Kunstinstituut Melly Archive

Item sets

• ACT VII: Of Facts and Fables
  Witte de With is pleased to present two upcoming exhibitions in theMorality program begun in the Fall of 2009: Act VI: Remember Humanity, and Act VII: Of Facts and Fables. They open simultaneously on 12 May. Act VI runs until 29 August and Act VII continues until 26 September 2010. There is a traditional distinction between the earth as the space of nature, and the world as the space of humanity. Fictions and abstractions belong to the world, as do thought and action. The fable, however, invariably returns to nature in search of motifs that are excluded from the principles and imperatives of morality: animals, plants, inanimate objects. Children are the fable’s ideal audience and are also exempt from the sphere of morality and moral imperatives, even if only temporarily – that is, for as long as they are children or remain ‘child-like.’ In this sense, that which is excepted from morality is susceptible to becoming an example – a negative example – of the seemingly chaotic and ‘anarchic’ state of nature. Animal behavior, for instance, is often mobilized by moralistic discourses in order to prove that the true nature of humanity is one of uninhibited impulses that morality is designed to set right. Of Facts and Fables brings together a selection of works that mobilize this realm of exception, presenting a critical image of the world and its fictions, operating in a space of representation that relies on fabulous motifs. History, mysticism, fiction, and scientific discourse come together in this exhibition as both outmoded forms of thought, and as potential for new kinds of speculative critique. Participants Mirosław Bałka, Keren Cytter, Stan Douglas, Agnes Geoffray, Marko Lulic, Philippe Parreno, Yvette Supraski, Luc Tuymans, Ola Vasiljeva, Danh Vo, Tris Vonna-Michell Curators Juan A. Gaitán, Nicolaus Schafhausen, Amira Gad Supported By Maison Descartes and CulturesFrance. <div class="
• ACT IX: Let Us Compare Mythologies
  What if all myths were true… – Liu Kang Act IX of Witte de With’s year long Morality program, Let Us Compare Mythologies, is a three-day cycle of staged events presenting international artists exploring the nature of the performance. Based on a wide variety of topics, like man’s intrinsic relationship to objects, the program is centered around the continued existence of myths in today’s society and their creative force. We are most grateful to all participants who are willing to show their works, (re)stage their performances and compare their mythologies… What happens when two myths meet, will they dissolve or will they reinforce each other? Participants Danai Anesiadou, Baktrüppen, Geneviève Belleveau, Dineo Seshee Bopape, Keren Cytter, D.O.R., Oskar Dawicki, Simon Denny, Yngve Holen, Andrew Kerton, Gergely László, Mark Leckey, Leeroy the Duck, Patrizio di Massimo, Eliza Newman-Saul, Nishiko, Rory Pilgrim, Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Jeremy Shaw, Tris Vonna-Michell Curators Renske Janssen, Dorothea Jendricke Supported By The Mondriaan Foundation, SNS Reaal Fonds, Office for Contemporary Art Norway and Dienst Kunst & Cultuur Rotterdam. With special thanks to all artists, all venues and the Goethe Institut. <div class="
• ACT VIII: Nether Land
  ACT VIII of MORALITY, developed by Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, for the Dutch Culture Centre, Shanghai, as part of the World Expo 2010. As the eighth act of Morality, realized specifically for the ‘world stage’ of Shanghai’s Expo, Nether Land highlights diverse international artistic practices that engage with the paradoxes of cross-cultural perception and fantasies of foreign and alternative production. Resonating with the name of the exhibition venue, the Dutch Culture Centre, the exhibition title Nether Land is a more exact and deadpan English iteration of the Dutch word for its nation, ‘Nederland’. The isolation of the word ‘nether’ points to its double meaning, as both low (hence the ‘Low Countries’) and remote (as in ‘the nether reaches of the universe’). The echo in Nether Land of the idealized ‘Neverland’ of Peter Pan is not lost, and many of the works in the show explore the idea of a better life elsewhere. More important still is the Chinese translation of the title, He Guo, which emphasizes the questioning tone of the exhibition: He Guo sounds like the beginning of He Lan [Chinese for ‘Holland’], it actually means ‘What Country?’ – a question that destabilizes our sense of place and creates something of a parallax effect, where shifting locations and shifting viewpoints contribute to deeper perspective. Each of the exhibited works in the exhibition projects a different relationship with a far away land – Asia, Africa, Europe and the Middle East – or estranges the here and now, making it impossible for a cumulative portrait of a country or culture to emerge. Nevertheless, the immense impact of such viewing from a distance and across borders on the shaping of aesthetic and political values that underpin contemporary artistic practice in a global arena comes into sharper relief. Participants Meschac Gaba, Guogu Zheng, Jacques de Koning, Erik van Lieshout, Ken Lum, Sarah Morris, Allan Sekula, Jennifer Tee, Lidwien Van de Ven, J.Q. Whitcomb, Xu Zhen Curators Amira Gad, Monika Szewczyk Network SICA Dutch Culture Center Shanghai Supported By This exhibition is generously supported by the City of Rotterdam, the Mondriaan Foundation and the Dutch Culture Centre / Netherlands China Arts Foundation. With thanks to the Fonds BKVB. <div class="
