Alec Mateo, Artun Alaska Arasli, NOA-Marthe PRInS

WORK PERIOD: JULY 17 – AUGUST 18

show: SEPtember 10 – OCTober 7

set at: kultuureiland, steendam

The exhibition ‘Green Fields | Subsurface’ is a mix of installations with sound, textual sculptures and performance that takes place at Kultuureiland in Steendam. Located opposite the Siddeburen gas mine and on top of the Groningen gas field, ‘Green Fields | Subsurface’ presents a dialogue with the intangible nature of natural gas as a resource and the gasquakes caused by decades of its extraction.

Throughout a residency period of one month, Alec Mateo, Artun Alaska Arasli, and Noa-Marthe Prins explored regional exhaustion in the wake of gas exploitation, with a particular focus on linguistic nuances, agency-dynamics and risk-ownership. Situated between the laborious process of structurally closing all Groningen gasmines and rapidly emerging “green” energy industries, their works attempt to tremble the narratives and climate-affects of this transition on both micro- and macro scales.

The exhibition offers a site-specific walking route alongside the artists’ works and the decommissioned gasmine, making (more) tangible the abstract exploitation of gas on the one hand and inviting you to build new relations to the green land and its subsurface on the other.

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NRC, 12 september: 'Aardbevingscijfers omgevormd tot muziek nabij een Gronings gasveld'

Mister Motley, 22 september: 'Op de Groningse gasbel.'

PRACTICAL INFORMATION

Opening hours

September 10 - October 7 2023

Weekends 12:00 - 17:00

Location

Kultuureiland: Damsterweg, Steendam

Performance GAS/LIGHT: Geerlandweg 5, Siddeburen

Accessibility

Public transportation

Plan your trip via Arriva (not 9292ov)

Option: take the train with your bike to Appingedam (30 min) and bike to Kultuureiland (25 min)

Car

From Groningen it is a 30 minute drive.

Parking is possible at the following places:

At the P of the beach pool Schildmeer (ca 30 places), from there cross the Roegeweg and follow the path (ca 10 minutes walk).

P1 Public P crossing Geerlandweg/Damsterweg (ca 6/8 places)

P2 On the small P near the T garden (approx 3/4 spaces)

P3 Parking bikes/scooters etc. intersection Geerlandweg/Damsterweg behind the first gates.

P4 Temporary parking spaces at small events (available only then, indicated by Parking signs)

photos by Jedidja Smalbil

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Alec Mateo is a Dominican artist from New York working with language, sound, and performance to explore the potentials of fugitivity; an attempt to negotiate the relationships between narrative and subject.

Noa-Marthe Prins is an artist and writer based in Amsterdam. Drawing from tactics of resistance theater and comedy, she explores the relations between exploitative productivity and the performativity of work. Recent shows and performances include Window of Opportunity, Out of Office at Impakt Festival Utrecht and Curriculum Veto at Het Nationale Theater, The Hague.

Prins is a research fellow at the Deep Future lectorate of the Royal Academy of Art The Hague and in 2020 she co-founded Art Goss, a platform for high-effort art gossip.

Artun Alaska Arasli is an artist and writer based in Amsterdam. He graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in 2011, and followed his studies in Frankfurt am Main at th Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Kunste in 2014. In 2019 he was a resident at the Jan van Eyck Academie, and in 2020 he was a resident at Rupert in Vilnius and at Deltaworkers in New Orleans. Presentations of his work include Prose, Kantine, Brussels, Cardena: Warming Up, Rozenstraat, Amsterdam; Porcupine, Jan Van Eyck, Maastricht; The Beauty Commission, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. His texts have been published in Le Chauffage, nY and Montez Press Interjection Calendar. Since 2017 he has co-authored multiple plays, i.a. Rijgen, NTGent (2020), Het Stille Nacht, Silbersee (2021), and the What’s in a Fairytale trilogy (2017-2019), Toneelgroep Oostpool.

SOUNDTRACK, VIDEO & PUBLICATION

Het resort asks other artists to join in on the episode.

For this episode  Amaya Samper will create the video about the working period and the artists, Phantom Wizard will compose the soundtrack and Staci Bu Shea  will write the text for the publication.

Perro Feo.

Multidisciplinary visual artist with a focus on illustration and film.

My artistic research engages with political themes, such as privilege, colonialism, and social attitudes. Using mediums including film, camera documentation, illustration, and installation.

As a method, I reflect the absurdity of real life in situations of political turmoil, with a layer of hyperrealist-surrealism. Always, from the eyes of a kid.

“Abandonar el normal instrumento

Cortar la conexión primordial

Raros sabores, raros aromas

Extraña luz de día

Con cariño,

Amaya”

Phantom Wizard is an artist, composer and producer born and raised in Amsterdam. He creates experimental sounds exploring his personal experiences with the physical, spiritual and abstract aspects of life.

Improvisation is an essential part of his practice serving as a portal into his subconscious mind. This highly personal approach to creating allows him to uncover layer after layer of his multifaceted existence.

Staci Bu Shea (b. Miami, 1988) is a curator, writer, and holistic death care worker based in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Broadly, Bu Shea focuses on aesthetic and poetic practices of social reproduction and care work, as well as its manifestations in interpersonal relationships and daily life, community organizing and institutional practice. Their debut publication ‘Dying Livingly’ is released with Sternberg Press in 2024. They currently teach at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague. Bu Shea was curator at Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons (Utrecht, 2017-2022). With Carmel Curtis, they co-curated ‘Barbara Hammer: Evidentiary Bodies’ at Leslie Lohman Museum of Art (New York City, 2017). Bu Shea holds an MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (2016).

EXTRA INFO

During the working period, the artists stay in Slochteren (where the gas field was found in the late 1950s).

This project is made possible by Mondriaan Fund, Kultuureiland, Stal van 't Geerland, Frank Fokkens, Peergroup, Kunstpunt.

TEAM

Jorien Ketelaar - project leader, production       productie @ hetresort.nl

Chiara Tamarro - production

Lotte Wiersema - communication             communicatie @ hetresort.nl

Ellen de Haan - coördinator, design (co-director)