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Paul O’Neill and Remco Torenbosch de Appel art centre


— de Appel arts centre, Amsterdam
January 5, 2014
Coordinator: Guus van Engelshoven



'European contextualising in analytical sociology and ethnographical representation on history and
the present’

— Speakers: Paul O’Neill, Remco Torenbosch

— Moderator: Guus van Engelshoven

On January 5th 2014, de Appel arts centre welcomes two guests: Remco Torenbosch, artist from the Prix de Rome exhibition and curator, writer, artist, and educator Paul O’Neill.

Remco Torenbosch will present his publication part of the research for his work in the Prix de Rome exhibition: European Contextualising in Analytical Sociology and Ethnographical Representation on History and the Present, 2013. With contributions by Charles Esche, Mihnea Mircan and the Council of Europe Strasbourg. Published by Black Dog Publishing London

Paul O'Neill will present the curatorial anthology Curating Subjects (2007), Curating and the Educational Turn (2010) and Curating Research (2014), published by de Appel and Open Editions (Amsterdam and London). With this series of theoretical publications, de Appel arts centre aims to share the specific knowledge on curatorial practice taught in the Curatorial Programme with a broader audience. On the occasion of the publication of Curating Research, Paul O’Neill will talk about the history of the series and the relations between the different publications.



Paul O’Neill is currently Director of the Graduate Program in Curatorial Studies at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York. He is international tutor of the de Appel Curatorial Programme, Amsterdam, and international research fellow with The Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media, Dublin. O’Neill is author of Locating the Producers: Durational Approaches to Public Art (Amsterdam, Valiz, 2011), edited with Claire Doherty. He recently completed the authored book The Culture of Curating, the Curating of Culture(s), (Cambridge, The MIT Press, 2012).

Radio Calling
TENT, Rotterdam


— Tent, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
December 15, 2013
Curator: Jesse van Oosten



Tent, Rotterdam

— Participants: Jay Tan, Jonas Lund, Remco Torenbosch, Koen Taselaar, Sarah Tripp

The Radio Calling weekend event explores in a mini-symposium, masterclasses, and live radio performances, radio as a tool, platform, and medium for contemporary art. How can the medium contribute to the production and perception of a work of art?

Sunday's live radio performances, presented and recorded in front of an audience, include Jonas Lund, Koen Taselaar and Remco Torenbosch and proposals selected through the open call. The weekend ends with a radio performance from Camden Arts Centre in London by the Rotterdam artist Jay Tan. Live stream on This is Tomorrow.



The Radio Calling weekend event explores various forms of radio in contemporary art through live radio performances, masterclasses and a mini-symposium. How can the medium contribute to the production and perception of a work of art? Why is the use of radio increasingly popular among artists? Radio Residencies, London and Rotterdam Radio Calling launches Radio Residencies, a new long-term partnership between TENT and Camden Arts Centre in London. Both institutions have invited an artist to produce a new performance work in which the possibilities of live performance and broadcasting are examined. The London artist Jeremy Evans and the Rotterdam artist Jay Tan are the first artists to participate in the residency project.

Nickel van Duijvenboden,
Remco Torenbosch Duende


— Brak/Duende, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
October 13 — October 21, 2012
Curator: Jack Segbar



Duende, Rotterdam

— Participants: Nickel van Duijvenboden, Remco Torenbosch

Within this exhibition Remco Torenbosch is showing components of his study on the concept of Europe entitled: European Conceptualization in analytical philosophy on history and present. The works that have emerged from this study are a reflection of the political, social and economic changes the European Union has undergone since the founding and the underlying accompanying utopian ideologies during the formation.



One element in this research is the creation of a collection fabric samples in the blue colour of the European flag, gathered in the countries of the European Union. With this collection of fabric samples Torenbosch is questioning if the collection can be ultimately considered as cultural objects and possibly can represent an ethnographic value as remnants from the various disappearing local textile industries, which results into wide social and economic changes. Within the colour differences between the fabric samples, this collection also underlines the European differences by country and it’s standard idea about the European blue. In the physical sense, the European blue colour functions as a monochrome within a modernist tradition with its purity laws, its longing for transcendence and an optimistic believe in the utopian potential. Simultaneously in a psychological sense the blue functions as a blue-screen (chroma key) where the broad and critical thoughts about Europe and the European Union can be projected, an idea that in both cases is a parallel to the so-called European collective thought.

