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About this activity.
In the context of FALL: FIVE FAILS – New Works after Bas Jan Ader- a collaboration of Block C, Pictura, ARTisBOOK, Minerva Academy, SIGN.
SIGN presents: A CASE OF MAKE BELIEVE 19 September – 19 October 2025
Oded Rimon, Danai Belosinof, Adele Dipasquale, Sverre van der Velde , Bernardo Zanotta
The official opening of FALL: FIVE FAILS will take place on Friday, September 19th, at 3:00 PM at Academy Minerva by Roos Gortzak (director of the Groninger Museum). Venues open at 4:00 PM. At SIGN the opening and toast of ‘a case of make believe’ will take place at 5:00 PM with a performance by the Braghi choir on the canal!
Five artists, inspired by Bas Jan Ader’s latest work, have explored how fiction can become a form of truth.
They explore this through installations, performances, video, and audio constellations. There will also be reading and writing sessions, a film night, and a tour for further exploration.
‘A Case Of Make Believe ‘is curated by Bernardo Zanotta (1996 in Porto Alegre, Brazil) visual artist, filmmaker. His short films are rooted in the interplay between the familiar and the fantastical.
Activities in SIGN
-Friday 26 September FILM SCREENING curated by Sverre van der Velde –Start 20:00 hrs .
-Saturday 4 & 11 October, Time: 10:00–15:00 (incl. lunch).
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WORKGROUP: The Boy Who Fell Over Niagara Falls – On (Auto)Fiction and Fatality –
Close readings and discussion on narrative and the tension between witnessing and myth-making. We will look at how autofiction can mediate our experience of the world, how storytelling can shape or undo fate, and how this can be incorporated into one’s art practice. Between session 1 and 2, participants are expected to write a short story which will be shared with the group.
https://sign2.nl/websign/workgroup-the-boy-who-fell-over-niagara-falls-reading-and-writing-sessions/
More detailed A CASE OF MAKE BELIEVE
In 2025, we mark the disappearance of Bas Jan Ader fifty years ago. His final project, “In Search of the Miraculous,” saw him embark on a journey across the Atlantic from the United States to Europe in a small boat; a voyage that ended with his disappearance. In the context of this anniversary, the city of Groningen will host a series of events to pay tribute to Bas Jan Ader, showcasing both his historical work and new artistic productions aligned with his recurring themes.
Among these events, at SIGN projectspace , a group of artists have developed new works where the boundaries between fiction and reality, as well as their documentation and reenactment, serve as a starting point.
A CASE OF MAKE BELIEVE challenges the very notion of these boundaries, proposing that constructed narratives and lived experience are inherently intertwined and perhaps even indistinguishable.
The works in the exhibition call for a different kind of presence. They look toward the miraculous and invite the viewer to play with it, as something folded into the textures of the everyday, staging fictions and parallel narratives. What the artists share is the use of the apparatus: film, theatre, sound and their poetic dimensions. “How can the voice be a technology that allows communication not only across distant geographies but also distant temporalities? Could it challenge our notions of linear time and prescriptive ideas of death?”
What if a window, a gust of wind, a conjuring, a doorway, a closet, a corner, were not just objects, but the memory of something or someone that has just vanished? Magic appears occasionally, unexpectedly. The familiar trick of disappearing inside a coffin. Could we, too, play a trick on death before it plays a trick on us? A ship sinks, again and again, in a room designed to fail. Someone decides to run away. Another chooses to look death in the eye and challenge it. A sand-filled basement hums with the breath of vanishing voices. A trip to the moon and then a return.
In the exhibition, the artists do not necessarily draw inspiration from Bas Jan Ader’s figure, but similarly question how fiction and life are entwined, at times taking the form of a mirror, at others a moment of disruption through the mediums of installation, music, performance, and video.
During the exhibition, a workshop at SIGN organised by Bernardo Zanotta will provide space for dialogue and the creation of a temporary community, extending some of the concerns of the works into shared discussion and reflection.
SIGN.
SIGN is een levendige en experimentele projectruimte voor actuele interdisciplinaire kunst op nationaal niveau. Zij biedt jonge kunstenaars een podium voor verdere profilering, ontwikkeling en intensivering van hun kunstenaarschap. Daarbij wordt nieuw werk geïnitieerd in bijzondere contexten en wordt de nodige reflectie gegeven. Presentaties zijn er in SIGN, op allerlei locaties, en in openbare ruimte met een variatie aan omstandigheden, invalshoeken, disciplines.
SIGN wordt ondersteund door Mondriaan Fonds Kunstpodium Basis 2025-2028 en door de Gemeente Groningen voor dezelfde periode.
Location.
SIGN
Winschoterkade 10
9711 EA Groningen
tel 050-3132651 of 0623631796
www.sign2.nl