Rise and Shine! This Must be Happiness - Researchlab UvA+Piet Zwart
The Research Labs in EYE on Art on 28 February and 16 May provide scope for a new generation of curators and artists to hone their skills. In these Research Labs, students from ten art academies and universities put together a programme involving their own work and films (including remixes) from EYE’s collection. The Research Labs do not follow a strict format and often result in a cultural crossover between film and other art forms. On 28 February and 16 May EYE will award a prize for the two best projects in collaboration with Heineken H41.
rise and shine! this must be happiness
An evening in collaboration with the University of Amsterdam and the Piet Zwart Institute to celebrate, challenge and contradict the age-old question of happiness. The programme will feature 17 original film and artworks presented by young researchers and artists who ask you tonight, are you happy?
The pursuit of happiness is an inalienable right, a right that we pursue without trepidation over the course of our lives. Happiness and happy lives are the measure of the good life. And yet, when we look around the modern world it becomes clear that there are lots of different happinesses. Happinesses that conflict and contradict, that make wars and not-good lives, happinesses that seem to deny what happiness is.
But do we even know what happiness is?
Maybe there is no happiness. As long as there is more than one person on earth there will always be conflicting pursuits of happiness. Over the course of two hours, 13 artists from the Piet Zwart Institute and 6 researchers from the University of Amsterdam will present to the EYE audience each of their own pursuits of happiness. They will ask what it means to be happy in this modern world.
Delving into the implications of catastrophic climate change, societal expectations and the ferocity of capitalism, 17 artworks and short films will be presented that show the very disparate pursuits of happiness we all recognize. What inspires us and motivates us, what confuses and challenges us, are all themes that will be taken up in each project.
We have pursued happiness for all our lives but only tonight will our true reflections on this happy question be presented to the EYE audience so that you too might come to reflect on this “inalienable right”.
(UvA+Piet Zwart)
Details
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