Jet lag at deServiceGarage, Amsterdam

Jet lag
performance
15 minutes
deServiceGarage, Amsterdam
March 23rd, 2013

Jet lag is a performance that reflects the impressions and observations of a traveller in a constant flux today.

Here´s an excerpt of the piece: vimeo.com/mercedesazpilicueta

Lecture-performance at the Dutch Art Institute, Anrhem. Guests: Chris Kraus and Erick Beltrán

lecture-performance
Dutch Art Institute
Arnhem, NL
March 2013

Guests: Chris Kraus and Erick Beltrán 

a short description of the poetry-performance

My work addresses a multiple subject in terms of affect and memory that is informed by and embraces a discourse of alterity. 

Through performance I try to merge poetry, language, appropriation, memory and repetition, where the voice takes a key role as a presence that comes out of an absent body. 

This poetry-performance is a type of format I have developed in the last couple of years where I recite a durational piece between fifteen and twenty minutes, that it is, on the other hand, performed more than once in different venues, being never the same piece. 

The scripts are composed as poems of several verses, by impressions and observations from everyday life and relationships, things that continuously happen to us, especially in the state of moving from one place to another. When performing, there is also a special emphasis put on rhythm, so as to say, on how the form develops from its content.

Currently I am further developing my work by using the script of the performances as a source material, composing a mise-en-scene of different images extracted from each verse, that are presented in the exhibition spaces as backdrops for the performances.

Back home - performance at Lost & Found, Theatrum Anatomicum De Waag Society, Amsterdam

Press > Mediamatic www.mediamatic.net/334117/nl/lost-amp-found-een-dissectie-van-het-creatieve

Back home
performance, 12 min. 
Lost & Found
Theatrum Anatomicum, De Waag Society, Amsterdam
December, 2012

Lost & Found is a night of stray images and sounds by Alma Mathijsen, Julia van Mourik, Kay Schuttel and Suzanne Wallinga. 

www.lost.nl

#CareerChange at Kunstvlaai, Amsterdam

#CareerChange by Mercedes Azpilicueta and Ohad Ben Shimon offers a critical and empathetic framework to think anew the cultural values, personal trajectories and professional practicalities involved in being an artist today.

The collaborative participatory format #CareerChange took place for the first time on Saturday November 24th, 2012 at the Kunstvlaai Festival of Independents INexactly THIS; as part of the collaborative project Day Shifts: Taking Turns at Upominki, an artist-run space based in Rotterdam.

During nine hours we played the role of career change advisers and conducted intimate interviews with 17 people. Each encounter lasted approximately 45 minutes, where people were opening up to share their doubts and insecurities in order to reflect upon, improve or change their career. While most participants brought into the space different concerns to discuss, others preferred to tell their own personal story as a way to better understand what they were doing and where are they going. They used the space and us as interlocutors for their thoughts and feelings related to their career and personal life.

Co-op Academy / the Van Abbemuseum presents 'Useful Art' at the Liverpool Biennial

Co-op Academy / the Van Abbemuseum presents 'Useful Art'

Course Coordinator: Nick Aikens
With: Steven ten Thije, Charles Esche, Annie Fletcher, Gemma Medina, Christiane Berndes, Diana Franssen, Daniel Neugebauer and guest lecturers

Participants: Anna Dasovic, Eden Mitsenmacher, Mercedes Azpillicueta, Fotini Gouseti, Katja van Driel, Pendar Nabipour, Rei Kakiuchi, Susan van Hengstum,Yoeri Guepin.

Introduction

The Van Abbemuseum's course with the DAI will focus its attention on the core research area of the museum - discussing, problematising and implementing the notion of 'Useful Art'. Art's perceived role in and value to society is changing. With the demise of ideological binaries between east and west, avant-garde art is no longer positioned as a symbol of a liberal, free society. This means the question of art's 'use' or 'use-value' to society has to be re-calibrated - for artists, institutions and the public we address. This allows us to re-think art not as an autonomous activity, detached from the world, but rather as a tool to be used. For the Van Abbe, this means we must consider again our function and role as a public museum for modern ant contemporary art. Drawing on the historical examples of John Ruskin and his nineteenth century 'Mechanics Institute' to contemporary practitioner Tania Bruguera, the notion of art's use and role in society can take on many forms, from aesthetic experience to socially informed practice that functions outside the 'designated' spaces for art. The course 'Useful Art' will include monthly sessions with heads of departments in the museum, including collections, research, exhibitions and mediation who will use the DAI course to consider how the idea of 'Useful Art' affects and influences their roles in the museum. International guest speakers, who are collaborating with the Van Abbemuseum, will be invited to present their research and respond to the work of DAI students. The course will culminate in a project in Eindhoven in July 2013, drawing on the areas explored throughout the year.

