Future Soils: Victoria McKenzie, Jasper Griepink with Radical Roots and Narges Mohammadi
As part of the Earthcraft, the new edition of Studium Generale KABK, Victoria McKenzie and Jasper Griepink will hold a discussion about soil, the sacred, futurism and the notion of ‘manifesting’ critically. Me and Lina Bravo Mora as Radical Roots will be there with Narges Mohammadi to hold a session on the grief food of our intersecting diaspora: halva. You can learn more about the event here.
The Pendant at Filmhuis Den Haag
The Pendant will be screened at Filmhuis Den Haag as part of the What You See Is What You Get cinema's program Glued & Screwed #5.
"The programme stitches together five films that make hard-to-digest subjects like power dynamics or the current and impending life, approachable and even funny. Five different acts in five different places expose shades of magic, politics, and systemic violence in Mayis Rukel’s The Pendant."
To get from one place to another,
Corrosia Theater
Commissioned by Atelier AM; 'To get from one place to another' premiered on September 24th, 2022 at the Corrosia Theater in Almere Haven, as the closure of the event Art in my Backyard by Museum M.
The work is the result of a two-months long collaboration between me, Mira Thompson and Anna Raiola.
To learn more about the work, you can go here.
Photos by ©ATELIER AM, Hans van Hal
ATELIER AM Residency
July - August 2022, I participated at the Atelier AM residency in De Kwekerij, Corrsia Theater in Almere Haven. The first segment of my participation was a collaborative research with Mira Thompson and Anna Raiola, marked with a mixed media installation at the public gathering, including the publication Nefes Care, photography, video documentation of the movement research and a bundle-dye fabric made with Jules Davis-Dufayard. To learn more about the work, you can go here.
RADICAL ROOTS PROJECT
Each week in July-August 2022, me and my dear friend & fellow artist Lina Bravo Mora were cooking with our wonderful facilitators at the AZC Amsterdam. Radical Roots was commissioned by Stichting de Vrolijkheid, the concept and design created by Lina and co-produced by me. I also gathered sound material from each of our sessions and produced the 5-episode sound narrative for the work.
This is how Lina defines the project on our website:
"Radical Roots project proposes to gather around a portable cooking table, honoring that we all carry wisdom, we can all teach each other, and we can always learn from each other's memories and paths.
Radical roots is a space to remember and create new memories through smell, taste, sound, touch, and sight.
As migrants, we want to create spaces of belonging for other migrants. Our goal is to share the pleasure and medicine of food and cooking, be together, and take risks in communication.
To build connections with each other in spaces, conditions, and times when being disconnected may seem more accessible. This first edition happened in AZC Amsterdam in the summer of 2022. In this webpage you will find our sound publication divided in chapters for every session and a printable recipe book."
We thank the residents of the AZC for their generous sharings. We stand with their struggle for asylum seeking.
You can learn more about Radical Roots here.
VIDEO PORTRAITS FROM GRA GRADSHOW 2022
In collaboration with dear friend and fellow filmmaker Kleoniki Stanich, we filmed the Gerrit Rietveld Academie Graduation Show 2022. We were invited by Public Rietveld / Sophia Zurcher to make video portraits of ≈80 graduating artists and their works. The portraits are on the Rietveld Academie vimeo page here.
Home in Istanbul for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic. Change change change change. Family constellation. All that's intergenerational. Going deeper into the stories about my great-grandparents during specific times (war). Feeling closer again to my maternal grandparents too (who raised me), something being physically present here brought; they died in 2012 and 2018. I find release. Boundary practice.
I love being here, resilience toolkit helps a lot.
NEW RADICALISMS BY (A)WAKE
"But... where are you really from?"
(A)WAKE offered me the pleasure of moderating the opening conversation of the second New Radicalisms festival with the creative team Shirin Mirachor, Salim Bayri and Hilda Moucharrafieh.
I love moderating conversations. This one felt wonderful.
Photo by Othmane Jmad.
Spending some time in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, where James Baldwin lived the last 17 years of his life. He retreated here after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, this was after Baldwin's decade in Turkey: Istanbul, Ankara & Bodrum. Chez Baldwin isn't here anymore, the home where he wrote "Open Letter to My Sister, Angela Y. Davis" is mostly destroyed now and the grounds are turned into a gated community of luxury apartments.
I'm here to write, draw, daydream and grieve. Found out by surprise: my dear Alizé's grandfather was buried here in this village. I found the grave, placed a pebble on it.
