Suzie van Staaveren and Jan Dirk Adams at Billytown

Artists: Suzie van Staaveren and Jan Dirk Adams

Exhibition title: Kifl the Kid Salon

Venue: Billytown, The Hague, The Netherlands

Date: June – October, 2020

Photography: Charlott Markus and Matt King / all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Billytown, The Hague

Billytown has invited Jan Dirk Adams and Suzie van Staaveren to create a site-specific exhibition. Kifl the Kid Salon explores the redefinition of the relationship between the exhibition and the public. The two artists are interested in how function elicits behaviour. With this shared interest as a starting point, space is created where social interactions can take place.

In the salon the notions of “fiction” and “reality” are no longer positioned as opposites. After all, there is no question of a ‘real’ salon, but an exhibition space that pretends to be. A space that is filled with interventions by the artists in the form of functional objects, performative elements (scripted scenes that are difficult for the viewer to distinguish from reality) and changes in architecture. Suzie and Jan Dirk invited artists to be part of the Kifl the Kid Salon via works presented or performative interventions.

By making the spectator part of the exhibition and activating them, the artists challenge them to reflect on their experience. The reflection by the spectator, the subtle moments in which this takes place, are dependent on the situations created. The artists research this via the scripted reality to provoke this reflective state. This by itself is for the artists an inherent part of their artistic practice.

Another important part of the Salon is that they investigate an alternative form for the exhibition in Billytown. A form in which the viewer, the work and the artist are in dialogue and in which everyone will have an equally involved share. In other words, an exhibition that does not work with rigid objects and arrangement, but is constantly in motion or in an elusive flux.

The artists invite whoever is interested in organising a public or private event. They play with how they can influence these situations by writing small scripted parts for actors that infiltrate these events. These events also provide the artists with unpredictable situations that they have to deal with. In this way everything starts to move in a way that the artists could have never foreseen.

About the artists

In a playful but precise manner Suzie van Staaveren (1991, NL) researches how objects work in their environments. Sometimes modular or interactive, often relating to the functional and tactile, the sculptures almost never refer to anything outside of themselves.They are the result of logical steps influenced by the people and the surroundings that came about in the process.

In his graduation work ‘Beautiful Room’, Jan Dirk Adams (1995, NL) gave performers the role of visitors who had already been present for a number of hours and had made themselves comfortable in his space and with his work. Adams pushes the viewer into the middle of the situation that is the work in order to become part of a complicated game of coincidences.

Every time something happens in the salon, a short film is created, like an episode. These can be viewed via our video channels.

The exhibition and program is made possible by Stroom Den Haag, Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds and Gemeente Den Haag.

Event as part of the Kifl the Kid Salon at Billytown 2020, Hoogtij. Performers: Gijsje Heemskerk, Yukari Nakamichi, Roderik Heijman, Gideon Oosten, Alyona Ciobanu

Workshop ‘NaM MaN’ by Jiajia Qi as part of the Kifl the Kid Salon at Billytown 2020

Music performance ‘Back from the woods’ by Melle de Boer as part of the Kifl the Kid Salon at Billytown 2020, Performers: Richard Hilgeman, Alyona Ciobanu

Mise en scène as part of the Kifl the Kid Salon at Billytown 2020

Mise en scène as part of the Kifl the Kid Salon at Billytown 2020, Embroidery by Yukari Nakamichi

Mise en scène as part of the Kifl the Kid Salon at Billytown 2020

Mise en scène as part of the Kifl the Kid Salon at Billytown 2020, Earring by Gideon Oosten

Mise en scène as part of the Kifl the Kid Salon at Billytown 2020

Mise en scène as part of the Kifl the Kid Salon at Billytown 2020, Ceramics by Sasha Zalivako

Palestinian Movie Night by Cyrill Rafael Vasilyev as part of the Kifl the Kid Salon at Billytown, 2020, Screening of ‘The Tale of the Three Lost Jewels’ by Michel Khleifi

Nikki Selser’s Great Traffic Birthday Party as part of the Kifl the Kid Salon at Billytown 2020, Performers: Roderik Heijman, Gideon Oosten, Jan Dirk Adams, Suzie van Staaveren

Mise en scène as part of the Kifl the Kid Salon at Billytown 2020, Ceramics by Sasha Zalivako