Poetry-performance at Zimmer, Tel Aviv

Poetry-performance at Zimmer
(הצימר)
Tel Aviv, Israel
August, 2012

Video-performance at Hellebou, Notodden, Norway

23 facts in Hellebou
Video-performance, 13 min.
artist-in-residence at Hellebou, outskirts of Notodden, Norway
July, 2012

Hellebu is a traditional log cabin, located in the outskirts of Notodden, Norway. The cabin functions as an artist residency, publishing house, and as a venue for exhibitions and live events. Founded in 2009 by Johanne Birkeland andEllen Henriette Suhrke, Hellebou came about after a weekend spent together in the cabin. At that time, the cabin was mainly used for storage space. With a desire to revive and make use of the surroundings, we turned Hellebu into an artist residency. We organised its interiors, and made room for studios in a neighboring woodshed and a playhouse. The studios were provided with electricity and simple tools. We coated the cabin's lumber walls with tar, and cleared the forest trail. Since our initiative began, more than 50 artists have lived and worked in Hellebu, for a stay of their own chosen duration. Our guests are encouraged to bring along a companion, and explore the surrounding fishing lakes, forest and mountain trails. Each artist should produce a work, which is somehow related to the site, and the works are later presented in exhibitions or publications. We're currently building our own permanent collection, based on original works from the previous years. Hellebou has produced two magazines, three 7" vinyl records, postcards and an artist book. Other activities include presentations in book fairs and exhibitions.

Poetry-performance at Documenta 13, Kassel

Poetry-performance at the poetry readings curated by Didem Yazıcı and Raimundas Malasauskas

OFF Documenta 13, Kassel

June, 2012

There is a lot to do back home, final lecture presentation at D.A.I., Arnhem

Back home
Poetry-performance

Final Lecture presentation at the Dutch Art Institute

Anrhem, Netherlands

June 2012

Here´s the documentation of the performance: http://vimeo.com/mercedesazpilicueta

28 public performance & lecturepresentations at the DAI 

Among the DAI's key-features are the annual End of Year Lecture-presentations and Performance-lectures by students, an open and experimental, art educational format, coined by the DAI in 2003. A three day long marathon, a surprising hybrid of research, reflection,presentation and performance in front of an audience of peers, public and invited reviewers of international standing.

This year we are thrilled to welcome Dr. Clementine Deliss, Director of the Museum der Weltkulturen in Frankfurt, and Dr. David Dibosa, Course Director for MA Art and Theory at Chelsea College of Art and Design in London. After each 20 minute-presentation ( during which the floor entirely belongs to individual students) the guests will give a spoken review on the form and the content of the presentation and will discus their evaluations amongst each other and with the audience. The sessions will be moderated by Gabriëlle Schleijpen, Head of program DAI /MFA ArtEZ.

In preparation of this event half of the DAI's student body has been working with dramaturge Jan-Philipp Possmann and theatre director/ performer/filmmaker David Weber-Krebs and the other half with artist Otobong Nkanga during the year long seminars Performing Presentation/ Presenting Performance and When the stage hits you.

Advance notice: Saturday July 7 we will conclude the year with a festive finissage at the Showroom Arnhem ( a one minute walk from the DAI's venue in the Kortestraat in Arnhem). 13 graduating students present  their artist publications at the Publishing Class book launch , an  installation with individual works, curated by Grant Watson  and a "practice- theatre" - group performance tutored by Ian White and organized by  If I Can't Dance I Don't want To Be Part Of Your Revolution.

practice-theatre 2011/2012

A year-long project tutored by Ian White in collaboration with Emma Hedditch, Jimmy Robert, Myriam van Imschoot and curated by If I Can't Dance, I Don't Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution. 
Coordinated by Tanja Baudoin.

Practice-theatre is a cumulative project that seeks to explore and question, through performance, the various aspects of what the place of theatre means to us as artists and how we might want to use it in our work. Each month the project will expand and enact ideas around a different aspect of theatre - with what’s done one month mapping onto the next - to consider the positions from which we speak, how we act, and what, through different frames, speaking and action might be.

