Texts by Tina Barouti, Anne-Grit Becker, Natalie Dupêcher. Photographs by Robert Rauschenberg and Cy Twombly.

In the fall of 1952, Cy Twombly receives a traveling scholarship from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and leaves New York for his first trip to Europe and North Africa. He meets up with Robert Rauschenberg in Casablanca, and the two of them travel to Marrakech and the Atlas Mountains, and then to Tangier. They pay a visit to Paul Bowles in Tétouan and go on day trips with him to nearby villages and Roman ruins. Twombly conducts his first and last archaeological excavation there. Upon their return to Rome in February 1953, Twombly studies and sketches the ethnographic objects and tribal artifacts he sees on display in the Museo Nazionale Preistorico Etnografico Luigi Pigorini. These sketches survive in the form of the North African Sketchbooks. Much of the surviving work from this trip consists of photographs taken with a Rolleiflex shared by the artists and sketches made by them, preserved in the archives of the Cy Twombly Foundation and Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio; they provide a unique perspective on Twombly’s lesser-known affinity for Africa’s Mediterranean shores.

The Books and Life of Raymond Roussel is a biographic and bibliographic study of the French author Raymond Roussel (1877–1933). It was researched and written by the art historian Michael Sanchez. The book takes the form of an inventory of every known state of every edition of Roussel’s lifetime publications. Interwoven into this bibliographic data are texts that analyze the relationship between Roussel’s literary procedures, the material construction of his books, and his life. The book also includes a list of primary and secondary literature related to Roussel.

In his work, McCarthy explores the dialectical relationships between subjects like city and citizen, friend and the stranger, and present and past. McCarthy’s work often testifies to the paradoxical emptiness experienced in a metropolis. Taking the city’s map as a metaphysical topography, the confluence of real estate, architecture, and urban planning become vocabulary for the construction of a self. Besides working with photography and text, McCarthy makes associative installations. His works appear to be images from memories, meeting viewers with a torrent of different emotions, ranging from amusement and admiration to aversion and fear. Designed by Lucas Quigley.

More information on the associated exhibition can be found here.

Programme produced on the occasion of Playbill Act IV: Mieko Shiomi at Torpedo Theatre, Amsterdam March 9, 2023.

Mieko Shiomi is most-known for her substantial contribution to the Fluxus movement, where her investigations into the nature and limits of sound, music and auditory experience began as a student in Tokyo in the late 1950s, during which time she co-founded the seminal postwar Japanese experimental music collective Group Ongaku.

Central to Shiomi’s body of work is the creation of Fluxus editions—printed matter often taking the form of instruction cards and action invitations—and events, for which she gained most recognition in 1960s and 70s after relocating temporarily to New York in 1964 on the invitation of George Maciunas. During this time she began scoring ‘action poems,’ most notably Spatial Poem (1965), whereby she removed musical notation from the score entirely, instead favouring verbal instructions that were to be interpreted by the performer.

Designed by Maud Vervenne.

Edition produced on the occasion of Playbill Act IV: Mieko Shiomi at Torpedo Theatre, Amsterdam March 9, 2023.

Mieko Shiomi is most-known for her substantial contribution to the Fluxus movement, where her investigations into the nature and limits of sound, music and auditory experience began as a student in Tokyo in the late 1950s, during which time she co-founded the seminal postwar Japanese experimental music collective Group Ongaku.

Central to Shiomi’s body of work is the creation of Fluxus editions—printed matter often taking the form of instruction cards and action invitations—and events, for which she gained most recognition in 1960s and 70s after relocating temporarily to New York in 1964 on the invitation of George Maciunas. During this time she began scoring ‘action poems,’ most notably Spatial Poem (1965), whereby she removed musical notation from the score entirely, instead favouring verbal instructions that were to be interpreted by the performer.

Designed by Maud Vervenne.

“In SHIMMER, A MANUAL OF UNDOING we present a series of hand-developed black and white medium format photos of Shimmer’s exhibitions-in-progress. The photographs were taken during the unpacking, the unwrapping, the decision-making, depicting the often-invisible labor of the art worker. Since 2018 we have been undecided on how to make room for these images, which seem to not fit into conventional forms of contemporary art presentation and documentation. They arrive long after the moment of their generation, finally finding their home in this book’s unsettled and unbound pages. It is in the lag—the linger—that we define as our studio method.” Designed by Christophe Clarijs.