Join us for a special closing event of the Sonic Acts exhibition Melted for Love at ROZENSTRAAT. You’re warmly invited to an informal salon exploring the exhibition’s themes, with contributions from Christiaan Bastiaans, Zoë Dankert, and Dorien Dijkhuis.

 

The program will be held in Dutch, but English feedback will be available during the workshop.

 

Writing workshop | 11.00 – 13.00h

The day begins with a writing workshop, led by art critic and poet Zoë Dankert. This final session focuses on collective art criticism: together, participants will respond to Melted for Love and explore how language can bring art to life in unexpected ways. While earlier workshops emphasised individual engagement through criticism and poetry, this session invites a shared process of creating and experiencing.

 

Artist talk & reading performance | 15.00 – end

After a break, the afternoon program starts at 15:00 with an informal conversation between Christiaan Bastiaans and ROZENSTRAAT curators Madelon van Schie and Sjoerd Kloosterhuis. Centered around Bastiaans’ video Face to Face (1978), presented as part of the biennial’s Rosebud program, the discussion will delve into both the work itself and the wider practice of the 74-year-old artist.

 

The event concludes on a festive note with a reading performance by poet, writer, and performer Dorien Dijkhuis. She will present excerpts from her poetic-musical piece Solastalgia, alongside new and previously published work.

 

Come by and experience how art and language come together.

 

 

About the artist

Christiaan Bastiaans (1951) studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and at Kyoto City University of Arts. His work has been exhibited at institutions including De Pont, the Kröller-Müller Museum, the New Museum in New York, De Appel, and ROZENSTRAAT – a rose is a rose is a rose. He has also participated in major international exhibitions such as the 12th Biennale de Paris at the Musée d’Art de la Ville de Paris (1982) and Aperto at the Venice Biennale (1988). In 2015, he presented the solo exhibitionPharmacy Deux Milleat Looiergracht 60 in Amsterdam. His work is held in several museum collections, including the Kröller-Müller Museum and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. In 2022, he was awarded the Jeanne Oosting Prize.

 

Dorien Dijkhuis is a poet, writer, and performer. She is the author of the poetry collection We Were Animals (Nieuw Amsterdam) and the novelThe Same Moon (Van Oorschot), a work that blends genres, combining prose, poetry, and essay. Beyond the page, she explores the boundaries of literary forms through collaborations with artists from other disciplines, including musicians, visual artists, and digital creators. This has resulted in works such as the poetic-musical performance Solastalgiaand the virtual reality installation VER. As a poet, she regularly performs at festivals and other stages, sometimes accompanied by an improvisational jazz band.

 

Zoë Dankert is a poet, art critic, and podcast maker. Her poetry has appeared in literary magazines such as Het Liegend Konijn, Kluger Hans, and nY, while her essays, reviews, and interviews have been published in outlets includingBoekman,De Witte Raaf, Metropolis M, and NRC. In 2022, she received the Basis Prize of the Prize for Young Art Criticism for an exhibition review, as well as the Incentive Award for Innovative Critical Art Practices for her podcast seriesWorking Title, which focuses on labor conditions and work culture in the contemporary Dutch art world. She previously worked as a web editor and managing editor at Metropolis M.