Gyz La Rivières New Neapolis is a declaration of love to a new fictional European city, which can emerge if four port cities – Rotterdam, Liverpool, Marseille and Naples – forge an alliance.
With a film and an exhibition, artist Gyz La Rivière shows in an unparalleled way how these cities have always been related to each other – with sailortowns, quays and alleys; migrants, workers and thugs; poverty, friction and a lively informal economy; and frantic attempts to clean it all up with urban renewal, gentrification and lots of soap. What can we learn from this urban bond? What forms of brotherhood and solidarity for a future Europe can emerge here? Welcome to New Neapolis, divercity.
Gyz La Rivière (Rotterdam, 1976) is an artist, designer, filmmaker and writer. He works as an idiosyncratic image archivist. With images that he makes himself or retrieves through in-depth archival research, objects that he finds on the street or borrows from collections, infographics, logos, icons and stories, he forges a dazzling Gyzian universe, which at the same time sharpens our view of the world around us in an unexpected way.
New Neapolis is a collaboration with Museum Rotterdam and the music programming of WORM.
The film is made possible in part by: Creative Industries Fund NL, CBK Rotterdam, Museum Rotterdam, JE Jurriaanse Foundation, Van Eesteren-Fluck & Van Lohuizen Foundation, Municipality of Rotterdam, Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, City Archives Rotterdam and the Nederlands Fotomuseum.