surprise me + daytime + only house + art & exhibitions
ADE picks
Deep Seeing Currents
Wed 21 · 09:00 · ARTIS Aquarium · Aquarium · Amsterdam
As you approach Deep Seeing Currents by Olafur Eliasson , you are slowly enveloped by darkness and the sounds of life underwater. Layers of oceanic cacophony – whale songs, rumbling of hydrothermal vents, and human-made noises, among others – surround you, while the vibrations can be felt throughout your entire body, emulating the experience of pressure in the deep sea. Above and around you, lights flash and seem to descend like the hypnotic circulation of marine snow, the organic and inorganic particles essential to life in the deep sea. The immersive sound of Deep seeing currents is brought to life by 4DSOUND . The exhibition is located inside the ARTIS Aquarium and can be visited with a valid ARTIS Park ticket. Tickets are available through the ARTIS website. Opening hours: Wed - Sun, 09:00 - 18.00
Erwin Olaf at The Grand
Wed 21 · 09:00 · Sofitel Legend The Grand Amsterdam · Amsterdam
As part of the ADE Arts & Culture program, a selection of iconic photographs from Clubscene by Dutch photographer Erwin Olaf will be on display at Sofitel Legend The Grand Amsterdam. The exhibition will be presented in the hotel lobby and at Oriole Garden Bistro, offering guests and visitors the opportunity to experience Olaf’s visual universe. Open to walk-in visitors throughout ADE week, this exhibition brings together photography, nightlife and contemporary culture in a setting that celebrates the vibrant atmosphere of the city of Amsterdam. The partnership reflects a shared appreciation for art, culture and the power of creative expression, while highlighting the close connection between Amsterdam’s cultural heritage and its electronic music scene. The photographs will also form part of the atmosphere during the ADE Kitchen Party at Restaurant Bridges and Oriole Garden Bistro , where art, gastronomy and music come together in celebration of one of Amsterdam’s most dynamic weeks of the year.
Erwin Olaf at The Grand
Wed 21 · 09:00 · Sofitel Legend The Grand Amsterdam · Amsterdam
As part of the ADE Arts & Culture program, a selection of iconic photographs from Clubscene by Dutch photographer Erwin Olaf will be on display at Sofitel Legend The Grand Amsterdam. The exhibition will be presented in the hotel lobby and at Oriole Garden Bistro, offering guests and visitors the opportunity to experience Olaf’s visual universe. Open to walk-in visitors throughout ADE week, this exhibition brings together photography, nightlife and contemporary culture in a setting that celebrates the vibrant atmosphere of the city of Amsterdam. The partnership reflects a shared appreciation for art, culture and the power of creative expression, while highlighting the close connection between Amsterdam’s cultural heritage and its electronic music scene. The photographs will also form part of the atmosphere during the ADE Kitchen Party at Restaurant Bridges and Oriole Garden Bistro , where art, gastronomy and music come together in celebration of one of Amsterdam’s most dynamic weeks of the year.
Art Expo: How Can There Be Day Without Night
Wed 21 · 10:00 · The Node North · Bunk Hotel Amsterdam · Amsterdam
The Node North will be hosting an free exposition with nightlife related art by Britta Moller from Wednesday October 20 till Sunday October 25. Britta Möller is an Amsterdam-based artist creating large-scale abstract paintings wth acrylic, mixed media and layered textures. Her work explores transformation, surrender, visibility and concealment — themes rooted in the moment her former professional world came to a sudden stop during the pandemic. Before turning to painting, Möller worked for more than twenty-five years as a graphic designer and art director. In 1998, she co-founded Maslow, an Amsterdam-based design agency working for a wide range of organisations within the cultural sector. Maslow was responsible for the art direction and visual identity of Amsterdam Dance Event from 1998 to 2020, one of the key projects that shaped Möller’s strong position within the music and nightlife industry. With a specialisation in books and magazines, she designed and produced publications connected to Dutch dance culture, including Mary Go Wild — 25 Years of Dance in the Netherlands. She later co-founded and co-owned Mary Go Wild, a platform, store and publishing house dedicated to dance culture, which produced titles including Awakenings — 20 Years of Techno, Celebrate Life — The Story of ID&T and Thunderdome — 25 Years of Hardcore. When the pandemic brought the cultural and event world to a halt, painting became a way to move through loss and transition. After decades behind a computer, large-scale painting brought her back into the body: using movement, rhythm and physical presence instead of screen-based control. In some works, Möller uses phosphorescent pigments, creating a hidden layer that appears only in darkness — a subtle reference to nightlife, and to the idea that everything carries both a light and a dark side. She works from her studio at A Lab in Amsterdam-Noord. Expo: Wed 21/10
Charged by Jaco Schilp
Wed 21 · 10:00 · ADE Lab Village Westergas · Amsterdam
Every person who walks into Charged becomes exactly that. A cloud of light gathers around you, pulled in by your presence, and moves when you move. Some people you meet in it carry the same charge as you, and so push each other's energy away. Others carry the opposite, and your clouds fold into each other before either of you has decided to merge. As magnetic poles repel, opposites attract. The work is about how we change each other's environment simply by being in it, positively or negatively, whether we mean to or not. Charging and discharging as a way of interacting between persons. The more people step in, the more chaotic it becomes. With only a few, it settles into something calm and connected. The visuals in Charged were built with TouchDesigner, while its eye uses an open-source AI vision model called YOLO, which has become the standard way for a machine to find people in a camera image. Its own creator walked away from it in 2020 because he could no longer ignore its military and surveillance uses. In Charged, artist Jaco Schilp give it a different job: it doesn't know who you are, but only where you are and how you move. No record of the images is kept. Technology born for watching, reimagined as a tool for connection and play. Jaco Schilp explores how these systems can transform when placed in a different light. Charged is a public light installation in Westerpark. It can be visited for free at any time of day or night during ADE week.
