April is the annual month of philosophy! During this month, various workshops and lectures are held nationwide relating to an overarching theme. In 2024, the theme was ‘chaos’. For the month of philosophy, the ZB Library of Zeeland organized a philosophy evening at the Vleeshal and the former city hall of Middelburg called Nachtuilen (Night Owls). On Friday, April 12, from 7:30 to 11:30pm, you could join us and philosophize about chaos. During Nachtuilen you could attend lectures and workshops by Marjan Slob, Marc De Kesel, Rients Ritskes, Katrien Schaubroeck, Nathan Wildman and Lisa van Sorge, among others.

The Vleeshal program during Nachtuilen consisted of a lecture by Lisa van Sorge and a guided tour and film screening at Vleeshal. Lisa van Sorge is a PhD candidate in the philosophy department at Tilburg University. She studied fine art and philosophy and has a practice as a visual artist in addition to her research. Starting from Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology, she investigates the artistic and socio-political critical possibilities of contemporary art. During Nachtuilen, she gave a lecture titled: Contemporary painting as an embodied act of framing: Toward a phenomenological aesthetics with Merleau-Ponty.

At Vleeshal, you were welcome for a guided tour of the exhibition Vleeshal Art Prize: Femke Gerestein, Moving Through Thin Places followed by a film screening of the work I feel like boiled milk (1980) by artist Lydia Schouten. Schouten is a Dutch performance and video artist who questions traditional gender roles and the sexualization of women in her work. Before the film screening, Roeliena Aukema (curatorial assistant of Vleeshal), gave a presentation about the relation between the work of Schouten and the themes of the current Vleeshal exhibition, in which loneliness, chaos, and the body were discussed.

The Nachtuilen program was a collaboration between the ZB Library of Zeeland, Vleeshal, HZ University of Applied Sciences and University College Roosevelt.