The Sheeptown Project
Alexandra Broeder
Sat July 10 to Tue 13, 2021
In her work, theater maker Alexandra Broeder connects the domains of art and psychiatry with each other. In The Sheeptown Project, the audience is sucked into a parallel universe where the doors open onto another reality. In the Beautiful Distress House on the NDSM Wharf, this summer a temple will rise where the audience attends a ceremony led by children. The service is held to honor the mysterious Sheepchild.
The Sheepchild is a symbol for all the children and young people who Broeder has recently been able to meet in the Dutch mental health services (GGZ). The same behavior that in our society causes these children to fall through the cracks in the system is approached in The Sheeptown Project as a spiritual power that via a ritual ceremony gives us access to our own vulnerability.
This program by Alexandra Broeder is in collaboration with Beautiful Distress and is part of the Over het IJ Festival.
Premieres on Saturday July 10 at Beautiful Distress House.
Tickets available here.
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De Dolende Mens
Rianne Meboer
Sat July 17 & Sun 18
Theater maker Rianne Meboer investigates how we deal with confused behavior in Amsterdam-Noord. With what words do you speak with integrity on this subject? Who or what does the (temporarily) wandering person encounter? And what about the environment?
In her research process, Meboer spoke to various experts, psychotherapists and district police officers, joined the Salvation Army and followed a course on Mental Health First Aid. In the end her own work experience in health care and her personal experience with mental health turned out to play a bigger role than she had expected.
Eventually she combined the results of her research in a theatrical, humorous presentation and a dialogue (Deep Democracy) with the audience and those involved. Her research will continue during Over het IJ Festival.
Sat July 17 & Sun 18, 2021 at Beautiful Distress House.
Tickets available here.
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Neuro Blooms
Leslie Holt
Tuesday July 20 - Aug 31 in Mentrum
Friday July 23 - Aug 20 in Beautiful Distress House
From Friday July 23 visual artist Leslie Holt presents her project Neuro Blooms in Beautiful Distress House, an exhibition of Leslie Holt’s Brain Stain and Unspeakable series. The exhibit addresses contemporary and historical views of mental health conditions and treatments.
Opening and artist talk at Beautiful Distress House: Friday, July 23, 5:30-7:00 pm
Neuro Blooms
Neuro Blooms harnesses the power of art to make mental health conditions visible and beautiful. Neuro Blooms imagery is based on PET scans of people with mental health conditions which reveal unique maps of brain activity and function. Holt’s work probes the visual beauty of PET scans, as well as their power to convey the brain’s role in mental illness. As a series within a body of work exploring mental illness and our beautiful brains, this work is rooted in Holt’s experience with depression as well as her mother’s struggle with bipolar disorder. Neuro Blooms imagery has catalyzed partnerships with organizations in the US and UK to help shape creative mental health campaigns.
Leslie Holt is a US artist living in Hyattsville, MD. Holt will also be one of our next artists in residence at the Kings County Hospital starting next year (after Covid forced its cancellation this year).
Mentrum - Mental Health Centre
Concurrent to the exhibit, large Neuro Bloom graphics will cover the windows of the Mentrum Mental Health Centre in Amsterdam. There will be an opening and reception at the Mentrum Mental Health Centre
on Tuesday, July 20, from 5:00 - 6:30 pm.
Address: Eerste Constantijn Huygenstraat 38, Amsterdam.
This exhibition was created in collaboration with Beautiful Distress and Mentrum.
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Untitled is a theater performance and video installation created by Jan Hoek and Eva Knibbe presented at the Beautiful Distress House. Untitled is a production of de Toneelmakerij, Theatergroep LeBelle (Cordaan) and Outsider Wear.
Untitled is about the last people with Down syndrome. It examines how we look at people with a mental disability now and through time. From demigod to devil child, clown, teddy bear or creative genius. Words determine how we look and what we see. Can you look at someone with Down without the word 'Down' in your head?
In 2021 the Nipt will make it possible to detect Down in an early stage of the pregnancy. In many cases this leads to a termination of the pregnancy, fewer and fewer people are born with Down.
What do the actors with Down think of this development? And their family members?
Actors Anne Gehring, Els Volmuller and Moos Kwist - mothers and brother of children with Down - share how beautiful and difficult it was for them to have a family member with Down. The actors with Down respond and advise.
