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Music video release and pop-up expo

For the Record: Urban Imaginaries with Tim Wes

Tim Wes will release Face Me, his new music video, under the arcade of Het Nieuwe Instituut on Thursday 16 July at 10pm (sunset). The launch takes the form of a pop-up exhibition and short video programme. The event follows For the Record: Urban Imaginaries, an event about representations of the city in music videos that was live streamed on June 11 with Tim as one of the speakers.

Still from Face Me by Tim Wes.

Face Me

“Three people visit a peepshow. They pay, take a seat and are met by their entertainer as the curtain slides up. But when the music starts and the show is set to begin, the tables turn: the visitors start to dance and the entertainer gazes at them. The voyeur becomes the entertainer, wanting nothing more than to feel seen and desired. Lost in this strange power dynamic, they will do anything to feel seen: even pay.

The music video for Face Me represents the vicious circle of a relationship in which two people are unequal to each other. Where one constantly gives while the other takes. Where one glorifies the good and ignores the bad in the person they’re with because, against their better judgment, they want to love so desperately. They lose themselves in their desire and even though they know how it might end, go for that quick fix of happiness again and again.

The story plays with context and flips expectations by shifting the power dynamic. It illustrates how, in a one-sided relationship, we can lose ourselves completely, and how things can turn out differently from what we expected at the beginning.”

Due to Covid-19 measures, we ask everyone to keep 1.5 metres from others before, during and after the event. 

date
16/07/2020
time
22:00 – 22:30
language
English
 
location

Het Nieuwe Instituut
Museumpark 25
3015 CB Rotterdam

entrance

Free

Reflection

For the Record: Urban Imageries with Tim Wes took place inbetween the first and second lockdown, in a period where things just seemed to be getting back to normal: “looking back at 2020, this might have been one of the most exhilarating exhibitions that took place within the cultural landscape of the Netherlands. With the pop-up exhibition I wanted to display how music, film, and art come together and how we are erasing the borders that were set in place around that time”, Wes explains.

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Tim: “in this short documentation the story of the spectators that were there is told. The fact that we documented it means that we can add this little piece of history to the archives and look back in twenty years at this special and unique time in life.”

Tim Wes x Het Nieuwe Instituut

Tim Wes is taking on the role of a pioneer that fights for a place within acknowledged institutes and organisations, in order to create space for a new generation of artists that navigate through different disciplines. “Before this pop-up exhibition took place, I put pressure on the cultural organisations in Rotterdam. On one hand, this was to shed some light onto a dark situation (the beginning of the lockdown), and on the other hand it was as a form of protest, in order to be heard”. “The large group of creators that do not walk the most common paths are still not given the proper attention to, in my opinion”, Tim shares. With the projects that he develops, he tries to embody and represent the group: “I want to show them what happens when these two worlds - the world of creators and the world of institutions - collide and collaborate, and I want to show what possibilities lie ahead. In my opinion, Het Nieuwe Instituut is not afraid to take on a challenge, to take a risk and to experiment. This is why I decided to work with them”.

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