Aan het woord: Carolina Calgaro
De expositie ‘Something Could Actually Happen: Zwischenlandschaften’ van Nabuurs&VanDoorn is van 21 juni tot en met 18 juli 2020 te zien is bij Pennings Foundation en is tot stand gekomen in nauwe samenwerking met het Van Abbemuseum. Curator van de expositie is Carolina Calgaro. Carolina Calgaro is Italiaanse. In het kader van een duale master Curating Art and Cultures aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam en de Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam loopt ze nu stage bij het Van Abbemuseum. Steven ten Thije, conservator bij genoemd museum, trad op als special advisor.
‘Zwischenlandschaften’ noemen de Eindhovense beeldend kunstenaars Inge Nabuurs (1972) en Erwin van Doorn (1971) de projecten waar zij sinds 2016 aan werken. De titel is geïnspireerd op een uitspraak van de Zwitserse socioloog Lucius Burckhardt (1925-2003): “Het is aan schilders en dichters om het landschap zichtbaar te maken”.
Er wordt een overzicht getoond van Zwischenlandschaften I, II en III. Het acccent ligt op Zwischenlandschaften III en de video van een speciaal hiervoor uitgevoerde performance.
Carolina selecteerde samen met de kunstenaars de werken voor de tentoonstelling. De expositie werd geopend door Charles Esche, directeur van het Van Abbemuseum. Op afstand, wel te verstaan. Esche bevond zich op het moment van de opening in Wenen. Zijn introductie werd daarom van tevoren opgenomen. Dat had zo zijn voordelen. In verband met de coronacrisis mochten we slechts dertig personen in het pand verzamelen. Om meer mensen de gelegenheid te bieden bij de opening aanwezig te zijn, werd een tweede sessie georganiseerd, met hetzelfde programma. Zo konden we de introductie van Esche nogmaals presenteren. Esche verwees in zijn introductie naar de uitvoerige tekst die Carolina over de methodologie van Nabuurs&VanDoorn en met name over Zwischenlandschaften heeft geschreven. Na een inleiding volgt de (Engelstalige) tekst van Carolina.
Methodologie
De expositie verschaft inzicht in de methodologie van de kunstenaars, waarbij research als basis dient. Nabuurs en Van Doorn onderzoeken sociale of culturele situaties of gebeurtenissen uit het verleden en reageren daar als kunstenaars op, door middel van allerlei typen interventies. De media waarvan ze zich bedienen zijn installatie, video, fotografie en performance. Teksten en projecties van teksten vormen een belangrijk bestanddeel van hun werk.
Onderzoeksresultaten en bevindingen tonen zij o.a. in installaties (research sculptures). Uit gevonden teksten, bijvoorbeeld archiefdocumenten, briefwisselingen of interviews, halen zij citaten - een woord of een markante uitspraak – die zij isoleren door de rest van de tekst zwart te maken. Vervolgens presenteren ze die woorden of uitspraken op banners of projecteren die op een door henzelf gekozen ondergrond. Door de citaten los te maken van de oorspronkelijke context krijgen ze iets tijdloos. In hun nieuwe presentatie kunnen de woorden en uitspraken associaties oproepen en een nieuwe betekenis krijgen, als een statement, waarmee het verleden verbonden wordt met het heden en mogelijk ook de toekomst. Daarnaast transformeerden de kunstenaars onderzoeksresultaten naar een legenda, die weer als basis dient voor de performance, en maakten ze een libretto.
Voor Zwischenlandschaften I (2016-2017) verdiepten Nabuurs en Van Doorn zich in het Furkart project, waarbij zestig kunstenaars tussen 1984 en 2000 als een artist-in-residence kunstwerken maakten in de Zwitserse Alpen vanuit een hotel op de Furkapas. Nabuurs en Van Doorn interviewden een aantal kunstenaars via e-mails. Uitspraken uit deze e-mails vormden de basis voor kunstwerken en voor een performance (Game Piece I), uitgevoerd tijdens Documenta 14 in Kassel. Ook maakten ze een poëtische film.
Voor Zwischenlandschaften II (2017) doken ze in het archief van houtverwerkingsfabriek Picus in Eindhoven en haalden vergeten projecten en nooit uitgevoerde plannen en ontwerpen boven water. Teksten uit documenten en correspondentie dienden als basis voor kunstwerken van het kunstenaarsduo. Ook van dit project werd een poëtische film gemaakt.
