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Warm Greetings from de Appel!
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Please join us on January 13, 2020 at 19:00
at Oude Lutherse Kerk (Singel 411 1012 WN Amsterdam)
for our 2020 Keynote
RSVP and SHARE
“THE KINGS TWO BODIES” by DARBY ENGLISH
2020 begins at de Appel with a keynote by the maverick art historian and cultural critic Darby English, who speaks publicly for the first time in the Netherlands. This talk sets the tone for a new year of programming. A year inspired by our refreshed mission: to make space and time for artists and allies to pose vital questions. A year when we attend closely to our surroundings and also practice deeper listening; hence a keynote (een gondtoon), a way to tune in… |
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We invited Darby English to adapt his essay published in To Describe a Life: Notes at the Intersection of Art and Race Terror: ‘The King’s Two Bodies’ speaks through the prism of Lorraine Motel, April 4, 1968, a model created by the design firm Boym Partners, as a part of Buildings of Disaster (1998-2008). Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, USA is best known as the site of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. More importantly this was place of key meetings between King and his associates, the site of planning for a social transformation with many names, which lives on in different regions and in different forms to this day. How, we might ask, do we feel this here – in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, in this corner of Europe, in 2020?
English’s previous books, How to See a Work of Art in Total Darkness
and 1971: A Year in the Life of Color have earned him a reputation for rare insight, honed by deep study and visceral experience of some of the most important art of our era. This also happens to be “hard art”, which is to say that it takes time, deliberation, and its full significance is not obvious on first glance. Yet if we invest and connect – if we find ways to make a public for this art – the potential shift of perspectives may be nothing short of life-changing. This is precisely the kind of experience of art and cultural production that de Appel commits to in 2020 and beyond.
The keynote is followed by “hard art”, open seminar with Darby English, held 14–16 January 2020, 11:00-15:45 inside the iconic Aula of the former
Wederopbouwschool of Tuinstad Overtoomseveld , now our home base at Schipluidenlaan 12 (Broedplaats Lely).
Throughout 2020 de Appel will continue to make most of the Aula as a site for exhibitions and other space and time experiments. Alongside the seminar, we begin the active construction of de Appel’s new Built Environment Research Group or BERG, with special advisor Rosa te Velde.
Special thanks to our partners and sponsors: |
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