ROZENSTRAAT –
a rose is a rose is a rose
News & Events
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01.0821:00Jeffrey’s Cinema #10
The Vampires of Poverty, 1977
(Agarrando Pueblo)
Directed by Luis Ospina
28 minutes
In Spanish with English subtitles
The Vampires of Poverty can be regarded as a satirical examination on the opportunism of “poverty-porn”. Masqueraded as a documentary, this Columbian film follows a team of filmmakers roaming the streets of Cali in search of images of abjection and victims of poverty for a television program commissioned by a German channel. A daring criticism against the potentially exploitative nature of socio-political documentaries, The Vampires of Poverty questions the veracity and intention of the images we see on-screen and invites the viewer to critically engage with the moving pictures that feed us knowledge.
Waar de Ratten Koning zijn, 1985
(Where the Rats are King)
Directed by Barbara den Uyl
56 minutes
In Dutch with English subtitlesBack in the 80s the area of the Staatsliedenbuurt in Amsterdam west was one of the poorest parts of the city, and a sort of self-declared free state with a thriving alternative community. In that period of time, alternatives were the mainstream, and this is a perfect example. The squatters, punks and local residents banded together to keep their world free. The mayor of Amsterdam tried to recapture this autonomous area of the city, and on the streets there were huge battles between residents and the authorities. Documentary filmmaker Barbara den Uyl was part of the legendary Amsterdams Stadsjournaal film-collective. She lived in the Staatsliedenbuurt, and for a year she recorded the issues that were in the air, recorded the confrontations, and what life was once like in Amsterdam before the scorched-earth policy of gentrification.
Doors are open at 21.00. The program starts at 21.30!
Limited seating. Please make your reservation via info@rozenstraat.com
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16.0714:00Nick Huls in conversation with Rainbow Soulclub about Ubuntu
“The individual is not complete without the other,” says Mogobe Ramose.
According to the South African philosopher, Western thinking has degenerated into self-interest and greed.
Instead, we should strive for connection and justice. In short, to Ubuntu.
During his guest lectures in South Africa, Nick Huls, emeritus professor of sociology of law in Leiden, became acquainted with Ubuntu. This humanistic philosophy of life differs radically from individualistic Western thinking. Ubuntu represents an attitude to life that starts from the realization that nothing is fixed. Life is an endless process of coming into being, decaying and coming into being again, and during this process everything is connected and dependent on each other. A person can only be happy if others are too.
Rainbow Soulclub is a collective of artists and visitors of the De Rainbow Group foundation in Amsterdam*. As a collective they make works that would not have been made without each other; the exhibition in Rozenstraat a rose is a rose is the result of the sharing of ideas and a joint work process. In addition, Rainbow Soulclub is also a solidarity collective, members have known each other for a long time and support each other in difficult times.
This conversation takes place within the context of the exhibition Rearrangement of Priorities #9 (home) in ROZENSTRAAT a rose is a rose. Since ‘Covid19’, all members of the Rainbow Soulclub have had a -temporary- roof over their heads. Unfortunately, this emergency shelter will soon be scaled down again and the question is how long the members will have shelter and where the next chapter of their lives will take place.
In an informal setting, Nick Huls and members of the Rainbow Soulclub will exchange ideas about the importance of Ubuntu and how this philosophy of life can be of interest to us in the here and now.
*The Rainbow Group foundation provides shelter and support for homeless people in Amsterdam
Maximum number of visitors: 25
RSVP: info@rozenstraat.com
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03.0711:30old love/new love walk with Robin Waart
old love/new love walk on Saturday, July 3 at 11:30 AM
We are happy to invite you for a special walk on Saturday the 3rd of July at 11:30 AM organized in collaboration with rongwrong and lead by artist Robin Waart.
The walk opens up his current project old love/new love by physically connecting rongwrong and ROZENSTRAAT with the billboards spread around the city containing a selection of phrases about love that Waart collected from 160 films for his artist book EVOL/LOVE.
We will start by meeting at ROZENSTRAAT – where you can see one part of the double installation that Waart made on the occasion of the launch of EVOL/LOVE – and then move together through the city. There will be few reading-chatting stops around the billboards in an attempt to bring to live the multilayered psychogeography of Amsterdam. For example one of the billboards is next to the club De Trut on the Bilderdijk, a place filled with ephemeral traces of powerful, unconventional, and fragile relationships, bonds, and experiments for many inhabitants.
The last destination will be rongwrong, where we will have a ‘rose drink’, visit Waart’s installation and his guest curated exhibition For, after, to and because with works by Carel Blotkamp, Peter Downsbrough, Hermann Gabler, Pati Hill, Bunny Rogers, Mitchell Thar and Emily Wardill.
We will be strolling but comfortable shoes are advised upon discretion. The walk takes approximately two hours.
