Frascati en Dries Verhoeven open museum voor performance art

From Thursday, May 30 to Sunday, June 2, Frascati will temporarily open its doors as a museum for performance art during WORK WORK WORK: many many works on labour. The entire building will be used for a group exhibition at the intersection of theater and visual art. Artists including Dries Verhoeven, Julian Hetzel, and Tehching Hsieh will showcase continuous performances and (video) installations about the future of labor in times of automation.

For four days, not only Frascati’s theater halls but also office spaces, stairwells, and dressing rooms will make way for art. Frascati, together with visual artist and performance maker Dries Verhoeven, co-curates the interdisciplinary program featuring twelve works created between 1980 and now, reflecting on themes such as labor migration, (self)discipline, and the human versus the machine.

The legendary Taiwanese artist Tehching Hsieh’s One Year Performance 1980-1981 (Time Clock Piece, 1981) will be shown. Verhoeven will reprise his monumental Broeders verheft u ter vrijheid (Brothers, Exalt to Freedom) (nominated for the VSCD mime prize in 2021): ten Bulgarian performers with a history as labor migrants will sing a historical workers’ song amidst immense robot arms taking over their tasks. Frascati Producties will present new work by Gosia Wdowik, who, as a young maker and activist, experienced burnout. This inspired her to create the continuous performance installation Body in Resistance, which will premiere during WORK WORK WORK.

On Sunday, June 2, Ahmet Öğüt will show his one time performance Labour after Like, Love before Work: which you can visit offline and follow online via a live stream on Instagram. For eight hours, Öğüt will create his artwork on-site. However, the artist will only work as long as the live stream receives 'likes.' Other works on display include WORKPIECE (2023) by Anna-Marija Adomaitytė & Gautier Teuscher, Time Machine (2014) by Julian Hetzel, and Employment Contract (1992) by Pierre Bal Blanc. In addition to Brothers, Rise to Freedom, Dries Verhoeven will also reprise his video works The Recruitment (2021) and To Perform (2021), the installation Songs for Thomas Piketty (2016), and the new works Painkiller Dispenser (2024) and Burger (2024).

The museum will be open eight hours a day, the length of a working day, and is part of Amsterdam Art Week 2024.

Opening hours:

Thu, May 30 16.00 - 00.00
Fri, May 31 16.00 - 00.00
Sat, June 1 14.00 - 22.00
Sun, June 2 12.00 - 20.00

Tickets: €10 - €40 (pay what you can)