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Meet the artist | Kristina Benjocki and Stijn Verhoeff

Date:
Saturday 1 June 2024
17:00—18:00
Location:
→ WELCOME STRANGER – Kristina Benjocki en Stijn Verhoeff – Het Hoogt en het Laagt
Het Laagt 24
Amsterdam
Admission
Free admission

17:00—18:00

HET HOOGT EN HET LAAGT (THE HIGH AND THE LOW)

You are welcome to join us for a late afternoon with artist Kristina Benjocki and Stijn Verhoeff starting at Forum: Meeting Point, a 1970s public space artwork by Shinkichi Tajiri.  Tajiri envisaged that on his 25x15m artwork, children would play and adults would meet and have a chat. This would give it an outdoor living room feel. The work thus ties in with architect Frans van Gool’s architecture. With his galleries and bridges, which resemble the pedestrian bridges of Schiphol Airport, Van Gool also wanted to create a space between inside and outside, accessible to everyone.

Artist Kristina Benjocki has made a film together with filmmaker Stijn Verhoeff that offers a poetic exploration of the van Gool Plan. It is an attempt to capture their multifaceted habitat in image and sound. During this afternoon, we will walk through Plan van Gool and screen the film.

Benjocki and Verhoeff’s short film is based on conversations with local residents and includes detailed film footage of daily activities and work in the neighbourhood. In the coming months, Benjocki and Verhoeff will continue to have conversations with their fellow residents. Excerpts from these conversations will be compiled into a podcast. 

Kristina Benjocki was born in 1984 in Zrenjanin,the former Yugoslavia. She has exhibited her work at various institutions and platforms worldwide, including Rijswijk Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, Serbia; Museum of Contemporary Art in Eupen, Belgium; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka, Croatia; Izolyatsia in Kyiv, Ukraine; the American University in Beirut, Lebanon.

Benjocki’s oeuvre is strongly influenced by archaeological practices and reflects on archaeology itself. Her work makes us aware of how narratives are constructed and how these constructions influence our perception of the world. She examines the conditions under which fragments of time are collected, recorded, documented, represented, shared, omitted, repressed or overlooked, and the implications this has for knowledge and the formation of identity and community. Central to her work is the archive, which she sees as an instrument for writing new histories.

Stijn Verhoeff is a filmmaker and writer. In addition to his own projects, he often collaborates with other artists, writers and musicians. Since 2022, he has been a board member of Fossil Free Culture NL and an advisor to the Student Council of the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and the Sandberg Institute. Stijn Verhoeff was born in Amsterdam in 1981.

Het Hoogt en het Laagt (The High and the Low) is the second collaboration between Benjocki and Verhoeff after the film While the Pile of Rubble Grows Towards the Sky, which came out last year.