Céline Condorelli: Proposals for a Qualitative Society (Spinning)

When: 9 September - 19 November 2017
Opening: Saturday 9 September, 17 hrs
Location: Stroom Den Haag, Hogewal 1-9
Open: Wed - Sun, 12- 17 hrs
Admission: free
Part of Attempts to Read the World (Differently)

Stroom School program
An in-depth program parallel to the exhibition, with lectures, talks, workshops, film screenings and the spinning top tournament Happy Spinning!;

Wednesday 13 September 2017, 20.00 - 21.30 hrs
Talk: What does it mean to make art public?
A public program in concurrence with the Stroom Invest Week 2017. Nine (inter)national curators, various artists and the audience will talk about the topic What does it mean to make art public? With a contribution by Céline Condorelli. Moderator: Saskia van Stein (director Bureau-Europa NAiM, Maastricht).

Sunday 8 October 2017, 13.00 - 14.30 hrs
Talk & film: The city: an adventure playground?
On location at Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam (AFFR), LantarenVenster, Rotterdam
What do we see if we look at the city through the lens of play? Tracy Metz will talk with a.o. Esmé Valk (artist, doing research into adventure playgrounds), Saša Radenovic (architect, doing research into play facilities in Sarajevo, from the theoretical viewpoint of Aldo van Eyck) and Jeroen van Mastrigt (creative director FreedomLab, expert in engagement strategies, with a background in game design). Illustrated with film clips of their own choice. Followed at 14.45 hrs by the première of the film De Pier by Jeroen Visser, about the pier of Scheveningen.

Thursday 12 October 2017, 16.30 - 18.00 hrs
Talk/discussion: Learning from... Johan Huizinga
by Jonas Ohlsson
According to Johan Huizinga the play element is primary to and a necessary condition of the generation of what we human beings call 'culture'. If our ability to play is under pressure, all of civilization is under threat. Johan Huizinga expressed these ideas in his dissertation Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture (1938). In the eyes of the artist Jonas Ohlsson it remains an urgent and inspiring book to this day. He will tell us why.
The Hague wine shop ‘De filosoof' will serve wine especially selected for the occasion.

Thursday 26 October 2017, 16.30 - 18.00 hrs
Talk/discussion: Learning from... Aldo van Eyck
by Saša Radenovic and Max Risselada
The architect Aldo van Eyck (1918-1999) designed more than 900 public playgrounds in post-war Amsterdam, commissioned by the Municipal Department of Public Works. According to Van Eyck "the unsuitability of the modern city for children calls into question its suitability for everyone." With these words in mind the architect Saša Radenovic looks at Sarajevo, the city he left in 1994. He wonders how he can use the Dutch know-how and the ideas of Van Eyck to inspire architects, urban planners and city administrators to create more space for playing children. Aldo van Eyck wrote about his ideas for the city in his text (and book) The Child, The City and the Artist (1962). Max Risselada, who was a professor at TU Delft for many years and who actually worked with Aldo van Eyck, will use this text and the work of Constant Nieuwenhuys to tell us more about the context in which the playgrounds were created. The two speakers will also engage in a discussion with the audience about why Van Eyck is still relevant today, both for the city in general and for The Hague in particular.
The Hague wine shop ‘De filosoof' will serve wine especially selected for the occasion.

Sunday 29 October 2017, 15.00 - 16.00 hrs
Workshop Happy Spinning! + guided tour of the exhibition
Workshop for children by Mariska van Andel with special attention for spinning tops, colours and pirouettes. At the same time parents, grandparents and all other visitors can join the guided tour of the exhibition. Or you can play with the spinning tops if you prefer to do so.

Thursday 9 November 2017, 16.30 - 18.00 hrs
Lecture/talk: Learning from... Hannah Arendt
by Daan Roovers
In her work and in this exhibition Céline Condorelli is inspired by the ideas and political philosophy of Hannah Arendt (1906-1975); and especially by Arendt's view of culture as "the company one chooses to keep, amongst people, amongst things, amongst thoughts, in the present as well as in the past". Therefore, we invited the philosopher Daan Roovers to tell us more about the ideas and theories of Hannah Arendt. Roovers recently wrote Mensen maken. Nieuw licht op opvoeden (Ambo/Anthos 2017), focusing, amongst others, on Arendt's interpretation of the concept of amor mundi - ‘love for the world'.
The Hague wine shop ‘De filosoof' will serve wine especially selected for the occasion.

Wednesday 15 November 2017, 17.00 - 19.00 hrs
Film program: Adventure Playgrounds
by Esmé Valk
Language spoken: Dutch / English
Esmé Valk presents her research into adventure playgrounds, illustrated by a series of unusual films. Adventure playgrounds are places where children can use all kinds of materials like planks, pallets, car tires, stones, pieces of plastic and other junk, to play with. They can play freely and unrestrictedly. They can do whatever they want. They can build something (or to tear it down). Adventure playgrounds were a reaction to the asphalt playgrounds with their rigid play-structures like slides, swings, seesaws and sandboxes.

