Ester Eva Damen

After the Rietveld Akademie and the Netherlands Film and TV Academy (screenplay & direction), Ester Eva Damen worked at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten and completed a master’s degree in Artistic Research at the University of Amsterdam. The La Jetée Foundation, initiated by her, has been stimulating cross-over projects since 2007. She writes freelance about film, made a number of short films including the 16mm b/w film ‘Windhang’ (1998), and wrote several drama scenarios for director Ineke Houtman, which were realized (within the NPS series ‘Kort’) ‘Sahara’ (2007). Ester Eva Damen’s work can also be seen within a visual arts context, with collaboration between film, dance and new music as one of the common threads in her work. She regularly collaborates with choreographer Angela Köhnlein and composer Yannis Kyriakides and more recently withthe dancers Ilana Reynolds and Sabrina Huth on their project You Are Here (2019). At the moment, she is completing her third short film with poet Tsead Bruinja based on his poem ‘Hok fan Rou’. She is currently working with three Frisian poets on a film project that is supported by, among others, the Netherlands Film Fund (New Screen): Ruzje Wyn/ Whisper Wind, 2023

Nicola Baratto & Yannis Mouravas

Nicola Baratto (IT, 1989) & Yiannis Mouravas (GR, 1986) are an artist duo working with Archaeodreaming, a research-based artistic practice that questions the fluidity of history via exploring the intersections of archaeology, dreaming, and myth-making. The resulting narratives are told through mixed-media installations, including films, artist books, and sculptures. We work with Archaeodreaming to craft new myths for the present, delving into history and our own dreams as archives for re-imagining the future. Through this experimental archaeology, investigate non-linear methods for narrating stories about historical artefacts, their materiality, symbolic function, and context of origin (or displacement). We have explored shipwrecks, relics, ruins, maps, and vessels as time capsules that can ‘open’ forgotten histories. Digging into these case studies we investigate how Archaeodreaming can become a method to contemplate something invisible and unknown and to engage with the processes of memory and (historical) imagination.

This method resulted in projects such as ‘Sometimes Archaeology Dreams of Itself’, ‘Future Relics’, and ‘Under any sea lies a desert’, developed between 2016 and 2020. These works function as vessels, containing objects, characters, images, and sounds that illuminate the same story from different angles. In these works, we constructed immersive spaces to enhance the sensorial and affective qualities of the work and to prioritise audience engagement. We built the film installations as contemplative portals in the form of (non)fiction narratives, with screen projections that reason on the geometry that the story suggests. In most recent direction of our collaboration, we worked on an experimental historical fiction film, titled ‘Zolfo Rosso’, a poetic tale delving into a fragment of Mediterranean history. We imagined the making-of a map of the ‘known world’ created in 12th century Sicily by geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi and commissioned by Norman King of Sicily Roger II. The so-called ‘Tabula Rogeriana’.

General Information — ARRG 22-23 

Dates: October 7th, December 2nd (2022); February 3rd, April 14th, June 3rd (2023)

Coordinators: Colin Sterling, Marta Pagliuca Pelacani (marta.pagliucapelacani@hotmail.it)

Credits: on request (up to 2 ECTS)

A series of five seminars will be organized to promote the exchange of ideas and experiences among artistic researchers and those interested in the field, during the seminars members of the group will present their research and receive feedback from their peers. One or two artistic researchers who have recently completed their PhDs will be invited to share their process with the participants of the seminars. The participants include PhD Candidates, but also those who have already completed their PhDs and would like to keep discussing their artistic research within a community of like-minded artists/scholars. Those interested in maybe pursuing such an academic study are also welcome to join, including Research Master students who wish to attain first-hand knowledge about the discipline.

ARRG 2022-2023 Programme

The programme will take place in VOX-POP (University of Amsterdam, Binnengasthuisstraat 9, Amsterdam), on Fridays from 13:00 to 16:00. 

7 October - Charles Rouleau & Sharelly Emanuelson

2 December - Brian McKenna and Anika Schwarzlose & belit sag

3 February - Ester Eva Damen and Nicola Baratto & Yannis Mouravas

14 April - Isabel Cordeiro & Rosie Heinrich

3 June - TBA