The radio broadcast evollove.nl accompanying the billboards, a screening of all 160 movies that make up EVOL/LOVE but without the picture (with a duration of 11 days, 19 hours, 26 minutes and 51 seconds) will be available for continuous listening until 3 July, 17:26:51, announced and framed by interventions in Het Parool on June 17 and this Thursday, 1 July.
Robin Waart’s work begins with the words of others. He uses repetition and collecting as a framework for projects with books, movie stills, photography and book pages to scratch at questions of (dis)continuity, what it means to do, and look at, the same thing over and over. Waart (NL/UK) lives and works in Amsterdam.
For more information about the project old love/new love click here and here!
EVOL/LOVE is made possible by the Mondriaan Fund, Harten Fonds, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst and will be available at Rozenstraat and De Appel. Thanks to Baptiste Pinteaux, Nicole Huard, Air de Paris, Romainville and Société, Berlin
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01.0714:00Wees Mimosa Govert Visser & Rainbow Soulclub in conversation with Chief Government Architect Floris Alkemade
Event: On July 1 between 2 and 4pm Wees Mimosa Govert Visser & Rainbow Soulclub will have a conversation (in Dutch) with Chief Government Architect Floris Alkemade
Chief Government Architect Floris Alkemade argues in his book The Future of the Netherlands that our contemporary prosperity has taken such an unimaginable flight that every change is first of all experienced as a threat. Right now however our ability to change direction must be tapped. The most powerful engine for change is to evoke desire for change. Imagination is essential here. It is not the world that determines who we are, but vice versa; with our stories we shape the world.
To survive in the periphery of our society, Wees Mimosa Govert Visser uses his imagination. He developed a system that, on a spiritual basis, tells him why he is here. Since 2000, he has been working on this system of cards and folders that provide him with information to learn and to keep learning, every day. Changing direction is a familiar concept to him.
The conversation takes place in the setting of the exhibition Rearrangement of Priorities #9 (HOME). Since Covid19, all members of the Rainbow Soulclub have had a -temporary- roof over their heads. Unfortunately, this emergency shelter will soon be scaled down again and the question is how long the members will have a ‘home’ and where the next chapter of their lives will take place.
In an informal setting, Floris Alkemade, Wees Mimosa Govert Visser and other members of the Rainbow Soulclub will exchange ideas about their personal search for deeper needs and the future of the Netherlands.
Maximum number of visitors: 25
RSVP: info@rozenstraat.com -
29.1117:00Jeffrey’s Cinema #9
EDEN AND AFTER 1970
(L’Éden et après)
Directed by Alain Robbe-Grillet
96 minutes
In French with English subtitlesThe film starts at 5pm
Limited seating, please register via info@rozenstraat.com
Face mask required
Welcome to the surreal world of Alain Robbe-Grillet, haunting images of shattered beauty, sado-masochism, poetry, and subversion. For Robbe-Grillet it is impossible to enter the realm of the imagination through the normal rules of filmmaking. His films always have a storyline which establishes a theme and its characters, but as it progresses the story becomes more and more loose until it splinters into another world of perception.
This flick is a French-Czechoslovak production, and it seems to me that the director was always sympathetic to the former Eastern bloc, not for political reasons, but because it represented a phantom continent where people thought and acted and dreamed differently than in the so-called West. The story of this film follows some bored students who hang out in a weird café called Eden. One day they meet a Dutch man who offers them another possibility than school and lessons. He invites them to an event, but when they arrive they find him dead. That’s the beginning of this movie which focuses on the students as they follow the trail of this man’s origins, which lead them to the Tunisian island of Djerba. And the more they attempt to uncover the truth, the more hallucinogenic everything becomes.
Visually stunning, the trip becomes an Alice-in-Wonderland journey for adults, a psycho-sexual maze, a mirror opposite to our conservative consumer society. The images are as stunning as anything in Jodorowsky’s films, but the storyline here is more warped and deranged and almost Lynchian in its multiple layers and obscure origins. The exotic locales and mysterious encounters multiply as this outlandish film unravels, including the kidnapping of a white European girl by Arabs. Cryptic, transgressive, sexy, and inspired by the atonal music of Arnold Schoenberg’s twelve-tone compositions! Hard art meets cinema.One viewer’s response:
“Composed. Scary. Erotic, sexy, unnerving. Fragile. Paced. Sexy, erotic, unnerving. Calculated. Frantic. Pretty. Gialli. Unnerving, erotic, sexy. Meaningful. Naked. Hard. Meaningless. Ice-cold. Constructed. Warm. Erotic, unnerving, sexy. Art. Entertainment. Warm, cold, erotic, unnerving. Eden and After is one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen. Did nothing happen? Did anything happen? Using cinema as a medium to explore the audience rather than it’s characters, a guitar strumming begins to sound like the most alien thing in the world.”This will be a high-definition screening.