THE SEASON OF THE WITCH:
WITCHCRAFT IN THE DIGITAL AGE
How to Read a Spread with The Pendant Tarot Deck is part of the IMPAKT event The Season of the Witch, curated by Inez de Coo. You can read more about the event here.
"IMPAKT brings together a group of artists and researchers working with digital witchcraft to discuss the presence and possibilities for the witch within their own practice and the world beyond. From personal digital healing practices to a universal story of changing narratives about technology, digital witchcraft examines the fantastical dimensions of lived digital experience."
TENT ONLINE CINEMA
The sibling of The Pendant, "How to Read a Spread with The Pendant Tarot Deck" is now on view at the second edition of TENT Online Cinema platform.
"The second edition of TENT Online Cinema is now live! Leading up to IFFR 2022 we are happy to present 19 video works for 19 days made by Rotterdam-based artists. From 4 January till January 23rd all films will be on display."
ECOLOGIES OF TRANSFORMATION
“The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible.”
Toni Cade Bambara
The new Sandberg Institute temporary master program Ecologies of Transformation 2021-2023 began, curated & led by Camille Barton. The coming two years from September 2021 on, I will be focused on researching how art and embodiment can be agents of social change with a small group of artists, in our community built around care and pleasure.
IN SEARCH FOR A LOST VALENTINE’S DAY PACKAGE: WANDERING IN
VIVIANE EL KMATI’S WORK
"Mayis Rukel met El Kmati for (A)WAKE to talk about her film, her design practice, the place of identity and representation in her work and her use of 3D and digital design as tools for storytelling and for getting curious about the future."
You can read the interview here.
Image from Valentine in Things City (2018) by Viviane El Kmati
HOW TO READ A SPREAD WITH THE PENDANT TAROT DECK (2021)
Method: The Muddy Ocean. The original tarot deck from The Pendant (2020) becomes a portal. The eight cards perform for the gaze of the one posing the questions. But they have their own demands from the one pulling the cards, forcing them to navigate between the narratives of symbols, the ruthless muddy ocean and their own deepest reflections.
You can watch the film here.
HET PAROOL INTERVIEW
With dear friends & fellow Rietveld alumni Danielle Alhassid, Nadja Schlenker and Irene Ha, we had monthly meetings with Edo Dijksterhuis for six months following our graduation in August 2020. The result is an article on Het Parool giving insight on how four newly graduated artists with different practices dealt with the specific conditions of the pandemic; published with webcam portraits by Jitske Schols. You can read the interview here.
"WHERE ARE THOSE STARS TO SHOOT FOR?"
New conversation with Nele Brökelmann for Metropolis M as part of the Diaspora Dialogen issue is now online.
"In the current issue of Metropolis M (Diaspora dialogen) Mayis Rukel is presenting an artist contibution, wrapping up the strange but intense last twelve months showing tables with Tarot cards, inspiring books, personal notes and a funding application form. Nele Brökelmann talks to the 2020 recipient of the Gerrit Rietveld Academy Award for Autonomous Art about his widely praised graduation work The Pendant and his plans for the future."
You can read the full interview here.
THE PENDANT ON TENT ROTTERDAM ONLINE CINEMA
IN PURSUIT OF A SENSE OF BELONGING
Conversation with Narges Mohammadi for (A)WAKE on representation in the Netherlands and Turkey and the use of digital culture as a possible tool for cultural understanding.
<< Colonial Europe never imagined us as people with agency and power, and the current extension of that history is still perplexed about what to make of us. I’m attracted to the idea of making use of that confusion and utilizing it for our self-definition of what it means to be from the WANA diaspora >>
Read the whole interview at a-wake.world
SOFT EDGES PODCAST IS HERE
Where voices are raw, and discussions are thorough. Where complexity becomes a nest for vulnerability. Where we, Mayıs Rukel and Lucie Gérard, seek to make sense of our messy human experience, while filling our bellies with laughter and our minds with nourishing conversations. Wide open. Curious. Accepting. Such is the space we strive to create. Welcome to the Soft Edges Podcast. Listen to us every Sunday on Spotify and YouTube.
Find us on instagram @softedgespodcast
Our music is by the amazing Patrick Walinga and our graphic design is by the wonderful Yuri Sato.
