FLAM VIII
Look at me, then look at me again

September 4-30, 2018, Arti et Amicitiae

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FLAM, Forum of Live Art Amsterdam, is an annual exhibition of live art happening in Arti et Amicitiae, intent on creating room for the wide spectrum of performance art practices of today.

This year’s edition opens with FLAM Live: an intensive week of performances, in which the body with its innate multiplicity is the medium. FLAM Live is extended and transformed throughout the month of September into FLAM Encounter: an exhibition of installations materialising and emerging from performances. Through this transformation, FLAM VIII creates space for both the ephemeral and material sides of diverse artistic practices.

To activate new perspectives on the works, FLAM VIII employs a metaphorical framework in which the performances of the live week are presented as elements of a wild garden. The viewers are invited to enter this wilderness, moving amongst the performances and sharing intimate space and time with other members of the public.

The exhibition is imagined rather as a cruise-garden , a roaming space in which different points of view can be taken, forming personal relationships with objects and other bodies in the space. Taken together, the program aims to generate unexpected cross-pollinations, a wild-cruise between the artists, their work and the public.

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Flam Live

4-7 September 2018
In FLAM Live, visitors can revel in a whirlwind of performances taking place throughout the whole building of Arti et Amicitiae: from the bar, to the counter, to the exhibition spaces. In content, the performances differ strongly, but in essence they are alike: a body in space, subject to the public’s gaze, stimulating frictions and shaping new meanings.

Subjects such as surveillance, cultural identity formation, vulnerability, the influence of online existence on the psyche, cannibalism, power structures within contemporary art, and the embodiment of masculinity and femininity are all touched upon. Many of the contributions of participating artists express an underlying feeling of disillusion, even where humor is used as an instrument for critique.

FLAM Live offers a rich, direct and personal exploration of these themes, as well as a close proximity to works which grow and unfold in real time.

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Participants

Alex Bailey, Roland Rauschmeier, Rebecca Chaillon, Tomislav Feller, Andrea Folache Zavala, Astrit Ismaili, Mami Kang, Maria Metsalu, Dora Longo Bahia, Harold Offeh, Marijn Ottenhof, Vincent Riebeek, Nicolas Roses,  Mathias Ringgenberg, Julian Weber, Antonia Steffens

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Flam Encounter

13-30 September 2018

FLAM’s cruise garden consists of ‘performative installations’: the works emerge from a performance or turn the spectator into a performer.

Within our normative society, the cruise garden forms a critical terrain. It is an in-between space which attempts to escape from - and at the same is created by - oppressive frameworks of the dominant cultural system. A sensual yet marginalized zone of encounter, cruise gardens subvert codes of communication, lust and desire, creating a parallel existence beyond physical appearance, sexual preference, social class or religion.

In the main exhibition hall different artists and performers are present, working on new ideas or reinterpreting existing works. Next to this open space, where visitors have a full view of what takes place, the exhibition includes hidden places with room for intimacy.

Across these various zones the works establish a direct and physical relationship with the visitor. A new décor emerges, and gazes are stimulated. 'Look at me, then look at me again'

Participants
Philipp Gufler, Richard John Jones, Maria Metsalu, Hannah Perry, Matthew Day,

keyon gaskin,  Sarah van Lamsweerde, Opera Corruption (Dutch Art Institute/If I Can’t Dance), Natasha Papadopoulou, Erin Hill, Jacopo Miliani & Sara Giannini,  Dionisios Argyropoulos-Ioannou

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Theaterkrant wrote a piece on Flam Live! Read it here