De Dingen

Monday 16 April - Thursday 26 April 2018
Location: Stroom, Hogewal 1-9, The Hague
Presentation: Wed - Sun, 12 - 17 hrs and during events
Events: for times and dates see program schedule below
>> Download exhibition guide (English only)

De Dingen is an 11-day festival of lectures, conversations, performances, presentations and screenings. Met: rkss, Swan Meat, Erik A. de Jong, Kamile Ofoeme, Frances Bodomo, The Otolith Group, Stine Alling Jacobsen, Simon Wald-Lasowski, Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee, Marjanne van Helvert, The Rodina, Vectors, Pauline Agustoni, Tabita Rezaire, Rowan Wigley, Imara Limon and The Embassy of the North Sea.

Rivers that are granted 'human rights'. The legal battle over the authorship rights of a monkey. A robot judge presiding over legal cases. With the multi-annual program De Dingen Stroom attempts to address the changing status of ‘things' and the implications this has on human life. With visual artists, designers and public organisations within the fields of law, environmentalism, politics, zoology, technology, space exploration, and social sciences we will attempt to gain new insights through experimentation. Almost everyday there will be special event in the exhibition space of Stroom, which will be designed as a setting to the events. This setting consists of four new commissions from different fields of enquiry, such as (graphic) design, communication, filmmaking and politics, and will feature a seating space, a library of Things, a ‘Material Resource Unit', as well as three new video works.

PROGRAM SCHEDULE

16 - 26 April 2018, Wed - Sun, 12-17 hrs
and during the events
Exhibition De Dingen
Presentation with work by The Rodina, Oh Son, Dear Son; Marjanne Helvert & Pauline Agustoni, The Library of Material Rights; Simon Wald-Lasowski, Dusting off / Shiny Nails; and The Parliament of Things, Embassy of the North Sea.

Monday 16 April 2018, 16:00 - 19:00 hrs
The Embassy of the North Sea
Session #1: Who are the Things in and around the North Sea?
In this first (closed) session a selected group of participants will make a list of the things, plants, animals and humans in and around the North Sea. You can attend this session on request as a member of the audience.

Tuesday 17 April 2018, 16:00 - 20:00 hrs
The Embassy of the North Sea
Session #2: Public Session
In this public session participants will formulate motions on behalf of life in and around the North Sea, for example on behalf of Doggersbank, Future Generations of Mankind, the Porpoise, or the Alga. The audience will also participate and contribute to the Plea that will be presented in The Hague and handed over to the House of Representatives (De Tweede Kamer) on 29 June 2018.

Wednesday 18 April 2018, 19:00-22:00 hrs
What the Archive Things
A seminar
A seminar rethinking the archive from three perspectives which all deal with the shifting status of things. The zoo as a living archive, geological archives of rocks as records of a disappeared landscape, or the change that museums are starting to implement in the practice of collecting and displaying objects. With Erik A. de Jong (Artis Royal Zoo), Stine Alling Jacobsen (researcher focused on maps and archives of the colonial rule over Greenland) and Imara Limon (Amsterdam Museum).

Saturday 21 April 2018, 19:00-22:00 hrs
Earth and Otherly Matters
Lecture/performance and screenings
With: Kamile Ofoeme - The Most Important Thing on Earth (lecture/performance following a spec of gold around planet Earth for a billion-year vacation, touching the hands and necks of more than 10 different fictional and actual characters, including Jay-Z); Tabita Rezaire - Sugar Walls Teardom (film exploring the contributions of Black womxn's wombs to the advancement of modern medical science and technology); Frances Bodomo - Afronauts (film painting a poetic and surreal picture of a Zambian girl who's training to land on Mars, fusing Zambia's military past with an imagined intergalactic future); and The Otolith Group - Medium Earth (an audiovisual essay on the millennial time of geology and the infrastructural unconscious of Southern California).

Tuesday 24 April 2018, 19:00-22:00 hrs
Why Should Our Bodies End at the Skin?
Performances and screenings
With: Marjanne Helvert & Pauline Agustoni - Once Created, Never Destroyed (could there be such a thing as material rights?); Rowan Wigley - Heresy of Champna (a surreal satire of a typical shampoo advert); Vectors - Contact Zone (an audiovisual performative design piece); rkss & Swan Meat - Queer Plastic (a synthetic and intimate object, the Barbie Doll, as a starting point to explore the interlocked polymers of immaterial and material agents).
The evening will be recorded and broadcast through Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee radio.

Thursday 26 April 2018, 16:00 - 19:00 hrs
The Embassy of the North Sea
Session #3: The contours of the plea on behalf of the North Sea
In this third (closed) session a selected group of participants discusses the contours of the Plea on behalf of the North Sea. You can attend this session on request as a member of the audience.

Partners De Dingen:
Ambassade van de Noordzee, Building Conversation, Parlement van de Dingen, Stichting De Noordzee, Stroom Den Haag, Waag Society.

16 Apr '18 - 26 Apr '18
Stroom Den Haag, Hogewal 1-9, The Hague
Entrance: free