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The Art of Critique
Concrete Conversation
Online live performance 
Louise Ashcroft and Fritha Jenkins

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On May 15 at 3 pm, Frans Hals Museum and Studium Generale Rietveld Academie invite you to attend the live Zoom performance Concrete Conversation by Louise Ashcroft and Fritha Jenkins.

Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88415204757 

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Image courtesy of Louise Ashcroft, 2019 

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Concrete Conversation 

Warped speech, broken eye contact and frozen facial expressions have infuriated our screen-based communications since the pandemic struck. But how might we use images to more inventively communicate our physical and emotional experiences through our screens? In this performance, Louise Ashcroft will have an image-based conversation with her best friend (and occasional collaborator) Fritha Jenkins using the Zoom video conferencing platform. The subject of their conversation is the Frans Hals Museum online collection, with works and interpretations being evoked and interpreted through odd sculptural gestures and object collages improvised with domestic clutter in their own homes at opposite sides of London. E.g. Pasta tongs become the jaws of a dog in a 17th century painting.


Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88415204757 

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The Art of Critique: Image Power, Representation Critique and Structure Critique 

This first event is part of The Art of Critique, an exhibition trilogy at the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem and a contextualizing side program in collaboration with Studium Generale Rietveld Academie. The side program consist of a series of lectures and performances by artists, scholars, and curators, unfolds in 2020 and 2021 and is supported by the Goethe-Institut.
 

As it is currently not possible to organize events at the museum, we have moved the project online. The website was developed and conceptualized by Rietveld graphic design student Giulia Bierens de Haan.


The current exhibition Image Power deals with the ways in which images circulate online and the role of art as part of this, the museum as “content farm”, and the role of critique in this environment.

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The Art of Critique 

The artistic movement of Institutional Critique feels particularly urgent today, as we are witnessing an intense moment of “institutional critique” in society at large: fueled by social media, the critique of institutions – think of phenomena like #MeToo, Brexit and the large scale climate protests – is practiced everywhere with an intensity and at a scale that feels unmatched. At the same time, one can question whether it still makes sense to treat the art world as a separate institutional field now that art institutions align themselves more and more with profit-oriented thinking and impulses generated within the art field are quickly swallowed up by a larger creative industry. Taking into account these developments, The Art of Critique asks what constitutes a practice of Institutional Critique today.

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Open Call 

We invite students of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and the Sandberg Instituut to actively engage with the theme and content of the program. Part of the online version of Image Power is an Open Call to contribute to the project with a digital artwork (in GIF format). 

For more information see: https://theartofcritique.rietveldacademie.nl/

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May 29, 2020: Online presentation by artist duo FLAME 

June 5, 2020: Online presentation by curator and critic Shama Khanna 

Image Power is on view until September 2020 and will open to the public again on June 1st.

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Gerrit Rietveld Academie
Frederik Roeskestraat 96
Amsterdam, Noord-Holland
1076 ED Netherlands