ART SCIENCE dialogue: Tanja Engelberts (Special Amsterdam Art Week)
| VU ART SCIENCE gallery warmly invites you to join us for the ART SCIENCE dialogue as part of Amsterdam Art Week on Wednesday 21 May, from 16:00 to 17:30.
This dialogue is organised by the gallery to accompany the exhibition Water Views. Artists and scientists together with the audience will explore several views on water from the colonial trade routes to the ecological impact of our changing climate, to old and new aquatic thinking. This first ART SCIENCE dialogue of this exhibition will focus on the work of Tanja Engelberts and her work Dead River. Inspired by Bruno Latour’s ‘The Parliament of Things’, Tanja Engelberts examined the Rhône river from an animistic point of view. She attempts to imagine what it’s like to be a fast-flowing river, slowly filling with Anthropocene-era artifacts over a 600 kilometre stretch. A landscape steeped in chemical waste, that is slowly disappearing due to climate change. With this dialogue forming part of Amsterdam Art Week, we are starting the series of ART SCIENCE dialogues with Tanja Engelbert, a former resident of the Rijksakademie. The Rijksakademie’s Open Studios, from May 22, is one of the central events of Amsterdam Art Week. Engelbert’s and Zammit’s conversation will focus on how art can mediate our relationship with nature and in so doing, help shape our relationship to ourselves and others. Taking fluidity and the concept of ‘bodies of water’ as starting point, we will explore how water can inform our connection to a changing world. About the speakers Tanja Engelberts lives and works in The Hague, The Netherlands. In 2021, Tanja Engelberts completed her two-year residency at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam. For the past four years she has worked on several projects related to fossil fuel industry and in particular the changing landscape of the North Sea, disappearing oil and gas platforms. Through these projects, she also explores our changing attitudes towards this industry. In her artistic practice she studies what happens to the processes that set people in motion, which have consequences that manifest themselves long after they have disappeared. Manuela Zammit is a contemporary art historian and critic based in the Netherlands. She currently coordinates the Research & Development department at Nieuwe Instituut (Rotterdam) and lectures in contemporary art and culture at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her writing regularly appears on Metropolis M magazine, academic journals and other more experimental platforms. In 2023, she completed a Research Master in Critical Studies in Art and Culture at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Programme Introduction to current exhibition Water Views 16:30 Library Lounge (VU Amsterdam University Library, Main Building) ART SCIENCE dialogue with speakers and audience 17:30 Closing Admission is free Image: Tanja Engelberts, Dead River, 2023/ Photo: Gert Jan van Rooij |