OPENAVOND AT DE APPELby Jan van Raay
Installation at De Appel
ARTZIEN, Vol. 1, No. 5, March 1979
A refreshing new addition to Amsterdam is the concept begun by De Appel this
month, the "Open Avond," or open evening. With plans to continue throughout
this year, the first Wednesday of each month is being offered to artists who
would like to do a performance, show films or videotape, etc. Artists need
only present themselves at the gallery the day before "Open Avond" and give
some idea of what they plan to do so that the evening can be almost
spontaneously coordinated. This eliminates the more formal route of
application to De Appel, having proposals passed by a board and then waiting
for a scheduled time, and it is an excellent opportunity for those younger,
less exposed artists. But they are faced with certain problems: those of
time, if there are many artists applying for one night, and a necessity to
produce their own announcements, if desired, or information sheets, which
were non-existent the first night. One artist had printed and mailed out his
own announcements, but those not belonging to a union must be prepared to
cover their own expenses.
I was a bit apprehensive when I learned that there were to be five offerings
the first night, March 7th, the variety and pace set by the pieces
themselves made it an interesting evening. Because of the situation of De
Appel, although events may occur simultaneously or one after another, it's
not necessary to present all of them. There is always another space to move
to. You can set your own pace.
There was an unusually large crowd the first night -- a curious mix of punk,
Amsterdam art and literary regulars and others. The evening began with
Gerard Pas who also videotaped his own performance. He began by presenting a
round cake to the audience on which was written the words "KUNSTLEDEMATEN."
He proceeded to talk about his battle with polio as a child, and to eat the
cake, very slowly, as he spoke. He told the audience the story of how he
became the Polio poster child, the rejections of schoolmates because her was
a cripple with a heavy metal brace on his leg, and of traumatic experiences
at a camp for crippled children ("Am I like them? Can't I see the difference
anymore?") And her ate and ate the cake. ("So I continued to consumer and I
decided to become an artist. I went to New York and my illusions were
shattered because I went to the Museum of Modern Art and contracted venereal
disease by rubbing my penis against a Picasso...I hear the artists of the
world talk about big deals, and I wonder, and art started to become cheap.")
He began to wretch, still eating. The cake was more than half consumed, but
he continued to eat and talk until only the word "KUNST" remained on the
icing. ("I called myself an artist for lack of a better name, and my work
became like an old lived out prostitute. I didn't want it anymore.") Forcing
his fingers down his throat he began to vomit over the word "KUNST," and
hands dripping slime on the pink icing, he ate his own vomit. And then -
"I've had enough" and it was over. It was a concise and well timed piece,
but the monologue tended to get a bit overindulgent. The events of which he
was speaking seemed so intense, so sincere, which made me resent the
necessity to use his fingers to force vomiting. The inner pressure should
have been enough.
The second offering of the evening was Harry Hoogstraten who stood reading
thoughts and statements in Dutch and English as a great number of color
transparencies were projected on a screen. Slides of paintings and collages,
book covers, old photographs, and in the background disco music played from
a tapedeck. Hoogstraten read intensely, sweat pouring down his brow, and the
overabundance of slides projected on the screen, It was too long. There was
too much. It was reminiscent of the late 1950s at a coffee house popular in
New York then called the Gaslight on Bleecker Street. People like
Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg and Kerouac could be found there, reading their
poetry. Everyone thought it was very deep. Many were bored but they looked
intense.
The third event was given by Roni Klinkhamer. A figure dressed in a white
paper jumpsuit stood next to a film screen on which was projected a slide of
a gold mask. Wearing a high hood made of newspaper, and carrying blue bag
and plastic sack, the figure passed along slowly in front of the screen
through the projected image of the gold mask. The bag and sack were dropped
to the floor, and the newspaper hood removed, revealing a blond girl. She
proceeded to tear up the newspaper hood. Then, kneeling, she pulled many
newspapers from the blue bag strewing them on the floor around her. The last
article out of the bag was a notebook. Revealing her palm to the audience on
which was painted the "eye of God," she turned to a microphone and read from
the book about the daily newspapers, "We are not protected...we want to be
black on white...black it white...black and white things that happened
somewhere and you read it in the daily news." I was reminded of Charlotte
Moorman's piece for the Avant Garde Festival of New York in 1968, when, in
the middle of Central Park, she took a copy of "The Daily News," shredded it
up and put it into an electric blender with a bit of water. After making a
thick gruel of it she fed it to one of New York's more popular reporters at
that time. And in the early seventies Lil Picard had done "Messages,
Messages," dressed in a newspaper dress and hat as slides of her own daily
life ritual were projected on a screen. I regret that I wasn't able to see
the completion of Ms. Klinkhamer's piece, (a coughing fit due to a recent
bout of pneumonia forced me to leave the room), but my son Cassidy reported
to me that she then put down her book and microphone, opened the top of her
jumpsuit a bit, and pulled out five pieces of red clay. She piled them on
the floor, then picked the mass up, pressing it to her forehead, chin and
neck. Ripping it off she then distributed small pieces to everyone in the
first row of the audience saying, "Nu ga ik de troep opruimen." (Now I'll go
clean the stairs)
The audience of the fourth performance seemed to be enthralled by his
lecture and wit. Egbert Switters, looking very punk, punctuated his remarks
by drawing diagrams on a blackboard, and as one source said "Explained the
mathematical functions relative to their occurance in this cause and effect
universe. For example, the thematical significance of the tetrahedron in the
pyramids and Stonehenge."
The finale this evening was by Piero Heliczer who sat at a table on which
various books and magazines were placed. After some music (Te Deum by
Charpenteur) he began to read what he said was something her had written
some time ago. An autobiographical sketch about his wife and child deserting
him in London, about sabotage and how to make a better world, and then his
wife and child deserting him again, this time in France. He went on with
his problems as a film maker and how we must learn to love and stop
sabotage. The manner in which he delivered it made it almost embarrassing to
listen to. It ended with him delivering, for sale, the collection of
publications on the table which ranged from Inter/View and Kulchur to Seven
Poems of Charles Henri Ford.
It was a long evening, but an unpredictable one. Hopefully "Open Avond" at
De April will continue to draw both participants and an audience. And
hopefully we'll have some pleasant surprises. It is a welcome idea.
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