Experience the hidden and unknown zones of smell, sound and movement of the Amstelpark. Join the Field Academy this weekend and participate in one or more workshops, walks and other activities that will allow you to experience the park in a new way. The Field Academy in the Amstelpark is an initiative of artist Cocky Eek in collaboration with various artists, Zone2Source and StrandLAB Almere, where an earlier edition took place in the summer. One of the workshops is aimed specifically at children, the other at adults: local residents, park visitors and other interested parties.
Curious how the Academy was? Read the report “Exploring the sensorial heritage of the Amstelpark” written by Anne-Florence Neveu here.
By way of introduction: We often talk about our landscape in terms of spatial and cultural heritage, but in this new edition of the Field Academy the question arises whether we can also consider a place like the Amstelpark as sensorial heritage: the park as a space for specific experiences, smells, sounds etc. What happens when you approach a park in this way? Can even regular visitors walk the existing paths in new ways, or can new ways of visiting the park emerge?
The Field Academy was developed as part of Strandlab in Almere, where the Floriade takes place this year. The Amstelpark was designed for the Floriade 1972 and is of the same age as Almere. For Our Shadow Floriade – 50 years Amstelpark – Zone2Source invited Cocky Eek and the Field Academy to explore the Amstelpark through a multitude of perspectives and approaches. With its unique history as a Floriade park, the Amstelpark embodies a great diversity of landscape traditions. Could we approach it as a living archive of sensorial heritage from all these different cultures and continents? The Field Academy focuses on other ways of knowing through the senses and via the body. Led by creative makers and local ‘guides’, the landscape is seen and heard from unexpected perspectives.
In a two-day programme, visitors can participate in a range of workshops and inspiring field walks led by diverse practitioners. The Field Academy invites everyone, from young to old and of all abilities, who wants to immerse themselves in sensory explorations in, with and through the Amstelpark.
all programs start at het Glazen Huis.
Saturday 24 September:
10:00 – 12:00 Voices from the Wateredge with Lada Hršak
10:30 – 14:00 Children’s workshop Cavemen with Rachel Schuit and Mischa Lind
13:30 – 16:00 Workshop Stone Network with Anna Bierler, Marit Mihklepp
13:30 – 16:00 Tracing broken artifacts with Kamila Wolszczak
13:30 – 16:00 Movement workshop Vitalizing the Invisible with Kenzo Kusuda
16:00 – 16:30 Joint closing
Sunday 25 September:
10:00 – 12:00 FINDING A MORE-THAN-HUMAN ALLY with Carolyn F. Strauss
13:30 – 16:00 Workshop Monstercode with Theun Karelse
13:30 – 16:00 Workshop Resonating Voices with Sigrún Gyða
13:30 – 16:00 Movement workshop TaijiWuXiGong with Luigi Kwas
14:00 – 16:30 Children’s workshop Cavemen with Rachel Schuit and Mischa Lind
16:00 – 16:30 Joint closing with festive ceremony
A sensory exploration of wateredges along the small waterway opposite the Belgian pavilion in Amstelpark focuses on its memory, texture, and entanglements. Engaging through listening, deep observation, and gathering sonar and tactile imprints with these muddy waters. Tactile imprints and viewing frames could be done on paper, negotiating the transition between wet and dry. The same papers could be bundled into one sensory Leporello.
When: Saturday, September 24 from 10:00-12:00. Sign up here.
Starting point: Glazen Huis, Zone2Source, Amstelpark
About Lada Hršak
Lada is a Croatian-Dutch architect, educator, and founder of Bureau LADA. LADA stands for Landscape, Architecture, Design, Action, and is a cross-disciplinary studio based in Amsterdam. Active between Amsterdam, Zagreb, and Cairo, the practice is specializing in artistic research, inclusive architecture, and the future of education. Current teaching engagements are with the Design Academy Eindhoven and the Royal Academy of Arts in Den Hague. Recent publications include ‘Shallow Waters’ – shifting geographies of two extreme deltas, and an urban travelogue in Cairo – ‘In Search of a Garden to Drink Tea’.
Eight children join Rachel and Mischa in a two-day workshop to build their own burrow in the middle of the woods of the Amstelpark. This lair will be visited by mysterious visitors during the night. The next morning we will discover what traces and messages have been left behind. At the end the children will think up a burrow ceremony for when their parents come to pick them up from their burrow. For this workshop we are looking for eight brave children between the ages of 6 and 10.
It would be very nice if you come both days, but if you can only make it to one you are also welcome.
When: Saturday 24 september from 10.30-14.00 (with lunch). Register your child here.
Sunday 25 september from 14.00-16.30, with cave ceremony at 16.00 (also for parents/guardians). Register your child here.