For more information about the programme please visit the link: http://practicetheatre.wordpress.com/

Dutch Art Institue / MFA ArtEZ & Raw Material Company Work In Progress / Learning Pieces Performance, presentations, discussion

14 May 2012, 16–20 Raw Material CompanySicap Amitié 2 Dakar, Senegal The Dutch Art Institute (DAI) connects art students to practitioners at the forefront of praxis worldwide. By initiating explorative associations DAI’s research trips aim to promote a better understanding of the (art) world in transition. From May 3 until May 16, during the Biennale and Dakar OFF events, the DAI teams up with colleagues in and around Dakar. Findings will be shared during a public “class” on May 14, organized in collaboration with Raw Material Company, center for art, knowledge, and society that works to foster appreciation and growth of African artistic and intellectual creativity. Practice-theatre…a performance project tutored by Ian White in collaboration with Emma Hedditch and Jimmy Robert, curated by If I Can't Dance I Don't Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution and coordinated by Tanja Baudoin. The project seeks to explore how ‘theatre’ can be understood from the position of artistic practice, to experiment with how such a set of interpretations might be of use within it. The project considers, occupies, and enacts aspects of theatre and its operations—to consider the positions from which we speak, how we act, and what, through different frames, speaking and action might be. The trip to Senegal begins with a working period at the Ecole des Sables, a dance company and school for African dance, located in the coastal village of Toubab Dialaw. Here the students will work on developing a model of ‘theatre’ as the group has come to understand it through their work together and develop a series of ‘performances’ through which this model might be demonstrated. With: Mercedes Azpilicueta, Rosie Heinrich, Anna Hoetjes, Eden Mitsenmacher, Lara Morais, Ane Ostrem, Eric Philippoz, Vanja Smiljanic, Marija Sujica, Witta Tjan, Sander Uitdehaag, and Mariana Zamarbide. Utilizing the landlines of Café Flinck and Café Berkhout in Amsterdam, their telephone will be receiving our incoming calls, audioworks, interviews, and sounds, connecting the local customers with Dakar. In cooperation with De Appel Curatorial Programme's exhibition and public interventions:www.threeartistswalkintoabar.com. Special thanks to Helmut Vogt and Koyo Kouoh. Framework : Gabriëlle Schleijpen Production: Jacq van der Spek

Kapsalon at UND 7

Isabella Gerstner, Wolfgang Wirth, Marc de Maisonneuve, Klaus Bock and Mercedes Azpilicueta have all been artists in residence in Rotterdam in 2011. The experience of sharing time and working on projects together led to the idea of establishing a permanent structure for common work though all of them currently live in different places.

Kapsalon is a test set-up to recontextualize ourselves as a collective disembodied voice.

Kapsalon took part in the UND 7, a platform for art initiatives in Karlsruhe, Germany.

March 7th to 11th 2012.

http://www.und7.de/

F.I.R.E.I.N.C.A.I.R.O.

We Are The Time:
Art Lives in the Age of Global Transition.

Conference-festival week at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie

12^th – 16^th March 2012

http://wearethetime.info

F.I.R.E.I.N.C.A.I.R.O. daily 13h30 to 19h30

F.I.R.E.I.N.C.A.I.R.O. is a Live Radio/Event space inspired, in part, by the renowned

Belfast independent record label, Good Vibrations. The project is a collaboration with the artist-run space Goleb, the UK community radio station Soundart Radio (102.5FM), and the Gerrit Rietveld Academie’s very own Radio Rietveld.

http://projectgoleb.wordpress.com

http://www.soundartradio.org.uk

http://radio.rietveldacademie.nl

Art and music have long contributed to society and our way of life. But in these dire financial times where media has been swallowed by giant conglomerates, and culture has fallen under the scrutinizing eye of market capitalism; where is the unifying ‘space’ that announces its difference to the prescribed status quo?

Throughout the history of popular culture this collective space, appearing both physically and conceptually, has been a hub of creativity, exploring both new and old technologies and giving birth to new sounds and new vibrations.

In Belfast, caught between the conflicts of its time, it was a little known record shop and label called Good Vibrations. Famous for producing the first record that was ever played twice in a row on British airwaves, it was also a project that recognized the potential of music to be a unifying force.

A little over a year ago it appeared that the Internet, with its use of social media, could be the free space where this difference could be heard; the apparent spark that lit the fires of the provincial town of Sidi Bouzid, which later reverberated to the cities of Cairo, London and New York.