The performance at the Beautiful Distress House can be seen at various time slots from July 9 through July 13, 2021 at the Beautiful Distress House.
Tickets on sale through the Toneelmakerij.
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Photographer Annaleen Louwes does not like being photographed. She suspects this has to do with a negative self-image. Before she can work on the LGBTQI+ group exhibition later this year in the Beautiful Distress House, she must first search for the origin of this negative self-image that she suspects of sabotaging her work.
During this preliminary study on the work she avoids making, she transforms the Beautiful Distress House into a film set. With a film crew, castings for the role of herself and through various audio layers, conversations with her therapist, mother and daughter can be heard.
She films the process toward making a selfie or self-portrait, and whether it succeeds remains the question. She films the avoidance of confrontation with herself and begins this quest with the x-ray scan of her skull. What is hidden there that she has no control over?
Annaleen Louwes was the first artist-in-residence at King's County Hospital Center (Brooklyn) and made the publication You can't nail a pudding to a wall as a result of her residency period.
Annaleen Louwes - Dismantling the self or the making of a selfie
May 24 - May 31, 2021 at the Beautiful Distress House.
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Martine Derks is a visual artist, graduated from the Rietveld Academy in 2008 and is now training to be a spiritual counselor at the VU in Amsterdam. She is currently doing an internship at GGz Centraal, Zon en Schild in Amersfoort, where she is given the opportunity to integrate art making into spiritual care.
During her open studio in the Beautiful Distress House she works together with different people she met in Zon en Schild, among other places. She creates a space where everyone can participate, regardless of their background: patient, visitor, local resident, artist or art lover. Spiritual counselors guide people through life's questions and usually do so in the form of conversations. But how can art be used to do this?
Martine Derks creates opportunities to look at everyday things in a different way. The "Sunset Saloon" presents and continues some of her collaborations:
Noortje van Kamer works in the Zon en Schild supermarket, creating sculptures from the products on the shelves and then writing poems about them. Nina van Sterkenburg is a model and can pose as Botticelli's Venus in creations made of aluminum foil. Duco Crop is working on his constellation around Beethoven taking over the walls of the Beautiful Distress House. There are also drawings by Annet Busé on display and inspiring stories by Sytske Bruning and Anouk Neskens, among others.
Making art creates a freedom that is disconnected from existing structures, which leads to new insights that reach beyond a regular conversation. Martine Derks advocates not only the beauty of this, but also the necessity.
1- 21 Mei open by appointment via info@beautifuldistress.org all days from 11:00 until 18:00
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Michael van Oostende
Participant in the WOK (Waanzin Ontmoet Kunst) project in 2019 and 2020. Michael van Oostende's book of his street photography will be published in April. He will present his book at the Beautiful Distress House with an online book launch on April 14 at 5pm, where his photos will be on view until May 1st.
April 15 - May 1 @Beautiful Distress House
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Inspired by his own history and his father who disappeared in a psychotic state in the streets of Istanbul, artist Michaël Bloos creates, together with Stichting Nieuwe Helden, other artists, experts and partners from the museum world and the mental health care services, his Universum van de Waanzin. A long-term investigation into the meaning of delusion. Within this project he uses theater, film, installation and audio and organizes research evenings.
Work in progress @Beautiful Distress: installation Echoes of Istanbul
At the moment Bloos is working with visual artist, instrument builder and musician Lucas Kramer on the installation Echoes of Istanbul. They are experimenting with an audio and experiential installation about psychosis and what it does to its surroundings. In form, sound, light and shadow, a story and a world of feelings will soon unfold. It is a search for how the audience itself can wander through the story of a father who loses everything including himself during his trip in Istanbul. Enter a palace of mirrors full of clean lines, undulating water and changing perspectives.
This installation will open mid-October in Museum Dr. Guislain in Ghent and then travel on to the Netherlands and the Beautiful Distress House. Michaël Bloos is also part of the thematic exhibition of Beautiful Distress on LGBTQI+ rights planned for 2022.
Make an appointment by writing us at info@beautifuldistress.org en visit us!