Aanleiding voor Zwischenlandschaften III (2017) was een expositie van de spraakmakende Amerikaanse kunstenaar Mike Kelley (1954-2012) en de Oostenrijkse kunstenaar Franz West (1947-2012) in Villa Empain in Brussel in 1999. De installatie Categorical Imperative and Morgue van Mike Kelley, aangekocht door het Van Abbemuseum, was reden voor Nabuurs en Van Doorn om af te reizen naar Wenen en naar Detroit en om daar onderzoek te doen. Dit project resulteerde in een film, aangekocht door het Van Abbemuseum, en installaties (research sculptures) die nu getoond worden bij Pennings Foundation.
Corona
De geplande performance (Game Piece II) kon vanwege het coronavirus niet voor publiek worden opgevoerd. Deze is van tevoren opgenomen door medewerkers van het Van Abbemuseum en is tijdens de expositie te zien. De performance werd uitgevoerd door een drummer, een danseres en een electronic voice.
Het Van Abbekoor zou een Libretto ten gehore brengen, gemaakt naar aanleiding van een discussie tussen curatoren over de Morgue van Mike Kelley. Maar als gevolg van het coronavirus kan het optreden van het koor vooralsnog niet doorgaan. De kunstenaars maakten een boekje met het Libretto. Bezoekers die het Libretto willen zingen, worden uitgenodigd naar het boekje te vragen. Vervolgens kunnen ze met het Libretto in de hand de Game Piece betreden en daar hun gezang laten horen.
Titel
‘Something could actually happen.’ Er kan iets gebeuren, maar dat is geheel afhankelijk van hoe de bezoeker de expositie ervaart. Woorden en tekstfragmenten krijgen – eenmaal losgemaakt van hun oorspronkelijke context – iets tijdloos. Ze kunnen associaties oproepen. Het is aan de bezoeker om te interpreteren. De bezoeker wordt uitgedaagd zelf op onderzoek te gaan in de expositie. De modules (geschreven teksten) en de poëtische films (gesproken teksten) bieden veel informatie.
De tekst van Carolina Calgaro biedt veel informatie over de methodologie van de kunstenaars en met name over de drie projecten:
Zwischenlandschaften (lit. Between Landscapes/Twilight Zone) is a series of works by Eindhoven based artist duo Nabuurs&VanDoorn. The series started in 2016 and currently the duo is working on the fourth version. In summer 2020 Nabuurs&VanDoorn present editions I, II and III at Pennings Foundation. The exhibition includes the performance of Game Piece II (edition 2), part of the Zwischenlandschaften III, that will be recorded and projected in the cinema space of the gallery.
The three editions of Zwischenlandschaften address different themes as the artists investigate unique social, historical and cultural moments throughout the projects. Not only do the artists travel through different geographical landscapes, such as Switzerland and the U.S., but different temporalities too using art and artistic interventions as tools to reactivate the past bringing it back to the present moment. All Zwischenlandschaften share the intrinsic quality of revealing past happenings, forgotten memories, that will later be used by the artists to intervene onto different fragments, landscapes of our present reality.
Nabuurs&VanDoorn magically take us back to the past engaging the viewer in the process of discovering and making visible those timeless connections with the moment we live in and the surrounding environment. At first, the duo thoroughly investigates former times, diving into different forms of documentation tied to the specific locations they find themselves in.
The artists’ starting point is at first their will to learn and discover what happened in a specific historical moment, one that somehow has influenced the art world, as seen in edition I and III, or the socio-cultural context in which Nabuurs&VanDoorn live, as seen in Zwischenlandschaften II. This approach of discovery and revealing is what the three series share in methodology. The artists act as a vessel taking us on a journey through different temporalities: present, past and future; as well as through spaces: being physical or liminal, real or in our minds.
The project took off with Zwischenlandschaften I (2016-2017) with Nabuurs&VanDoorn emailing and interviewing artists who participated in the ‘Open-Art-System’ of Furk’art, the hotel in the Furka Pass in Switzerland bought in 1978 by gallerist Marc Hostettler and later transformed into a residency for artists. Nabuurs&VanDoorn used their emails with former residents as the basis for the work Distorted Dialogues (2016). This work exists out of other components: Sparkles of What’s Missing (2016) and the video Zwischenlandschaften I in which the artists poetically recount their journey combining a voice over and imageries. The project ends with the performance Game Piece I, made for Documenta 14 in Kassel, where the artists allow viewers to use the digitized Distorted Dialogues, namely CorrespondAnce (2017), to collectively superimpose them onto the German urban landscape.
