AMP: Artists' Meeting Place and Resource Collective

The Holland Festival - one of the oldest and most established large theater/music festivals in Europe is every June in Amsterdam and featured an international cadre of performance/music/dance and experimental work - hollandfestival.nl

Dance

The brilliant choreographer William Forsythe is an American choreographer who settled in Germany long ago and started his own company in Frankfurt. His brilliant work Decreation was exactly that - a melting piece of choreography as dancers distorted their bodies and voices and used an incredible sound design to highlight their rapid dialogues and descent.

I discovered Brian Eno when my ex-boyfriend choregraphed to his music. I liked what I read at the time in 2001.

"An artist is now much more seen as a connector of things, a person who scans the enormous field of possible places for artistic attention. To create meanings, or perhaps new readings, which is what curators do - is to create."

Now Mr. Eno is talking politics, the war and everything else:

I saw a BBC documentary recently on the horrific build-up to what is now unbelievable a 5 year long war.

Economists lately in the US have been painting the bleak economic truth - "For this amount of money, we could have provided health insurance for the uninsured of this country. We could have made social security solvent for the next three generations, and implemented all the 9/11 Commission's recommendations [to tighten domestic security]."

I showed a Buddhist friend over for breakast recently some work by a California buddhist artist - Michele Benzamin-Miki (coming from a mixed Japanese, N. African and Euro-American background). In an interview she stated "I feel that art is about revolution. Tolstoy once said that art inspires non-violence. With art you can get away with more to inspire non-violence. You can really push the envelope with the images you put out. My art is like getting to express in a transcendent language which circumvents belief systems. Art can bring people to a deeper place of spirituality, of activism, of anything." (www.artmbm.net)

Bringing the sun back. That's what we were doing after a week of bright sunlight in Amsterdam was replaced by mist. Almost 3,000 flowers came to Amsterdam for The Valentine Peace Project.

Volunteers came, the Dutch Flower Council sent a photographer, - lots and lots of kids and members of the Pijp community center gasped and awed at the bunches and bundles of carnations, tulips and irises shuffling from room to room as poems were wrapped, tied or taped around them.

I knew similar parties putting this all together would soon be happening in a few hours in the US. I was pleased that enough people had come to participate in my project for its first incarnation in the Netherlands!

I woke up early yesterday and saw a sliver of the moon - there still at 7am. Flickers of the sunrise were just reaching it and it hung above my neighbor's house like a prop on a string. I grabbed my digital camera - but no this is an image I'll just have to remember. There's a song by the Indigo Girls "Don't take a picture remember this is in your heart."

After the storms leave. That's how it is now with the city fresh and sparkling after a big wash. It still takes my breath away sometimes as I speed along on my bike - daytime or night. The lights on the bridges. The water reflecting the houses or the lights.

The innovative dance theater company Same Planet Different World will be presenting their 10year anniversary production the weekend of November 8 at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts. This is a company using theatrical elements within excellent modern dance. Check out their video at spdwdance.org.

Also Asimina Chremos of Silverspace combines forces with the innovative Khecari Dance Theater for The Wonder Cabinet of Dr. Wudnerkammer November 8-9, 15-16 (khecari.org) at Hamlin Park.

The unique Peace Museum of Chicago will open their new space with "An Oasis of Imagination" - author Alan Weisman,(The World Without Us) book Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World is about an experiment of sustainable living - Gaviotas - a village of peace and plenty developing in a dangerous barren desert. Grace Bastidas along with award-winning photographers, Antonin Kratochvil and Hector Emanuel provide a social and environmental backdrop. Opening soon! peacemuseum.org

AMPsterdam

The popular and controversial exhibit store Arab Hema (El Hema) has extended its closing date to January 6. Come to the Arab incarnation of the well loved Dutch store Hema with real products and designs by Dutch and International cutting edge designers. The exhibit is created by art and technology specialists Mediamatic - next to the Stedlijk museum. (mediamatic.net/elhema).

Also currently in different locations around Amsterdam are large photo displays of naked Nederlanders posing for Spencer Tunick's project Dream Amsterdam (dreamamsterdam.nl).
Art Amsterdam has also announced its 2008 dates (May 7 - 12). (artamsterdam.nl)