project

Dropstuff / Geert Mul

Dropstuff aims to stimulate debates concerning public space by creating a platform where diverse parties can meet and be confronted with opinions and perspectives of politicians, residents, artists and activists concerning public space. Invited by Marres, the multi-media platform of Dropstuff will settle on the Vrijthof in Maastricht from October 12th until October 27th 2009. The platform consists of a 4 by 14 public led-screen with several connected interfaces throughout the Netherlands as well as the Dropstuff website. On request of Marres, artist Geert Mul cooperated with curator Nicolette Gast to develop a so-called ‘Game of Life’ for the Dropstuff pavilion, titled Build or Bomb . The initial task to focus on freedom of speech in relation to media and youth culture is translated to the visualization of a light-hearted social experiment, but with serious connotations and associations. After all, Build or Bomb refers to two opposing tendencies of the human race: creation and destruction.

You are cordially invited to attend the opening on Friday, October 16th at 3pm on the Vrijthof in Maastricht.

Click here for more information on Dropstuff.
 

exhibition

Depression

After an exceptionally successful opening, the international group exhibition Depression has been open to the public for some weeks. It is interesting to note that this is the first exhibition that causes such strong reactions about the title, that it is often expected to have a direct relation with the presented works. Depression primarily investigates the relation of the artist to the work of art and art in general, thus touching upon themes such as loss in both its psychological and economical form. The much-appreciated hand-out (see website) offers the visitor the required information on the position of every artist.

The exhibition arose in cooperation with the British art critic and curator Dan Kidner and curator Lisette Smits and presents works of, among others, Lee Lozano, Jim Shaw, Seth Price, Karl Holmqvist and Nairy Baghramian (see image). Click here for more information.

parallel program

Depression Films

Marres and filmtheatre Lumière have collaborated on projects before, but never before did this rise to a complete filmprogram that is so connected with an exhibition, in this case Depression. Composed by David Deprez (artistic director Lumière), Lisette Smits and Dan Kidner, the program contains some impressive classics, which focus on themes such as the excess of consumerism, economical speculation, financial and political crises, and personal and collective loss. In this context, the film Modern Times (1936) by Charlie Chaplin was already shown at Marres on September 13th.

Program in Lumière:

October 28th, 7.30 pm
Accatone (1961), Pier Paolo Passolini

November 4th, 7.30 pm
Alice (1990), Woody Allen

November 11th, 7.30 pm
Land and Freedom (1995), Ken Loach

November 25th, 7.30 pm (avant-première)
Capitalism, A Love Story (2009), Michael Moore.

Click here for more information.

parallel program

Depression Lecture Brian Dillon

On Saturday, October 31st at 4 pm, writer and essayist Brian Dillon will give a lecture at Marres about his recently published book Tormented Hope: Nine Hypochondriac Lives. After his presentation he will talk about the book with writer and curator Dieter Roelstraete.

Tormented Hope is a book about mind and body, fear and hope, illness and imagination. It explores, in the stories of nine individuals, the relationship between mind and body as it is mediated by the experience, or simply the terror, of being ill, and in an intimate investigation of those nine lives, it shows how the mind can make a prison of the body, by distorting our sense of ourselves as physical beings. Healthy or unhealthy, robust or failing, ignored or obsessed over, our bodies respond daily to our shifting state of mind, whether we are aware of the process or not. This book is about an especially dramatic instance of that relationship: the mind's invention of physical disease. Through his witty, entertaining and often moving examinations of the lives of its nine subjects - Charlotte Brontë, Florence Nightingale, Marcel Proust, Andy Warhol and others - Brian Dillon brilliantly unravels the tortuous connections between real and imagined illness, irrational fear and rational concern, anxiety and imagination, the mind's aches and the body's ideas. Tormented Hope is thus not just a case-study about the complexity of Hypochondria and connected mental ‘defects’ like melancholia and depression, but primarily an in-depth investigation into the border between being ill and healthy and the ways in which our bodies respond to the unpredictability of the mind.

The presentation takes place in connection with the exhibition Depression, which is still on show until November 29th at Marres.

Brian Dillon is a research Fellow in the Creative and Performing Arts at the School of English, University of Kent, and UK editor of Cabinet, a quarterly magazine of art and culture based in New York. He writes regularly for Frieze, Art Review, the London Review of Books and the Guardian. He is the author of Tormented Hope: Nine Hypochondriac Lives (Penguin, 2009) and a memoir, In the Dark Room (Penguin, 2005). He is working on a novella, Sanctuary, to be published by Sternberg Press in 2010.
Dieter Roelstraete is curator at te MuHKA, Antwerp. He is co-editor for Afterall magazine and writes for A-prior, Dot Dot Dot and several art publications.

news

The Great Indoors: record number of entries!

Maybe it is the growing reputation of the award or possibly it is connected to the crises and the urgency of communication, but The Great Indoors has, with a total amount of 380 entries, 50% more registrations than the previous edition! And again the projects entered into the competition come from both international star architects as well as from unknown talents. At the end of October, the jury will compose a shortlist of twenty-five designs.

On the 6th of November a program of workshops starts for students of the Academy of Fine Arts Maastricht, the Maastricht Academy of Architecture and the Design Academy Eindhoven. Together with a team of ten designers, artists and architects, the students will be commissioned by local partners to arrange the interior of five buildings in the city centre of Maastricht. The program starts with a series of lectures by Guus Beumer, Alexander van Slobbe and Jurgen Bey, who will present their perspectives on the question of ‘Changing Ideals’. Bey contributed earlier to an exhibition of the same name and Van Slobbe focuses on his ambitions with the exhibition NL=New Luxury, both held at NaiM/Bureau Europa.

Image: House VI by Peter Eisenman, photo by Johannes Schwartz for the exhibition Changing Ideals, Re-thinking the House at NaiM/Bureau Europa.

news

Free guided tour

On Sunday, October 25th at 1 pm, the monthly free guided tour takes place (only entrance fee). This guided tour covers the exhibition Depression. Reservations are not necessary.

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