Category: event

During this Game & Watch we will collectively play two contrasting videogames to consider how Indigenous narratives are shared and considered in gamified realms. We will examine the representation of Indigenous peoples as well as the roles they are cast in the videogames 'Never Alone' and 'Sid Meier's Colonization'.

We want Varia to be used by people who live in the neighbourhood. Is it already happening but we've never met you all together, we'd love to have a moment to formalise how this can work for everyone. With conversation and food we want to set up ways to organise and coordinate the access for Varia. How can we help each other across our extended solidarity networks? What are our responsibilities to one another and how can we communicate clearly? This is a gathering to share our expectations and needs for this space that we (can) all use.

Join us for a new episode in the extratonal infrastructure series - the extra in Rotterdam's cultural life. Be on time and it is fine!

The times of Cold War seem long gone, yet they significantly impact present cultural ideologies that repeat and evolve in contemporary creative production. This evening gathering is the starting point of a series that tries to expose the influence of the Cold War across present day narratives, technologies and geopolitics.

Whine, Dine and Decline is a dinner and conversation around the local foodscape of the Netherlands and it's potential future in the context of climate change.

In continuation of the Miscalculating Risk: Policing Technologies event, in this session we will start a collective research thread around supermarket surveillance technologies together with Sanne Stevens. During this session, we want to explore all these sides of AI shoplifting technologies; the promises, the drivers and motivations and ideological assumptions behind the technology, but also how it works out in practice, who is impacted and in what ways.

What is the role of the vernacular in sound knowledge and modes of organisation? Knowledge and information organisation are deeply powerful acts, which relate to how we envision the world. This event further develops an ongoing thread about the ways the vernacular (re)orients language and technology and generates other forms of knowledge sharing and organising. Khamoosh is a participatory artistic research project that mediates conservation and restoration by exploring the sonic heritage of Iran through recorded sounds of everyday life; sounds less heard or even silenced. Golnoosh and Maryam, two members of Khamoosh, will begin by presenting how Khamoosh as a process-based project operates, and share insights to their own roles within the Khamoosh community.

November is home to multiple interventions by The Platform For Extratonality. During this intermediate music event we welcome QOA and Primeiro, two artists with a tendency to enthrall through elemental improvisations.

The Homemade Computer Club is a gathering space for those curious about computers.

Get to know the Common Dirt of Charlois; from the neglected patches of soil around the platan trees to the community-run street gardens. During the autumn excursion we will investigate how nature finds its way through the urban planning of Rotterdam.

We are moved to invite you to our 3rd Extratonal Special: sound is political. For this edition we ask you to be present with your political ears, to feel with us what it means to have a voice that is (not) heard, to notice which voices are not present in the room, to desire together social transformations, to listen to less heard histories, to pinch our autonomous bubbles, to be touched by sound waves and connect with them consciously.

In 2023, Film Lab Palestine had to postpone their Palestine Cinema Days festival. Instead of celebrating cinema in Palestine, they brought Palestine to the world in 86 cities, across 139 venues, spanning 41 countries. November 2nd marks the day the Balfour Declaration was signed, and in an effort to amplify Palestinian voices, we are joining Palestine Cinema Days Around The World and are screening Naila And The Uprising directed by Julia Bacha​.

"Listening to the Cracks" is a research project that explores the often-inaudible sounds of urban nature. Together with Matthias Hurtl and Yoana Buzova, participants will engage in a listening session in Gouwplein, Oud-Charlois, to uncover voices and frequencies that are typically overlooked or dismissed as nuisances.

The Homemade Computer Club is a gathering space for those curious about computers.

Common Dirt is an ongoing series of events organized by Varia, in which we take a critical look at the cross-connections between biology and technology in Rotterdam.

Diana Pankova will share her work and process on "Solarigraphy - a hand-crafted technology aimed at the star(s)", teaching us how to make your own camera out of a beer can (or any light-tight container)! During this workshop she will share a specific way of capturing sun, that anyone can do, but most don't even think about. You can bring your own empty beer can (or not empty so you can have it for a drink later!)

For the last session in our Fictionality Series we invited artist Toon Fibbe, who proposed to turn our professional selves into (drag)characters, with Anna Delvey serving as our guide and teacher, but not without looking at the (fictional) performativity of funding bodies first...

Every month, The Platform for Extratonality gives the latest musical tendencies a stage at Varia. For October we have invited three groups that will challenge your dreary mindset. With the help of sunny improvisations, they are bound to disperse the autumn clouds for a while!

This workshop is a point of entry into a broader discussion looking towards new tech that is making it ever more simple and accessible to 'capture nature in a single click'. During the workshop we will explore digital conservation techniques and their impact, while considering how digital conservation techniques might shape the future landscape.

Extratonal Infrastructure is back for a second batch of irregular musical performances in the heart of the south of Rotterdam. Join us on the 4th of September for a dizzying array of notes, pauses and passes as we once again welcome the latest extratonal tendencies to varia.

Join us for a celebration moment of our extratonal resident Ål Nik’ end of art residency! She will share her sonic experiments and creations from the last 3 weeks.