• Cosima von Bonin’s Far Niente for Witte de With’s Sloth Section, Loop # 01 of the Lazy Susan Series, a Rotating Exhibition
  At Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art, Cosima von Bonin presents an exhibition around the notion of sloth and fatigue. With her typical laconic humor, Cosima von Bonin creates a constellation of new and existing works. From oversized stuffed animals to sewn fabrics, from pastiches of minimalist sculptures to recreations of shop display systems, her work blends formalism and pop, oscillating between seriousness and fun, weighed down with melancholy or fizzing with critical wit. The expression dolce far niente evokes the sweetness of doing nothing. Here the expression takes on a certain irony, as this is the first show in a sequence of major institutional exhibitions, which means that the artist is doing quite the opposite of nothing. The sequence is subtitled: THE LAZY SUSAN SERIES, A ROTATING EXHIBITION, referring to the rotating disks that appear in many restaurants and are used to present an array of dishes. The idea of a rotating exhibition differs from a traditional traveling show in that, with each rotation or loop, visitors are served a slightly different dish. Education During this exhibition several educational activities, like art confrontations and workshops, are being organized for high schools and academic students. In an art confrontation, the students take a close look at the works of Cosima von Bonin. The Witte de With educator takes the specific knowledge and experience of the students as a starting point. By creating an open atmosphere, students can explore their own responses to art works and increase their understanding of art. Discussion and debate are used to share ideas. We aim to engage students with the artworks and encourage critical thinking about the works of Cosima von Bonin and about contemporary art in general. Workshops Wolfert Tweetalig Four groups of students from Rotterdam high school Wolfert Tweetalig visit Witte de With during Cosima von Bonin’s exhibition. Their visit consists of two parts: an art confrontation and a workshop. Following the theme of the exhibition the workshop evolves around sloth. Artist Karin Schipper guides the students in creating their own universe out of movable and stackable goods. During the workshop the class gets divided into smaller groups who each have their own task in making this new universe come to life. The process of growth is captured in images, which together form a stop-motion film. The four stop-motion films will be screened on Sunday the 7th of November at 4 P.M. in the Goethe-Institut as one of the Slothful Sunday. Art Now: Cosima von Bonin Witte de With Education hosts a month-long series of workshops for over 400 high school students. Participants Cosima von Bonin Curators Nicolaus Schafhausen, Zoë Gray Network MAMCO, Museum Ludwig, The Arnolfini Supported By The Indofin group, Cees and Inge de Bruin-Heijn Goethe-Institut Niederlande Galerie Daniel Buchholz (Berlin/Cologne) Galerie Neu (Berlin) <div class="
• Making is Thinking
  Making is Thinking explores distinct artistic practices engaged with notions of conceptual craft and intuitive industry. It seeks to collapse the persistent dichotomy between the practical and the intellectual, and presents a range of works that refuse the binary of concept and form. Among the artworks included in Making is Thinking, several recurring or overlapping areas of interest are discernible: There is a fascination with the role of the amateur, occupied with absurdly time-consuming activities that verge on meditation (Wilfrid Almendra, Dewar & Gicquel, Teppei Kaneuji, Hans Schabus). There is an analysis of the process of creation, and a transformation of this analysis into a new moment of creation (Hedwig Houben, Ane Hjort Guttu, Edgar Leciejewski). There is an exploration of sculpture and the applied arts, a struggle between functionalism and formalism that avoids any hint of nostalgia (Julia Dault, Rita McBride, Eva Rothschild). There is a flourishing of decoration and beauty in the reassessment of certain Modernist tropes (Eva Berendes, Alexandre Da Cunha). There is the avoidance of conscious thinking and the emphasis on intuitive knowledge (William J. O’Brien, Koki Tanaka). And in many of the works, there is a knowing humor or irony that deflates the pious earnestness that can accompany discussions of craft. Context: European society has been marked by an increasing division between making and thinking that dates back to the industrial revolution. With the decline of urban guilds and rural cottage industries in the nineteenth century, and the subsequent mechanization of labor, workers were separated into blue- and white-collar jobs. Today, our education system privileges the creation of flexible “knowledge workers” over those with practical skills or manual know-how. It is possible to trace a similar division in art since the beginning of the twentieth century. With Duchamp’s introduction of the readymade in 1913, the focus of avant-garde artistic practice shifted away from technique and the process of making to the transformative power of the artist’s vision. This saw the flourishing of conceptual art and the movement that Lucy Lippard famously labeled the dematerialization of the art object, culminating in Lawrence Weiner’s 1968 Declaration of Intent in which he announced that an artwork “need not be built.” For