Wednesday 15 November 2017, 20.00 - 21.30 hrs
Lecture The Playground Project
by Gabriela Burkhalter
Language spoken: English
Over the past few years various international museums organized exhibitions dedicated to the subject of play. One of them was The Playground Project in Kunsthalle Zürich (spring 2016), curated by the political scientist and urban planner Gabriela Burkhalter. In 2008 she started an ongoing research project and online archive on the history of playgrounds: www.architekturfuerkinder.ch. She made various exhibitions on the basis of this research and she manages the archive of Group Ludic, whose Buiteltuinen (rough and tumble playgrounds) are the subject of a Stroom window presentation.

Sunday 19 November 2017, 15.00 -17.00 hrs
Spinning top tournament Happy Spinning! + guided tour of the exhibition
On the closing day of the exhibition we organize a spinning top tournament. Everyone can join. Bring your own (or self-made) spinning tops or play with the ones in the exhibition.

About Proposals for a Qualitative Society (Spinning)
With Proposals for a Qualitative Society (Spinning) artist Céline Condorelli presents Stroom's exhibition space as a place for rehearsal and play. A series of carousels and spinning tops invite visitors to play and interact with them, while (historical) references of radical playground designs show what play means for the city and for society.  

For Céline Condorelli intimacy with culture is extremely important, and a hugely political issue. She believes culture should not be something one looks at (silently) from a distance, it is part of everyday life. Condorelli's artworks therefore often allow for intimate contact usually excluded from cultural objects: her works can be used and touched. They have double or triple lives, make references to works by others, and fulfill different spatial functions, such as an entrance, a display structure, a background, seating, models or play objects.

Proposals for a Qualitative Society (Spinning) draws on political theorist Hannah Arendt's concept of culture as the company one "chooses to keep, amongst people, amongst things, amongst thoughts, in the present as well as in the past". It further includes references to architects and artists such as Lina Bo Bardi, Palle Nielsen and Aldo van Eyck. Their ideas about play and culture are present in a series of new 'wall works' developed by Condorelli with graphic designer James Langdon.

Céline Condorelli considers exhibitions as constructions through which we apprehend the world, which allow us to rehearse possibilities for making things public. In this way, after this exhibition, the carousels will be permanently relocated to the playgrounds of two local schools in The Hague, whose children have been actively involved as researchers throughout the process and development of the project. By testing the relationship between exhibition practices and public art, by pedagogical experiments from gallery to school, this exhibition investigates and outlines possible roles for children and artists in society.

Céline Condorelli presented a first edition of the carousels in 2016 for the exhibition Playgrounds in the Museu de Arte de Sao Paolo (MASP); a re-enactment with contemporary artists of the exhibition of the same name organised by Nelson Leirner and Lina Bo Bardi in 1969 at the opening of MASP. The spinning tops were developed during a residency at Kunsthalle Lissabon in 2016 and shown in the exhibition Concrete Distractions.

Proposals for a Qualitative Society (Spinning) is Condorelli's contribution to Attempts to Read the World (Differently); a program in which Stroom together with various artists

 looks in a searching, intuitive way at our present world, the rapid developments therein and possible futures. And by doing so, imagines a possible new world.

Céline Condorelli (CH, IT, UK) is a London-based artist, currently Professor at NABA Milan, and one of the founding directors of Eastside Projects, Birmingham, UK; she was the author and editor of Support Structures published by Sternberg Press (2009). Condorelli developed the exhibition Display Show at Stroom Den Haag with James Langdon and Gavin Wade, starting at Temple Bar Gallery, then Eastside Projects, and in its final phase shown at Stroom Den Haag, where it later transformed into Another Reality. After Lina Bo Bardi (2016).

Recent exhibitions include the Gwangju Biennale, Liverpool Biennial, Sydney Biennial, and Concrete Distractions, Kunsthalle (Lissabon, 2016), bau bau (HangarBicocca, Milan, IT, 2015), Céline Condorelli (Chisenhale Gallery, UK), Positions (Van Abbemuseum, NL), including the publication The Company She Keeps, with Bookworks (2014). Her first monograph, bau bau is published by Mousse (2017).
www.celinecondorelli.eu

Proposals for a Qualitative Society (Spinning) is made possible through the generous support of the Mondriaan Fund, BankGiro Loterij Fonds, BPD Cultuurfonds and the City of The Hague.

Parallel to the exhibition, but from another perspective, Stroom presents the exhibition Play your city in Atrium City Hall (2 - 21 October 2017).