Saturday 3 December: Ellen de Bruijne Projects and Jeremiah Day are excited to host a presentation of Second Culture Press, an Amsterdam initiative co-organized by Taf Hassam (DAI,2010) , along with collaborators Janine Armin and Marius Jopen.
Hello - this Saturday I'll show a performance at Ellen de Bruijne Projects in Amsterdam, the last in the series that have made up the exhibition of my work there. Ghost Dance Song, a work never before shown in the Netherlands, will be brought out from retirement to contribute to the current fantasies and non-fictions of this particular chapter we inhabit. The performance will begin at 17:30 sharp.
In addition, Ellen de Bruijne Projects and myself are excited to host a presentation of Second Culture Press, an Amsterdam initiative co-organized by a crucial figure for my own practice in recent years, Taf Hassam, along with collaborators Janine Armin and Marius Jopen. Details on Second Culture Press below.
Please join us for a drink to celebrate this project and the constellation of people it brings together and the cultural model it enacts.
Cheers, Jeremiah Day
Second Culture Press is a new independent publisher produced by artist Taf Hassam, writer Janine Armin, and designer Marius Jopen of the design activist group The Foreign Legion. Their first series, Burn Down After Reading, builds on the theoretical concept of The Parallel Polis first published as samizdat [self-published/publication] by Czech ‘dissident’ Václav Benda in 1977.
The text, written at the height of the ‘normalization process’ in former Czechoslovakia, was a philosophical call to his fellow ‘dissidents’ to abandon hope that protest could change the repressed social, economic, and political institutions under the authoritarian regime. He instead urged the creation of new ‘parallel structures’ that would be more responsive to human needs and which might someday supplant the existing corrupt ones.
Taking up these ideas the press explores the contexts, strategies, and inspirational literature that have helped shape independent art initiatives the world over. Currently the publications are distributed on request but a selection will be available before and after the performance at Ellen de Bruijne.
Participating initiatives include: The Arbour Lake Sghool (Calgary, CA), Cooperativa Cráter Invertido (Mexico City, MX), Dirt Palace (Providence, US), Easterndaze (Prague, CZ), Mexicali Rose (Pueblo Nuevo, MX), The Side Room (Amsterdam, NL), TEOR/éTica (San José, CR), and Triple Candie (Philadelphia, US).