On Sunday 20 September, Kunstfort organises a performance by Eoghan Ryan on the fort island. Truly Rural is an address to the rural and pastoral as fetishised, over-farmed and headless terrain. Attention, spectatorship and cultural contagion become a choreographic strategy. Five dancers build on herd behaviour and the movements of sick cows’ bodies, entering into interactions in which the intimate and formal regularly turns into the repulsive. The performance asks whether a certain freedom is embraced through over- identification with the potential madness of the herd, in its dis-ordered cultivation of working conditions.

Taking place on the Kunstfort peninsula in Vijfhuizen – on the green grass around the fort canal and the fort structure. In the background is the impressive inundation area: land that can be flooded by crossing locks and dikes for defence purposes. The village of Vijfhuizen is located in the municipality of Haarlemmermeer: predecessor of the Flevopolders, drained between 1849 and 1852, and previously an immense expanse of water. Both Haarlemmermeer and the Defense Line of Amsterdam, of which the fort is a part, are world famous icons of Dutch water ingenuity and the well-known flat, bare landscape. Although located near Amsterdam and in the Randstad, it is also a distinctive rural region.

Dancers: Alexandra Tveit, Raoni Muzho Saleh, Stefan Govaart, Tristan Al-Hinnawi and Çigdem Polat. Music mix by Daniel Iinatti.

Program 20.09.2020
15.00: Walk-in
15.15-16.00: Performance
16.00-16.20: Q&A with Zippora Elders, director Kunstfort
16.20-17.30: Drinks & bites

Fee performance: free
RSVP: info@kunstfort.nl (walk-ins also possible because of outdoor location)

Eoghan Ryan (b. Dublin, 1987) is an Irish artist currently based in Amsterdam. Eoghan’s work engages video installation, and performance to understand the group as a creature in relation to the dynamics of institutional life in Western Europe. Selected shows, performances and screenings have taken place at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; South London Gallery; Rowing, London; 427,Riga; Spike, Berlin; Serralves Museum, Porto; IFI, Dublin; Outpost, Norwich; Kem, Warsaw; Cubitt, London; Kim? Contemporary, Riga; Plastik Moving Image Festival, Dublin; CAC, Vilnius; Catalyst Arts, Belfast; BDP, Berlin, New Shelter Plan, Copenhagen, EEFF, London, FACT, Liverpool amongst others. He is currently in residence at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten 2019/21.