Weiner, thinking is making. Nevertheless, today artists are still making physical artworks and engaging with tangible materials. In our increasingly dematerialized world, how are we to engage with materiality? How might thoughtful forms of this insistence on making relate to our supposedly post-industrial society? In recent years, craft has been held up to epitomize an alternative set of social values in the face of industrial production, global capitalism and mass consumerism. Yet this idea of craft is broader than that defended by John Ruskin or William Morris at the start of the previous century. Incorporating many elements of Modernism and informed by postmodernism, it offers a radical way for rethinking questions of work, both within and beyond the artistic field. Many artists are turning to this expanded notion of craft as a paradigm for making that seems to fuse previously oppositional positions – such as the trace of the artist’s hand and conceptual reflection – and are exploring its potential for reconsidering broader questions of production. Accompanying program: 25 January 2011: Master class by Julia Dault and William J. O’Brien. 2 February 2011, 7pm: Lecture by Rita McBride 27 February 2011, 3pm: Crafternoon, a discussion afternoon combined with making. 26-28 April: Workshop by Hedwig Houben for students of the Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam, at Witte de With. As Rita McBride once said: “Art doesn’t matter, it is the doing, the learning, the scrambling, the growing, the discoveries along the way that matter.” Continuing Witte de With Education’s successful series of “art confrontations,” interactive tours of the exhibition will be available throughout its duration, structured to explore the “discoveries along the way.” Publication: To highlight the importance placed on process, the accompanying publication was produced over the course of the show, and made available to the public in online installments. The publication features an introduction by curator/editor Zoë Gray followed by four essays. The contributors include Gavin Delahunty, Head of Exhibitions & Displays, Tate Liverpool; Alice Motard, Deputy Director & Exhibitions Organiser, Raven Row, London; Solveig Øvstebø, director of Bergen Kunsthall; Yoshiko Nagai, curator/writer, Tokyo. Participants Wilfrid Almendra, Eva Berendes, Alexandre da Cunha, Julia Dault, Ane Hjort Guttu, Hedwig Houben, Teppei Kaneuji, Edgar Leciejewski, Rita McBride, William J. O'Brien, Eva Rothschild, Hans Schabus, Koki Tanaka, Daniel Dewar & Grégory Gicquel Curators Zoë Gray, Amira Gad Supported By Goethe-Institut Niederlande, OCA, CulturesFrance, Institut Français des Pays-Bas (Maison Descartes), Austrian Embassy in The Hague. <div class="
• The End of Money
  The End of Money is a group exhibition about time and value. Bringing together works by a host of international artists, this exhibition and its parallel publication reflect upon the fears, hopes, and expectations associated with the end of money and its ominous consequence: the dissolution of an absolute standard of value. What limits does the economy impose on our collective imagination, and how is the collective imagination responsible for the current economy? The End of Money focuses on the multiple relationships that could and those that should exist between culture and economy. Informing this curatorial project is the utopian notion that, in a world where money has been factored out of the collective memory, other suppressed forms of value may emerge leading to another social bond and a different relationship to time. Time, Benjamin Franklin famously said, is money. In Marshall McLuhan’s formulation of this statement, money is “stored time”. With this variation, McLuhan meant to suggest that with the clocking of labor, a practice whose origins lie with the Industrial Revolution, time becomes the meta-commodity, that which is ultimately and essentially being traded in money. The time of work; but not necessarily – as Franklin would have it – the time of the worker. The works included in The End of Money range from reflections on the arbitrary ways in which value is ascribed to things, as in Zachary Formwalt’s video At Face Value (2008), in which a stamp collection is taken as an occasion to explore the historical valuation of stamps as currency; to explorations of the absolute loss of representative value, as in Christodoulos Panayiotou’s 2008 (2008), a monumental pile of shredded Greek Cypriot Pounds, the totality of which the artist was able to acquire when Greek Cyprus adopted the Euro. Other works highlight time, which is a persistent corollary of money in our efficiency-obsessed culture: Maha Maamoun’s short video 2026 (2010), explores the limits of the temporal imagination, revealing how the image of the future is foreclosed by the mind’s over-identification with the present; or Toril Johannessen’s graphs, which quantify the relationship between time and history and as such attempt to de-naturalize our conceptions of it. There is also Fischli & Weiss’ Sichtbare Welt (1987-2000), a series of photographs taken by the artists all over the world, critically evoking a parallel between systems of valuation and modes of representation. Publication The accompanying digital publication, edited by Juan A. Gaitán, includes contributions by Dessislava Dimova, Donatien Grau, Dieter Roelstraete and Carolina Sanín. They have been approached with the request to speculate on this theme in their own medium – be this fiction, art history, philosophy