Shimmer

On 26 April at 14:00, two artworks in our exhibition Ageless, Ageless will change places. To mark this transfer Cally Spooner and Pam Virada will join us at Shimmer to reflect on their works in the exhibition, and what they are currently working on today. 

Alongside the constellation of freshwater bodies in Slowglass (2026), Virada will welcome visitors to Shimmer with a serving of The Sea, as an introduction to a new body of water in the space. Following a short reading by Virada, we will hold open a window to the port, a gesture by Spooner titled —active because it leaks (2022). Spooner’s gesture of opening the window lets the port’s sounds, shifting air, and city life seep into Shimmer, turning the space into a pavilion rather than a closed off space.

This artwork will momentarily join Spooner’s sound piece, Melody’s Warm Up (2022), in which the work will be mixed into the port. After the event, Melody’s Warm Up (2022) will depart Rotterdam, leaving behind the unpredictable symphony of the industrial port as the exhibition’s new soundtrack.

The event concludes at 16:30. The exhibition continues welcoming visitors until 18:00.

To reserve your spot, please email [email protected], as seating is limited. 

The event will be in English.

Image: Installation shot from No Transcendence, Only Immanence (2022), Pam Virada

Sunday Afternoon with Cally Spooner and Pam Virada - https://mailchi.mp/1a8991e4e367/sundayafternoonwithcallyspoonerandpamvirada

Close up views of our multi-year study Ageless, Ageless beginning with two connected exhibitions with work by Cally Spooner, Fernanda Gomes, Thomas Fougeirol, and Pam Virada. Shimmer is open on Sundays from 13:00–18:00.

Shimmer’s position toward fusion, palimpsests, and layering — of cultures and languages, extends to the sensibility to time itself. As the writer Walter Benjamin reminds us: “the past carries with it a temporal index…there is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one.” (Theses on the Philosophy of History, II, 254) History makes us who we are, yet it demands reflection to avoid returning only to the same mistakes. Like a lullaby, repetition here is considered across registers: bodily, material, and linguistic. The artworks assembled in our first two exhibitions—by Cally Spooner, Fernanda Gomes, Thomas Fougeirol, and Pam Virada—propose different temporal movements: presence and absence, rupture and repair.

Photography by Jhoeko and Bart Roggeveen, courtesy of Shimmer

Supported by Gemeente Rotterdam and Amarte.