Coronavirus (Covid-19)

In response to the Corona crisis and the necessary and restrictive measurements, West is making its programme accessible to all people staying at home with the section Thuistezien (dutch for watch at home).

With Thuistezien the institution wants to contribute to the quality of life in this serious situation. By means of a daily video, publication, report or column, the institution aims to soften the stay at home with a moment of imagination and reflection. For suggestions and reactions you can contact us via: thuisblijven@westdenhaag.nl.

In line with the national policy regarding the coronavirus, our location on the Lange Voorhout is closed to the public until Monday, April 6, 2020.

Internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch featured in our Alphabetum V — Free Emoji project asked her followers on Twitter what emojis they use when conveying emotions aroused during the Covid-19 pandemic, the economic downturn, social distancing and the ensuing general revelations about life, the world and everything. The responses are a great case study on how our limited palette of emojis are being employed and combined in new ways, to depict our condition of being confronted with unprecedented challenges, and the disturbed emotions which leave us at a loss for words.

More information about Alphabetum V — Free Emoji

has anyone figured out an emoji yet that's kinda opposite in tone to 😅?

like, where 😅 is sorta "that's awkward but it's fine", what's "this is funny but it's terrible"?

is that just 🙃? is there something else?

asking for a...rona

— Gretchen McCulloch (@GretchenAMcC) March 26, 2020

Gustav Metzger (1926—1917) called for the elimination of the contemporary art scene in its heavily commercialised form. In his essay Years without Art he called on artists worldwide to renounce any form of artistic production between the years 1977 and 1980 to encourage the collapse of the art market. On February 28th 2018 West organised and recorded the 1-day symposium about Gustav Metzger: The Conscience of the Art World. Artist, filmmaker, writer, pamphleteer, art historian, and activist Stewart Home was invited for a personal talk on art strikes.

More information about this symposium

SO’UP: Encyclopaedia of incoincidences, farces, tricks and mystifications is based on a number of archive entries compiled by the artist Mattia Denisse and instigated by the incoincidences between images from the online digital broth and his artistic process. To these images, Mattia adds a classification system that relates to his cosmogony, his vocabulary and his recurring literary universe. The entries encourage us to scrutinise the intimacy of these reverberations, seeking the triggers to unleash his narratives. This publication with a texts by Sofia Gonçalves is an introduction the exhibition: Theodore's Dream by Mattia Denisse.

Download: PDF
More information about the exhibition

In 2018 the Colombian curator Juan Pablo Fajardo put us in touch with Carol Wells from the Center for the Study of Political Graphics in Los Angeles. The CSPG is a research archive that collects, preserves, documents, and exhibits posters relating to movements for social change. CSPG is advancing the power of art to inspire people to action. Founder and executive director Carol Wells is very passionate about the center and in this video (recorded and edited by West) she talks about the collection, activism and concienness. ‘Can art stop a war and save the planet?’ In this interview Carol Wells tells us how. This year CSPG is celebrating thirty years of art & resistance! Congratulations to Carol & team.

Website: http://www.politicalgraphics.org
Online collections: http://www.politicalgraphics.org/exhibitions

The Alphabetum is a physical space at West where the formative and formal aspects of language are explored. From the end of November 2019 to the end of February 2020, Richard Niessen showed the project The Typotectural Suites in Alphabetum V. A project in which he allowed language to solidify into fixed forms and used 3d-structures for a readable city. Now that the Alphabetum is not accessible, we would like to refer to the virtual tour through the whole of The Palace of Typographic Masonry. The website shows a colourful, innovative and impressive overview of all collections, presentations and activities in a labyrinthically arranged layout.

Installation views and info Alphabetum V
Visit The Palace of typographic Masonry

Conceptual artist Cesare Pietroiusti succeeds Taiwanese artist Tehching Hsieh with a 1-year-long exhibition at West. This exceptional exhibition model is reserved for prominent artists with a distinctly exemplary role. Just like in the work of Hsieh, Pietroiusti is not focused on art as an object, but on life itself as a form of art. Because the exhibition is now temporarily closed due to the current situation (Covid-19), artist Cesare Pietroiusti personally offers the work 'Untitled (incomplete drawing), 2020 -' to you. West will send you one of the 5,000 drawings, made with fire, for the exhibition 'A Variable Number of Things'.

Are you interested? Please transfer € 2.50 for the shipping costs to Stichting West: NL63 INGB 0000 8298 85, stating your name and postal address. You will receive a unique drawing in your mailbox.

More info about Cesare Pietroiusti at West

Spinoza was a radical and a rebel. His philosophic writing was boldly secular and rational, scintillatingly irreverent and irrepressibly critical, committed to friendship, and emancipated embodied experience. Today, with globalised capitalism in crisis, these principles are suddenly in question. Can Spinoza’s thinking help us gain agency to face our challenges today? Through the readings and discussions in the monthly Spinoza circles we hope to re-evaluate the status and prospects of the contemporary challenges.

The sessions are convened by Baruch Gottlieb, and this month, hosted online. The Spinoza reading circle is open to anyone who would like to read Spinoza regardless of previous experience. Main language of discussion is English.

Sunday 29.03.2020, 14 hrs
Tickets 0,-/6,- euro.
RSVP: https://onlinespinozacircle.eventbrite.nl

...
Q: Just like a Kunsthal, Kunstforum is a German invention, which nowadays can be found in all sorts of countries. What is the difference between the two types of institutions?
A: The difference between the two is that a forum emphasises the encounter with the other. Kunstforum wants to create time and space for everyone to discover for themselves what art is; and does not want to define it from within the organisation. We are convinced that it is not up to us to tell what the true art is. It's more about offering choices, making suggestions on how to look at things. Heinz von Foerster, an Austrian scientist, biologist and father of second-order cybernetics, claimed: truth does not exist, truth is the invention of a liar. The more choices everyone has, the more possibilities arise.
...

> read the whole interview

Katja Diefenbach is professor for cultural theory at the Merz Academy in Stuttgart Germany. Her work explores contemporary aesthetic theory, the reception of Spinoza and Descartes in contemporary French philosophy. Her most recent book examines Spinoza in post-marxist philosophy, exploring the concept of structural materialism. Katja Diefenbach was one of the speakers at the 2-day symposium Spinoza & the Arts: Passionate Reason at 04.10.2019 and 05.10.2019 at West Den Haag. Her lecture is recorded and edited by West.

As kick off for the section Thuistezien (Watch at home) we selected a quite special concert of the Polyband and Jasper Stadhouders, which was preformed at Musical Material #8. A collaboration between Rewire and West Den Haag, where specialists in the fields of music and art, perform and reflect within an intimate setting.
The performance is including Chicago based jazz trumpet player Jaimie Branch and the The Hague based composer and accordeonist Leo Svirsky. Polyband performed with: Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti (movement), Jaimie Branch (trumpet), Genevieve Murphy bagpipes), Marta Warelis (keyboards), Leo Svirsky (accordion), Jeroen Kimman (guitar), Jasper Stadhouders (guitar), Miguel Petruccelli (bass), Tristan Renfrow (drums), Philipp Moser (drums), Sandor Caron (sound engineer). The concert was performed at Korzo Den Haag on 30.11.2018 and filmed and edited by West.

The concert was performed at Korzo Den Haag on 30.11.2018, and filmed and edited by West. More information about Musical Material #8.