Stay(ing) with the Trouble
In 2018 the 100 Day House continued to make Veem House for Performance a place to imagine, to (re)act, to share and to stay with.
As put by Donna Haraway, we asked “how to stay with the trouble” to understand the present’s issues, relate to our future, and to find alternative forms of being and staying together in today’s world.
- How do you keep building up a brand identity strategy for a recurring program format like the 100 Day House?
- How can you make use of CRM strategies to retain and expand your public?
- How do you channel an inclusive political debate for new and existing stakeholders?
- How can you make use of Marketing, Communications & PR strategies to transform an art institution into a community-based platform accessible to everybody?
I kicked-off the process working from scratch: using some program elements to re-adapt the visual strategy to the new 100 Day House edition, and to strengthen the brand identity in order to stimulate public recognition and recall.
My role:
Head of Marketing, Communications & PR
Educational program developer
Collaborations and
partnerships:
Amsterdam Art Weekend, Institute of Network Cultures (Amsterdam),
Frascati
Producties House (Amsterdam), Fair Practice Label and Code, SNDO & DAS Graduate School,
Vlaams Cultuurhuis de Brakke Grond, Life Long Burning (supported by the European
Commission), Bâtard Festival, BAU Dance & Performance Amsterdam, Keren Levi | NeverLike,
Nicole Beutler Projects
Credits:
Pictures: Ernst van Deursen
Graphic design: concept and design by Atelier Carvalho Bernau + Rectangle Design
(Open
Work); concept development and editing by Veem House for Performance team & Andrea
Rogolino
(Curate Fabrica)
I started assembling sneak peeks to organically build-up a communication. I visualized the creative space as a dashboard where to drag-and-drop contents to be put in dialogue. It allowed keeping diversity and plurality at the core.
I acted like a spider in the web interconnecting press, artists, professionals, new collaborators, and initiating solid partnerships to be held on the longer run. I also facilitated and guided audience development strategies in connection with the neighborhood to better frame the link with the city of Amsterdam.
Finally, fundraising strategy campaigns have been found and put in place. The Fantastic Bookstore and the Become a Housemate membership campaign continued to be promoted, since their successful launches the year before.
The website has been transformed into three layouts for pre-, during, and post the 100 Day House, integrating a higher degree of online interactiveness and informative purpose. By forming an archive and re-thinking the website as a platform for sharing new stories, it could contextualize the program within the art scene in Amsterdam.
We produced a symbolic theater’s key given to those who subscribed and supported the 100 Day House as a whole, allowing different willingness to pay. The launch of the official campaign spread throughout other cultural and artistic spots across the city and all the Netherlands. It maintained a temporary absence still visible, in preparation for the actual program launch and execution.
The newspaper series
Stay with the Trouble!
To stay with the trouble means to work until the limits, to take risks, to bite off more than you can chew…
A three issues newspaper series to unfold stories drawn behind the program and to open up a platform for exchanging thoughts and research with the public, as if they would read a newspaper daily.
A tool not meant for just knowing more but mostly for engaging with.
The three issues have been released on Day 0, Day 50, and Day 100, reinforcing the rhythm set by the 100 Day House. Readers have been invited to collect all issues as a series, to mix them in the pages, separate them as single posters, read them in different directions and temporalities. Each issue gradually fades out until becoming full black in the last number.
As the editor-in-chief of this pilot project, I organized the work of authors and the team around, the artistic direction, and the design studio.
Volume 1 - “gestures of care, forms of resistance”
It presents the program, introducing different ways for navigating through it: 4 hashtags per thematic block, 4 modes of action ranging from “performance” to “at work”, 4 curatorial statements on the back for each block. It can be read like a roadmap or a manual with instructions needed before to unpack a box.
Read the first issue hereVolume 2 - “how to stay with the trouble?”
It is footage of different voices, touch-based analysis looking back half-way, about togetherness and exchange, in a conversation between the house and the neighborhood. A multi-layered assemblage of changes from the first edition to the time of publication.
Read the second issue hereVolume 3 - “exercises to embody the darkness”
With this last four-page volume of the series, after a hundred days of open doors, public program, and a busy house – had begun 265 days of darkness. This small leaflet was given at the end of the last show to better frame something that came through unexpectedly: how to continue moving, reading, and imagining after all...
Read the third issue hereBâtard Festival Amsterdam
Hosted by Veem House, the Brussels-based Bâtard Festival brought together a bewildering mix of theater, dance, performance, film, and discursive programs. Bâtard means bastard, but it also stands for hybridism, rawness, and cutting-edge. I took care of the overall promotion, together and in parallel with the initiative taking place right before in Belgium, while finding synergies and contextualization with the rest of the 100 Day House.
