Join us for the opening night of Wasteland: Streams of Waste 2023!

18:00 Doors open
20:00 Welcome speech by collective.wasteland
20:30 Performance by Werner van der Zwan and Gökay Atabek
22:00 Evening program: Default #10

Join us for the celebratory opening of Wasteland: Streams of Waste! collective.wasteland is an interdisciplinary collective of researchers, artists, anthropologists and designers consisting of Katya Borisova, Yannik Güldner, Leon Lapa Pereira, Erik Peters and Anne Vera Veen.

Performance | The Muttering Void: Vacuum Cleaners and Trash Cans Unplugged
by Werner van der Zwan and Gökay Atabek

In “The Muttering Void: Vacuum Cleaners and Trash Cans Unplugged” artists Gökay Atabek and Werner van der Zwan explore how vacuum cleaners and trash cans can be given a voice and relate to us humans, in a sonic fashion. Separately, both artists have worked extensively in the past with the animating and sonifying objects. Gökay Atabek explored the vacuum cleaner with the piece “16000 Watt” and Werner van der Zwan the trash can with “Talking Trash”. Together, they attempt to merge the vocabulary they have developed for these object within the context of a performance piece.

It is coded in our perception of reality that trash is something which disappears from our world. Vacuum cleaners and trash cans are examples of the black holes the trash disappears into, where it stays out of sight and out of mind. Obviously, trash never truly disappears. Instead it tends to haunt us, re-emerging in the strangest places; like the bits of micro-plastics in our blood vessels and the medicine in our drinking water. What if we try to see these black holes as actors within this exchange? With the piece, the artists explore how a voice can be given to these objects, so that we can relate to them almost as intermediaries, actively partaking in the journey of trash.

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Werner van der Zwan 

Werner van der Zwan (The Hague, 1995) studied Fine Arts (WdKA) and Philosophy(EUR). In his artistic practice he investigates how a sense of life can be created in the non-living. By animating found objects and giving them a lifeworld he tries to question the dichotomy between subject and object. He does this by morphing the objects into moving bodies using electromotors. In performances and installations stray objects are given a last breath, expressing their distinct character. Werner often collaborates with composers and has made work in the form of theatre and musical composition.

Werner is part of the XR Research Cluster of V2_, a research of XR (Extended Reality) for non-human beings. His work has been shown in places like Ars Electronica, De Doelen, V2_, Het Hem and WORM.

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Gökay Atabek

Gökay Atabek (Istanbul, 1997) is an artist, and art-worker who is the sole representative, accountant, webmaster, and production manager of Vølksamt! Kultur Manufaktur; a studio focus on intermedia art.

Essentialy what Vølksamt! does is organization; be it organizing sound into composition, objects into bricolage or people into an entity. While Vølksamt! develops a wide variety of work such installations, performances, and digital media, its output is always firmly rooted in the realm of sonic arts. Cutting it’s teeth in the underground of Istanbul, Vølksamt! is inseperable from the iconography and DIY spirit of punk rock. It is because of this spirit that Vølksamt’s work is tied to vigirous and relentless handicraft, laced with blood and sweat. Vølksamt!’s work has been shown in many locations; from moldy basements and dark nightclubs to (internationally) acclaimed entities such as ArsElectronica, V2_Lab for Unstable Media, NDSM, Extrapol and Generate! Festival.