21 march - 12 april @Beautiful Distress House
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PUK* has it’s very own immersive website! Floris Schönfeld and his crew have been working tirelessly to create this new immersive world online after the closing of the exhibition at Beautiful Distress House due to the Corona regulations.
Since 2017 Schönfeld has been working together with scientists, technologists, experience experts and ants to develop a new neuro-diverse artificial intelligence named PUK*. At the exhibition at BD House, visitors got to opportunity to meet PUK* love. They were immersed in an open-ended multimedia installation in which storytelling and technology were combined to shed light on new frames of reference on neurodiversity.
We now invite you to have this unique experience online, on the new PUK* website!
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Beste Vrienden,
Het was een bewogen jaar voor iedereen. We leven mee met degenen die door COVID zijn geraakt. Helaas is de tentoonstelling van PUK van Floris Schönfeld gesloten tot na de lockdown, en is ook het geplande project van Alexandra Broeder uitgesteld.
Wij blijven positief en bedanken iedereen die zich heeft ingezet om de Beautiful Distress projecten in 2020 mogelijk te maken, zoals o.a. alle kunstenaars die hebben meegedaan aan het Corona-project. Jullie filmpjes zijn blijvend te zien op onze website. Zij hebben allen super creatief en positief op de veranderde omstandigheden gereageerd. We hopen ook dat jullie genoten hebben van de installatie en de indringende film van Sylvie Zijlmans en Hewald Jongenelis. Daar gaan we vast nog meer over horen.
Ook in 2021 hebben we veel moois te doen in en buiten het Beautiful Distress House.
Kunstenaars staan te trappelen om naar de residenties te gaan, zodra dit weer kan. We hopen dat we dit jaar weer in New York en Japan onze intrek kunnen nemen.
In het Beautiful Distress House zijn we van plan jaarlijks twee tentoonstellingen te organiseren met werk van de kunstenaars uit de residency in Kings County Hospital, New York en de kunstenaars uit de (eerste) residency in Fukuroda Hospital, Daigo town, Japan. De kunstenaars die daar in de afgelopen jaren een residency deden zijn bezig met het voorbereiden van een tentoonstelling geïnspireerd door hun residency periode.
Wij gaan verder met ons WOK “Waanzin Ontmoet Kunst” project. We zetten aanbevelingen om in concrete actie met kunstenaars, ervaringsdeskundigen, beleidsmakers en mensen uit de GGZ. Samen werken we aan onze missie: met kunst en kunstprojecten psychisch lijden zichtbaar, voelbaar en bespreekbaar maken.
Een van de projecten voeren we zelf uit: We ontwikkelen Art Based Labs in BD House waarbij professionele kunstenaars creatieve mensen met een psychische kwetsbaarheid coachen en ondersteunen bij de ontwikkeling van hun creatieve talenten. We zoeken hierbij samenwerking met andere organisaties die ondersteuning bieden bij het exposeren en marketen van hun werk.
Laten we blijven verbinden en vol hoop vooruitkijken.
Het team van Beautiful Distress
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This week is the LAST chance to see Sylvie Zijlmans and Hewald Jongenelis' short film "They Live In Us (I Am A Very Detailed Person)" at the Beautiful Distress House. The film will be showing Thursday to Sunday from 8-10pm. The film itself is 34 minutes. Make sure to drop by!
Location: Beautiful Distress House, van Riemsdijkweg 41a, Amsterdam Noord
Date: 22-25 October
Time: 8-10pm
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Het Vijfde Seizoen - 2007
Life has come to a grinding halt due to the corona virus.
Beautiful Distress and the Fifth Season had to adapt to these difficult times as well and had to virtually stop all activities. The artist in residence programs in Kings County Hospital in New York, and Fukuroda Hospital, Japan are temporarily on hold. The Beautiful Distress House that we operate in Amsterdam Noord is closed and all the planned exhibitions there are postponed.
We hope to jump back into action once everything calms down a bit and it is safe to do so. In this time of social and physical distancing art can connect, give inspiration and the boost we can all use right now. This knowledge has inspired us and “our" artists to give a sign of life and our involvement to our mutual friends and followers by actively using our Beautiful Distress and Fifth Season social media platforms with the artists that have spent a residency period in Den Dolder (The Netherlands), Kings County Hospital, New York or Fukuroda Hospital, Daigo Town, Japan.
