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NOTES – Amsterdam (video installation)

Ivana Müller

The concept of Notes is inspired by the 19th century practice of ‘marginalia’, which cultivated a gesture of “personalizing” a book before offering it to a friend or a lover by writing personal notes in the margin.

In Notes this gesture of love or friendship becomes a poetic practice in which 5 selected readers, in this case Erin Hill, Jasiek Mischke, Juha van t’Zelde (by proxy), Lisa Skwirblies and Andrea Bozic, annotated a same copy of a book that they chose together: A Breath of Life by Clarice Lispector.

One after the other and in a set order, sharing this body of literature as a matrix and a space for all sorts of reflections and associations, they created an archive of a long process of collective reading and writing. During the period between December 2017 and September 2018 in which the book traveled between them, the annotators created a hybrid manuscript grafted on the original book that questions the idea of reading, of sharing a certain common and of creating new possible narratives (fictional and real) with the book as a starting point. 

The video with the visual representation of the annotated book accompanied with the conversation of the annotators and Ivana Müller about the experiences of the annotating process is on a display in the library of het Veem during the entire 100 days of the 2018 season.

This annotated copy of the book continues its life outside of official institutions, travelling further in an unknown direction, from reader to reader, each reader choosing the following one. The book’s journey will last for the next 10 years, crossing many hands and taking unpredictable paths driven by chance, trust and gestures of friendship, care and love. A log of all readers is kept as part of an archive, slowly tracing the cartographies of the emerging reading community.

More info on www.ivanamuller.com/works/notes

23 September 2018

00:00

22 October 2018

00:00

22 November 2018

00:00

22 December 2018

00:00

The first version of the project Notes was developed by Ivana Müller in collaboration with Paula Caspar, Ant Hampton, Bojana Kunst, Paz Rojo, Jonas Rutgeerts and David Weber Krebs and was realized in autumn/ spring 2016/2017 after the invitation of Theater Freiburg and Museum für Neue Kunst Freiburg, Germany, in the frame of the festival Heritage Depot.

Ivana Müller is a choreographer, artist and author of texts.

Through her choreographic and theatre works, performances, installations, text works, video-lectures, audio pieces, guided tours and web-works she re-thinks the politics of spectacle and spectacular, re-visits the place of imaginary and imagination, questions the notion of « participation », investigates the idea of value and its representation, and keeps on getting inspired by the relationship between performer and spectator.

Although she creates through various forms, theatre remains the principle context in which she develops and presents her work. Her pieces – amongst others How Heavy Are My Thoughts (2003),  While We Were Holding It Together (2006), Playing Ensemble Again And Again (2008),  60 Minutes of Opportunism (2010), Partituur (2011), In Common (2012), We Are Still Watching (2012), Positions (2013), Edges (2016)  – have been produced and presented in some of the major theatre festivals and venues in Europe, USA and Asia over the last 15 years. 

In her practice she has collaborated with artists and theoreticians such as Bojana Kunst, David Weber Krebs, Andrea Bozic, Jonas Rutgeerts, Jefta van Dinther, Bill Aitchison, Paz Rojo, Sarah van Lamsweerde, Christine de Smedt and many others. 

Next to her artistic practice, Ivana Müller curates artistic and discursive encounters and teaches as a guest lecturer/professor. 

Ivana Müller was born in Zagreb and grew up in Croatia and in Amsterdam. She lives in Paris and works internationally.

Official website: www.ivanamuller.com

Concept:
Ivana Müller

Amsterdam Annotators:
Erin Hill, Jasiek Mischke, Juha van t’Zelde (by proxy), Lisa Skwirblies, Andrea Božić

The concept of Notes has been developed in collaboration with:
Paula Caspar, Ant Hampton, Bojana Kunst, Paz Rojo, Jonas Rutgeerts and David Weber Krebs