Autumn of Modernism II
Temporary Gallery, Cologne


— Temporary Gallery, Cologne, Germany
September 7 — October 28, 2012
Curator: Lorenzo Benedetti



Installation view of Autumn of Modernism II at the Temporary Gallery Cologne, 2012. Works from left to riight: Martijn in 't Veld, Remco Torenbosch (European conceptualization in analytical philosophy on history and present B), gerlach en koop, Remco Torenbosch (European conceptualization in analytical philosophy on history and present A), Batia Suter. Courtesy of Temporary Gallery, Cologne.

— Participants: Gwenneth Boelens, Piet Dieleman, gerlach en koop, Sara van der Heide, Martijn Hendriks, Bas van den Hurk, Rob Johannesma, Katja Mater, Marc Nagtzaam, Falke Pisano, Roma Publications, Petra Stavast, Batia Suter, Remco Torenbosch, Martijn in ’t Veld

The title of the exhibition was inspired by The Autumn of the Middle Ages, Johan Huizinga’s classic book published in 1919, a study of the forms of life, thought, and art at the end of the Middle Ages. The book shows that the artists of that period achieved their groundbreaking successes precisely because they drew on the past. This gave them a better grasp of the changes occurring all around them.

Images



The explosion of news outlets and ways of consuming the news has made our society very focused on the now, and we sometimes forget to consider the future or the past. Artists try to step out of the present by consulting sources from the past and using them in their art, thus attempting to build bridges to the future.
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Collection Presentation
De Vleeshal, Middelburg


— De Vleeshal, Middelburg, The Netherlands
July 1 — October 21, 2012
Curator: the public



De Vleeshal, Middelburg

— Participants: Maartje Korstanje, Marlow Moss, Job Koelewijn, Bianca Runge, Marijke van Warmerdam, Liza May Post, Fransje Killaars, Remco Torenbosch, Marinus Boezem, Francesco Arena, Robert Maaskant, Piet Dieleman, Ben Sleeuwenhoek

SBKM/De Vleeshal is in charge of Middelburg’s municipal art collection, which is stored at the MuHKA(Museum of Modern Art in Antwerp). Selections from the more than 150 works are periodically exhibited at De Vleeshal or De Kabinetten van De Vleeshal. For The Art of Choice, a preliminary selection of 36 works was presented to the public for voting.



This work was in 2010 on display during the exhibition Fault in Cabinets and was subsequently purchased. Torenbosch refers to his work on the social and economic dynamics of our time, translated into formal structures. Untitled (BEP) is a mobile, a schematic representation of the economic term 'Break Even Point (BEP), when a company or institution no profit and no loss (more) and who thus can grow. De Vleeshal, 2010.
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Against Interpretation
Onomatopee, Eindhoven


— Onomatopee, Eindhoven
June 8 — July 15, 2012
Coordinator: Onomatopee, Whatspace



Onomatopee, Eindhoven

— Participants: Koen Delaere, Cheryl Donegan, Harm van den Dorpel, Wade Guyton, Bas van den Hurk, Sandra Kranich, Alexandra Leykauf, Tom Meacham, Rory Pilgrim, Remco Torenbosch, Joelle Tuerlinckx, Evi Vingerling

The information overload races on; in public space it’s more like overkill. Whatspace wants to draw from our relationship to information in public space – to offer us the consecutive possibilities of confrontation, tranquillity and renewed concentration – and they want to do so experimentally, through the power of abstract art. Not only do they want to make this power manifest, they also want to grasp hold of it.



Against Interpretation and Other Essays is a collection of essays by Susan Sontag published in 1966. It includes some of Sontag's best-known works, including "On Style," "Notes on 'Camp'," and the titular essay "Against Interpretation." In the last, Sontag argues that in the new critical approach to aesthetics the spiritual importance of art is being replaced by the emphasis on the intellect. Rather than recognizing great creative works as possible sources of energy, she argues, contemporary critics were all too often taking art's transcendental power for granted, and focusing instead on their own intellectually constructed abstractions like "form" and "content." In effect, she wrote, interpretation had become "the intellect's revenge upon art." The essay famously finishes with the words, "in place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art".
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The Theory of Moral Sentiments
SoundArtMuseum, Rome


— SoundArtMuseum (SAM), Rome, Italy
Curators: Riccardo Giagni, Lorenzo Benedetti, Cesare Pietroiusti



Installation view of the SoundArtMuseum Archive, 2012. Picture: Leo van Kampen

— Participants: Dario D'Aronco, Domenico Mangano, Remco Torenbosch

The Theory of Moral Sentiments is a 1759 book by Adam Smith. It provided the ethical, philosophical, psychological, and methodological underpinnings to Smith's later works, including The Wealth of Nations (1776), which is a reflection on economics at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and argues that free market economies are more productive and beneficial to their societies. Remco Torenbosch shear within this work only the link to the LibriVox database which hosts free audio books read and runned by volunteers to provide a non-economic (including books on economics) trading situation.

