An evening with works by Michiel Huijben, Kristina Benjocki, Orr Menirom, Eva Schalkwijk, Nele Brökelmann and Tiécoura N'Daou During this special evening Michiel Huijben will give his talk 'A Guide to Concrete Living', a lecture in the form of a virtual guided tour. It asks how a materialist view on our environment could work when this is applied to an immaterial concept like space. The talk is followed by a short program of films by: Kristina Benjocki with 'Clock Face'; Orr Menirom with 'Limited Speech Holds Endless Misunderstandings'; Eva Schalkwijk with 'Playlet'; Nele Brökelmann with 'The world's conjunction'; and Tiécoura N'Daou with 'Mirror'; A Guide to Concrete Living – Project description A Guide to Concrete Living is a talk in the form of a guided tour. It asks how a materialist view on our environment could work when this is applied to an immaterial concept like space. Walking through a virtual labyrinth composed of diverse interiors, we visit modernist homes to experience their free plans; walk on sets of American sitcom series designed for the screen, and through generic office lobbies and Dutch terrace houses, among other places. Architectural and virtual environments are associatively linked with one another to consider the concept of space in terms of the in-between: a space that is mostly determined by something that lies outside of itself. Limited Speech Holds Endless Misunderstandings In 2010, Noam Chomsky, a linguist and political activist, was invited to give a talk in Birzeit University near Ramallah. Identified with the radical left, Chomsky was denied entry to Israel and sent back to Jordan. Shortly after the incident, Dana Weiss from the Israeli Channel 2 met with him at the hotel lobby in Amman for a 40- minute interview. During the interview, deep ideological tensions between Chomsky and Weiss surfaced. In the video, the interview language is cut apart into individual word fragments. This material is then recomposed into a new monologue told by a third, invisible character. The tense tone of the interview clashes with the intimacy of the new text. The repositioning of words allows the invisible character to articulate intimate thoughts that Chomsky and Weiss can’t express. According to Chomsky’s theory “Universal-Grammar”, language enables the pronunciation of endless expressions with a limited amount of words- a vocabulary. Similar to verbal language, the video’s image is a system with an inner grammar. It depicts a deserted landscape, portrayed through a complex of digital fragments. In this landscape, the relations between a limited amount of fragments create endless variations of the image. Clock Face Experience of temporal structure of time manifested by the sound of clock-ticking is usually associated with progression of narrative into a story with the beginning and the end. Clock Face operates with exactly the opposite. The camera moves slowly, wandering around devastated post-transitory city scape, as if measuring the space between its protagonists. Between intervals of silence, a female voice reads lottery numbers. Clock Face protagonists are mostly elderly man who play, usually without interaction with each other. The camera never shows their faces, it focuses solely on their bodies choreographed by the list of called numbers. Playlet The world is ordered in a certain way and there are certain agreements about how people should behave. Eva Schalkwijk watches her everyday environment and experiences it as artificial. Composition and choreography give her the impression that reality is directed. In the movie ‘Playlet’ she took on the role of director and constructed a new script based on everyday actions. The sidewalk is the stage and the random pedestrians are actors that play random pedestrians. The repetition of acts changes everyday behaviour and routine into a theatre play. Eva Schalkwijk (NL), Playlet, 2015 Camera: Thijs van Gasteren People: Martha Kamminga, Henk Schalkwijk, Dirk Gelderman, Daan Meijsen, Eva Hoonhout The world's conjunction Alone in an empty office, a business man elaborates on the beauty of coaction. Meanwhile, he gets more and more excited by his own chain of thought. Mirror/ Miroir The water support of emotion, sensitive and quiet, is the big mirror of our World. In this video, involves for me of loosening certain semantic plans of anchoring of the water as mirror. Precious symbol of divination, the mirror contains to him only the visible and the invisible, the known and the stranger … The water, the cradle of the existence, the man leaves in his discovery, searches his past to plan his future. He finds mysterious moments of dream, inspiration and relaxs. Mirror is also an invitation in the respect for this resource with priceless value for the humanity. L’eau support d’émotion, sensible et calme, est le grand miroir de notre Monde environnant. Dans cette vidéo, s’agit pour moi de dégager certains plans d’ancrage sémantiques de l’eau comme miroir. Symbole précieux de divination, le miroir contient à lui seul le visible et l’invisible, le connu et l’inconnu… L’eau, berceau de l’existence, l’homme part à sa découverte, fouille dans son passé afin de prévoir son futur. Il retrouve des moments mystérieux de songe, d’inspiration et se relaxe. Miroir est aussi une invitation au respect de cette ressource à valeur inestimable pour l’humanité.