or criticism – and to form their own areas of expertise, be these “scientific” or “unfounded”. Documentation of the exhibition will also be included. Language: English ISBN: 978-90-73362-98-7 Side-Programming Film Screening: A selection of historical and contemporary films whose subject is money and time will be screened at Witte de With on Sunday 26 June 2011 (12 to 6 pm). This event is organized by Juan A. Gaitán and Mariska Oosterloo. Time/Bank: For the duration of The End of Money exhibition Witte de With will accept Time/Bank’s hour-notes designed by Lawrence Weiner. Time/Bank is a project by e-flux: www.e-flux.com/timebank. Participants Alexander Apóstol, Pierre Bismuth, Fischli & Weiss, Zachary Formwalt, Goldin + Senneby, Hadley + Maxwell, Toril Johannessen, Vishal Jugdeo, Agnieszka Kurant, Matts Leiderstam, Maha Maamoun, Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Tomás Saraceno, Tonel, Vangelis Vlahos, Lawrence Weiner Curators Juan A. Gaitán, Amira Gad Network Time/Bank Supported By Office for Contemporary Art Norway; Cypriot Ministry of Education & Culture; and Pro Helvetia: Swiss Arts Council. With thanks to the Fonds BKVB; The Canada Council for the Arts; and Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin. <div class="
• Melanchotopia
  Witte de With’s Melanchotopia is an exhibition that invites more than forty international artists to work with different venues in the city-center of Rotterdam – places where people live and work – and to activate their potential as spaces for ideas, discourse and invention. From large-scale interventions to very simple gestures, Melanchotopia supports a range of artistic practices that go beyond the classical approach to displaying art in public space. Working with the existing dynamics of the city, Witte de With’s intention is to bring forward the diverse layers of daily life in Rotterdam, creating a rich framework for subjective encounters. It is an exhibition about the reality of Rotterdam. Today, Rotterdam seems to be on hold between its past and its future: filled with nostalgia for the pre-WWII city and in wait for the utopian future, which is perpetually stalled in unfinished developments and reconstructions. Projections about yesterday and tomorrow drive the image of the city, that seems to lack a present. Melanchotopia performs the present of the city through the specific practice of each artist. Over the course of the exhibition (and remaining active until 31 December 2011) Witte de With’s galleries is reconfigured to become the epicenter of Melanchotopia. The projects, which spread throughout Rotterdam’s center, are brought together via a graphic mapping. Several art works and installations are also on show inside the epicenter and it is the site for numerous events. Besides its new function as an information center, Witte de With is equipped with a designed Pro qm bookshop and an auditorium dedicated to a side program of lectures and artist talks. Here is available the exhibition guide with Melanchotopia map. The comprehensive educational program provides guided tours, art encounters and a special audio tour. All images published in the Melanchotopia catalogue were specifically commissioned to Steffen Jagenburg by Witte de With. Side program On an almost daily basis throughout the exhibition, the Melanchotopia epicenter hosts a variety of events. These include talks, lectures, book launches, film screenings and performances, all exploring different aspects of Melanchotopia’s themes. During these events, the Pro qm bookshop is open. Education Workshops & master classes The Melanchotopia epicenter also hosts several workshops and master classes, by artists from the exhibition and by invited professionals, including – Stefan Kalmár & Richard Birkett (Artists Space, New York) – Nicolaus Schafhausen, director, Witte de With – Zoë Gray, curator, & Belinda Hak, business coordinator, Witte de With Art Confrontations Groups of (young) adults, students and secondary school students have the possibility to take part in an art confrontation as part of Melanchotopia. During an art confrontation, the group will view and discuss the exhibition together with an educator of Witte de With, who will encourage the group to look carefully at the works on display and form their own opinions of them. Art confrontations are designed to be accessible to all levels of education. An art confrontation takes 1 hour and costs € 2.50 per person (cash or cultuurkaart). A maximum of 30 persons can take part of an ‘art confrontation’ session. Grand Opening Friday 2 September 2011, starting from 1 p.m. till late 1 – 5 p.m.: Guided tours of the exhibitions, starting at Witte de With. (Each tour lasts 45 min. They start at 1 pm; 1:30 pm; 2 pm; 2:30 pm; 3 pm; 3:30 pm; 4 pm; and 4:30 pm) 6 p.m.: Opening speech & drinks at Witte de With. 7 p.m.: Premiere of ‘Music for Melanchotopia’ for soprano and string ensemble by George Van Dam, live at the Rotterdamse Schouwburg. 9 p.m.: ‘It’s all downhill from here on,’ an event by Filip Gilissen, from sunset till sunrise, at the corner of the Karel Doormanstraat and Crispijnstraat. 