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For the first instalment of the cycle ‘Solitary Solidarity’, curated by Hamja Ahsan, Page Not Found presents a physical screening of the film Shy Radicals.

Shy Radicals is a portrait of Hamja Ahsan and the story behind his remarkable book and satirical manifesto, which calls for all shy, quiet, and introverted people to unify and overthrow Extrovert-Supremacy.

In his book Shy Radicals, Hamja Ahsan has not simply created an artwork, he has created a world that blurs the boundaries between creator and creation, between real life and the life of the imagination, between reality and an imagined fiction in which he is a leading character.

The documentary follows Hamja as he deals with the trauma and despair of his brother’s extradition case, whilst traveling the world inspiring and educating others through creativity and activism.

Signed to Ridley Scott’s Black Dog Films, director Tom Dream’s expertise lies in collaboration, working closely with artists to create truly original music videos and documentary films.

Style-nostalgia, nature, and psychology are recurring themes that feature strongly in Tom’s work, with a passion for capturing ongoing stories as they unfold, illuminating the people behind the music and unpicking human dynamics.

Tom has a background in music and psychology and currently lives in a 1970s location house in Margate.

Starts at 19:00. Reserve your free ticket here.

Why do artists write novels? What does the artist’s novel do to the visual arts? How should such a novel be experienced? In recent years, there has been a proliferation of visual artists who create novels as part of their wider art projects. They do so in order to address artistic issues by means of novelistic devices, favouring a sort of art predicated on process and subjectivity, introducing notions such as fiction, narrative, and imagination. In this sense, it is possible to speak of a new medium in the visual arts; yet, very little is known about it.

Join us for an evening of discussion, performance, and sharing across disciplines during the launch of David Maroto’s The Artist’s Novel: The Novel as a Medium in the Visual Arts (Mousse Publishing, 2020). This two-volume book is the first to explore in depth the subject of the artist’s novel. Part 1: A New Medium aims to critically elucidate the pressing questions posed by the emergence of a new artistic medium with a theoretical approach to a number of key case studies.

Part 2: The Fantasy of the Novel is a research project in the form of a novel, which examines the process of creation of an artist’s novel. The protagonist is in the position of a detective who tries to understand the conditions under which an artist decides to write, and how such a thing is possible within an artistic setting.

Accompanying David in the discussion, writer and curator Yann Chateigné Tytelman will examine the different ways contemporary artists have employed the artist’s novel, and its impact on the curatorial and institutional context in which it appears and with which it interacts.

Artist Cally Spooner, author of one the key case studies analysed in A New Medium, will carry out a reading performance from her new artist’s novel in progress, Dead Time – which will serve as a springboard to discuss notions of fiction and performativity in relation to the artist’s novel.

Writer and critic Chris Kraus will engage in conversation with David on the introduction of fictocritical writing practices in contemporary art, and the emergence of hybrid textual strategies where theory and practice, fiction and research, literature and the visual arts, merge.

Starts at 17:00. Reserve your free tickets for physical attendance or our livestream here.

We are pleased to invite you to window.open(), a day-long festival, held by students and alumni of the Master of Experimental Publishing (XPUB), Piet Zwart Institute at Page Not Found. 

A window is a framing device, an interface through which we can look inside, to spaces where small groups meet, and outside to the world beyond. Screens and windows delineate boundaries between public and private. We adjust, in order to be able to communicate within a temporary window of time, reframing our intentions and seeking opportunities to share some real-time realness.

window.open() at PNF will be an interface for the XPUB program to communicate with the public inside and outside of the physical space. We adjust, using windows in the street and in the browser in order to be able to communicate. Through this dialogical interface attitudes, perspectives, backgrounds and situations are explored together in a program consisting of presentations, workshops, publication launches, conversations and performances which take place both online and offline.

Program Schedule:

12:00-17:00 XPUB Bookshop (offline)

12:00-14:00 HAM DISTRO (online)

As a launch activity for the Collectiveioning publication, the XPUB class of 2019-2020 invites the public to join them to inhabit the cells of an collaborative online spreadsheet. 

14:00-15:00 OUIJA SEANCE (online, every 20 minutes)

Together we spell out our hopes, fears, suspicions, desires and more through an ever-changing multi-user whiteboard.

