Vleeshal Center for Contemporary Art is pleased to invite you to the performance Cries in Concrete, Curses Curbstones, Dreams in Drywall, Rests in Rainfall by Helena Keskküla.

In June 2020, a runestone was erected on the island of Saaremaa in Estonia, to celebrate the family of Koit. As runestones are uncommon for this particular landscape, Keskküla was intrigued by this gesture of her great-uncle’s son, and it led her to embark onto an almost obsessive journey of learning how to shape stones. During her research, Keskküla emerged herself in Estonian mythology, and read about sacrificial stones and boulders that the legendary Estonian hero Kalevipoeg carried and threw around.

Over the course of the two years that followed, Keskküla has been experimenting with the carving of large boulders. During that carving, an image of two women accompanied by two heavy boulders on a basketball court emerged in her mind. This vision formed the point of departure for a site-specific performance that includes three performers and four stones. A thorough investigation into possible sites for the performance ultimately led Keskküla to a basketball court situated on the Wold beach in Zeewolde, Flevoland.

On September 2, from sunrise to sunset, you are invited to attend Cries in Concrete, Curses Curbstones, Dreams in Drywall, Rests in Rainfall. In the midst of the boulders, performers Lidwien Ponsioen, Rose Akras, and Dianthus will activate the site through the durational and laborious production of concrete, tear-shaped objects that will accumulate over the course of the performance. Persistence, joy and fatigue will inform the work as the day progresses, which is why you are encouraged to attend the performance for a long period of time, slow down, perhaps even spend several hours with the work,  to see it grow and shift back and forth from a site of production to a mythological destination.

Where did these boulders come from? What is their history? Some say they were symbols of fertility, others believe they function merely to mark borders. We might never know.

Cries in Concrete, Curses Curbstones, Dreams in Drywall, Rests in Rainfall will be presented in dialogue and collaboration with Land Art Flevoland, in whom Keskküla and Vleeshal have found a partner with expert knowledge about environmental art in the Netherlands.

To attend the performance, you can make use of a special shuttle bus that will drive from Amsterdam via Lelystad to Zeewolde, and back. On the way to Zeewolde the land artwork Engelen (Angels) by Moniek Toebosch will be visited, and on the way back the work Groene Kathedraal (Green Cathedral) by Marinus Boezem will be visited. The bus departs from Amsterdam Central Station at 12:00, from Lelystad Central Station at 13:15, and returns from Zeewolde at 18:00. Tickets for the bus cost 15 euros and can be purchased by writing to office@vleeshal.nl

If you choose to travel by public transport, we advise to travel to Almere and take bus 159 to Zeewolde from there. From bus stop Zeewolde Centrum it is a 10 minute walk to Woldstrand. The Woldstrand is accessible by foot and wheelchair and beach club Fika can be visited for food and drinks.

Helena Keskküla (1992) is an Estonian artist working mainly with video, performance and installation. She uses humour,a play on insecurities, and the notion of failure to address more universal topics. In the last three years, she has mainly focused on mythology and stone carving, which she combines with performance and construction materials. She graduated from the Estonian Art Academy in 2015 and the Fine Arts Department of the Sandberg Institute at Gerrit Rietveld Academy in 2021. She is the 2023 recipient of KKV-Bohüslan stone scholarship and was selected to represent Estonian artists at the ISCP Residency in New York.

Cries in Concrete, Curses Curbstones, Dreams in Drywall, Rests in Rainfall is a commission by Roos Gortzak, director of Vleeshal Center for Contemporary Art, Middelburg, the Netherlands. Martha Jager is assistant curator for this project, and did invaluable work over the course of these two years.