10 p.m. till late: Party at Witte de With, DJ sets by Guillaume Bijl, Tobias Donat, Filip Gilissen, Kate Newby, Tobias Spichtig and Zin Taylor. Locations Witte de With – Center for Contemporary Art, SPAR Corandewal, Pathé Schouwburgplein, Weenink Bedrijfskleding, ROTTERDAM.INFO, Museum Rotterdam, Robeco, Bar Mon Cheri, Shop Erotica, Avondwinkel Alexia, Galerie VIVID, Willibrordschool, Rotterdamse centrum markt, Grotekerkplein, Beurs-World Trade Center, Stadswinkel Centrum Stadhuis, GRAND HOTEL CENTRAL, Q-Park Weena, Het Schieblock, The Manhattan Hotel, Nationale-Nederlanden, Rotterdam Centraal, Groot Handelsgebouw & Engels Grandcafé Restaurant Zalen, Rotterdamse Schouwburg, Mauritsplaats, Pauluskerk, Van Urk Piano’s & Vleugels, Jan Segeren herenmode, De Karel Doorman, Queens of Rings, Bilderberg Parkhotel, Buro Rietveld / Dutch Style Company, Stiltecentrum Erasmus MC, Hartman Binnenhuisadviseurs, De Havenloods. Participants Michael van den Abeele, Saâdane Afif, Babak Afrassiabi, Harold Ancart, Danai Anesiadou, Sven Augustijnen, Dirk Bell, Michael Beutler, Guillaume Bijl, Pierre Bismuth, Monica Bonvicini, George van Dam, Thea Djordjadze, Jean-Pascal Flavien, Olivier Foulon, Murray Gaylard, Filip Gilissen, Adam Gillam, Harald Thys & Jos De Gruyter, Arnoud Holleman, Adrià Julià, Leon Kahane, Kate Newby, Erik van Lieshout, Minouk Lim, Sarah Morris, Alex Morrison, Ricardo Okaranza, Pages, Henrik Plenge Jakobsen, Nina Pohl, Tomo Savić-Gecan, Markus Schinwald, Slavs and Tatars, Andrew Smart, Mårten Spångberg, Tobias Spichtig, Zin Taylor, Octavian Trauttmansdorff, Kostis Velonis, Lidwien Van de Ven, Peter Wächtler, Lawrence Weiner, Markus Weisbeck Curators Nicolaus Schafhausen, Amira Gad Network Berlage Institute Supported By VSB Fonds; SNS Reaal Fonds; Gobierno de Espana AC/E; Institut Francais; Creative New Zealand; Danish Arts Council; Canada Council for the Arts; Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia. Rotterdam Tourist Map hijacked by Studio Matthias Görlich; Image Compositing: Felix Scheu; Printer: Druckerei Henrich, Frankfurt, Germany; Thank you to ROTTERDAM.INFO for permission to use their map. <div class="
• Polder Cup
  Polder Cup was part of the Morality project’s Between You and I, a joint project by SKOR and Witte de With which took place between the Fall of 2009 and the Fall of 2010. Polder Cup was a site-specific project by Spanish artist Maider López. The façade of Witte de With functioned as an open call to participate in a one-day football championship, which took place on September 4, 2010 in the polders of Ottoland (Municipality of Graafstroom). Unlike a typical football game, López’s displaced football field intersected by water channels, challenged the rules of football and encouraged players to seek and invent new strategies. Not only does the location create an unusual situation, it reflects on the long Dutch history of fighting against water and the consensus society. With this project, López hopes to transform the function of the polders, going beyond its historical and agricultural uses, to host a public event held within the framework of a common sporting match. Through the participation of football players and audience from all walks of life, the polder will undergo a transformation in which its use can be opened up for new interpretations, challenging the way in which we perceive our spatial surroundings. Maider López’s projects focus on the intriguingly humorous or the extraordinary behind the obvious and ordinary. López creates various events and situations for individuals to gather through a common language, in this case, football. Polder Cup becomes a moment where diverse groups of the society are brought together through play, sports and social exchange. Polder Cup was part of Morality‘s Between You and I, a joint project by SKOR and Witte de With which took place between the Fall of 2009 and the Fall of 2010. For this project, four international artists were commissioned to intervene on Witte de With’s façade in order to create a critical interface dealing directly with Rotterdam’s urban fabric. Between You and I strived to open a space to reflect about morality today, inviting an active response by the public concerning the presence of contemporary art in public spaces. Curated by SKOR (Stichting Kunst en Openbare Ruimte) & Witte de With (Center for Contemporary Art) Featured artists: AES+F, Isa Genzken, Maider López and Ayse Erkmen. Participants Maider López <div class="
• Angela Bulloch — SHORT BIG DRAMA
  There is more than meets the eye to Angela Bulloch’s work. Her solo exhibition SHORT BIG DRAMA at Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art plays with this red herring – the illusion of simplicity – and highlights the theatricality of Bulloch’s practice. Focusing on three types of works – namely her monumental wall paintings, colorful pixel installations and interactive drawing machines – SHORT BIG DRAMA presents a selection of existing works together with specially commissioned new pieces. In this exhibition, contradiction takes center-stage and reveals the inherent beauty of Bulloch’s complex artworks. Playing with the nature of drama, whether epic or mundane, big or short, the project adapts the form of a play to structure a sequence of commissions and a new suite of works by the artist. For Witte de With, Bulloch interprets and manipulates earlier potentially clashing installations into a seemingly harmonious whole. Bulloch adopts an interdisciplinary approach, incorporating references from a wide array of sources, be it history, film or music. In her wall paintings, specific references to artistic, political or social groups are deconstructed and graphically assembled. Through this process of détournement, the artist questions the informational status of an artwork, as well as the possibility of narrating history. Bulloch’s drawing machines are interactive pieces, triggered or