AMSTERDAM.- Living legend Meredith Monk has devoted her life to exploring the potential of the human voice, weaving together new modes of perception and expanding the boundaries of music, performance and visual art. Her newest work, Indra’s Net, is an immersive installation performance work inspired by a Buddhist tale that illustrates life’s interconnectedness.

In the ancient Buddhist/Hindu legend of Indra’s Net, an enlightened king, Indra, stretches a large net across the universe with an infinitely faceted jewel placed at each intersection. Each jewel is unique yet reflects all the others, illuminating the interdependence of all living things.

For this world premiere at the Holland Festival 2023, together with members of her extraordinary Vocal Ensemble and a fourteen-piece chamber orchestra from amongst others Ensemble Academy, Monk offers an interplay of music, movement and architecture embodying celestial, earthly and human realms through sound, video and performance.

Meredith Monk, Oude Kerk

To celebrate this versatile artist and her more than six decades of influential stage productions, music and films, the Oude Kerk Amsterdam and the Hartwig Art Foundation will jointly realise Meredith Monk, the first extensive European exhibition about Meredith Monk in the autumn of 2023.

Meredith Monk is widely recognised in the worlds of music and theatre. This survey will be the first exhibition in Europe dedicated to her immersive work, with major works from her oeuvre presented as multi-sensorial installations, embracing the cross-disciplinary way in which she has worked throughout her career. The exhibition will showcase her music, notations, scores and drawings, sound recordings and films and a set of immersive installations which translate themes and objects from her stage productions into new experiences.

This first survey on the oeuvre of Meredith Monk is a collaboration in two acts at Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, together with the Hartwig Art Foundation (21 Oct. 2023 – 17 March 2024) and at Haus der Kunst München (10 Nov. 2023 — 3 March 2024). The Amsterdam exhibition is curated by Beatrix Ruf and developed in close collaboration with Meredith Monk and The House Foundation for the Arts.

Ed Atkins: The worm is a video installation which presents a telephone call of the artist with his mother. She is heard but not seen, while Atkins is rendered as a digital avatar who listens attentively and occasionally mumbles in agreement, sympathy or surprise, asking a question only when her narrative falters. The mother sounds close but is physically far away - The worm was made during lockdown and recalls painfully the nature of our digitally defined experiences during these times. We see extreme close-ups, odd angles, abrupt cuts, awkward gestures and involuntary tics of the artist’s avatar recorded in motion capture technology. The usually scruffy Atkins appears in this video work as a natty television host in a dark windowpane suit with wire-rim glasses who diverges from the often-abject characters featured in his previous works.

The worm (2021), video projection with sound, loop, 12 min, 40 sec. Collection Hartwig Art Foundation. Promised gift to the Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed / Rijkscollectie.

Ed Atkins: Epitaph

British artist Ed Atkins is best known for his computer-generated videos that sentimentalise technology’s failings. Epitaph is Atkins' only existing live work, which is given a new title with every performance. Epitaph shows Atkins’ attempt at an adequate recitation of the poem The Morning Roundup (1971) from the New York author Gilbert Sorrentino with singing and histrionics throughout.