Exhibition — Dec 16 until Dec 16, 2004

Admission
Necessary. Send an e-mail to reservations@stedelijk.nl, stating your full name, e-mail address, telephone number, and the date of the program you want to attend.

The Belgian artist Johan Grimonprez in conversation with Jeroen Boomgaard and showing 'Looking for Alfred' in SMCS on 11, Thursday, December 16.
Commences 8:00 p.m.
Admission: € 2,50

Tickets are available the whole day, until 8:00 p.m., at the ticket window of Stedelijk Museum CS on the second storey.
Reservations via desk@stedelijk.nl or 020 573 2811

Recently the Stedelijk Museum acquired the pioneering video film dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, by the Belgian artist Johan Grimonprez. The film shows a history or aeroplane hijackings and terrorist attacks, in a rapid montage of existing television and film fragments. The acquisition was reason to invite Grimonprez himself for a discussion of his work. Dorine Mignot, curator of film and video art at the Stedelijk Museum, will welcome the audience. Art historian Jeroen Boomgaard then presents a short introduction to dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, and directly after the showing of the new film work Looking for Alfred opens a dialogue with the artist.

Looking for Alfred documents Grimonprez’s search for Hitchcock look-alikes. In its orientation to the many walk-on roles that Hitchcock himself played, and through the montage of the images, the work not only contains references to fifty years of film history, but also explores the boundary between fiction and documentary.

Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y (1997) is presently to be seen in Stedelijk Museum CS, as part of the exhibition‘ParaDocs’. Grimonprez says of this film, ‘It begins with several nostalgic images from the 1950s and ‘60s... But in the course of the film a very different media climate becomes visible... right up through the cynical spectacle terrorism that we can see on CNN. In addition to being a history of aeroplane hijackings, dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y is also a history of the manner in which hijackings are presented in the media... and even of the technique of the media, from the film camera to the camcorder.’ Because of the events on 9/11, in addition to being an historical survey dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y has also proved to be a somewhat macabre prophecy.

‘ParaDocs’ continues its run through January 16. This exhibition includes video and photo work with a documentary character, selected from the collection of the Stedelijk Museum. In addition to Grimonprez, other artists represented in it include Marina Abramovic, Günther Förg, Meredith Monk and Bruce Nauman, and photographers such as Carel Blazer, Ad van Denderen, Kadir van Lohuizen and Koen Wessing. The point of departure was the theme War and Violence, from the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, which took place in November.
The exhibition is open until 9:00 p.m. on Thursday evenings.

SMCS on 11 
SMCS on 11 is the programme of lectures, discussions, film and video
presentations of Stedelijk Museum CS. The ‘11’ refers to the 11th storey of the Post CS building, where most of the activities take place. They are regularly on Thursday evening. The Museum itself is open to 9:00 p.m. that evening.