October Artists' Conversation: Nienke Terpsma & Rob Hamerlijnck

Our next Smooth Space Artists' Conversation at Torre Abbey is on Wednesday 1 October, 7pm - 9pm.

We will be talking to Dutch artists Nienke Terpsma and Rob Hamerlijnck who are coming to Torbay straight from the 4th Rennes Biennale where they have been commissioned to present new work.

Founded in 2008 by the non-profit association Art Norac, the contemporary art biennale Les Ateliers de Rennes (literally Rennes’ Workshops), is the only European artistic event to devote itself to a reflection on the connections between contemporary art and business and/or the economy.

« Play cannot be denied. You can deny, if you like, nearly all abstractions: justice, beauty, truth, goodness, mind, God. You can deny seriousness, but not play. […] Genuine, pure play is one of the main bases of civilization »
Johan Huizinga, Homo ludens (1951).

For PLAY TIME, Rob Hamelijnck & Nienke Terpsma have created a new edition of their publication FGA titled FGA# 31 - It’s play time - a bilingual book available during the biennale. Structured around three conversations, it takes as its starting point the 1938 book Homo ludens: a study of the play-element in culture by Johan Huizinga. The artists have been speaking with the following people as part of their research into the importance of play in different fields: Tijs Goldschmidt, Dutch writer and evolutionary biologist, on why and how animals play; Joris Luyendijk, Dutch journalist who writes for the BBC’s experimental Banking Blog, which looks at the world of finance from an anthropological perspective. He is currently analysing the behaviour of bankers in the City of London; Evelyne Reeves, director of Le Bureau des Temps in Rennes, an agency that devises improvements in the way the city structures its time.

For more information visit http://www.lesateliersderennes.fr/