Museumnacht010 2022
Museumnacht010 takes place on 18 June from 20.00 to 01.00 this year. More than 35 institutions in Rotterdam will open their doors. For this occasion, Team MAMA members Elnaz Assar, Dicle Gülşahin, Maria Mombers, and Ioana Răileanu have put together the following programme for you:
20.00–01.00: Carpet Codes by Elnaz Assar
20.15–20.30: Documentary film screening Enterprise Romania
21.00–22.00: Celine Bereyakan DJ set
22.00–23.00: Maria Mombers DJ set
Carpet Codes
The subject of Carpet Codes is resistance in societies with high levels of suppression and conflict, such as Iran. Elnaz Assar’s focus is on Iranian women who form half of Iran’s population but face suppression in their everyday lives. Proven the capability of soft activism to survive high levels of censorship, her project explores craftivism as a possible tool women could utilize. To communicate and empower each other in a silent yet powerful fashion whilst avoiding consequences and creating a safe space.
Craftivism (craft+activism) is a growing worldwide movement where artists, activists, and the general public use their crafting skills for political purposes. Going to a protest or calling your local politician is no longer the only way to raise your voice particularly in Iran. Elnaz uses craftivism as a practical method that enables women to voice their issues and create spaces in which they can share their thoughts and ideas and protest softly and discreetly.
After some first-hand experience of the censorship and repression, Elnaz decided to use the steganography practice. She created a platform for women to share their stories since most Iranian women have access to carpets. She chose the carpet as a covert system to camouflage women’s sensitive stories. Carpets bring high value to the process of her project as they are transformed into a bank of data. Craftivism creates dialogue in the hopes of creating a positive change via personalized activism.
A secret platform for Iranian women to share stories, hopes, and dreams
Enterprise Romania
Enterprise Romania is an experiment located at the intersection of spectacle, cinematography, social psychology, and controlled accident. On 22 September 2013, two directors moved 50 angry young people to a village on the outskirts of Bucharest, transposing them in the future, in a Romania that no longer exists as a state, but has become a private company. Faced with the eradication of the entire village, the participants position themselves either on the side of Enterprise Romania or against it. The arrival of a bulldozer spontaneously destabilizes the identities of those involved: activists become aggressors, the director becomes dictator, the actors boycott production. Gradually, the young people are absorbed in a confusing battle, which makes them blindly use a resource that is no longer clean: water.
Enterprise Romania is the product of laboratories developed in 2013 by a team of sociologists, artists, activists, actors, and directors, in order to insert situations that provoke reactions to injustice into the reality. The labs were among the most innovative and controversial projects of the year, with participants taking artistic, physical, and political risks. Enterprise Romania equates the simulated democracy of the Romanian state with the cinema production policies.
Image credit: Ioana Păun and Maria Drăghici.Ioana Păun is an instigator, theater director, and performance artist working and researching internationally. She graduated from Goldsmiths University London and The National University of Theater and Film, Bucharest. Her work explores how humans behave in ferocious political, economic, and health circumstances. She is particularly attracted by stories about outliers, destabilization, paradox, and moral dilemmas. Her work always contains narratives in one way or another.
Maria Drăghici is a visual artist and community builder. She has been developing the concept of active art / community art in Romania, together with a creative community called the Generosity Offensive. The Generosity Offensive is the concept by which an informal group of artists claims social involvement as a defining attitude in the creation of any artistic production. The concept proposes a return to the reality of everyday life, through productions of active art / community art.
Celine Bereyakan DJ set
Celine Bereyakan is a producer-songwriter based in Rotterdam who has recently discovered turning tables. She mainly composes simple post-punk songs and makes lo-fi beats sampled from Turkish pop music from the period of her childhood. In her DJing practice, she aims to share only what she likes with the crowds. You will hear a lot of tunes addressing different parts of the world, especially the Middle East and Balkans in her set. Other than playing, she also enjoys collecting cassette tapes and vinyl.
Music being a fun tool for her to stay in the present moment combining her identity and locus, Celine Bereyakan works as a cultural manager and content maker in the daytime, going with the name stated on her ID-card. Instagram: @celinebereyakan.
Image credit: Celine Bereyakan.Maria Mombers DJ set
Holimary, Maria Mombers (1998), is a visual artist from Rotterdam. Her paintings, illustrations, and video works are mostly strongly inspired by the internet and pop and youth culture. Whilst discovering virtual environments such as Fortnite or TikTok, she researches Gen Z masterpieces which evoke the question of what could be seen as art in a digital age. With spending time in chat rooms and virtual worlds she collects stories, encounters, and situations which illustrate the lonely place the world could be but also the beauty of finding affection in unexpected places.
With a long-lasting love for electro music and a newly discovered interest in DJing, Maria will play a collection of tracks that inspired her to make her art. Expect an eclectic mix of electro, IDM, pop, ambient, and reggaeton.
Image credit: Maria Mombers.About IRL
Our lives are dominated by the self-produced realities that we encounter on the internet and social media. This tension between fact and fiction touches upon the core of our leitmotiv IN REAL LIFE. The only way to escape the post-truth is to meet each other in real life. We facilitate these meetings in the form of readings, lectures, masterclasses, workshops, excursions and parties that tangibly express the ideas behind HOME | IN REAL LIFE | NETWORKS.