We asked the artists to make a small video of 1 to 2 minutes max and in the video (show) and reflect on the artwork they did in the residency, especially given the current times we are living in: What was their focus during the residency, keeping in mind the people they met and worked with in the hospital. Never before have so many people understood better how it feels to have your freedom curtailed.
We think it is important to share these videos, especially now, since our experience is that the vision of the artists and their artworks inspire our followers and sometimes also give hope. We realize everybody is having a difficult time. Please feel free to react on these videos. New York, and thus also Kings County hospital, has been hit especially hard.The patients and staff there can use all the support they can get, as can everyone else involved with -or following- Beautiful Distress: artists, patients, their families, health care workers, volunteers, we want to cheer up everybody.
We may be isolated, but we are not alone.
Beautiful Distress and Het Vijfde Seizoen
Het Vijfde Seizoen - 2007
Life has come to a grinding halt due to the corona virus.
Beautiful Distress and the Fifth Season had to adapt to these difficult times as well and had to virtually stop all activities. The artist in residence programs in Kings County Hospital in New York, and Fukuroda Hospital, Japan are temporarily on hold. The Beautiful Distress House that we operate in Amsterdam Noord is closed and all the planned exhibitions there are postponed.
We hope to jump back into action once everything calms down a bit and it is safe to do so. In this time of social and physical distancing art can connect, give inspiration and the boost we can all use right now. This knowledge has inspired us and “our" artists to give a sign of life and our involvement to our mutual friends and followers by actively using our Beautiful Distress and Fifth Season social media platforms with the artists that have spent a residency period in Den Dolder (The Netherlands), Kings County Hospital, New York or Fukuroda Hospital, Daigo Town, Japan.
We asked the artists to make a small video of 1 to 2 minutes max and in the video (show) and reflect on the artwork they did in the residency, especially given the current times we are living in: What was their focus during the residency, keeping in mind the people they met and worked with in the hospital. Never before have so many people understood better how it feels to have your freedom curtailed.
We think it is important to share these videos, especially now, since our experience is that the vision of the artists and their artworks inspire our followers and sometimes also give hope. We realize everybody is having a difficult time. Please feel free to react on these videos. New York, and thus also Kings County hospital, has been hit especially hard.The patients and staff there can use all the support they can get, as can everyone else involved with -or following- Beautiful Distress: artists, patients, their families, health care workers, volunteers, we want to cheer up everybody.
We may be isolated, but we are not alone.
Beautiful Distress and Het Vijfde Seizoen
“They Live In Us”, het nieuwste project van beeldend kunstenaars Sylvie Zijlmans en Hewald Jongenelis, is een korte film over de geheimzinnigheid, de angst, en de charme, van het besef dat je nooit zeker kunt zijn van het beeld dat je van de werkelijkheid hebt. In de tentoonstelling “They Live In Us (I Am A Very Detailed Person)” die van 25 september tot en met 25 oktober te zien is in het Beautiful Distress House in Amsterdam, tonen zij een preview van deze film.
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Beautiful Distress - 2019
Writer #MirtheBerentsen stayed at the residency in New York in 2017/2018 which resulted in the publication 'Stories from Kings County Hospital'. A fragmentary collection of stories, poems and pictures about the psychiatric hospital as a biotope for American politics, escaping reality by creating a counter-narrative, gender, the limitations of care, the inevitability of death and the power of language.
"I just got off the phone with Shaka, a dear friend and writer. We met at the hospital and he mentions that Coronalife is almost like a communal psychosis. As determining what is real and what is not has become the new normal. Imagine someone telling you half a year ago that we live in a society where everyone should keep a 1,5 meter distance while wearing masks, all your steps are traced via your phone so that your neighbors get a notification if you're infected, your temperature is checked before entering a restaurant, inequality rises in rapid pace, oh and by the way: 5G is the culprit'.
This whole corona-period is challenging, even for people without a history of mental illness. So please, check in with your loved ones, support your local community and ask for help.
