Symposium Fluid Rhythms

Irina Shapiro Caroline Nevejan

16 August 2018, 16.00–20.00 | Location: Imagine IC & OBA Bijlmer | Bijlmerplein 393, 1102 DK Amsterdam Zuidoost

This symposium is a public launch of the seven-month programme Fluid Rhythms. It aims to explore the potential of rhythm as a lens through which we look at the complex urban fabric—the tunings and frictions between multiple elements of a city.

Rhythms occur on many levels at the same time in the macro-level structures and dynamics of the city: in its planning and infrastructure; within the cells of bodies; and in the interconnections between mind, emotion, brain and heartbeats, which can be provoked by a smell, a sound or a sight. By investigating these intertwined patterns of change—in other words, rhythms—a world of subtle complexity starts to reveal itself to us in how humans, machines, animals and microbes interact and coexist.

Organised by Open Set in collaboration with curators Mike Thompson (Thought Collider), Noam Toran, and the research group Designing Rhythm for Social Resilience, the international and interdisciplinary programme Fluid Rhythms will be engaged in the exploration of the potential of rhythm-related practices as common ground for research and artistic work. During the programme, we will discuss different methods for discovering new, invisible or forgotten rhythms, in order to find the points of friction and blind spots in order to transform and harness the power for social and ecological change. Eventually, working with rhythms is a way of synchronizing our efforts in acting and living together in a networked society.