surprise me + only wednesday + art & exhibitions + at night
ADE picks
Charged by Jaco Schilp
Wed 21 · tba · 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 · tba · 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 · tba · 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, the fusion of science and cloning, the many possibilities and uncertainties of future human birth, and the ethical dilemmas surrounding genetic modification. 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, connecting with them via the ChatGPT system. The videos of babies floating in space can be viewed on each screen, where audiences can observe how genetic anomalies are reimagined not as physical difficulties, but as representations of more unique and special forms of humanity. After experiencing egg retrieval and Preimplantation Genetic Testing (PGT), the artist went through the process of selecting embryos through genetic testing—freezing only those that passed as “normal,” while discarding those that did not. But what exactly defines an embryo with “normal” genes, and should embryos with “abnormal” genes be discarded? Even now, countless human embryos that fail PGT during in-vitro fertilization are discarded worldwide, never reaching pregnancy or birth. Does an embryo that fails PGT, then, represent a baby that was never born? 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 · tba · ADE Lab Village Westergas · Amsterdam
After being cancelled during ADE 2025 due to the adverse weather conditions, Heliotrope by Heleen Blanken & Daniel de Bruin is back at the ADE Lab Village in Westerpark during the ADE week 2026. Heliotrope is a kinetic installation inspired by the natural phenomenon in which plants orient their leaves and blossoms toward the sun. The work takes this principle as both a biological reference and a metaphor, exploring processes of energy reception, tropistic behaviour, the atomic movements inherent to living matter, and the pulsating rhythms embedded within the natural world. This idea is translated into a mirrored installation. The mechanically engineered installation moves its blades, diffusing light beams, and reflecting its surroundings in a chaotic and refracted image. It explores parallels between manufactured and organic movements and tries to liquefy the barriers. Heliotrope transforms from day into night and back again, evoking a state of perpetual motion. In doing so, it proposes an artificial organism, one that, like its botanical counterpart, responds to invisible flows of energy. Heliotrope is a public light installation in Westerpark. It can be visited for free at any time of day or night during ADE week.
Het Ei by Touki Delphine
Wed 21 · tba · ADE Lab Village Westergas · Amsterdam
Part of ADE Arts & Culture, co-curated with Amsterdam Light Festival. Amsterdam-based Touki Delphine is a boundary-pushing collective of musicians, performers, and visual artists. They are making waves both nationally and internationally with monumental light and sound installations, built from recycled materials: taillights in FIREBIRD , turn signal relays in RELAY , wiring in TRANSMISSION , windshield washer fluid reservoirs and their pump motors in DRIFTING . Their latest work, SUPERDRUM , is constructed from second-hand drums, wooden branches, and car door lock mechanisms. Through their work, they create musical poetic encounters between humans and machines. Inspired by natural systems, the climate crisis and the idea of nature as a living whole, they imagine a future in which people, nature and technology collaborate rather than compete, and where waste can be transformed into something meaningful, alive and beautiful. That vision feels more urgent than ever. In a time of ecological exhaustion, technological alienation and social fragmentation, they believe there is a growing need for physical, sensory and collective experiences. Through their work, they explore how technology can not only distance us, but also reconnect us, creating poetic encounters between humans and machines. Het Ei is a public light installation in Westerpark . It was co-curated with Amsterdam Light Festival , marking a first collaboration between the two organisations that brings together electronic music and light art. It can be visited for free at any time of day or night during ADE week. It will appear in the city again coming winter for the fifteenth edition of Amsterdam Light Festival. More information: amsterdamlightfestival.com
Melting Image
Wed 21 · tba · The Cristel Ballroom Gallery · Amsterdam
Melting Image is a quiet resistance to how we consume images today — against the passive, one-dimensional scroll of the digital screen, it asks for presence instead of speed. Here, looking takes time, and the image only reveals itself to those willing to give it. An image is silkscreened onto layers of transparent material, then heat-formed until it lifts off the flat surface and takes on an organic, sculptural shape. Displayed in the gallery window, it turns the glass into a screen between street and space. Lit from behind by a slowly shifting projection, each layer catches the colour differently: parts of the image surface, others fade, never quite settling into one form. The longer you look, the more it keeps changing. Romina Koopman is a visual artist working at the edge of the tangible and the virtual, questioning how the digital image reshapes our perception of reality. The artwork will be displayed in the gallery's window throughout the ADE week, day and night.
Listening Session & Bites with Disco Arabesquo
Wed 21 · 18:30 · Van Eesteren Museum · Amsterdam
What does a film sound like if you take away the visuals? During this special ADE listening session, DJ Disco Arabesquo dives into his collection of vinyl and cassettes, taking you into the world of Egyptian film music from the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Expect unique soundtracks, hidden gems, and music you might recognize without knowing where you’ve heard it before. With this listening session, Disco Arabesquo shares his love for the music, the films, and the culture in which these sounds continue to live on outside the cinema. In addition, Qibli Bahri will provide delicious Egyptian snacks , so you can dive into ADE with a well-filled stomach. You can also explore the exhibition Dreams of Films - Films of Dreams . Please note: we are keeping this event small and intimate, so don't wait too long to buy your tickets. The exhibition Dreams of Films - Films of Dreams is part of ADE Arts & Culture. Discover more about it at this link .
Rethinking Dance in Nightlife
Wed 21 · 18:30 · DB55 · Amsterdam