altered by the engagement of visitors. In this way, her drawing machines explore the dialectic between technology and labor, making us conscious of our place, and that of others, within the gallery space. With her Pixel works, Bulloch ‘programs’ our experience of art by encoding specific references in the technical programming of her modular light and sound installations. Though the complexity of the workings behind these installations is invisible, a predefined experience of the work is imposed upon the viewer, thus challenging the viewer’s subjective input. A common thread in Bulloch’s artistic practice is thus the manipulation of codes and a sense of control. Whether that code is music or text-based, the artist plays with and orchestrates our perception and experience of art. She proposes that this experience can be ‘subliminally programmed’ and her work stages that which is beyond our grasp. Curated by Amira Gad & Nicolaus Schafhausen. Click here to download the exhibition guide (English, PDF). Participants Angela Bulloch Curators Nicolaus Schafhausen, Amira Gad <div class="
• Meriç Algün Ringborg — Line No. 2 (Holy Bible)
  Meriç Algün Ringborg (b. 1983, Istanbul, lives and works in Stockholm) presents a seemingly simple horizontal line, consisting of scriptures from the Holy Bible, that courses through Witte de With’s exhibition space. Perhaps the most unexpected point of departure for Line No.2 (Holy Bible) is Alexander Selkirk who is known as the original Robinson Crusoe, the central protagonist in Daniel Defoe’s fictional yet biographical novel first published in 1719. Algün Ringborg’s work presents the Holy Bible as a symbol for self-control as it appeared in Selkirk and Crusoe’s stories, further stipulating on the role of religion throughout history. Line No. 2 (Holy Bible) part of Prompts & Triggers Meriç Algün Ringborg Participants Meriç Algün Ringborg Curators Defne Ayas <div class="
• Qiu Zhijie — Blueprints
  Artist Qiu Zhijie (邱志杰; b. 1969, Fujian Province, China) draws from major political and historical narratives to produce large-scale ink-based maps and diagrams. From Confucianism to Enlightenment, Qiu Zhijie charts new paths, centers, nodes and relationships, scrutinizing the mutable boundaries that outline histories of world thought. Qiu Zhijie developed these series of mappings of the contemporary world based on several concepts that are summarized in the following maps: Map of 21st century; Map of Utopia; Map of Total Art; Map of Chinese History; Map of Nanjing Yangzi River and Map of Spirit Renew. Blueprints (2012) part of Prompts & Triggers Qiu Zhijie View the artist at work: 26 – 28 June 2012, from 12 to 6:00 p.m. Shanghai Biennale Curatorial Presentation: Thursday 28 June 2012, at 6:00 p.m. Participants Qiu Zhijie Curators Defne Ayas Network Shanghai Biennale <div class="
• Surplus Authors
  Outside of personal romance, collaboration is perhaps the most elemental form of politics—just consider how the term plays a hand in ideas as basic as “two heads are better than one” as well as in issues as large as international alliances. To crack open this power relation Surplus Authors looks at a group of artists whose work traces and delineates several fault lines inherent in the act of collaboration from (art) historical and social indebtedness, to trust, generosity, incentives, antagonism and even cooption. Without laying claim to any illustrative narratives, Surplus Authors presents itself at a time of a growing call for institutions to work together as a promised means to alleviate the reasons for austerity. As a possible retort, Surplus Authors begs another question: is collaboration an end in and of itself, or is it a tenuous and unfolding process in which psychological, intellectual, and political dynamics are contested and reconstituted? Participating artists: Michael Blum & Damir Nikšić, AA Bronson & Ryan Brewer, Club Moral, Maya Deren, Song Dong & Yin Xiuzhen, Haris Epaminonda & Daniel Gustav Cramer, Chris Evans, Luis Jacob & Chris Curreri, Dora Garcia, Alicja Kwade, MadeIn Company, Karen Mirza & Brad Butler, Annaïk Lou Pitteloud & Steve Van den Bosch, Ana Roldán & Falke Pisano, Wu Shanzhuan & Inga S. Thorsdottir, Hito Steyerl, Jalal Toufic, Oscar Tuazon and Tzu Nyen Ho. Surplus Authors is curated by Defne Ayas together with Philippe Pirotte. The opening will be jointly hosted with TENT, who is opening the show Between The Map and The Territory on the same day, from 8 pm to 11 pm. From 11pm onwards, after party in WORM, opposite Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art and TENT. Participants AA Bronson, Hector Aristizábal, Michael Blum, Ryan Brewer, Brad Butler, Club Moral, Daniel Gustav Cramer, Maya Deren, Chris Evans, Haris Epaminonda, Tzu Nyen Ho, Luis Jacob, Alicja Kwade, Karen Mirza, Damir Nikšić, Pablo Pijnappel, Falke Pisano, Annaïk Lou Pitteloud, Ana Roldan, Wu Shanzhuan, Song Dong, Hito Steyerl, Inga Svala Thorsdottir, Jalal Toufic, Oscar Tuazon, Steve Van den Bosch, Yin Xiuzhen, Xu Zhen Curators Defne Ayas, Amira Gad, Philippe Pirotte Supported By Kunstenisrael <div class="
• Paola Pivi — Tulkus 1880 to 2018
