in response to the work of Koen [removed];It will be available at the space in print and published on the website of P/////AKT from Sunday onwards. Köseoğlu studied philosophy and literature in the Netherlands, Turkey and the US. He received his second MA in Aesthetics and Politics at California Institute of the Arts on a Fulbright scholarship. He is a Lecturer at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam as well as Erasmus University College, where he teaches literature, politics and postcolonial theory.

Turning to Dust and Bones (April 2022 – April 2023) is a series of six consecutive solo exhibitions loosely dealing with the subconscious, memory and the traces of being uprooted. It is featuring Anders Dickson, Koen Kloosterhuis, Kristina Sedlerova-Villanen, Aslan Goisum, Giulia Cenci and Rodrigo Herná[removed];
The public program is moderated by DIG – the Internet Guide of literature magazine De Gids, with editors Asha Karami, in charge of selecting contributors for additional texts and events, and Fabienne Rachmadiev, who is closely following the program in order to write the central essay for the series.

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Sarah Pichlkostner – Fill O
David Dale Gallery, Glasgow
Opening: Saturday 6 August 4 – 8pm

Until 20 August, Thu 12 – 6 pm & Fri – Sat 12 – 8pm
Bar Dee Dee will be open during the exhibition opening and on Fridays and Saturdays 2 – 8pm

Sarah Pichlkostner creates sculptures and environments through which she investigates the representation of invisible processes: the transmission of energy, the passage of time, and our psychological responses to materials and things. Or as she puts it: when material is brought to an object, [removed] is made into one, and the function of this object is continuously developing over time, then the object is ultimately reflecting us.

Fill O is the second part of an organisational exchange with P/////AKT, Amsterdam, with whom Sarah Pichlkostner realised the solo exhibition If the moon was a cookie in 2018. The first part of the exchange, I didn’t think it would turn out this way took place at P/////AKT from 13th November – 19th December [removed];

Online Screening
Empathic Creatures (2018), Barbara Kapusta, 6 mins, 43 secs
Selected by Sarah Pichlkostner and viewable on our website for the duration of the exhibition

Commissioned Writing
A written response to Fill O by Clarinda Tse will be readable on our website in August.

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Koen Kloosterhuis, Spaghetti Rain
Turning to Dust and Bones, part 2

Closing event: 31 July, 17 – 19 hrs
26 June – 31 July 2022
Thu – Sun, 14 – 18 hrs

Three reanimated crows, inspired by their plastic lookalikes placed in gardens to scare away pigeons, and animatronics found in haunted house rides, ‘greet’ the visitor as they cross the threshold and wander through the exhibition space; turning them into an intruder. Within the space, the crows create a domain of privacy and secrecy that is inherent to most backyards. The electronics, attached on the outside of the birds instead of being concealed within, function as external organs meant to force the stuffed crows to speak. It is a single voice, belonging to one crow, that echoes its way through the second and has almost disappeared by the time it reaches the third.

Scattered across the floor lie chunks of concrete. A wing, a head, a hand, an elephant’s trunk; the remains of a carefully dissected gathering of garden statues, originally collected by my father. Fragments of bodies that are endlessly reproducible. Clones and copies not bound to time or space—reduced to decoration, degraded to kitsch.

Strands of spaghetti covered in red sauce have fallen on top of the debris. We once had a neighbor that would feed his leftover spaghetti to the crows living near our street. In the sky, the birds would fight each other over the bloody scraps, sometimes accidentally dropping them into my father’s backyard, marking the concrete tiles and stone statues with yellow strings and splashes of red.

Backed into the corner, slightly elevated from the floor, stands the untreated and vulnerable garden house that, instead of providing a solution to survive in an inhospitable environment—like its predecessor the log cabin—has become a place associated with leisure, relaxation and daydreaming. A sanctuary from the outside world placed on the edge of the domestic sphere; a room at the end of the garden.

Spaghetti Rain marks the second episode of Turning to Dust and Bones, a series of solo exhibitions by six artists that is loosely evolving with the mind, memory and a sense of being uprooted.

Tilde ~ 1934
Polina Kanis, Pejvak (Felix Kalmenson and Rouzbeh Akhbari)

26 June – 31 July 2022
Thu – Sun, 14 – 18 hrs

Curator: Masha Domracheva
Production and technical support: Matteo Casarin, Brian McKenna, Alex Fischer

The exhibition explores two utopian botanical projects both initiated in 1934

The work of artistic duo Pejvak is telling the story of an expedition to Japanese-occupied Manchuria led by artist, scientist and mystic Nikolay Roerich and commissioned by the US Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace. Roerich and Wallace had a double agenda. Wallace regarded Roerich as his spiritual leader and secretly supported the painter’s mission to establish a pan-Buddhist society based on high spirituality and cooperative labor, known as the Sacred Union of the East. Roerich in turn was supposed to collect drought-resistant plants that would be able to stabilise and restore American soil.

The work of Polina Kanis explores an ideological project accidentally started by Soviet scientist Fyodor Zorin in the botanical garden of Sochi. He planted a wild lemon tree and then grafted other citrus fruits onto its crown. A tradition grew: throughout decades prominent international figures added grafts of different citrus varieties to the tree. Today there are more than 630 of these additional shoots, representing 167 different countries and a utopian vision of political and ecological symbiosis.

So, a recently developed branch of science — breeding — became extremely important for the rise of the agricultural sectors of the world economy, and two so called ‘camps’ —USA and USSR in particular. That is not a coincidence as ideas about new forms of life often appear on the ruins of societies collapsed after a recent crises, when they are about to resurrect, and the new world is to be built. But what new world were supposed to be built? What was given a start at the same time in 1934 in the world politically and socially? And what those visionary projects, explored in the exhibition, mean to us today? Can we consider them utopias today, knowing that they were echoing imperialist logic? And lastly, how shall we reconsider the concept of utopia within decolonial thinking?

The exhibition was first opened on May 13 within Amsterdam Art Week, and supposed to function until June 19, but due to unpredictable organisational issues with the space it had to be closed the day after. Soon after these events, P/////AKT team has kindly offered to reopen the show in P/////AKTPOOL.

Raphaël Langmair
Again (Monochrome)

26 June – 31 July 2022
Thu – Sun, 14 – 18 hrs

16,5 x 25 x 3 cm
2 burnt slices of bread, cardboard box, ink stamped text
signed, numbered, dated
edition of 5, published by the artist

P/////AKT is proud to present Again, (Monochrome) a new edition by alumn Raphaël Langmair:

He finds an object and makes a replica, although differently from its original. In the past he used ink of an octopus for making one in print of that same octopus. In another work he takes a fruit market crate and rebuilds it into a triangle shaped one. Recently one morning he burnt his toast. He took another slice of bread in order to make a toast again. While waiting he decided to burn deliberately the next one as well that brought him two burnt toasts that he turned into a piece, hence the title of this edition: Again. (Kees van Gelder)

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P/////AKT would like to thank:

Mondriaan Fund, Amsterdam Fund for the Arts and 

Stadsdeel Amsterdam Oost.