Six brand new sound, video and performance works at the Stedelijk Museum

The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam has invited five artists and an artist duo to create new time-based media artworks. The young artists will create a quick ‘sketch’ in response to today’s volatile world, and predict what the future might hold. Sketches for the Future presents a cross-section of the newest developments in time-based media, with artworks including video, performance and sound. The works will be launched on 10 September in the Teijin Auditorium.

The Stedelijk Museum has selected Simnikiwe Buhlungu, Sander Breure & Witte van Hulzen, Christine Sun Kim, Ghita Skali, Sung Tieu and Michele Rizzo to make work for Sketches for the Future. Their practices address urgent social and political issues such as labour, (colonial) power structures, communication, community and activism. The artists will receive a production budget and an honorarium for the commission. The Stedelijk, which has been collecting time-based media since the 1970s, was the first museum in the world to do so, and, after the presentation, the works will join the museum’s holdings. Thanks to Sketches for the Future, the museum will make its first acquisition of work by Sander Breure & Witte Van Hulzen, Christine Sun Kim and Sung Tieu, and will deepen its collection by adding new work by Ghita Skali, Simnikiwe Buhlungu and Michele Rizzo to previous acquisitions.

Each of the artists gives their own interpretation of Sketches for the Future: Michele Rizzo investigates recovery, care and transcendence through dance, and is experimenting with video art for the first time. Sung Tieu develops a soundscape with which she transports the listener straight to a factory work floor. In her work, Christine Sun Kim refers to The Simpsons and expresses her heartfelt personal vision for the United States. Ghita Skali draws on the French parody The Invaders, taking a humorous approach to a world order disrupted by COVID-19, and Simnikiwe Buhlungu reflects on the future and on the meaning of togetherness during her daily activities. Sander Breure & Witte van Hulzen devised 12 performative interventions that will be enacted in the coming months by a group of Stedelijk employees.

During the corona pandemic, opportunities for developing and presenting time-based media were restricted. With this commission, the Stedelijk hopes to reinvigorate the discipline. The artworks symbolise the resilience of artistic practice and offer ideas and actions for the future. The works can be seen from 10 September in the Teijin Auditorium of the museum and, after 10 December, in the newly redesigned collection presentation Tomorrow is a Different Day.

Sketches for the Future was created thanks to the contribution of Fonds 21 and the Mondriaan Fund.