Museumnacht: The Argonauts awaken

What happens when a sculpture is not as fixed as it appears? When a monument changes, moves or even becomes part of a larger ecological system?

The Argonauts – Ivan Morison

Since September, The Argonauts by Ivan Morison have stood at NDSM. As strange, almost monstrous figures, they have taken up a new place on the former shipyard.

Morison built The Argonauts using agricultural waste materials, including unusable remnants from the thatching industry. A mineral skin covers the materials, protecting them and giving the sculptures a monumental and seemingly permanent character. This creates an agricultural body in drag, which takes on a lasting character from the outside, while gradually transforming and composting from within.

de Constructies – Cindy Moorman

This tension between permanence and change forms the starting point for de Constructies – a living sculpture by Cindy Moorman.

For one night, a fourth sculpture appears alongside the three existing figures: a human construction. A group of bodies temporarily forms a new construction together. It is there, changes and disappears again.

With this intervention, Moorman shifts the boundary between human, sculpture and public space. What appears fixed turns out to be temporary. What appears monumental can move. And a sculpture can also be a body.

Cindy Moorman is a Dutch visual artist. In her practice, she explores how people, objects, images and ideas relate to one another. Her Geënsceneerde Ontmoetingen are carefully composed situations in which these elements temporarily come together. Her work moves between performance, installation, text, drawing and video art, and often emerges in collaboration with other makers, participants and communities.

Singing Soil – Studio Metaform

Where de Constructies literally sets the sculptures in motion, Singing Soil by Studio Metaform directs the gaze – or rather: the ear – towards what happens beneath our feet.

The immersive sound installation makes audible changes that normally take place beyond our view: in the soil. Studio Metaform translates scientific data about nematodes into a soundscape. These microscopically small worms are present throughout the soil and play an important role in the underground food web.

For Singing Soil, scientific data on nematodes from different forms of land use in the Netherlands (arable farming, natural and agricultural grassland) is transformed into music. In this way, something that is normally invisible and difficult to imagine suddenly becomes audible. The soil is given a voice. Differences in biodiversity and the influence of human land use become part of an auditory experience. What happens beneath the surface when we change the landscape?

Studio Metaform, consisting of Kaj Boonstra and Emma Little, works at the intersection of art, science and social change. The collective translates complex research and data into sensory experiences that make urgent ecological and social questions tangible and understandable.

One night, different forms of change

With the Museumnacht programme The Argonauts Awaken, Marlene Deutinger brings two perspectives together. de Constructies makes change visible in the body and public space. Singing Soil lets us hear what takes place beneath the surface.

Together, they reopen The Argonauts for one night: not as a fixed monument, but as a place where bodies, materials, nature and surroundings are constantly in motion.

de Constructies will be built several times per hour. In between, you can hear Singing Soil. You can find us at Smederijplein at NDSM-werf, directly by the ferry. During your visit, enjoy a drink from Brouwerij ’t IJ and experience how art and public space come together at NDSM.

‍

‍

‍