production stills © de Appel

Synthetic Types

performative event, deAppel & Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 2019

The event Synthetic Types, held at the Stedelijk Museum is part of Landscape with Bear, an exhibition that investigates what has come to be known as De Appel’s Collection (Unintended), an accumulation of objects – artworks, props, leftovers, and unidentified materials – that lies within the institution’s extensive Archive. In the exhibition on view at De Appel, a single continuous topography blurs the line between the collection pieces and display. Building from the proposition that practices of collecting are part of regimes of knowledge production, this project asks, what kinds of knowledge can emerge from the fragmentary, the uncertain and the unstable?

The piece works through the artificial presence of language to create abstractions of inclusivity and foreignness. Arising from the collaborative framework of this project, which involves professionals from fields spanning contemporary art, curating, art history, architecture, design and archaeology, a new performance work has developed. Synthetic Types took place at De Appel’s Archive, and was streamed live into the Auditorium of the Stedelijk Museum. This work questions how access and inclusion are created or restricted through the institutional protocols of collecting. Using Japanese, Korean and Russian language, two performers interact with the unintended collection through conversations with subjects who are inaudible and out of sight, to explore how knowledge around objects and identities is produced.

A real-time English translation was provided to the audience alongside the filmed live image.

Cast: Kang Yumi, Lee Jeong-ha

Cinematographer: Johann Arens

Sound Recordist: Yashaswini Raghunandan

Assistant Directors: Kyung Bin Koh, Kanitha Tith

Real-time translators: Leila Gray, Mire Lee, Julian Ross

Supported by the Curatorial Programme 2018-2019, de Appel and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.