  Opening talk by Defne Ayas, Director of Witte de With Additional talk by Christa Meindersma, Director Prince Claus Fund Witte de With is excited to unfurl her 2013 program with Tulkus 1880 to 2018, a mastodontic artwork and work in progress by Paola Pivi, based on an extensive international research. Aimed at creating a complete collection of portraits and basic information on all the tulkus of the world – who in Tibetan Buddhism are the recognized reincarnations of previous Buddhist masters* – from the beginning of photography until today, from all the schools of Tibetan Buddhism and Bon, and from all the areas of the world where this religion is practiced, this growing survey has until now collected over 1100 photographic portraits. Manifesting in a stunning array of forms, from high production color prints to inexpensive photocopied reproductions, and in scales ranging from pocket-size to large format, these images are the same ones commonly treasured in monasteries, hung in private households or shops, or collected by the faithful. These photographs are considered holy by the believers. Executed in collaboration with hundreds of tulkus, individuals and institutions around the world, Pivi’s research will continue to grow and be displayed through 2018 in various venues, up to a total of 10 exhibitions, after which it will be donated to the Tibetan people. The direction of the research itself has been delegated to Tibetan individuals, under the supervision of Tibetan historian Tashi Tsering, Director of Amnye Institute, Tibetan Centre for Advanced Studies, Dharamshala, India. The entire project/artwork Tulkus 1880 to 2018 is non profit. Tulkus 1880 to 2018 uncharacteristically lays bare these objects of specific veneration within the confines of a religiously plural, and often secular art institution–an institution that conversely is not known for presenting nominally sacred objects to its audience, and is itself enshrined within a long history of aesthetic discourses that attempt to establish a ‘visual neutrality’. Witte de With Director Defne Ayas calls the exhibition “a major undertaking of key historical value” and adds: “As Witte de With, we are tremendously proud to be a partner to this important project, for which Paola Pivi went beyond and above, and collaborated with spiritual leaders, scholars, researchers, and photographers, as well as with special archives. It is indeed a treat to experience it.” In Tibetan Buddhism, a tulku is the recognized reincarnation of a previous Buddhist master (a highly realized teacher or lama, e.g. H.H. the Dalai Lama or H.H. Karmapa) who is able to choose the manner of their rebirth and can often reveal the place of their next birth by means of cryptic clues. Tulkus are collectively revered for holding the lineages of oral transmission of all of the Buddha’s teachings, which have been handed down through many generations. Most often they are referred to as Rinpoche or ‘precious one’. With photographs by: Daniel Kuma Bärlocher, Sue Byrne, Das Brothers, Alexandra David-Néel, Don Farber, James Giabrone, Marion Griebenow, Thomas L. Kelly, Kinsey Bros, Vijay Kranti, Mr. M. Linden, Heather Lindquist, Marvin Moore, Melina Mulas, Tashi Nangchen, Sarah Orbanic, Tashi Paljor, Tenzing Paljor, Matthew Pistono, Claire Pullinger, Raghu Rai, Matthieu Ricard, Joseph Francis Charles Rock, Tim Roodenrys, Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam, David Sassoon, Sandra Scales, Jurek Schreiner, Albert Shelton, Tseten Tashi, Gursed Tserenpil, Neal Watkins, John Claude White, David Zimmerman, and many more. Tulkus 1880 to 2018 is curated by Davide Trapezi and co-commissioned by Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art and Defne Ayas on behalf of Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art. Special thanks go to all the sponsors who have supported this project from its inception onwards: Artissima, Turin; Galleria Massimo De Carlo, Milan and London, Galerie Perrotin, Hong Kong /Paris, Photographic Laboratory Grieger, Düsseldorf, and generous contributions of anonymous donors. The project Tulkus 1880 to 2018 and its progress is documented on the following website: www.tulkus1880to2018.net. Public Programs In a fashion more prismatic than mirroring, Witte de With will organize a symposium in two parts in which mental visualization, projection, and modeling will be put to task to unravel the question of how the grasping of the world as a fixed image–pictorial and/or descriptive–can hold one belief over another. 21 November 2012 New Beginnings Film screening of The Reincarnation of Khensur Rinpoche by Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam. 2 February 2013 Lacing Buddhist Threads in Contemporary Art This transversal event joins together a set of thinkers so as to draw out just a few rich strands from the art and culture, which bind Buddhist history. Curator Davide Quadrio will lead the audience through the visual narrative depicted in the 17th century Tibetan thangka (painting) portraying Tsuglag Gyatso, the Third Pawo Rinpoche (c 1567–1630), which references to the origin of the tulku photographic portrait tradition and hangs in the Witte de With galleries as a loadstone for the general exhibition. Expanding on the contemporary history of Buddhism in the West, artist Louwrien Wijers will in conversation with art historian Arnisa Zeqo trace early parallels between pre-Christian iconography, and the Buddha’s image, punctuated by personal reflections on Wijers’ introduction of the 14th Dalai Lama to Joseph Beuys and the European art scene in the 1980s. 30 March 2013 Between Seeing and Believing This symposium will tackle a novel course and explore the faculty of imaging, both pictorially and descriptively, by focusing on how belief can be constructed through the process of envisioning. To this end, several scholars including Andrei Pop, Minou Schraven and Pascal Rousseau present a short iconographic reading of a single image of their own choice respectively—collectively though, each of these images revolve around the idea of visions, be they found in dreams, hypnosis, hallucinations, representations of the afterlife, or other related themes. Participants Paola Pivi Curators Defne Ayas Supported By Tulkus 1880 to 2018 is made possible in part by support from AMMODO. <div class="
