ROZENSTRAAT – a rose is a rose is a rose

Which bodies are allowed to move freely and unhindered through the city? How can groups of people change cities through organisation, solidarity and movement? During a performance festival and exhibition in ROZENSTRAAT, a diverse group of artists will explore these questions and many more besides through videos, readings, performances, tours and workshops. The 2002 artwork AmsterdamREALTIME by Esther Polak, Jeroen Kee and Waag Futurelab will serve as the starting point for the Enter/Public/Space exhibition and the Enter/Public/Stage performance festival. For this piece, participants ‘drew’ an interactive map of Amsterdam using early GPS systems. Created by people’s movement through the city, this map becomes a residue of an embodied performance, revealing how users appropriate and rewrite the city from within. The festival and exhibition engage in critical dialogue with AmsterdamREALTIME and consider the presence of different bodies in public spaces. It aims to acknowledge the shifting nature of their presence and the norms of their acceptance in different contexts by tracing their

The exhibition explores how the notion of ‘home’ is being renegotiated by climate crisis, colonial histories, and forced displacement. It brings together installations, films, sound works, and performances that reflect on how land, bodies, and ecosystems are shaped and altered by systems of exploitation.

In Face to Face (1978) by Christiaan Bastiaans, a man lies in a natural setting while slowly covering himself with layers of clay. Gradually, his body merges with the landscape – the clay’s color echoing the leaves around him. A small mirror covering his mouth reflects the surrounding environment, offering a glimpse of the world that simultaneously conceals and absorbs him. His gesture is modest, almost humble, yet unfolds as a quiet and profound transformation. Human figure and surroundings become indistinguishable, forming an image of transience that evokes death as much as continuity. The mirror here suggests a paradoxical return. Even as the body disappears, the world is reflected back, as if life persists through what remains both visible and unseen. The man effaces himself until he is no longer a subject inhabiting nature, but a surface reflecting its image. In this way, the work explores interrelatedness and the possibility of becoming one with the natural world. Rosebud #17 is presented alongside the exhibition Melted for Love, in which grief, memory, ancestral knowledge, and our relationship to nature emerge as central concerns.