Opening Curiosity
de Appel, Prins Hendrikkade 142, Amsterdam
Opening Curiosity, installation view, Curiosity: Art and the Pleasures of Knowing, de Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam, 27 June - 14 September 2014. Photo: Carina Erdmann. Courtesy Hayward Touring.
Opening Curiosity, installation view, Curiosity: Art and the Pleasures of Knowing, de Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam, 27 June - 14 September 2014. Photo: Carina Erdmann. Courtesy Hayward Touring.
Opening Curiosity, installation view, Curiosity: Art and the Pleasures of Knowing, de Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam, 27 June – 14 September 2014. Photo: Carina Erdmann. Courtesy Hayward Touring.
Carina Erdmann
Opening Curiosity, installation view, Curiosity: Art and the Pleasures of Knowing, de Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam, 27 June - 14 September 2014. Photo: Carina Erdmann. Courtesy Hayward Touring.
Opening Curiosity, installation view, Curiosity: Art and the Pleasures of Knowing, de Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam, 27 June - 14 September 2014. Photo: Carina Erdmann. Courtesy Hayward Touring.
Opening Curiosity, installation view, Curiosity: Art and the Pleasures of Knowing, de Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam, 27 June - 14 September 2014. Photo: Carina Erdmann. Courtesy Hayward Touring.
Opening Curiosity, Photo: Carina Erdmann.
Opening Curiosity, installation view, Curiosity: Art and the Pleasures of Knowing, de Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam, 27 June - 14 September 2014. Photo: Carina Erdmann. Courtesy Hayward Touring.
Opening Curiosity, installation view, Curiosity: Art and the Pleasures of Knowing, de Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam, 27 June - 14 September 2014. Photo: Carina Erdmann. Courtesy Hayward Touring.
Opening Curiosity, installation view, Curiosity: Art and the Pleasures of Knowing, de Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam, 27 June - 14 September 2014. Photo: Carina Erdmann. Courtesy Hayward Touring.
Opening Curiosity, Photo: Carina Erdmann.
Opening Curiosity, installation view, Curiosity: Art and the Pleasures of Knowing, de Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam, 27 June - 14 September 2014. Photo: Carina Erdmann. Courtesy Hayward Touring.
Opening Curiosity, Photo: Carina Erdmann.
Opening Curiosity, Photo: Carina Erdmann.
Opening Curiosity, installation view, Curiosity: Art and the Pleasures of Knowing, de Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam, 27 June - 14 September 2014. Photo: Carina Erdmann. Courtesy Hayward Touring.
Opening Curiosity, installation view, Curiosity: Art and the Pleasures of Knowing, de Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam, 27 June - 14 September 2014. Photo: Carina Erdmann. Courtesy Hayward Touring.
Opening Curiosity, installation view, Curiosity: Art and the Pleasures of Knowing, de Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam, 27 June - 14 September 2014. Photo: Carina Erdmann. Courtesy Hayward Touring.
Opening Curiosity, installation view, Curiosity: Art and the Pleasures of Knowing, de Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam, 27 June - 14 September 2014. Photo: Carina Erdmann. Courtesy Hayward Touring.
Opening Curiosity, installation view, Curiosity: Art and the Pleasures of Knowing, de Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam, 27 June - 14 September 2014. Photo: Carina Erdmann. Courtesy Hayward Touring.
Opening Curiosity, installation view, Curiosity: Art and the Pleasures of Knowing, de Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam, 27 June - 14 September 2014. Photo: Carina Erdmann. Courtesy Hayward Touring.
Opening Curiosity, installation view, Curiosity: Art and the Pleasures of Knowing, de Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam, 27 June - 14 September 2014. Photo: Carina Erdmann. Courtesy Hayward Touring.
Opening Curiosity, installation view, Curiosity: Art and the Pleasures of Knowing, de Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam, 27 June - 14 September 2014. Photo: Carina Erdmann. Courtesy Hayward Touring.
Opening Curiosity, installation view, Curiosity: Art and the Pleasures of Knowing, de Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam, 27 June - 14 September 2014. Photo: Carina Erdmann. Courtesy Hayward Touring.
Opening Curiosity, installation view, Curiosity: Art and the Pleasures of Knowing, de Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam, 27 June - 14 September 2014. Photo: Carina Erdmann. Courtesy Hayward Touring.
Opening Curiosity, installation view, Curiosity: Art and the Pleasures of Knowing, de Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam, 27 June - 14 September 2014. Photo: Carina Erdmann. Courtesy Hayward Touring.
Curiosity, curated by writer Brian Dillon, focuses on our impulse to acquire knowledge, but also on our guilty desire for the pleasures of new and strange things.
Free entrance
During the opening of the exhibition Curiosity in de Appel arts centre, Aura Satz (SP, 1974) presents the slide projector performance Blink Comparator: Her Luminous Distance. In her work, Salz explores the complex relationship between humans and machines. Developed from research on the pioneering deaf astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt (1868-1921), this performance project attends to the lesser known women who contributed to important astronomical discoveries, in particular the women known as 'Human Computers' at Harvard, who were engaged in painstaking astronomical observation and classification.
The performance features a device used by astronomers to detect small pattern differences between photographic plates by alternately switching between images. The accompanying soundtrack is a pulsing rhythmic drone which plays on the perception of patterns. The blinking slide sequence includes images drawn from Leavitt's original annotated photographic plates of Variable stars, archival images from the Human Computers' workplace, and a series of images of craters on the moon named after women astronomers.
Curiosity: Art and the Pleasures of Knowing, is a Hayward Touring exhibition by Southbank Centre, London. Organised in collaboration with Turner Contemporary, Margate and in association with Cabinet magazine.
Curiosity – Art and the Pleasures of Knowing
affiche, 2014
