Bathtub lecture
with Renzo Martens and Ced’art Tamasala
Events — Nov 30, 2024
Renzo Martens, together with Ced'art Tamasala, gives the third Badkuip lecture, an annual event in which thinkers and makers reflect on the major current questions in the art world. Expect a thorough excavation of the foundations of the Stedelijk and propositions for the way forward to this museum and others.
- Price
- Museumticket + 3 EU
- Location
- Auditorium
- Time
- Nov 30, 3 pm until 6 pm
- Main language
- English
- Admission
- Tickets
In this back- and back and forward-looking lecture, Renzo Martens will dig up the foundations of the Stedelijk Museum and museum and its legacy of championing groundbreaking art, to then articulate a bright and shared future for a museum by and for the people for the Stedelijk.
He will make an inventory of who the public and stakeholders of the Stedelijk are, and explore how they can all be more involved in formulating the future of the museum. He will also identify the challenges based on his own position, bias (as far as he can oversee it) and experience. During the lecture there will be an intervention by Ced'art Tamasala, member of the Congolese plantation workers collective CATPC, who will speak from his experience and position about the hopes and expectations of communities like his, within the Kingdom but also in Congo, Suriname and Indonesia.
Following the lecture, Nous Faes will respond to Martens and Tamasala from her perspective. Finally, Martens and Faes will join in a conversation with Rein Wolfs and the audience, moderated by Aldith Hunkar. After the program drinks will be served next to the Auditorium, providing the opportunity to continue the conversation informally.
EXPOSING THE INSTITUTION’S FOUNDATIONS
On 30 November 2024, at 10.30 a.m., before the Bathtub Lecture, Renzo Martens will dig deeper into one of the corners of the Stedelijk Museum. Martens’ partial re-enactment of Jan Dibbets’ historic work aims to delve further into the museum’s foundations.
Martens draws inspiration from an iconic work by artist Jan Dibbets from the 1969 group show Op losse schroeven (an idiomatic Dutch expression that translates literally as ‘on loose screws’), in which Dibbets questioned the role of the museum and the conventional experience of art. Dibbets dug trenches at each corner of the building to expose the museum’s foundations and symbolically place the Stedelijk on a pedestal. By offering visitors a disruptive experience, he challenged the traditional relationship between art and its audiences.
The performance takes place on the corner Paulus Potterstraat – Sandbergplein. The results will be on view until 2 pm on November 30.
Biographies
Renzo Martens
Renzo Martens (1973) studied political science and art. After making the films Episode I and Episode III: Enjoy Poverty, Martens established Human Activities and its “reverse gentrification program” on a former Unilever plantation in the DR Congo. Together with the plantation workers of the Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise (CATPC), he employs artistic critique to build a new world – not symbolically, but in material terms. Together, they opened a White Cube that returns the land that was confiscated to the community. With curator Hicham Khalidi, Martens supported CATPC to provide the Dutch entry for the Venice Biennale 2024.
Ced'art Tamasala
Ced’art Tamasala is founding member and vice president of CATPC. CATPC - ‘Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise’ or ‘Congolese Plantation Workers Art League’ in full - is an art cooperative of plantation workers based in Lusanga, DR Congo. CATPC was founded in 2014, with renowned environmental activist René Ngongo. In 2017, the New York Times named their solo show at SculptureCenter 'the most challenging show of the year’. CATPC has built a practice of securing hundreds of acres of exhausted plantation land for future generations with the proceeds of their art. In the middle of that land, they built a museum, the White Cube Lusanga. On that land, they develop new pathways of restitution, establishing worker-owned, ecological and inclusive food gardens: the Post Plantation. CATPC participated in the 2024 Venice Biennale at the Dutch pavilion and is laureate of the S+T+ARTS Prize Africa 2024 Grand Prize.
Nous Faes
Nous Faes, BFA, MSc (1960) started as an aspiring anthropologist, switched to visual arts, became a producer in the arts, and had a fairly successful term as director of an art institution. She then made a U-turn towards theory and sociology, committing herself to policy bodies to inform, discuss, and ultimately critique them. As a writer on (art) policy and a lecturer, she shares well-informed knowledge about art as a system, but primarily encourages her audience to look well beyond their own immediate horizon.
Aldith Hunkar
Aldith Hunkar is moderator, presentor, trainer and creator, with over 30 years of experience in a broad range of media, from the national news to her own freestyle multi-media journalism.