Artistic performance about basking shark hunting

29 October: Artistic performance about basking shark hunting at  Looiersgracht 60, Amsterdam

This Saturday, 29 October, former EHC board member Sadie Hale and former UvA student and artist Miriam Sentler will collaborate in a performance at Looiersgracht 60, Amsterdam. The performance takes as its subject the elusive basking shark, a large shark that migrates to the waters around the Hebrides in Scotland each summer. It builds on an artistic residency Miriam and Sadie undertook together at KNOCKvologan, on the Isle of Mull, in summer 2021.

The performance and panel discussion will take place on October 29 from 16:00-18:00 and will be followed by a reception with the artist and her collaborators. Admission is free, limited seating so please RSVP for the public programme by emailing us at info@looiersgracht60.org.

The Chase is a presentation by visual artist and artistic researcher Miriam Sentler and is the sixth edition of Looiersgracht 60’s Archive Series. Accompanying the installation will be a public programme on 29 October, including a performance and panel discussion with Sentler’s frequent collaborators, environmental humanities researcher Sadie Hale, composer Drake Stoughton, and curator Alicja Melzacka.

The Chase brings together an installation of three of Sentler’s projects proposing alternative artistic methods of archiving endangered species in landscapes exploited for fossil fuel extraction. The Archive Event will activate three works in its wake: The Chase (2020), a sound work examining endangered birdsong within the Hambacher Forst, Cairban – A Contemporary Shark Hunt (2021), a performance and installation chronicling the artists’ search for the oil-producing basking shark,  and The Forest Underground (2022), a work in progress developed from the sounds of the coal mines of Genk and which will be experienced at Looiersgracht 60 for the first time.

Sentler does not strive to capture her subjects, but rather focuses on the notion of ‘the chase’ itself – inching closer towards engagement with precarious and fleeting landscapes. By mining the sounds, stories and experiences of these landscapes and translating them carefully into stand alone works, Sentler questions our human involvement in displacement and ecological change.   

For more information about this event, please visit the website www.looiersgracht60.org or email info@looiersgracht60.org.