** The publication is still for sale via @Printedmatterinc @san.serriffe @MottoBooks @riot_artandbooks @werkplaatstypografie @wiels_brusselsstories and many other places >>> 100% of all sales will go to the @audrelordeproject - a lesbian, gay, bisexual, two spirit, trans and gender non-conforming people of color community organizing center, focusing on the #NewYorkCity area **
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Carol Stakenas, curator at-large for the Social Practices Art Network (SPAN), talks to Chilean Amsterdam-based artist Martín La Roche (1988) about his three-month residency experience at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, New York, as part of the Beautiful Distress Foundation (Amsterdam) program, whose mission is to raise awareness of mental distress under the belief that art is pre-eminently capable of articulating and representing the human condition.
Beautiful Distress uses art to tell stories of psychiatry to a wide audience that, by not coming into direct contact with mental illness, is submerged in ignorance and, therefore, stigmatization. Although mental illnesses evoke negative emotions in those who suffer them, they are also a rich source of creativity. By uniting these two worlds, that of art and psychiatry, Beautiful Distress seeks to validate the world and the experience of the mentally ill.
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Het Vijfde Seizoen - 2018
Life has come to a grinding halt due to the corona virus.
Beautiful Distress and the Fifth Season had to adapt to these difficult times as well and had to virtually stop all activities. The artist in residence programs in Kings County Hospital in New York, and Fukuroda Hospital, Japan are temporarily on hold. The Beautiful Distress House that we operate in Amsterdam Noord is closed and all the planned exhibitions there are postponed.
We hope to jump back into action once everything calms down a bit and it is safe to do so. In this time of social and physical distancing art can connect, give inspiration and the boost we can all use right now. This knowledge has inspired us and “our" artists to give a sign of life and our involvement to our mutual friends and followers by actively using our Beautiful Distress and Fifth Season social media platforms with the artists that have spent a residency period in Den Dolder (The Netherlands), Kings County Hospital, New York or Fukuroda Hospital, Daigo Town, Japan.
We asked the artists to make a small video of 1 to 2 minutes max and in the video (show) and reflect on the artwork they did in the residency, especially given the current times we are living in: What was their focus during the residency, keeping in mind the people they met and worked with in the hospital. Never before have so many people understood better how it feels to have your freedom curtailed.
We think it is important to share these videos, especially now, since our experience is that the vision of the artists and their artworks inspire our followers and sometimes also give hope. We realize everybody is having a difficult time. Please feel free to react on these videos. New York, and thus also Kings County hospital, has been hit especially hard.The patients and staff there can use all the support they can get, as can everyone else involved with -or following- Beautiful Distress: artists, patients, their families, health care workers, volunteers, we want to cheer up everybody.
We may be isolated, but we are not alone.
Beautiful Distress and Het Vijfde Seizoen
Het Vijfde Seizoen - 2010
Life has come to a grinding halt due to the corona virus.
Beautiful Distress and the Fifth Season had to adapt to these difficult times as well and had to virtually stop all activities. The artist in residence programs in Kings County Hospital in New York, and Fukuroda Hospital, Japan are temporarily on hold. The Beautiful Distress House that we operate in Amsterdam Noord is closed and all the planned exhibitions there are postponed.
We hope to jump back into action once everything calms down a bit and it is safe to do so. In this time of social and physical distancing art can connect, give inspiration and the boost we can all use right now. This knowledge has inspired us and “our" artists to give a sign of life and our involvement to our mutual friends and followers by actively using our Beautiful Distress and Fifth Season social media platforms with the artists that have spent a residency period in Den Dolder (The Netherlands), Kings County Hospital, New York or Fukuroda Hospital, Daigo Town, Japan.
We asked the artists to make a small video of 1 to 2 minutes max and in the video (show) and reflect on the artwork they did in the residency, especially given the current times we are living in: What was their focus during the residency, keeping in mind the people they met and worked with in the hospital. Never before have so many people understood better how it feels to have your freedom curtailed.
We think it is important to share these videos, especially now, since our experience is that the vision of the artists and their artworks inspire our followers and sometimes also give hope. We realize everybody is having a difficult time. Please feel free to react on these videos. New York, and thus also Kings County hospital, has been hit especially hard.The patients and staff there can use all the support they can get, as can everyone else involved with -or following- Beautiful Distress: artists, patients, their families, health care workers, volunteers, we want to cheer up everybody.
We may be isolated, but we are not alone.
Beautiful Distress and Het Vijfde Seizoen
