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.

Citational Choices takes La Trobe University’s Etta Hirsh Ceramics Collection as its point of departure. The exhibition combines ceramics with archival material, moving image, sculpture and exhibition design. Together, these elements unravel the biographical stories present within the collection itself—those of Etta Hirsh, of a local art scene, of La Trobe Art Institute, and now, in the case of this exhibition, everyone newly involved. Through contemporary works which engage with personal and material archives, the exhibition pays particular attention to the stories – the anecdotal and the informal ones—that don’t often make it onto the record. Artists include Anna Daučíková, Luke Fowler, Gail Hastings, Rita Keegan and the Rita Keegan Archive Project. Exhibition design in collaboration with Maud Vervenne. Curated by Isabelle Sully.

Booklet of English translations produced on the occasion of Playbill Act II: Moniek Toebosch at Torpedo Theatre, Amsterdam June 24, 2022.

Directly engaging with the theatrical setting of Torpedo Theater, the forty-five short texts composing theater-maker, artist, educator and broadcaster Moniek Toebosch’s 1994 work Kop op Kop [Head to Head] were performed as a one-person play by television and radio presenter Adeline van Lier. First exhibited as part of the Stedelijk Museum’s 1994 exhibition Couplet 3, the work—for which Toebosch wrote monologues and poems to accompany a selection of portraits held in the Stedelijk Museum’s collection—is one of many pieces produced by Toesbosch that interweave text with performance and/or its implications.

Designed by Maud Vervenne.

Programme produced on the occasion of Playbill Act II: Moniek Toebosch at Torpedo Theatre, Amsterdam June 24, 2022.

Directly engaging with the theatrical setting of Torpedo Theater, the forty-five short texts composing theater-maker, artist, educator and broadcaster Moniek Toebosch’s 1994 work Kop op Kop [Head to Head] were performed as a one-person play by television and radio presenter Adeline van Lier. First exhibited as part of the Stedelijk Museum’s 1994 exhibition Couplet 3, the work—for which Toebosch wrote monologues and poems to accompany a selection of portraits held in the Stedelijk Museum’s collection—is one of many pieces produced by Toesbosch that interweave text with performance and/or its implications.

Designed by Maud Vervenne.

Unbidden Tongues #7: Continuity Girl unpacks the ‘forensic feminist methodology’ developed by writer, curator and administrator Naomi Pearce. Informed by research conducted in various personal archives of women administrators of artist studio spaces in London from the 1970s until now, the components of Pearce’s writing span mortuary field notes, interview transcripts, intimate first-person accounts and an auto-fictive mystery novella. These various evidentiary approaches blend to form an unconventional casebook that puts forward the complicating factors underpinning the process of writing history in the first place. In this particular title, the biographical lens focuses on Shirley Read—a photographer, writer, teacher, administrator and oral historian, whose work has been largely overlooked, until now.

Unbidden Tongues #3.1: Adrian Piper is a poster to accompany Unbidden Tongues #3: Adrian Piper: Necessary Questions. This poster, housed in the archive of Kunstverein München and announcing Piper’s exhibition there in 1992, was reprinted in February 2022 on the occasion of Unbidden Tongues’ participation in On and Off the Grid, a yearly program of presentations and events dedicated to various form(at)s of publishing at the Schaufenster am Hofgarten, Kunstverein München.

More information on the original exhibition can be found here.