Clubcult - Video Installation
Wed 21 · 10:00 · ADE Lab Village Westergas · Amsterdam
In loving memory of Jelmar van Belle, who filmed these videos during the closing of De School and sadly passed away on 20 February 2026. In January 2024, the renowned Amsterdam nightclub De School closed its doors. For more than eight years, it offered the city a unique space where everyone could truly be themselves. Behind these doors, a world of expression, love, fashion, and identity emerged. Clubs like this are more than nightlife venues, they are breeding grounds for culture. The culture that forms around Amsterdam’s underground nightlife is shaped by people who cannot easily be defined. They often remain invisible to the outside world, partly due to the strict no-picture policy. Yet they are the ones who embody the color, creativity, and authenticity of the city. From this invisibility, CLUBCULT emerged as a creative collective who share the same passion for fashion, art & nightlife. During the final 66 hours of De School, Clubcult captured more than two hundred club visitors in temporary studios built within the walls of this iconic venue. The portrayed were scouted directly from the club; spontaneous, unfiltered, and completely themselves. The result is raw, intimate, poetic, and real. Alongside these videos, photographs were also taken in four photography studios. These images have been brought together in a 400-page photography book, available to order at johnnyblood.nl. The project premiered with an exhibition at Door Open Space during ADE 2025, and will be screend across Westerpark throughout ADE 2026. Credits: Creative direction: Maaike Bouwman JOHNNY BLOOD, Casting & Creative direction: Lizzy Bouwman, JOHNNY BLOOD Art Direction: Daan Kneppers Videographers: Jelmar van Belle, Dorith Mous Photographers: Barrie Hullegie, Lonneke van der Palen, Jorre Janssens, Tim Verhallen. Graphic Design & Art Direction book: Anne van Bokhoven Casting & Scout: Michiel van Maaren With special thanks to: Jochem Wertheimer, Leendert Sonnevelt, Nathan Kofi, Anne van der Weijden
Dreaming Babies: illi by Yoon Chung Han
Wed 21 · 10:00 · ADE Lab Village Westergas · Amsterdam
The artwork “ Dreaming Babies: illi ” presents 23 special hybrid human babies , each with a different chromosomal anomaly, sleeping and dreaming inside their own virtual incubator in space, weaving stories through their unique identities. This project explores new speculative human designs, addressing humanity’s desire to create a perfect being through genetic technologies. Each baby’s story, generated from genetic data, is created in collaboration with artificial intelligence. Visitors can interact with the sleeping babies in real time by inputting sound through a microphone. On the screens, audiences can observe how genetic anomalies are reimagined not as physical difficulties, but as representations of more unique and special forms of humanity. What exactly defines an embryo with “normal” genes, and should embryos with “abnormal” genes be discarded? This AI-based installation reinterprets the genome not as an object of pathology, but as a site of imagination and mythology. Each chromosome—often associated with genetic disorders or congenital conditions—is reborn as a baby character with a name, an alter ego and imagined being, endowed not with deficiency but with a poetic and abstract superpower. By naming and animating what is often silenced or hidden in the shadows of society, the work subverts the stigma surrounding disability, difference, and genetic variation. The installation proposes an alternative mythology—where anomaly becomes another self, and what is called “abnormal” is transformed into a source of creative power, multiplicity, and beauty. This work is commissioned by Seoul Foundation for ADE Arts and Culture. It is a free public installation in Westerpark, and can be visited for free at any time of day or night during ADE week.
Heliotrope by Heleen Blanken & Daniel de Bruin
Wed 21 · 10:00 · ADE Lab Village Westergas · Amsterdam