Landscape on the Move will also include the SoundArtMuseum (SAM), a project launched in 2005 as a museum of sound and a place where hundreds of sound-art works by contemporary artists are brought together and exhibited. Many of the sound-art installations in the museum are site-specific, including H. H. Lim’s Daily Music, which has been specially created for Middelburg. As part of the exhibition, a series of new works will be presented to the SAM archives, which will be on display in the exhibition space for consultation by the public. Some of the archives can also be found on the Internet at www.radioartemobile.it, under ‘SoundArtMuseum’.



The Sound Art Museum is an initiative promoted by ZERYNTHIA and RadioArteMobile (RAM), one of the first internet radio stations to discuss the field in between the so called visual arts and sound research.
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Building The New Economy
Accademia Carrara di Belle Arti


— Accademia Carrara di Belle Arti Bergamo
May 7 — 8, 2012
Coordinator: Alessandra Pioselli



Seminar entitled: Between Act and Protest: Building The New Economy at Accademia Carrara di Belle Arti Bergamo, Bergamo, Italy, 2012

— Participants: Students Accademia Carrara di Belle Arti Bergamo, Remco Torenbosch

The starting point of the two-day seminar (‘Between Act and Protest: Building The New Economy’) at Accademia Carrara di Belle Arti di Bergamo was to involve the students to take part in the discussion about the economic situation that we are dealing with today. On a practically and psychologically approach the students could arrange an alternative while facing the start of a professional practice. They were asked to create the opportunity for themselves to open up their own abilities of designing their daily life by creating methods to put themselves out of the originally economic structure.



The origins of the art gallery lie with the Count Giacomo Carrara, a wealthy collector and patron of the arts, who left a generous legacy to the city of Bergamo at the end of the 18th century. After the Count's death, in 1796, his properties were managed by a nominated commissary until 1958, when the Comune di Bergamo took over direct supervision. In 1810, a new building in the neoclassical style was constructed, the project being undertaken by the architect Simone Elia, a pupil of Leopoldo Pollack.

The museum has continued to augment its collections both with purchases and donations. As of 2006, it possesses 1,800 paintings dating from the 15th to the 19th century, and by artists including Pisanello, Botticelli, Bellini, Carpaccio, Mantegna, Raphael, Moroni, Baschenis, Fra Galgario, Tiepolo, Canaletto and Piccio. Besides paintings, there are drawings and prints, bronzes and sculptures, as well as collections of porcelain, furniture and medals. In 1793, at the same time as the public opening of his gallery, the Count Giacomo Carrara desired that drawing and painting courses be initiated in the same place. The school, which was located in the same building as the art gallery until 1912, now has its own premises nearby.

Lecture about relevance
IULM Università, Milan


— IULM Università, Milan, Italy
May 10, 2012
Coordinator: Paola Tognon



Libera Università di Lingue e Comunicazione (IULM), Milan, Italy

— Participants: Students IULM Università di Lingue e Comunicazione, Remco Torenbosch

Lecture about the subject of relevance: “Know, know how to be, know how to do”. It is on these three cornerstones that IULM University has based its teaching mission, taking inspiration from the principles of UNESCO. Taking strength from its vocation of integrating cultural knowledge and professional competences, the University has from its very inception over 40 years ago always presented itself as a meeting point between the academic world and labour markets.

The Istituto Universitario di Lingue Moderne (I.U.L.M.) was founded in 1968 by the Fondazione Scuola Superiore per Interpreti e Traduttori, under the inspiration of Senator Carlo Bo and Professor Silvio Baridon. From the very beginning the idea behind the project was to satisfy the demands of the labour markets based on analyses of current trends.



Initially, this meant focusing on the study of languages – the sine qua non for becoming a part of an increasingly European framework. Things have changed over the years and it has become crucial to learn how to use specific communication tools. To meet this need, the university’s training opportunities and its facilities have been renewed and upgraded. It was a courageous development, in line with the principles that led IULM to change its identity and update all its syllabuses, closing the courses that had made the institute’s history, introducing new syllabuses and modifying the university’s charter and name. Introduced in 1998, the denomination IULM University of Languages and Communication bears out the institution’s two-fold vocation of teaching languages as well as communication. This is the core principle of the institute’s range of training opportunities.

