The Theatricality of Commonality is a performative talk involving Gabriel Lester, Eric Duivenvoorden, and Ernst van den Hemel who will highlight the notions of commonality and communality from the late 1960s Provo movement to the present-day Occupy movement. The role of the common in regards to the position of the individual —and the experience shared between both, especially in the context of the Netherlands—is the backdrop against which this history is staged.
Gabriel Lester is an artist based in Amsterdam and Shanghai. His work is based on dramatic tension and questions the role of the spectator. He has had solo shows at the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2011), Z33, Hasselt (2009), and the Bloomberg Space, London (2007).
Eric Duivenvoorden is a philosopher, sociologist and Historian at the International Institute for Social History in Amsterdam. He is the author of a number of books about Dutch art and radical politics including Magiër van een nieuwe tijd, het leven van Robert Jasper Grootveld (2008), a biography on Robert Jasper Grootveld.
Ernst van den Hemel is a religion and literary scholar. His PhD on the work of John Calvin was published in 2009 under the title Calvinism and Politics: Between Resistance and Resignation. Van de Hemel is involved in various activist collectives, including Schijnheilig Gallery, Artists in Amsterdam and Occupy, opposing the concept of “illegal.”
