In the initial stages of preparing for our museum's construction, we seize a brief opportunity to extend an invitation to COURTPLAY in the former courthouse of Amsterdam (Parnassusweg 220), the location of our forthcoming museum of contemporary art.
COURTPLAY is a 24-hour event, conceived by Mohamed Almusibli and Ivan Cheng for Hartwig Art Foundation. The former courthouse of Amsterdam will become the stage and set for a 3-act theatrical play —a deconstruction of a TV legal drama, with contributions of writers and artists from near and far. Mini-marathons of artist films, and site-specific installations are positioned through the monument-listed atrium and former courtrooms. Food and drinks are available for visitors throughout the building.
As a format, COURTPLAY serves to display tensions between its contributors and the established notions of law and tradition, and questions the difference between audience, consumer, and witness. Insistent on dealing with popular culture, distribution, and the force of language, the title of the event is playfully derived from a band name, Coldplay. Their frontman, Chris Martin, indisputably bears most of the band’s celebrity, enhanced by the wide tittering at the lifestyle quirks from his partnership with actress and entrepreneur Gwyneth Paltrow. Upon their separation, they used the neologism of ‘conscious uncoupling’ instead of divorce. An instance of legal language and its socialized alternative, it met ridicule from the press, but sustained fascination with how relationships can be defined and shaped by their terms of engagement. COURTPLAY runs the course of a day, but its contents speak to manifold continuities and affiliations.
Programme
Friday 12 JAN.*sold-out
6 p.m. – midnight
Screenings: Noor Abed, Ryan Trecartin`
Installations: Özgür Kar, Brianna Leatherbury, Mire Lee, Jay Tan, Aqui Thami, SoiL Thornton, Sands Murray-Wassink, Marina Xenofontos
7 p.m. – 11 p.m. ALIAS (Turbo Moniker) Act 1 - City/Mind
Saturday 13 JAN.
7 a.m. – 11 a.m. ALIAS (Turbo Moniker) Act 2 - Celebrities
10 a.m. – 6 p.m.
Screenings: Peng Zuqiang, Sophia Al-Maria
Installations: Özgür Kar, Brianna Leatherbury, Mire Lee, Jay Tan, Aqui Thami, SoiL Thornton, Sands Murray-Wassink, Marina Xenofontos
1 p.m. – 5 p.m. ALIAS (Turbo Moniker) Act 3 - Body/State
ALIAS (Turbo Moniker), performance part of COURTPLAY (2024). Photo Maarten Nauw. Copyright Hartwig Art Foundation.
ALIAS (Turbo Moniker), performance part of COURTPLAY (2024). Photo Maarten Nauw. Copyright Hartwig Art Foundation.
ALIAS (Turbo Moniker), performance part of COURTPLAY (2024). Photo Maarten Nauw. Copyright Hartwig Art Foundation.
With works by Noor Abed, Sophia Al-Maria, Özgür Kar, Brianna Leatherbury, Mire Lee, Peng Zuqiang, Jay Tan, Aqui Thami, Ryan Trecartin, SoiL Thornton, Sands Murray-Wassink, Marina Xenofontos.
ALIAS (Turbo Moniker) with Soraya Lutangu Bonaventure, Ivan Cheng, Mami Kang, Geo Wyex. Garments by Good & Bad (Marina M. Kolushova, Victor Stuhlmann, Ossi Lehtonen). Camera by Arvo Leo.
Text contributors include Sophia Al-Maria, Josefin Arnell, Ed Atkins, Felix Bernstein, Victoria Colmegna, Claire Fontaine, Robert Glück & Jocelyn Saidenberg, Annie Goodner, Calla Henkel & Max Pitegoff, Shiv Kotecha, Huw Lemmey, Nour Mobarak, Becket MWN, Ariana Reines, Tai Shani, Ryan Trecartin, Angharad Williams.
Food from Bakkerij Mater, Comfort Ball, Soup en Zo. Graphic Design by Sabo Day.
Mohamed Almusibli is an artist and curator based in Geneva. He has curated exhibitions at Centre d’Art Contemporain de Genève, FriArt Kunsthalle Fribourg, Antenna Space in Shanghai and Peres Projects in Milan among others. In 2021 he was in charge of Almusibli Panorama, a year long online video program for the Centre d’Art Contemporain that concluded with the first edition of the Swiss Moving Image Award. Since 2019 he runs the art space Cherish that he co-founded together with James Bantone, Thomas Liu Le Lann and Ser Serpas. Mohamed is a lecturer at the MFA program at l’Ecole Cantonal d’Art de Lausanne. He was recently appointed director and chief curator of Kunsthalle Basel starting in March 2024.
Ivan Cheng works with genres, languages, and their readings. He produces video, objects, performances and publications alongside complex and context specific spectacles. His background as a performer and musician form the basis for using performance as a critical medium. His work was recently presented at Lafayette Anticipations, Paris, FR; OCT0, Marseille, FR; Against Sun and Dust, Pesaro, IT; Frac des Pays de la Loire, Nantes, FR; gta exhibitions, Zurich, CH; Zweigstelle Capitain, Naples, IT; Édouard Montassut, Paris, FR; CNAC Magasin, Grenoble, FR; Vleeshal, Middelburg, NL. Confidences/Majority, the second in his series of vampire novels, was published by After 8 Books in 2022. Since 2017 he has initiated project space bologna.cc in Amsterdam.