Autumn of Modernism
De Vleeshal, Middelburg


— De Vleeshal, Middelburg, The Netherlands
January 14 — March 24, 2012
Curator: Lorenzo Benedetti



Installation view of Autumn of Modernism at De Vleeshal Middelburg, 2012

— Participants: Gwenneth Boelens, Piet Dieleman, gerlach en koop, Sara van der Heide, Martijn Hendriks, Bas van den Hurk, Rob Johannesma, Katja Mater, Marc Nagtzaam, Falke Pisano, Roma Publications, Petra Stavast, Batia Suter, Remco Torenbosch, Martijn in ’t Veld

The title of the exhibition was inspired by The Autumn of the Middle Ages, Johan Huizinga’s classic book published in 1919, a study of the forms of life, thought, and art at the end of the Middle Ages. The book shows that the artists of that period achieved their groundbreaking successes precisely because they drew on the past. This gave them a better grasp of the changes occurring all around them.

The explosion of news outlets and ways of consuming the news has made our society very focused on the now, and we sometimes forget to consider the future or the past. Artists try to step out of the present by consulting sources from the past and using them in their art, thus attempting to build bridges to the future.



The research European conceptualization in analytical philosophy on history and present started at the end of 2011. Components of this research are shown in the solo exhibition EUROPA at GAMeC - Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bergamo, Italy. And in the group exhibition Autumn of Modernism curated by Lorenzo Benedetti and took place at De Vleeshal and at the Temporary Gallery in Cologne, Germany.
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A Ten-day Communal Kitchen W139 and Casco


— W139, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
December 9, 2011
Curators: Binna Choi, Tim Voss



Mandeville Reading at Kitchen139: A Ten-day Communal Kitchen Experiment A cooperation between W139 and Casco, in the context of The Grand Domestic Revolution – User’s Manual, Jan van Eyck Academie & KijkRuimte, 2012

— Participants: Emory Douglas, Occupy Amsterdam, Premsela, Remco Torenbosch, Jan van Eyck Academie a.o.

More than half a century ago, Hannah Arendt stated that in the modern world two spheres of life – the private and the public –are no longer separate and the economy is actually very much about how to keep a household. However, how much do we know about our economy? Over a century ago, American feminists started building communal kitchens in order to socialise their isolated work as well as save time for other activities such as involvement in the suffrage movement.

What would we gain from such a communal kitchen today? And who is this “we”? W139 cooperates with Casco on ‘Kitchen139’, a ten-day open kitchen and activity series. We invite all for those occupied with multiple deadlines and appointments towards the end of year, to join a collective house management where cooking, eating, talking, thinking, cleaning are all coming together. Inspiring or even more fatiguing, or possibly both?



'Kitchen139' transforms W139 into a ten-day open kitchen and invites all of those occupied with multiple deadlines and appointments towards the end of year, to join a collective house management where cooking, eating, talking, thinking, cleaning are all coming together. Inspiring or even more fatiguing, or possibly both?

The Making of Political Textile or Making Textile Political


— IK Paviljoen, Oost-Souburg
November 27 — December 25, 2011
Mondriaan Fund Pilot Recidency



Installation view on Between Act and Protest: The Making of Political Textile or Making Textile Political, 2012

— Participant: Remco Torenbosch

The machine monochromes (Protests Document; Conceptualization in analytical philosophy on history and present, textile version A, B, 2011) in the perspex frames are presented consist of two identical custom folded pieces of cotton from the tent industry. This particular material has increased since the last decade a prominent place during protests and demonstration camps such as the Puerta del Sol in Madrid, in Tahrir Square in Cairo during the global Occupy Movement.

The canvas is stripped of its functional ornaments as stitching and zippers making the tent parts are returned to their original form and substance language. By this act are the materials are at an intermediate stage of function and action, what was previously a tent can now be a flag or banner, presented as a political object / document or just dust remain. Torenbosch these translations is especially interested in documenting the textile as an object which is normally a direct connection enters the cell, performative character which also features the protest.



