Museumnacht

Dadara is a multidisciplinary visual artist with a strong connection to the nightlife. It is therefore no surprise that several of his works have appeared at the legendary Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert. In his work, he holds up a magical and humorous mirror to society, blurring the line between reality and fantasy. During the pandemic, he made several works that denounced the current policies surrounding night culture. A striking example of this is the intervention of the (evening) clock on the Frederiksplein which he partially covered with tape.

Silent Night consists of a series of photographs taken by nightlife photographer Jitske Nap. During the pandemic she photographed several Amsterdam nightclubs and investigated what happens to a space when it cannot fulfill its role. The concept for this series originated during the first weeks of the covid-19 lockdown in 2020. Jitske wanted to capture the effect of the lockdown with a subject close to her heart: the Amsterdam nightclubs.

When the pandemic hit and the clubs closed, DJ collective Koma started their Bak2Bak sessions. Every Saturday afternoon they drove through the center of Amsterdam with turntables on a bakfiets. During Museum Night they will revive these Bak2Bak sessions, only this time with a dancing audience on the Amsterdam ferry from 19:00 and from 22:00 in Sexyland.

Casper Strietman is an artist who paints DJs on stage as they perform. During the pandemic he painted the empty nightclubs in Amsterdam. During the Silent Night exhibition, not only will his work be on display, but he will also take his the brush to paint live DJs together with participants of his workshop and introduce them to his approach to making live art.

The premise of this three-part film is the sudden disappearance of the nightlife due to the covid-19 pandemic. Clubs are the place for many LGBTQ+ people to meet like-minded people, be free and disappear into the collective vibrance of the night where lust and passion triumph. The scenes in the film are a metaphor of disastrous impact of loneliness and the lack of a significant outlet for the LGBTQ+ community. The story of the film is based on observations and conversations about how clubbing communities dealt with the crisis. Autoeroticism, intoxication and sexual release are the common thread. Scenes that normally have the nightclub as their setting now take place in atypical places of Amsterdam or only in memory.

Club Lockdown is a short film made at Club Radion during the pandemic. The concept for the film came about when screenwriter Ashar Medina saw the photo series by Jitske Nap about the empty nightclubs. Jitske’s photos inspired him to write a horror story about an ambitious politician, who ignores quarantine rules during the covid-19 crisis and goes on an illegal blind date she found through the dating app Footfinder, where people with a foot fetish can have fun anonymously. The charming club owner invites her to an intimate private party at his empty nightclub, which is in danger of going bankrupt due to the crisis. When she discovers that there is more behind his seemingly innocent foot fetish, the evening turns into a blind date from hell.

During the pandemic, performer Xenia Perek and artist Arthur Guilleminot managed to put a positive spin on the situation. They knew that on an artistic level nothing would stay the same and that the art world and their field of work was completely upside down. The artists continued to work together and a love-hate relationship unfolded towards each other’s styles. The experiment ultimately proved to be healing and successful. They produced two pieces together: Xenia, 2020 bodies of work and PC Dreams, 2021: final sprint.

Sound Color is an installation with lights, home-made speakers that become sound sculptures and bring an electronic musical composition to your ear. The installation is based on a club experience but Robbie creates a new spatiality throughout this musical experience. He developed this idea especially for the Museumnacht to take everyone into his sculpted sound experience.

DarkRaum is a performance artist and costume designer. Over the past two years, he has created several costumes inspired by the emotions and effects of the pandemic, such as the polarization of society and the necessity of being an artist precisely in times of crisis. In his work, he portrays the face of corona in his own original way. His creations are projected on the facade of Sexyland World.

📸 by Jitske Nap