The new film museum EYE

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Art director, designer and photographer in the virtual world. What's in a name.

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On the 5th of April the new film museum EYE will open its doors to the public. A building that has evolved into an architectural gem on the IJ bank, next to the Shell tower. This new addition to Amsterdam’s rural landscape was designed by Delugan Meissle Associated Architects (try spelling that on the phone), it certainly has a different feel to it from every side you look at it. Take the ferry from the NDSM wharf back to Central Station and see how the building changes shape, a pretty cool experience. This was exactly one of the goals of the architects, to combine multiple perspectives in the design.

With four theaters, 1200 m2 exhibition space, an interactive basement and a restaurant/bar it’ll be quite the asset to the Amsterdam cultural sector. But who cares, it’s all about programming.

The programme

EYE opens with the exhibition Found Footage: Cinema Exposed.

This exhibition shows how artists and film makers use existing material taken from the web, DVDs or TV as a raw material to create something new. A great theme to open the film museum with. It’s so fitting with our current young culture of appropriation and taking what you want. From google images to music, the found footage is taken out of its original context, sound is modified, silenced or added. Celluloid is scratched, chemically treated or painted upon, while digital images are mangled in a different way.

If they get the themes right this could become an interesting place to wander and dive in all year round.

Some of the creative people involved in this process are Bruce Conner, Douglas Gordon, Matthias Müller, Gianikian/Ricci Lucchi, Pablo Pijnappel, Wolf Vostell, Aernout Mik, Christoph Girardet, David Claerbout, Anri Sala, Bill Morrison, Joachim Koester. The youngest artist amongst them is 33 years old, and I do wonder how much the younger audience will be able to relate to this exhibit.

In EYE’s new film theaters visitors can learn about the thematic film program which fits with the Found footage theme. Furthermore, on several dates EYE also organizes debates and lectures within the theme of the current exhibition.

Festival

You can visit the Eye opening festival where they will give you a peek in their year round programming. Take for instance a peek in the upcoming Martin Scorsese and Stanley Kubrick retrospective.

Featured image by Rene den Engelsman

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