THE PENDANT TAROT DECK ON METROPOLIS M 1-2021
The Pendant Tarot Deck, First Spread of 2021 is on the new issue of Metropolis M as part of the theme Diaspora Dialogen.
"The image is rooted in my fascination with intellectual workspaces as the physical and literal grounding for generating creative political activity. A desk in a round room within a run-down ivory tower: objects ending up on the desk that inevitably carry the spirit of the time and its relevant subjects."
CUTCAST S02E02 | MAYIS RUKEL & THE PENDANT
A nice conversation with Hein van Joolen and Julius Ponten for the new episode of the podcast CutCast is out; in depth discussion on The Pendant and its creation process, relating The Pendant to Turkey, the upcoming podcast collaboration of Mayis Rukel & Lucie Gérard and some other stories. You can watch the episode on YouTube here or listen to it on Spotify here.
THE PENDANT IS ON DE FILMKRANT
The Pendant is on de Filmkrant with an interview by Alexander Zwart; a key summary to a longer conversation facilitated by Zwart with very interesting questions. You can read the interview here.
LANCERING LEVENSWERK -
EEN AVOND VAN TIJDSCHRIFT SIMULACRUM OVER DE RELATIE TUSSEN KUNSTENAAR EN KUNSTWERK
On December 9th, 2020 at Perdu in Amsterdam, The Pendant will be shown at the launch event of the new issue of the Simulacrum magazine followed by a Q&A with Mayis Rukel. The event will also feature a reading by the artist Alina Lupu of her text You Asshole (2016) and an interview with Sandra Kisters, Head of Collection and Research at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen related to her 2017 publication The Lure of the Biographical: On the (Self-) Representation of Modern Artists.
You can reserve your spot here.
SELECTED 2020 - VIDEO PORTRAITS
SELECTED 2020 was launched by Radio Rietveld and Ben Zegers, with 'SELECTED 2020 - Video Portraits'; concept & production by Vere van Hal and Bieneke Bennekers, the interviews conducted by Luuk Heezen and the videos filmed and edited by Rik Lauwen. The eight video portraits are created together with the artists to give insight in their way of thinking and working and gives the viewer the chance to dive deeper into the work of our graduates. Special thanks to the jury members GRA Awards 2020 for Autonomous Arts; Femke Herregraven and Charl Landvreugd. All video portraits can be viewed at rietveldacademie.nl/selected2020 and the other participating artists are Irene Ha, Clémence Lollia Hilaire, Matilda Kenttä, Simon Marsiglia, Alexis Stephenson, Nomin Zezegmaa and Eric van Zuilen.
You can watch the video portrait of Mayis Rukel discussing The Pendant here.
THE PENDANT AT THE NETHERLANDS FILM FESTIVAL
The Pendant will be part of the Netherlands Film Festival 2020 and will be available online on demand during the NFF talent days, 9th-13th December.
INTERVIEW WITH THE NEW ORIGINALS
You can read the interview with The New Originals about The Pendant and the Best of Graduates 2020 show of Galerie Ron Mandos here. The photos shown here are by Eben Badu.
THE PENDANT ON DE VOLKSKRANT
The Pendant is on De Volkskrant with a beautiful review by Sarah van Binsbergen. You can read the article here.
THE PENDANT AT GALERIE RON MANDOS
28 OCTOBER - 20 NOVEMBER
The Pendant is on display at Galerie Ron Mandos, Prinsengracht 282 in Amsterdam as part of their Best of Graduates 2020 show until November 20th, with part of the original The Pendant tarot deck also shown on the blue wall. You can reserve your spot through the Galerie Ron Mandos website. (The photo of the installation shown here is by Michèle Margot.)
THE PENDANT ON METROPOLIS M
The Pendant is featured on Metropolis M October/November issue with a beautiful text by Jorik Amit Galama.
THE PENDANT AT GALERIE RON MANDOS - BEST OF GRADUATES 2020 SHOW
The Pendant was invited by curator Radek Vana and team Galerie Ron Mandos to be a part of the 2020 edition of their annual Best of Graduates show in Galerie Ron Mandos in Amsterdam. You can see the show between 28th October and 20th November at Galerie Ron Mandos, Prinsengracht 282.
THE PENDANT WON THE GRA AWARDS 2020 FOR THE AUTONOMOUS ARTS
The Pendant won the Gerrit Rietveld Academie Awards 2020 for the Autonomous Arts, selected by this year's jury Charl Landvreugd and Femke Herregraven.
