THERE IS NO BETTER ME (ENG)
Rosa Cherim
NINA GLOCKNER & SACHI MIYACHI
Exhibition & Public Program by Nina Glockner and Sachi Miyachi together with researcher Lila Athanasiadou
December 18, 2022 to February 25, 2023
In the exhibition There is no Better Me, Nina Glockner and Sachi Miyachi bring together Japanese memorabilia, cultural artefacts, personal anecdotes, and architectural fragments from their Artist-in-residence period at Fukuroda Psychiatric Hospital in 2019. The title acts not only as a ‘note to self’, but also as a provocation, problematising our imperative for self-improvement and the ways behaviours that refuse to comply get pathologized. Simultaneously, There is no Better Me acts as a reminder to ground oneself in the present instead of being occupied by a nostalgic past or an idealised future.
The space of Beautiful Distress House in Amsterdam North is theatrically staged and ordered through a series of site-specific walls that echo the geological, architectural, cultural, mental and institutional boundaries encountered by the artists during their residency, interwoven with their experiences growing up in Japan and Germany, and currently living in the Netherlands. The work shows that what can be initially perceived as a boundary, has the capacity to transform into an interface and reveal ways of communication with oneself, the institution, the staff, the patients, the locals and the building itself. The audience is led through a series of proprioceptive encounters with the architecture as well as soundscapes and videos. Together these build an incomplete archive of the residency while resonating with Western contemporary discussions on mental health and self-improvement. The title, boldly covering the façade of the building, operates as an echo of the themes of the exhibition to the commuting crowds travelling through the city of Amsterdam.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Nina Glockner
Artist Nina Glockner holds a Master in Fine arts from Sandberg Institute (NL), a Bachelor from Minerva Academie in Groningen (NL), and has studied philosophy at Humboldt University Berlin (D). She has been artist-in-residence at several places such as the Jan van Eyck Academie Maastricht, Fukuroda Hospital Japan, The Fifth Season Den Helder, EKWC. Recently she became a parent.
Nina Glockner’s practice–consisting of (object-based) performances, installations, video, publications, workshops, and somatic research–is about exploring the thin line between executing control and being under a state of control while revealing rather than producing connections. It deals with (power) relationships among humans, bodies, minds, objects, and actions in a given space – ranging from institutional and organisational, to the private. It is about creating a dialogue between the building modules that mark the social playground and examining where subjectivity reveals an encounter with the other. And how to negotiate this encounter (un)aware of the systematic structures that influence its circumstance.
www.ninaglockner.de
@nkg_publications
@scores.structures
Sachi Miyachi
Sachi studied Art and Anthropology at Wako University in Tokyo and Fine Art at Gerrit Rietveld Academie and Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam. Her work consists mainly of three-dimensional installations, site-specific interventions, rituals and performances, often presented in museums, art institutions as well as in public space, as part of art festivals.
Sachi sculpts the here-and-now. She is inspired by the paradoxes and antagonisms between nature, humans and technology as well as how their relationships form spatial delimitations that shape public space. She researches and artistically translates our collective efforts to handle both the internal and external world, measuring, comparing, scaling, representing, designing and altering bodies, architectural spaces and landscape.
program
Opening: Sunday 18th of December - 12:00 uur
Launch of small publication & Japanese style tasting for body & mind by artist and chef Nao Ishizaka. Nao Ishizaka will produce four special recipes for There Is No Better Me.
Deconstruction-Tools for a Better Self: Saturday 21st of January: 16.00 / 18.00
Non-Reading Reading Group on the notion of How-to-Books
Down in the Traum-Trauma-Mantra-Raum or How to perforate a subjective vacuum? On Saturday 11th of February: 16.00 / 18.00
Bodily Workshop in collaboration with artist Mylan Hoezen
Finissage & Performance: Saturday 25th of February - 16.00 / 18.00
COLOFON
Artists: Nina Glockner en Sachi Miyachi
Curation: Nina Glockner en Sachi Miyachi, in samenwerking met Lila Athanasiadou
With special thanks to: Su Melo, Sophie Stiller, Edd Vossen, Club Oma, Yelizaveta Strakhova, Levi de Kleer, Karoline Swiezynski, Nao Ishizaka, Marika Groen, Persephone Abbott, Jasper Drexhage, Lizzl Shakti, Amalie Ebsen Ourø Jensen, Cika Schulz en Jolande Mertens.
This exhibition was created with the help of The Mondriaan Funds, het Vijfde Seizoen, AFK en Fukuroda Psychiatric Hospital.