By Clare Butcher

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Steven ten Thije

NABA

Recently Charles Esche, Diana Franssen, Carina Weijma and myself had the opportunity to have a taste of Italy again in all its richness and complexity. For a week we acted as guest teachers at NABA – a private art school in Milano – and while there had the chance to hear the tragic story of Isola Art Centre, which lost its building to city planners. In many ways it was a inspiring week which allowed us to reflect and speculate on the future.

Bert Theys one of the founders of the Isola Art Centre

The teaching was a pleasure to do, for it not only allowed us to engage in a dialogue with the art students – always refreshing – but also gave us the possibility to hear each other speak. Even if it is clear that each of us has a different perspective, unifying us however, within our understanding of art at the moment, is a wish to try and bring forth the potential of art in a political sense, without reducing it to mere political means. In a sense we seem to be engaged in a complementary questioning of both politics and art, for both notions seem to be subject to change today. Read more »

By Clare Butcher

“Taking responsibility for being open” - these were the key words of Angela Plohman’s workshop held at the museum on 20 January, as part of the Transparency series we’re putting together. It was the very term “Transparency” that Angela first ploughed into (no pun intended) regarding the dangerous duality of being open while also generating a set of ethics for oneself in how and when and why information is communicated and feedback is invited. Read more »

By Clare Butcher

Below is an introduction for an upcoming show I’m working on at the Aarhus Art Building in Denmark, The Good Old Days. It showcases the work of four artists from my own generation and while that’s perhaps not the most original way to build a show, for me, it’s revealed some urgent matters for contemporary practice, which seeks a relevant political action based on situated, re-constituting of recent history.

Lara Baladi, Lucia Nimcova, Nandipha Mtambo and Agnieszka Polska

6 February to 17 March 2010

Day by day

Introduction

The Who wrote a song in 1965 that entered Rock ‘n’ Roll history and influenced the development of Punk Rock in the UK. My Generation is almost a self-fulfilling prophecy: as it names and gives voice to the young, mobile, irreverent g-g-g-generation of Western Europe and the United States.
Read more »

By Clare Butcher

With the development of Web 2.0, and I’ve been told now, 3.0, culture there comes a need to reevaluate, or indeed, truly evaluate for the first time, how a museum of the 21st century might actually integrate the culture of the Online into its daily, and perhaps minute by minute affairs. We are holding a number of internal seminars, entitled the Transparency series, at the museum to unpack the issues of publicity, discretion and experimentalism in our hyper-reality. The first will be led by Angela Plohman, director of Baltan Laboratories, Eindhoven. Following are some links to a few relevant readings in connection with the content of the workshop.

Virtueel Platform

Through the Looking Glass - Museums and Internet-based Transparency

By Steven ten Thije

Some weeks ago we had an interesting discussion in the museum with a group of art history students from several different universities. They came over to look and discuss the three exhibitions that comprise the first chapter of Play Van Abbe with Charles Esche, Christiane Berndes and myself. In the conversation especially one thing struck me. In the discussions we found ourselves several time returning to the average visitor. Constantly we were speculating on whether or not this figure would comprehend the show. Read more »

By Charles Esche

I’m on a plane flying to Alicante. God knows why really, it is not necessary for much that I cherish but I said yes once to some invitation and here I am, not wanting to think about it further. At least I get to listen to God Help the Girl

The flight is, not surprisingly, a holiday flight to escape the cold Dutch winter. It is only half full and I’m sleepy with a precious seat between me and my neighbour. I take a look across…and that’s where it begins to get interesting or maybe better troubling. Read more »

Fingers Crossed!

By Gemma Medina Estupinan

With projects come challenges. Each one different and attractive…but, no way. Sometimes, the things happen just to make your life difficult and difficult!!

2 weeks ago, I live in a Soap Opera, the Choir’s Soap Opera and I am wondering to myself what will be next!!!…

Gemma Medina narrates her experiences coordinating the Choir’s recording and performance as part of the Chto Delat work, Song of the Museum Guards for the People of Eindhoven (2009). The first part is a series of fragments from Gemma’s correspondence with the Head of Collections, Christiane Berndes; and in the second part, Gemma stews a little. Read more »

By Charles Esche

Here is a text, not yet published, that I hope gives a little background into the thinking behind the project

Why Play? Why Van Abbe?

“it’s all about the thing itself”, he said in Dutch, arguing that what we are doing with the Van Abbemuseum and its collection transgresses the rules of art. He was a fellow museum director, this man who confronted me, but he deserved a hearing. “I honestly don’t think it is” I replied “it’s about the context at least as much, possibly more – and as museums we should to give people a chance to make their own mind up.” He offered me a lift in his car, but we didn’t talk about art and context anymore. It seemed our two points of view couldn’t be reconciled, maybe because they emerge at different historical moments and in response to different understandings of what art represents in the world at large. Read more »

Some sharp words from Robert Smithson:

Cultural Confinement

Cultural confinement takes place when a curator imposes his own limits on an art exhibition , rather than asking an artist to set his limits. Artists are expected to fit into fraudulent categories. Some artists imagine they’ve got a hold on this apparatus, which in fact has got a hold of them. As a result, they end up supporting a cultural prison that is out of their control. Artists themselves are not confined, but their output is. Museums, like asylums and jails, have wards and cells- in other words, neutral rooms called “galleries.” A work of art when placed in a gallery loses its charge, and becomes a portable object or surface disengaged from the outside world. A vacant white room with lights is still a submission to the neutral. Works of art seen in such spaces seem to be going through a kind of esthetic convalescence. They are looked upon as so many inanimate invalids, waiting for critics to pronounce them curable or incurable. The function of the warden-curator is to separate art from the rest of society. Next comes integration. Once the work of art is totally neutralized, ineffective, abstracted, safe, and politically lobotomized it is ready to be consumed by society. All is reduced to visual fodder and transportable merchandise. Innovations are allowed only if they support this kind of confinement. Read more »