Programme in English

What is the spectrum of currencies by which creative labor can be valued? Thinking through concepts of solidarity, friendship, and emotional labor, the freedoms and restraints of alternative and normative currencies will be investigated.

20:00 Introduction Flora Woudstra (editor Perdu)
20:10 Isabelle Sully & Baha Görkem Yalım

20:50 BREAK

21:15 Seecum Cheung
21:40 Talk moderated by Flora Woudstra

Seecum Cheung will speak about the potentials of encountering another. To consider it as a period of osmosis, as a potential for transformation, as conflict, and as a method to practice culpability and action. Circling and reflecting upon the testimonies as gathered by Svetlana Alexievich in Second-Hand Time, the intimate poetry of Anne Boyer in Garments Against Women and Sarah Schulman’s analysis of social relations on the personal and the political in Conflict is Not Abuse.

Cheung will think through these texts in relation to her time working with and for charities. The campaigns were able to generate huge momentum, which saw her and others working through precarious conditions, the ideology of the 'bigger goal' propelling them to ‘get things done’ no matter the cost. But what are the limits to supporting a cause which you can not see, nor feel, nor question? Or: how does a campaign contribute towards an imaginary cause? And (how) does it shape our responses to those whom we are meant to support? Cheung will weigh her personal desire to make ‘meaningful change’ against the limits and outcomes of the(se) campaigns.

Isabelle Sully will explore the conditions and politics of production in friendship. When working with friends, what currencies are we trading in? And to turn the phrase on its head: what might we be trading in, giving up, when we commit to working in the uncertain territory of friendship? In an attempt to answer these questions, Isabelle has invited fellow artist and friend Baha Görkem Yalım to join her, to re-perform a work of his which she considers to be a gift.

When she first encountered this work it was protected by the institution that was their school. Now, his occupational health and safety is in her care. How might she then attempt re-gift this to you, outside the legal safety of an institutional structure and beyond the willingness to receive a gift through friendship? And most of all, who is she to assume that it's now her gift to give?

Seecum Cheung is a visual artist working primarily with moving image. Her current work is an ongoing series of films, based upon the interviews and encounters that she has initiated with leading specialists in the field of right-wing radicalism, human rights organisations, and activist refugee groups.

Isabelle Sully works as an artist, writer and curator. Her practice revolves around the social, economic and administrative mediation of publics within and through contemporary art. She recently completed a Master of Art Praxis at the Dutch Art Institute and is currently the editor of Publication Studio Rotterdam. Originally from Melbourne, she is now living in Rotterdam.

Baha Görkem Yalım is a visual artist. Yalım’s exploration, not only of contents, but also of the use of artistic media, is in a constant flux - refusing to crystallise in a particular form. Yalım employs video, installation and performance sometimes in variations and sometimes as folds of the same. His practice at times crosses the borders of a writer, teacher and curator. He is currently living in Amsterdam.