Starting point: Glazen Huis, Zone2Source, Amstelpark
Number of participants: 8
About Rachel Schuit and Mischa Lind
Rachel Schuit is a drama teacher and graduated from the mime course at the AHK and founder of Nexus art-platform and makerspace in Weesp. She is using the body as an instrument and explores the intimate relationship to a landscape, with its own dynamics, elements and materials.
Mischa Lind makes films, breeds insects, digs holes and creates spatial work. Mischa graduated from the Interfaculty ArtScience in 2020 with an alienating installation of sand filled with hundreds of crickets. With this, he won the Stroom Aanmoedigingsprijs.
This workshop will explore collective writing and moving practices as modes for doing and being together. We will search for stones which are lying the Amstelpark, and explore different ways of reading and writing with these geologic bodies. While spending time with stones, we will also discover hidden corners in our own bodies and discover common grounds – with the group and the earth we walk on. We will facilitate some simple exercises of reading and writing together, that will reveal the geology of our own bodies and minds.
When: Saturday 24 September from 13.30-16.00 hrs.
Starting point: het Glazen Huis, Zone2Source, Amstelpark
Registration: Register here.
Amount of participants: max 12
This workshop is in English
About Stone Network
Stone Network is the shared practice of designer Anna Bierler and artist Marit Mihklepp. Anna and Marit began their collaboration in 2021 from their shared interest in the entangled lives of geological ancestry; stones and the stories they carry. Stone Network develops ways of researching collaboratively and designing spaces of care and attention for bodies that exist outside the human timeframe. Anna and Marit have been working with writing scores and instructions dedicated to human and geologic connections, focusing on the relationship between writing, space and movement. So far the Stone Network has taken shape in conversations, writings, workshops, radio shows and publications.
Do you want to discover public space from another perspective? Do you like speculating and imagining things? Do you like to gather small artefacts? Or, are you simply a fan of discovering the city? Everyone is welcome! Artist Kamila Wolszczak invites you to a walking adventure in the Amstelpark. We will walk together in the park and reflect on alternative methods of experiencing urban public space. We will focus on the micro perspective and details to observe other relationships with the artifacts, nature, the horticulture and the infrastructure of the park. We will open our body sensations and connect with our imagination.
When: Saturday 24 September from 13.30-16:30 hrs
Starting point: het Glazen Huis, Zone2Source, Amstelpark
Registration: Register here.
Numbers of participants: 12
About Kamila Wolszczak
Kamila Wolszczak is a Netherlands-based Polish visual artist and researcher. She is a matter mediator, counter-narratives inventor with communication skills and a thirst for knowledge. She is creating performance, text and installation projects based on the relations between self-organized public side space and artifacts and human traces. She enjoys collaborative projects and co-creation, blending facts with speculation. She accepts change as inevitable and believes in the power of matter and communities, creativities as a magic tool for real shifts in society. Kamila has studied in the Maria Curie-Sklodowska University Lublin (Painting BA), the Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław (Art Mediation MA) and in the Fontys University Tilburg (Performing Public Space Artistic Research MA).
Kenzo Kusuda is a dancer who often relies on improvisation. In this movement workshop, he focuses on the performativity of the landscape: the bee dancing by, the tree gently swaying in the wind, the clouds slowly transforming high in the sky. In fact, everything dances. In this improvisation, we simply start our movement by seeing what is moving all around us. Discovering the life of movement, improvisation and performativity in the Amstelpark.
When: Saturday 24 september from 13.30-16.30 hrs
Starting point: het Glazen Huis, Zone2Source, Amstelpark
Registration: Register here.
Amount of participants: unlimited
This workshop is for everyone and suitable for people of all ages and abilities. Experience is not necessary, because we are all experts in our own bodies and our perception.
The workshop is in english. No experience is required.
About Kenzo Kusuda
Amsterdam-based Japanese choreographer/dancer Kenzo Kusuda is a unique phenomenon in the world of dance. He reveals the poetry of the dancing body in a personal and often breathtakingly intense way. Kusuda takes the audience into a world of imagination. His work is possessed of a mystical beauty that lies beyond the perception of our physical senses. Simply with the movement of the body on an almost empty stage, he is able to reveal that which is invisible.
In the peaceful and welcoming Amstelpark, a more-than-human presence awaits you. A gentle yet powerful someone with gifts to share and wisdom to exchange. During this workshop, as you tune in slow-ly to the park environment, this ally will make itself known to you. The process is unavoidable: it’s why you are drawn to participate in this session. In a ‘fast’ world, it’s easy to forget that we are part of a larger ecology of relations that includes a myriad of more-than-human actors and agents. This workshop facilitates intimate encounter with a few of the entities who are standing by to support and collaborate with us. A small notebook is recommended, but not required.
When: Sunday 25 September from 10.00-12:00 hrs
Starting point: het Glazen Huis, Zone2Source, Amstelpark
Registration: Register here.
