Amsterdam Revisited: A'dam & Eve: On sex, tolerance and other dependencies

‘Three foreign curators revisiting Amsterdam have decided to tackle head-on the outsider's view of Amsterdam as a sexually liberated, free wheelin' society. It is seen as a city which is open, tolerant, fun and where anything goes. "How true is this cliché - how deep does it go? Did projects such as happenings, performances and the upcoming feminism of the sixties and seventies help to articulate a break down of public and private and the shedding of the sexual taboos ? Or perhaps the 'character' of Amsterdam itself: its openness, its willingness to experiment, its lack of hierachy, its relaxed and tolerant attitude which encourages a certain freedom which has impacted on its artists. This exhibition seeks to interrogate and celebrate both the production AND the circumstance" (Annie Fletcher). Gathering together Amsterdam-based practices both past and present, the curators want to explore how sexuality and openness are articulated in Amsterdam and why. The show includes early experimental ventures such as the celebratory, openly explicit magazine Virgin Sperm Dancer involving important cultural protagonists such as Willem de Ridder, Anthon Beeke and Anna Beeke. Also Abramovic and Ulay's famous use of their own bodies to problematise notions of personal and public space in the seventies will be present. With the exhibition Amsterdam revisited: A'dam and Eve: on sex, tolerance and other dependencies Benedetti (freelance curator, Rome), Berger (curator Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel) and Fletcher (curator Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin) want to show the completely varied strands that go to make up artistic production in Amsterdam, from Jan Cremer to Maria Pask, from Lily van der Stokker to Lawrence Weiner: the show will include over thirty artists who have lived and worked in Amsterdam from the seventies right up to the present day.’ (Press release De Appel)