Noor de Vries
Publishing/PerformanceNoor de Vries is a video artist, researcher, writer, and film programmer. She questions who the city is built for, what drives people to come together in political movements and communities, and what prevents them from doing so. In recent years, archives of social movements have formed the starting point for her video essays and publications. Through anecdotes, fragments of documents and conversations, she encounters histories that can never be fully reconstructed. Her practice revolves around republishing and remixing archival material in speculative ways, seeking to reactivate its political potential. In doing so, she engages with contemporary political concerns surrounding militarisation, climate change, fascism and gentrification.
Two Hands is a two-channel video installation that explores the tension between idealism and pragmatism within political movements. Taking the Kabouterbeweging, a Dutch activist organisation of the 1970s, as a point of departure, the work examines how this movement sought to combine the creation of an alternative society with political change from within existing institutions. Drawing on archival material from the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, de Vries combines historical documents, found footage and her own imagery. The video work forms a dialogue between different historical moments. De Vries considers the recurring dilemmas of political organising and asks what role utopian thinking can have today, particularly in a context of growing militarisation and political uncertainty. The video work is shown in connection to Savva Dudin’s performance taking place in the same room.