15:00-16:00 BLANK PAGE SYNDROME (offline)

Join offline for a curated read and conversation around Saturn, where we’ll attempt together to re-actualize the image of this age-old villain, by digging into its oldest mythologies. 

16:00-17:00 LINGO BINGO (offline)

Feeling lucky? Shoot your shot during our XPUB1 Bingo! We will roll the drum for you, and with every word you stripe off your card, you are getting closer to winning one of our hot and very exclusive prices from our previous issues!

16:00-17:00 Civil Entertainment Sirens® (offline)

Civil Entertainment Sirens® consists of a series of polyphonic textures performed from a Web oscillator instrument currently under development. This audiovisual performance is willing to explore different combinations of sound frequencies for your own entertainment. 

Reserve your free ticket here.

During this almost-ritual event, the MA Artistic Research, Royal Academy of Arts, The Hague, will launch the 2021 issue of Keywords, a publication collectively written and edited by its first year students during their reading days. This evening will also be the occasion for graduates of the programme to read excerpts of their theses.

Keywords is an annual publication written, edited and designed by students of the MA Artistic Research of The Royal Academy, The Hague. This year the focus is: Waywardness and Artistic Research: Speculation, Skepticism, Difference.

As physical seating for this event is limited, Page Not Found is happy to make available a livestream of the evening for those who don’t want to miss it.

Starts at 19:00. Reserve your free ticket to the livestream here.

Page Not Found presents the third chapter of the Open Letters project, which invites The Hague artists to occupy the large storefront of Page Not Found with messages of urgency and vulnerability. Following an open call, the selected works are ‘published’ in a series of window displays using vinyl lettering. The series gives artists room to publicly reflect on current times, with works given to an audience of passersby of the lively Boekhorststraat.

In the first months of the pandemic Georgie Brinkman (as part of duo ZOOX) was due to stage a newly commissioned performance work in a rural area of the UK through More Than Ponies. Inevitably, this had to be reconfigured from a site-specific, community choir performance to a digital form: a solo performer via Facebook live. This iteration of the work contemplates what happens to its meaning when it is disconnected from its original site. How can these words resonate with the larger, global notions of loss, vulnerability and change we are currently experiencing?

‘Brekekekéx koáx koáx!’ is a song that acts as a futile, ritualistic attempt to resurrect an extinct (in the British wild) species. The last known colony of the Common Tree Frog (Hyla Arborea) in the British wild lived in Hilltop Pond, Dorset. In 1988 the last male was found far away from the pond calling a lonely ‘Brekekekéx koáx koáx!’ for a non-existent female. Using astrological predictions for 1988 as an attempt to retroactively foresee the extinction, this new, ritual song rewrites the lyrics of the oldest surviving secular love song in the English language, ‘Bryd one Brere’. The piece borrows its name from the Ancient Greek comedy ‘The Frogs’. During a choral interlude, the onomatopoeic cry of ‘Brekekekéx koáx koáx!’ marks the only time that the titular frogs are heard. They exist only to annoy the protagonist, who tries his best to eliminate their sound. He eventually manages to silence them with a monstrous fart.

Georgie Brinkman is an artist and researcher whose work treads a precarious ground between science-fiction and science-fact (and the muddy sludge in between), to ask what it means to be human in the age of extinction. By casting other-than-humans as leading protagonists in her films, writing and installations she seeks to pull apart the anthropocentric perception of a division between nature and culture. Georgie recently graduated from MA Artistic Research at The Royal Academy, The Hague. Alongside her practice she founded an artist residency, The New Flesh, to support early career artists who work at the intersection of costume and moving image.

Image caption:

Illustration of a singing frog, drawn from ‘Rupert and The Frog Song’ (1984), written by Paul McCartney. Here, Rupert the Bear witnesses a frog chorus. that occurs only once every few hundred years.

“Brekekekéx koáx koáx!” is on view from August 9, 2021 through September 9, 2021. The exhibition is visible any time from the street.

EN:

During The Hague Contemporary Art Weekend,  Page Not Found presents Pavilionesque, an exhibition around the magazine created by acclaimed artist Paulina Olowska.

Founded in 2015, the Pavilionesque magazine is a collaborative, performative and theatrical effort in the field of artistic publishing. In its search for unpublished materials connected to theatre, performance and puppeteering, Pavilionesque is an active archive of contemporary and dramatic arts.

