RESIDENCY: MINT NEST Summer 2020

MINT Rotterdam is a creative art collective and focuses on showcasing fresh talent. They arrange the production for art events including visual art, performance, music and video. MINT provides an online platform, interviews, video-documentation and exhibitions. They facilitated and curated the 2020 summer residency at WORM’s S/ash Gallery.

MINT named this edition NEST!, projected as a safe space for fresh artists to develop new ideas. UBIK & S/ash Gallery were transformed into studios for collaboration, innovation and artistic fine-tuning. MINT also prepared a diverse and Covid-mitigated 2-day programme, where visitors booked a time slot. We feature the artists who participated below.

Artists

Serdal Sertdemir

Serdal Sertdemir is a Rotterdam based artist. He works at the intersection between jewellery craftsmanship and contemporary art. Serdal’s designs are raw, clean and emphasise the natural qualities of the metals he works with. His current works are made of copper, brass, silver and stones such as Cabochon and Brilliant diamond cut. Serdal also hosts Jellewey workshops where you can learn more about the metals, make your own jewel with the materials he provides or bring your own jewel to modify. Next workshop 29 AUG more info here.

Colour photograph of what look like a close up shot of two thick copper rings on a black, scaled base. Part of MINT Summer 2020 residency, WORM S/ash Gallery.

Lichun Tseng
Lichun Tseng is a Taiwanese artist/filmmaker based in Rotterdam. In her works, She is interested in searching for the experience of the vital dimensions of life, absorbing and partaking in it, grasping its wholeness; in which exploration and reflective contemplation are profound mental drives. She has explored this research and practice mainly through 16mm film, installation, performance, and painting. She is one of the active members of an artist-run lab, Filmwerkplaats at WORM, where she has been developed her films and supported other artists’ films with Do-it-yourself method since 2009. Her works have been shown nationally and internationally, including the New York film festival, Internation film festival Rotterdam, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, and others.

Screening of:
Remnant from echo and shadow
16mm | optical sound | black and white | 20min | 2020

Who is moving?
How do we start, continue, and end?
It is a search, research, and a process of the unknown and the unconscious; the full and the empty; the momentary and the eternal, which explores the space between the visible and invisible in reflection and connection.

Photograph, predominantly in grey, of a male silhouette with a sun shining through the figure's armpit. Part of MINT Summer 2020 residency, WORM S/ash Gallery.

Ratri Notosudirdjo

The work always gets involved in a social confrontation hidden deep within layers. A lot of this can be traced to my upbringing. I’m an inbetweener (or a third-space occupier) and my identity tends to fluctuate. I flirt a lot with softness and rigidity, and contradictive tensions of these likes because sitting amidst them seems to be where all the action is happening. It began to play a big role in my storytelling and through these thick layers of symbolism, metaphors and analogies I hope to stimulate the viewer into the situation. Just as one gets sucked into reading, perhaps one could get stuck in a stimulus I created.

Werner van der Zwan
In this theatre piece thrown-away objects are morphed into personalities with windshield washer motors from the scrapyard. Movement and posture express their distinct characters. These characters come to life in a play where they experience desire, aggression and disability. Broken, out of fashion or simply out of place, the objects now fend for themselves.

Bart van de Dood
Is a design student currently studying at the Willem de Kooning academy in Rotterdam. He makes bold and expressive designs that address societal matters with a humorous tone.

Colour photograph of three illuminated windows (the window frames in darkness) showing a colourful flowing design with orange and greens predominating. Each window shows a white wifi signal. Part of MINT Summer 2020 residency, WORM S/ash Gallery.

EyeRod Collective (Davide Amato & Polly Joy Wilson)
EYEROD is a live art collective curated by theatre-makers Davide Amato and Polly Wilson. Their current work consists of testing the boundaries between compelling theatre and rituals. They want to create disruptive and meaningful experiences that shed a burning light on the cruel reality of what it means to be human through ingenious fantasies and fiction. For these reasons, the collective EYEROD, inspired by the concept of the eye, is called an opening that makes it possible to see but also to be seen, and rod: the English name for the light-sensitive cells in the eye, which allows someone to give to receive light and see in the dark.

Ramona Redskywalker & Kye James Mcdonald Middleton

Photograph of three people, two women and a man, skating past the open doors of WORM Slash Gallery, in the Boomgaardsstraat. Part of MINT Summer 2020 residency, WORM S/ash Gallery.

Rico Dyks
Mag well, hoeft niet, kan zeker, dat sowieso.

Colour photograph of a large vibrantly painted fabric structure with a cover , on a street, possibly the Boomgaardsstraat, placed in a square surrounded by concrete tower blocks. Part of MINT Summer 2020 residency, WORM S/ash Gallery.