Founder and creator of the concept of the Foundation IK sculptor Jan van Munster (Gorinchem, 1939). Already in the 60s, his work in major museums in Netherlands. Then he quickly international fame. In contrast to the wide variety of the material in which he works, the theme is remarkably homogeneous. For decades he investigates consistently and increasingly from other angles the topic "energy". Heat and cold, light and darkness, tension and release, compression and expansion, visibility and invisibility witnesses of polarity that dominated his oeuvre. As a summary for all forms of tension chooses Van Munster around 1984 the sign + / - as commonly used, artistic formula. By making images which his own body dimensions underlie creates a new dimension: the imagination of his creative energy into his work. This led him to the suggestive formula I. Everyone refers to himself as IK. I respect everyone, challenges and demands. I, who is that?

An Inquiry into the Nature (...)
Stroom Den Haag


— Stroom Den Haag, The Hague
March 20, 2011
Curator: Maaike Lauwaert



An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations and The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money at Stroom The Hague, 2011

— Orators: Joost Nieuwenburg, Mieke Coupé

In the form of a dialogue two speakers will recite two influential but conflicting theories on economy: by Adam Smith* and John Maynard Keynes**. The Stroom exhibition space will function as a platform for rehearsal. (at Stroom the texts were read by Joost Nieuwenburg and Mieke Coupé).

As part of: 'There, I Fixed It' stands for an attitude, a way of looking at materials and problems that is at the same time bold and unexpected. These problems can be small and trivial, but also large and global. The exhibition presents work that is characterized by the ability to turn the ordinary into something extraordinary. The artists succeed in doing this through their unique use of materials, a different view on what is useful and a great feeling for improvisation, self-sufficiency and temporality. The artists avoid, directly or indirectly, in a concrete or poetic way, dominant economic strategies and production models. Thereby they show us unruly solutions to urgent problems.



* 'An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations' by Adam    Smith was first published in 1776.

** 'The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money' by John Maynard     Keynes was first published in 1936.

Oh Crisis II
Huize Frankendael, Amterdam


— Huize Frankendael, Amterdam
March 28 — April 28, 2011
Curator: Nathanja van Dijk



Huize Frankendael, Amterdam

— Participants: Lara Almarcegui, Jan Fabre, William Monk, David Osbaldeston, Reed Siefer, Dave Sinai, Berend Strik, Remco Torenbosch, Koen van Mechelen, Roger van de Wouwer, Jason van der Woude

What is the value of art. Seen from the current crisis seems to demand in the media to impose more and more. To this kind of discussion seems to limit the values​​. Themselves Oh Crisis 2.0 aims to address this issue, by working with managers to reflect on the value and quality of art an answer. The result is a kaleidoscopic image, in which sometimes the emphasis on the economic domain, then the political and socio-cultural.



“The capitalistic side of economics is the purest form of socialism: It doesn’t care what your religion or skin colour is, it only cares about money”

Financial Times (reading)
De Vleeshal, Middelburg


— De Vleeshal, Middelburg, The Netherlands
June 6, 2010
Curator: Lorenzo Benedetti



De Kabinetten van De Vleeshal, Middelburg

— Participants: Three orators

In the exhibition Fault at De Kabinetten van De Vleeshal, Remco Torenbosch (b. 1982) reduces the space (material and formal) devoted to economic politics, by using economics as a new humanistic modernism and reducing as a new minimalism.

Torenbosch navigates the areas between the found object, the process, and the built or manufactured. His works seem to be charged with the myths of modernism with its purity laws, it’s yearning for transcendence, and its optimistic faith in the utopian potential of freedom. But at the same time they reveal the absurdity of these notions. In an almost mechanical, robotic fashion, Torenbosch dissects the cadaver of a modernism that lost its innocence.



“The capitalistic side of economics is the purest form of socialism: It doesn’t care what your religion or skin colour is, it only cares about money”

Fault
De Vleeshal, Middelburg


— De Vleeshal, Middelburg, The Netherlands
April 17— June 13, 2010
Curator: Lorenzo Benedetti



De Kabinetten van De Vleeshal, Middelburg

— Participant: Remco Torenbosch

In the exhibition Fault at De Kabinetten van De Vleeshal, Remco Torenbosch (b. 1982) reduces the space (material and formal) devoted to economic politics, by using economics as a new humanistic modernism and reducing as a new minimalism.

Torenbosch navigates the areas between the found object, the process, and the built or manufactured. His works seem to be charged with the myths of modernism with its purity laws, it’s yearning for transcendence, and its optimistic faith in the utopian potential of freedom. But at the same time they reveal the absurdity of these notions. In an almost mechanical, robotic fashion, Torenbosch dissects the cadaver of a modernism that lost its innocence.



“The capitalistic side of economics is the purest form of socialism: It doesn’t care what your religion or skin colour is, it only cares about money”