Numbers of participants: unlimited
About Carolyn F. Strauss
Carolyn F. Strauss is the founder and director of Slow Research Lab, a multidisciplinary research and curatorial platform based in Amsterdam. For nearly two decades, the platform has been developing a body of theory and practice it calls ‘Slow research’: a term that describes an expanded realm of inquiry and experimentation for exploring ways that human lives are intertwined with other species and spaces, tempos and temporalities, histories and materialities. Training oneself to perceive and engage the world more Slow-ly gives way to subtler and also more profound resonances with (and within) a vast field of planetary entanglements.
We only recently started using text to record our world of thoughts. For most of our human evolution, we could not read or write. Libraries or databases didn’t exist. So how was this done? MonsterCode focuses on one specific form, in which the world of thoughts was integrated directly into the landscape. Landscapes acted like mind-palaces in many cultures, including here in Europe where this indigenous tradition has been completely forgotten. In this workshop, we pick up the thread after 3000 years. With basic experiments we’ll discover how to build such mental spaces. After a few months of practice to walk through your world of thoughts, you will start to notice that it restructures your mental processes.
When: Sunday 25 September from 13.30 to 16.00 hrs
Starting point: het Glazen Huis, Zone2Source, Amstelpark
Registration: register here.
Amount of participants: 15
About Theun Karelse
Theun Karelse studied fine-arts at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam before joining FoAM, a distributed group of transdisciplinary laboratories operating at the interstices of art, science, nature and everyday life. His interests and experimental practice explore edges between art, environment, technology and archaeology. In collaboration with Zone2Source he runs the long term Machine Wilderness research programme. His Amsterdam outdoor studio gardens serve as testing grounds for urban biodiversity, climate adaptation and indigenous knowledge systems. He is a board member of the Embassy of the Earth and part of the Future of the Delta team at the Embassy of the Northsea.
Taiji and Qigong is a daily practise in the Amstelpark. Luigi Kwas has for decades been a practitioner and master of a specific Chinese movement art called TaijiWuXigong. This form is based on ancient principles in which the body grounds and heals itself. What happens to our movement when we attune ourselves to the earth beneath us? Luigi has worked with many masters, but experience is not necessary to participate in this workshop. We just start with the grass under our feet and with Luigi as our guide you will be set in motion naturally.
When: Sunday 25 September from 13.30 to 16.00 hrs
Starting point: het Glazen Huis, Zone2Source, Amstelpark
Apply: register here.
Amount of participants: max 30
This workshop is suitable for people of all ages and conditions. Experience is not necessary to participate.
About Luigi Kwas
Luigi has been working non-stop with oriental martial arts, Taijiquan, and Taijiwuxigong for more than 30 years. In 1996, together with master Zhao Qiu Rong, he founded the Jing Wu kungfu school in Haarlem, and in 2006 he founded the EVI M.A.S.T.E.R.S. Club.
Artist and singer Sigrún Gyða holds a workshop on sound creation in collective outdoor exercises. It is a meeting ground for people to find inspiration in sports related movements and in how movement can change the way we think and communicate. In the afternoon of 25th of September we will look into how our bodies react to different movements or feelings in the open space of Amstelpark and ask ourselves if the bodily feeling of tension can change the way our voices resonate alone or together. In the workshop participants will work at their own speed to test their individual limits with exercises on the voice and a collective sound-creation in connection to the inspiring park.
Where: Sunday 25 September from 13.30 tot 16.00 hrs
Starting point: het Glazen Huis, Zone2Source, Amstelpark
Registration: register here.
Amount of participants: 12
This workshop is suitable for people of all ages and physical conditions.
About Sigrún Gyða
Sigrún Gyða is a filmmaker, classical singer, composer and visual artist. Her practice seeks to capture the performative self through sound as a mythical mode to reflect on femininity, body labor and time. Sigrún’s work focuses on different social groups, cultures and differentiation. Sigrún lives and works in Reykjavík and Amsterdam where she graduated at the Sandberg Institute with a MA in fine art and design 2021.
As a flying field reporter, Anne Florence Neveu will be present live for two days, making observations, conducting mini interviews with passers-by, workshop providers, participants, and the non-human visitors and residents of the park. Based on this, a report is written of the Field Academy-Amstelpark in which the Amstelpark is explored as a sensory heritage. Anne Florence Nevue is an artistic researcher and writer exploring the intersection of eco-surveillance, methods of production & reproduction, and queerness. Their recent projects include an analysis of the media-based economy of desire in the giant panda and a media archaeology documenting the replacement of a plant community. Their projects often find their forms in videos, performances, lectures and publications.
The Field Academy is made possible by Adviescommissie voor de Kunst (ACK) Stadsdeel Zuid