Distorted Dialogues (2016) consists of fifty-six manipulated emails and correspondences the artists had with the residents of the Swiss hotel, such as: “Because the landscape was so beautiful it was difficult to compete with. So I wanted to make something that was hidden in plain sight”, an extract from the conversation with artist Alix Lambert. Interestingly, these dialogues are isolated sentences taken out of their original context and conversation. These words act as a monument, an anchor to the past. They highlight forgotten memories that become timeless as they offer themselves to the artists’ creative process. The extracts from the exchange the duo had with the residents of the Swiss hotel, embodied in Distorted Dialogues and later digitized in CorrespondAnce, never alter their meaning with the passage of time.
Without further manipulations, the quotes offer themselves to be used in different environments and times as they represent a reminiscence of a long-gone past that magically speaks to back then as to now, resisting time passing. The duo takes us through a magical and mysterious journey through time by revealing and reusing forgotten or never-before realized memories in the present moment. Using the monuments discovered in the first stage of the research and superimposing them onto present sceneries, Nabuurs&VanDoorn recontextualize the findings connecting them to today’s realities and future possibilities. Distorted Dialogues intervenes in the present as the emails are projected onto specific locations of the now abandoned Furk’art residency, captured in the photographic series Sparkles of What’s Missing (2016). Moreover, the same emails will later be used as part of the performance Game Piece I created for Documenta 14 in Kassel. The superimposition of the past onto other temporalities and urban sceneries creates new artistic landscapes that influence the viewers’ own perception of the past, present and future.
Zwischenlandschaften II investigates the forgotten archives of the Dutch woodwork factory Picus based in Eindhoven. Similarly to the first edition, here too one component of the project, namely 1TroPicus (2017), displays photographic images taken from the Picus’ archival documents, architectural plans, correspondence etc. used by the artists, once again, as monuments that highlight forgotten or never realised projects intertwined with the cultural landscape of the Dutch city. The discoveries found in the Picus’ archives take us back to a forgotten past of which is reactivated in front of our eyes as we walk through the highlighted extracts of 1Tropicus. These timeless monuments, as they magically connect us to the past while keeping us aware of the present, are tools the duo uses to create an ensemble of different components and minimal interventions. 16 Circumferences of Feedback (2017) captures digitized extracts from 1Tropicus projected onto different areas of the now abandoned factory. Interestingly, while investigating Eindhoven’s famous woodwork facility, Nabuurs&VanDoorn come across Picus’ engagement with the construction of prefabricated houses for the American organization, Freeland League, which in 1946 was negotiating the resettlement of Jewish and Eastern European refugees in Suriname, part of the Dutch colonies until 1954.
By using archival materials, the duo takes the viewer through the mysteries of the Dutch factory connecting the local discoveries to more global issues related to the present, placing them in the current discussion on migration, decolonization and refugee crisis. For instance, the matchstick installation The PICUS Villa (2014), which represents the house in the Swiss Monte Verità where a matriarchal colony resided, allows the viewer to question the different shapes a colony can take: on the one hand the wooden prefabricated houses Picus was aiming at building in Suriname highlight the ignored colonial past of the Netherlands; on the other hand The PICUS Villa shows a more privileged ideal colony. All these discoveries are summed up in the video Zwischenlandschaften II where a voice over poetically drives us through the different landscapes the artists have travelled while producing the project.
Lastly, Zwischenlandschaften III looked into research, collections and email correspondence that helped the artists to locate the 40th piece of Mike Kelley’s Morgue. The video component of Zwischenlandschaften III is now part of the permanent collection of the Van Abbemuseum. As the previous editions, the duo has started their journey by diving into Mike Kelley’s personal life, researching in the Van Abbemuseum’s collection and interviewing different personalities involved. This took them through an actual expedition to Detroit where they discovered and navigated through the same spaces as the artist. The route they took can be seen in Morgue Merged on Michigan Avenue Between East and West (2017). The map translates into a geographical landscape Mike Kelley’s Morgue and his trilogy of films that documents Kelley’s journey through Michigan Avenue.