The third and latest issue of Pavilionesque, copublished by the Walker Art Center, focuses on the extraordinary nature of the grotesque and its modern manifestations. It playfully proclaims itself GROTESQUE – CARNAVALESQUE – BURLESQUE – EPIDEMIC – DANSE MACABRE – ARABESQUE. The publication features artworks, interviews, essays and a grotesque novel.

For The Hague Contemporary Art Weekend, Page Not Found unveils a theatrical installation, choreographed by Paulina Olowska in collaboration with sculptor Zuza Golinska. Together they created a singular podium, where Pavilionesque stands as the main thespian figure. Basking in the glow of golden curtains, this character crawls and teases, to a soundtrack composed by Jacek Sienkiewicz based on Roland Topor’s poetry.

Entrance to the exhibition is free. Reservation of a time slot is required for the opening weekend, taking place 8 to 11 July.

The exhibition will stay up until 8 August.

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NL:

Tijdens het The Hague Contemporary Art Weekend presenteert Page Not Found Pavilionesque, een expositie rond het gelijknamige tijdschrift opgezet door de bejubelde kunstenaar Paulina Olowska.

Het tijdschrift Pavilionesque werd in 2015 opgericht als platform voor theater- en performance-gerichte kruisbestuiving middels artistieke publicatie. Pavilionesque vormt een levend archief van hedendaagse kunst en dramatiek in haar continue zoektocht naar niet eerder gepubliceerde materialen rond theater, performance en poppenspel.

Het derde en meest recente nummer van Pavilionesque, dat in samenwerking met het Walker Art Center werd uitgebracht, focust op de eigenaardige esthetiek van het groteske en haar moderne manifestaties. Deze uitgave proclameert zich GROTESQUE – CARNAVALESQUE – BURLESQUE – EPIDEMIC – DANSE MACABRE – ARABESQUE, en 

omvat curieuse essays, interviews, reproducties van kunstwerken en een heuse groteske novelle. 
In het kader van The Hague Contemporary Art Weekend onthult Page Not Found een theatrale installatie, onder regie van Paulina Olowska en met enscenering door installatiekunstenaar Zuza Golinska. Samen creëerden ze een podium waarop Pavilionesque als centrale figuur wordt uitgelicht; schitterend in de gloed van gouden gordijnen en kronkelend op muziek door Jacek Sienkiewics naar Roland Topor’s poëzie.

Entree voor de tentoonstelling is gratis. Reservering van een time slot voor het openingsweekend van 8 tot 11 juli is verplicht.

De expositie is tot 8 augustus te bezoeken.

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Paulina Olowska was born in 1976 in Gdansk, Poland, and lives and works in Rabka Zdroj and Krakow, Poland. She has had one-person exhibitions at Kunsthalle Basel; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and the Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw. Olowska received the prestigious Aachen Art Prize in 2014, with an associated exhibition at the Ludwig Forum for International Art, Aachen, Germany. She has also staged performances at Tate Modern, the Carnegie International, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Zuza Golinska was born in 1990 in Gdansk and lives and works in Warsaw, PL. She is a multidisciplinary artist who explores the impact of architecture and public space on the human individual. Her art reflects on the way in which human physical and mental wellbeing is influenced by the psychology of space in the time of civilisational acceleration and late capitalism. In her work, Golińska frequently disrupts the clear-cut division between the functional and the aesthetic as she examines the influence of spatial forms on emotions and decisions of users. In 2018, she won the ArtePrize awarded by the ArteVue and Delfina Foundation. She presented her works in the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Zachęta National Gallery, Delfina Foundation in London, National Gallery in Prague and many others.

Page Not Found and The Reading Room invite you to our first post-lockdown session! The Reading Room is a series of reading sessions revolving around short texts provided by invited guests — contemporary researchers, cultural theorists, philosophers and artists — who join the session to provide insight and context to the topics at hand. The Reading Room is curated by Sissel Marie Tonn, Jonathan Reus and Flora Reznik.

For the 38th session of the Reading Room, we will delve with Tommy Ventevogel into sci-fi writing with an activist twist. We will discuss a scene from “The Dispossessed” by Ursula K. Le Guin, and zoom into utopian anarchism as presented in this soft sci-fi novel with social engagement, but also as a political ideology. We will complement this read with a short and beautiful essay by the same author called “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction”, to ask ourselves what storytelling in general can be.

