Brace for Impact

“Technology’s influence on our individual and collective bodies is not always apparently dramatic or immediately mobilising. Instead, in anticipating its potential dangers and misfortunes, we find that its impact often lies in the bracing itself.”

Brace for Impact, the final project of De Appel Curatorial programme 2017-18, critically investigates the relationship between technology and affect. From 20 April to 20 May, various presentations including exhibitions and public programmes will take place across several locations in Amsterdam including De Appel, Stedelijk Museum, De School, and Amsterdam Airport Schiphol.

The digital age emerged with techno-positive promises of seamless transactions, of the possibility of unfettered global communication, and of the chance to be here and then elsewhere in no time. As generations pass and more “digital natives” are born, this utopian enthusiasm for technology has begun to ebb. The conversation has shifted towards concerns about netizens’ dependency as well as their political complicity in the infrastructures and flows that sustain silicon giants and big data. 

Taking this setting as the point of departure, Brace for Impact brings attention to the influence that technology and its politicised representations exert on human life. The project consists of 6 programmatic nodes that challenge and complement one another,  and unfold the divergent ways in which technological environments shape our affective dispositions.

Node #1 @ De Appel (Exhibition): Mehraneh Atashi, Samson Young
Node #2 @ De School (Exhibition): Basel Abbas & Ruanne Abou-Rahme, Agnieszka Polska
Node #3 @ De Appel (Sound works): Cilia Erens, Jacob Kirkegaard, echo+seashell
Node #4 @ Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (Time-based works): Sidsel Christensen, Jonathan Reus, Yao Qingmei 
Node #5 @ Amsterdam Airport Schiphol (Guided walk): De Appel Footnotes #04
Node #6 @ De Appel (Outdoor installation): Thomas Swinkels  

Curators: Sun A Moon, Luay Al Derazi, Jagna Lewandowska, Ong Jo-Lene, Arkadiusz Półtorak, and Miriam Wistreich

A commissioned essay by Jan Verwoert, Abstractions of Gritty Ecstasy is published in the Brace for Impact booklet that will be made available at all project venues.

Please click here  for more information and complete events schedule.  

About De Appel
De Appel brings together people, objects and ideas to explore the yet unknown. With an experimental, open-minded and inclusive focus, the programme serves the intellectually and emotionally curious, (non-) specialized art enthusiast. De Appel organises every year the internationally respected Curatorial Programme.

About De Appel Curatorial Programme
De Appel Curatorial Programme is an educational platform investigating alternative forms of exhibition making and curatorial activities. Since its inception in 1994, the ten-month program brings together six emerging international curators from various academic and experiential backgrounds, who collectively develop a project at De Appel.

Brace for Impact is made possible by De Appel, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, De School, STEIM, Goethe Institut Amsterdam, Danish Arts Foundation, The Danish Cultural in Brussels, Amsterdam Fonds Voor De Kunst, Creative Industries Fund Netherlands, Stroom Den Haag, Edouard Malingue Gallery, Container Artist Residency 01.