From the research, timeless memories extracted from Kelley’s works, life and from the duo’s conversations with different parties highlight connections between past and present, Mike Kelley and Franz West, as well as the U.S. and Europe. The photographs of Six Odes to Mephistopheles (2018), made in Vienna after finding the 40th piece of Mike Kelley’ Morgue in the collection of Franz West, intervene into the Austrian environment by capturing the timeless quotes taken from Nabuurs&VanDoorn’s research projected onto sceneries connected to Mike Kelley and Franz West. Moreover, as part of this edition, the artists use Morgue Merged on Michigan Avenue Between East and West to recontextualise the actual landscape of the area of Detroit, reinterpreting it as a legend, a map, a new language to be used to navigate and act in the present. The performance Game Piece II shows the dialogue between past and present in action, by deploying the legend the artists have created through their journey in the U.S., performers are called to improvise actions based on their reading and decoding of the map’s legend.
The exhibition ‘Something Could Actually Happen: Zwischenlandschaften’ welcomes the visitors to the historical investigation the Dutch duo has undertaken for the production of the Zwischenlandschaften series, asking the viewer to travel through the same landscapes the artists have visited and produced throughout the years. For instance, through an open access exhibition in which the monumental works of the three series are re-activated through the presentation, the viewer is guided through the multi-layered methodology of the artists aiming at shedding a light on their act of revealing and concealing. The first part of the event showcases the multilayered works of the three series. The exhibition’s presentation does not overlap the projects, but guides the audience in discovering the three different realities through the works the artists have produced. Once the duo’s methodology has been shown and the viewers have discovered the mysteries of the past, the second part of the exhibition shows the act of superimposition and creation of new landscapes, temporalities and voices in action.
De modules zijn ingericht voor de live performance. Een legenda (rechts) dient als leidraad voor de performers. foto's Hetty de Groot
The exhibition ‘Something Could Actually Happen: Zwischenlandschaften’ is accompanied by the screening of the performance of Game Piece II. Game Piece II is a result of the process of research and discovery the artists have undertaken in Detroit while researching the missing piece of Mike Kelley’s Morgue, as part of Zwischenlandschaften III. Here, once again, correspondences and archival materials collected by the artists during the process are superimposed onto specific spaces. The performance highlights the duo’s entering new liminal landscapes, in this case the physical body, functioning as a playground where the audience can observe first hand how the duo uses timeless monuments of the past to intervene into the present moment. Game Piece II is an improvised happening where symbols derived from the monuments of Zwischenlanschafen III, as Distorted Legend (2018), are transformed into protocols, a language that guides the performers in a new process of discovery and manipulation of the past, impacting the ways they experience the present moment and future. By imposing previous works onto the performers’ bodies, Game Piece II enables non-mediated processes of discoveries to arise in the moment of the performance itself.
The performance was meant to be experienced during the first two days of the opening, however, due to the current situation, it will be pre recorded and shown continuously in the cinema space of the Pennings Foundation. In this way, the recorded execution shows how the dynamic moment of the performance becomes once again an archival material and a monument for remembering and experiencing the past, one that could have been different as it won’t happen as it was initially planned for the exhibition. As with all elements of the Zwischenlanschafen series, Game Piece II is not only a vehicle to discuss the specific artistic production and discoveries of the duo but it highlights more global issues such as the absence of an actual performance due to the current corona pandemic. The presence of the sculptural modules become in themselves a timeless memory of a happening, meaning the performance that happened but that could have happened differently if corona was not here. Once again, the monuments offer themselves as a vehicle to connect and reveal the invisible past to the present, becoming a breeding space for new horizons and possibilities to emerge. Pennings Foundation becomes, in this way, a landscape where new interventions are made possible. Throughout the month in which the exhibition is held, the audience is encouraged to make use of this durable atomposhere to discover fresh connections of past, present, and future. Overall, the event aims at sparking a certain curiosity in the viewer who is invited to join the process of travelling in ‘between landscapes’.
Due to the corona crisis, the exhibition ‘Something Could Actually Happen: Zwischenlandschaften’ has been adjusted following the regulations of the government.
De poëtische film Zwischenlandschaften III bevindt zich in de collectie van het Van Abbemuseum. Voorlopig is de film daar nog te zien samen met Morgue van Mike Kelley, als onderdeel van de expositie The Way Beyond Art. foto's Peter Cox
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