Tommy Ventevogel is a playwright and theatre-maker based in Rotterdam. Tommy also teaches sci-fi writing, text and image-techniques and has developed a course in activist writing.

There are a limited number of spaces available for this event. As this is a discussion, you are expected to have read the provided texts before attending. We will provide you with a copy of the texts once you have RSVP’d. Due to the current pandemic situation, we ask you to wear a mask and to observe physical distance during the session.

Starts at 16:00. Reserve your free ticket here.

Tim Hollander’s work ‘To be chiseled out of marble’ was selected amongst others following the open call ‘Open Letters’. Open Letters invited The Hague artists to occupy our large storefront with messages of urgency and vulnerability. Selected works will be ‘published’ in a series of window displays using vinyl letters. The series gives artists room to publicly reflect on current times, with works given to an audience of passersby of the lively Boekhorststraat.

Tim Hollander (1987, NL) works as an artist, curator, writer and designer. From a personal perspective, yet in an alternately concrete, abstract, critical and poetic manner they reflect on the vocabulary, rules, handling and presentation of contemporary art and exhibitions. They work in a variety of media, including installation, sculpture, text and publications. Behind the direct engagement with their artistic surroundings hints can be found of a more personal narrative.

The recent series of lockdowns have made them re-evaluate themselves, bringing lingering questions about gender, presentation and identity to the foreground. To be chiseled out of marble combines some of those questions with thoughts about current pandemic-times, barriers between inside and outside, containing and being contained, the prevention, allowance and welcoming of rot, corroding separations and a need for empathy.

You are free to pass by and view the work whenever you like, as it is exhibited in our window.

Page Not Found is delighted to invite you to a talk by artists Batia Suter and Delphine Bedel. This event will take place in our project space.

To attend the livestream of this talk, reserve a free spot here.

This event marks the sixth and final instalment of our Tangible Photography program, which started at the beginning of 2020 and was postponed due to the pandemic. The dematerialization of the image created for some artists with a photographic practice a desire for tangibility, that is: for a materiality accessible by touch. Publishing appears in this context as a natural strategy to answer this desire and to reinstate the photographic image in its materiality. This program presents a large selection of publishing practices to show the diversity of their approaches.

Delphine Bedel will present her research on the emergence of the term “feminism” and its historical relation to publishing. Batia Suter will discuss her practice together with Delphine.

Delphine Bedel is an artist, lecturer, writer, and publisher. Her principal topics of interest are media, feminist publishing, politics of memory and the global circulation of images. Known for her cutting-edge publications and feminist education projects, Bedel works with leading cultural institutions, photography festivals and art and design academies. She is the founder of Meta/Books, and co-founder of the Roadmap for Equality in the Arts in the Netherlands. She currently teaches Speculative Design at AKV | St Joost (NL) and is a member of the German Photography Academy. Her work is exhibited internationally.

The Swiss-born, Amsterdam-based artist Batia Suter (b. 1967) studied at the art academies of Zürich (CH) and Arnhem (NL), and was also trained at the Werkplaats Typografie. Suter produces monumental installations of digitally manipulated images for specific locations, and works on photo-animations, image sequences and collages, often using found historical pictures. In 2007 and 2016 she published the artist books Parallel Encyclopedia and Parallel Encyclopedia #2, based on compositions of images taken from old books she has collected along the years. Her other books, published by Roma Publications; Surface Series (2011), Radial Grammar (2018), Hexamiles (Mont-Voisin) (2019), and Cloud Service (2019, together with Printed Matter Inc) are evocative montages of found images exploring the diverse resonances of geological shapes and landscapes, visual surfaces and image structures. The underlying themes of Batia Suter’s practice are the ‘iconification’ and ‘immunogenicity’ of images, and the circumstances by which they become charged with new associative values. Her work intuitively situates old images in new contexts to provoke surprising reactions and significative possibilities. By this method, and with an attuned sensitivity to hidden harmonies and expressive accidents, Suter thus generates hypnagogic spaces where pictures can communicate by their own logic, in a force field of imaginative metamorphosis.

Starts at 18:00. Reserve your free ticket here.