In the initial stages of preparing for our museum's construction, we seize a brief opportunity to extend an invitation to COURTPLAY in the former courthouse of Amsterdam (Parnassusweg 220), the location of our forthcoming museum of contemporary art. COURTPLAY is a 24-hour event, conceived by Mohamed Almusibli and Ivan Cheng for Hartwig Art Foundation. The former courthouse of Amsterdam will become the stage and set for a 3-act theatrical play —a deconstruction of a TV legal drama, with contributions of writers and artists from near and far. Mini-marathons of artist films, and site-specific installations are positioned through the monument-listed atrium and former courtrooms. Food and drinks are available for visitors throughout the building. As a format, COURTPLAY serves to display tensions between its contributors and the established notions of law and tradition, and questions the difference between audience, consumer, and witness. Insistent on dealing with popular culture, distribution, and the force of language, the title of the event is playfully derived from a band name, Coldplay. Their frontman, Chris Martin, indisputably bears most of the band’s celebrity, enhanced by the wide tittering at the lifestyle quirks from his partnership with actress and entrepreneur Gwyneth Paltrow. Upon their separation, they used the neologism of ‘conscious uncoupling’ instead of divorce. An instance of legal language and its socialized alternative, it met ridicule from the press, but sustained fascination with how relationships can be defined and shaped by their terms of engagement. COURTPLAY runs the course of a day, but its contents speak to manifold continuities and affiliations.