Ben Russell, Terre Thaemlitz, Evan Ifekoya: 3 Movements

De Appel’s autumn event and exhibition cycle foregrounds the elements of music and sound in aesthetic and critical practice. Through the works of Ben Russell, Terre Thaemlitz, and Evan Ifekoya, 3 Movements engages sound as sensation, as information, and as political act. The programme consists of three distinct curatorial modes of address, from immersive solo-exhibition to DJ-set to polyphonic sound installation, each an articulation of an idiosyncratic critical approach to sound, vibration, and auditory communication. Additional performances and public events will complement the three central components.

Ben Russell
It Is Here/This Will Last Forever
October 4–December 1, 2018

This solo exhibition, the first by Ben Russell in the Netherlands, highlights the artist’s structural, vibrant, and multi-sensory approach to moving image art. Russell’s work is deeply connected to the history of documentary image-making, and often uses sound in surprising and disorienting ways to create a syncretic audiovisual world in which psychedelia merges with ethnography. Featuring two sonically immersive video installations, along with the premiere of a sonic sculpture that re-casts a sheet of copper as a speaking subject, the works in It Is Here/This Will Last Forever constellate an imperfect picture of living dystopias and imagined utopias, rendering our current world a place beyond the reach of myth, while searching for real and imaginary change.

Terre Thaemlitz
Crying The Club: A Night With DJ Sprinkles
October 11, 2018

This night-long conversation and DJ-set featuring Terre Thaemlitz’s underground deep house moniker DJ Sprinkles addresses DJ-ing as a vital discursive act. Nurtured in New York’s queer and transgender sex worker clubs in the late 1980’s and early 90’s, DJ Sprinkles’ work manifests itself as a form of deep sonic critique, while also being downright danceable. Intersecting the smooth, synthetic surfaces of deep house music with an oftentimes harshly formulated discourse on gender, sexuality, and class; the music offers a hyper-specific, analytical reading of the socio-economics of music production and DJ-ing. Throughout the conversation and DJ-set that compose Crying The Club: A Night With DJ Sprinkles, Thaemlitz’s work as DJ Sprinkles will be approached on an analytical level, opening up its essayistic dimensions.

Evan Ifekoya
A Score, A Groove, A Phantom, A Congregation
December 13, 2018–January 26, 2019

This exhibition reconfigures two recent bodies of work by artist Evan Ifekoya, Ritual Without Belief (2018), an immersive sound installation recently commissioned by Gasworks London, and the project A Score, A Groove, A Phantom (2016–ongoing), both of which investigate topics of polyvocality, subjectivity, authorship, and collaboration. A Score, A Groove, A Phantom explores archives of blackness, sociality, and inheritance as they diffract through queer nightlife and trauma in the present moment. Ritual Without Belief introduces “an algorithm across generations, locations and political affiliations,” with vocal samples that draw from literature and theory, music, conversations with friends, and more intimate thoughts and reflections. For this iteration, Ifekoya will be drawing on legacies of black queer resistance in the Netherlands.

For more information and updated info on all 3 Movements exhibitions and events, please check deappel.nl.

The Ensemble of Movements
The Ensemble is De Appel’s recurring education programme. It gathers polyphonic voices, ideas, and experiences deriving from exhibitions and other artistic projects through a wide range of activities and conversations. During 3 Movements, the Ensemble will investigate sound and gender expression through body movement. What does sound do to our body? What do our bodies do to our minds? What can we communicate through movement? These questions, along with others, will be explored to imagine other ways of body awareness. The Ensemble of Movements is organised by De Appel with the artists and choreographers Sedrig Verwoert and Christiaan De Donder.

3 Movements is sponsored by Amsterdam Fund for the Arts and Mondriaan Fund; and curated by Rachael Rakes and Niels Van Tomme.