With the recent censorship laws being proposed on the Internet, our question as a group has been: If we could freely express ourselves, what kind of vibrations would we want to send out there? And the workgroup’s answer has (so far) been: F.I.R.E.I.N.C.A.I.R.O.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEkG3raANtU which after all is an intense love song.

Throughout the week, different radio programs will take place with a variety of guests and a range of live musical acts.

The entire project will be broadcasted as a Live Feed through the Radio Rietveld website, and will also appear on the UK community radio station Soundart Radio (102.5FM)

Follow the week’s events on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/pages/FIREINCAIRO/374246752600653

The entire project will also be streamed live on

www.fireincairo.org

The streams will later be accessible through an archive on the website.

Tutors: Taf Hassam / Renée Ridgway

Coordination/Radio Hosting: Taf Hassam (UK), Kaja Wie Van Der Pas (NO), Maria Guggenbichler (DE)

Radio / Newspaper / Design:

Andre D Chapatte, Carina Erdmann, Charline Tuma, David Hermans, Gintare Kerbelyte, Julie Hénault, Lilia Luganskaia, Lotte Voets, Mads Wildgaard, Marius Jopen, Melissa Tun Tun, Mickael Marman, Mio Fujimaki, Noga Harel, Øjan Døsen, Pernilla Roos, Raoul Audouin, Sabo Day, Stefan Auberg, YURI AN, Vytautus Volbekas

House Band: Gerard Barry (IRE) + Charlie Stewart-Liberty (IRE)

Guests: Simon Ferdinando (KE), Natasha Ginwala (IN), Roel Griffioen (NL), Jakob Ehrlich (AT), Jessica Dill (US) + Radio Contributions from: Hiwa K and many More.

Special thanks to: Renée Ridgway, Gabriëlle Schleijpen, Alena Alexandrova, Jort van der Laan, Anna Hoetjes, Joris Lindhout, Lost Property http://lostproperty.cx, Mark Kremer, & Kristina Mirova

Snippets

I chose to make a visual poem inside this office.

Literature, art history and daily life situations were my

working material to build a poly-narrator.

I found some sources I wanted to work with and some other

precarious materials as a card from a restaurant or

leftovers from a present.

Victor Grippo (AR) and Marcel Broodthaers (BE) -with part

of their works Analogy IV from 1972 and Fig.1 Programme

from the same year- combine in a speech chain making and

unmaking themselves in a particular topology where others

and their discourse- are included. Like poet Mariano Blatt

(AR) with his fanzine Sarpadit from 2007, and artist

Nicolás Sarmiento (AR) with whom we wrote together a text

based on simple and daily life questions that usually

appear in chain emails or spam. We tried to utter the text

using different manners of speaking through an online

conversation between Rotterdam and Buenos Aires.

Watching slalom on a couch / Performance at De Derde Dinsdag at V2_ Rotterdam, January 2012

Dear Sister - performance at Dutch Art Institute - Arnhem/NL - December 2011

Notes from Rotterdam - Poetry reading at Het Wilde Weten - Rotterdam, October 2011

‘Since I believe through readings I can address the importance of regaining the “I” of the poet, I would like to invite you to a poetry reading. I am trying to build a language that somehow evokes the use of the body and voice as vigorous gestures, as vehicles to understand relationships and affection. On this evening, I will read some texts from Buenos Aires and some from Rotterdam. And for the unexpected, I will also like to be read, among all, a poem from someone I like very much.’

Mercedes Azpilicueta (1981, Argentina), artist in residence at Het Wilde Weten, October 2011.

She recently received the Argentinian scholarship Maria Marta Sánchez Elia de Nuñez and for 2011-2013 she will be living in Netherlands to obtain her Master degree in Fine Arts at the Dutch Art Institute/ArtEZ. Through the DAI, she has joined the project practice-theatre 2011-2012 tutored by Ian White in collaboration with Emma Hedditch and Jimmy Robert and curated by ‘If I Can´t Dance, I Don´t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution’. Currently, her practice is developing towards a type of performing where the possibility of speech can be reached. To her knowledge, practice involves futility and transcendence and she has become more and more interested in the idea of leaping between these two places. To bounce is an appealing way of developing her energies in a spontaneous way, to be able to constantly transform herself in each particular situation and social context. Either with drawings or words her practice tries to become a palimpsest of superimposed symbols and random utterances that mirrors the fragile and chaotic sense of knowledge. “I am interested in decoding the idea that all meaning is surrounded by an impenetrable darkness. And that what we can perceive are isolated lights in the abyss of ignorance.”