• The World Turned Inside Out
  Could secularized narratives and the impasse of modern rationalism be producing a world devoid of wonder? But consider that knowledge never draws straight lines… Drafting from unexpected maps and courses of knowledge, and reactivating pre-modern anchors, Witte de With enables the development of artistic practices in collaboration with a set of international protagonists who, by linking and delinking across fields, seek to debunk historical narratives guided by traditional educational models. These investigations set in motion new paths of inquiry respectively, replete with desire, curiosity and speculation. On 25 May 2013 The World Turned Inside Out begins with a dynamic series of seven events taking place at Witte de With throughout the summer and orchestrated by the program’s protagonists and their guests from the fields of the arts, academia and science. Continuing into the Fall of 2013, lines of inquiry extend into the curatorial, educational and online publishing activities of Witte de With and culminate with the establishment of a collaborative network of partner organizations, both in Rotterdam and throughout the world. Julieta Aranda tries to understand the nature of ‘exotic matter’, by way of transhistorical apples – objects that both define us as beings capable of acquiring knowledge and that represent our material state: bound to the world… Ho Tzu Nyen follows the millenary cosmo-ecological path of the mythical Malayan Tiger, which continues to haunt South East Asia colonial and communist histories. Also stretching times and geographies, Landings (curators Natasha Ginwala and Vivian Ziherl) survey the mangrove as an ‘in-between’ place that becomes a motif to conceive modes of unauthentic belonging and extra-territoriality, extending its recent launch event at Witte de With: Imperial Pastoral: On Constructions of Rurality. Landings will initiate a conversation with Rana Hamadeh and present works by Roberto Chabet (courtesy of the Asia Art Archive), Bonita Ely, Rana Hamadeh, Irene Kopelman, Tejal Shah, Lawrence Weiner and Terue Yamauchi, along with photographic materials from the Tropenmuseum (Amsterdam) and the North Stradbroke Island Historical Museum (Dunwich). Jennifer Wen Ma contemplates the various occurrences of the Garden of Eden, from Western medieval paintings to Chinese and Middle-Eastern mythologies, inviting a Kunqu opera singer to voice the utopian projections of lost paradises. Kader Attia observes the construction of evil through the unfolding of the colonial gaze in the pages of early twentieth-century printed matter. Riffing on science-fiction and anthropological concepts of indigenousness, non-linear time, and the politics of language, Shezad Dawood embarks on fictional journeys towards a ´possible film´that stages encounters with the mystical. Aslı Çavuşoğlu drifts into the depths of lapis lazuli’s ancient blue, linking the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan with Witte de With, in her search for delirium, absentness and the intangibility of the sky. Studio Miessen provides The World Turned Inside Out with a spatial framework that proposes a space of assembly to generate an ongoing reinterpretation of the material on display, including readings, rehearsals, screenings as well as archival installations. The spatial set-up draws inspiration from ancient archeological sites, where images, symbols, icons, artworks and other objects of curiosity offer insights into the protagonists’ inquiries. Working in parallel with the on-site activities of Witte de With, an ancient site in the Danish forest of Lilla Hareskov will become a stage for the launch of new lines of inquiry by Deirdre M. Donoghue. The artist reflects on the maternal figure as a thinker and a producer of knowledge, rather than as a subject of representation and as a domestic figure inseparable from human emotions. In the company of these protagonists, Witte de With continues to be a mediating agent for artists and thinkers with the aim to upset linear narratives of knowledge with the ambition that art will turn the world inside out. As The World Turned Inside Out continues throughout the Fall of 2013, a growing network of interlocutors from the arts, humanities and politics will shift away from familiar twentieth century references to instigate another mindset -one that reflects on the diversity of materials, cultures, religions and histories, and puts them into work through public talks, live events, film premieres and performances. Participants Julieta Aranda, Kader Attia, Virginie Bobin, Aslı Çavuşoğlu, Roberto Chabet, Shezad Dawood, Deirdre Donoghue, Bonita Ely, Amira Gad, Natasha Ginwala, Rana Hamadeh, Tzu Nyen Ho, Bauke Knottnerus, Irene Kopelman, Claartje Lindhout, Jennifer Wen Ma, Tejal Shah, Lawrence Weiner, Terue Yamauchi, Vivian Ziherl Curators Defne Ayas, Amira Gad, Virginie Bobin <div class="
• The Temptation of AA Bronson
  Opening: Thursday 5 September 2013, 5 – 8 p.m. Performance by AA Bronson at 0:01 a.m. Performance by Michael Bühler-Rose at 7 a.m. Performance by Chrysanne Stathacos from 2 to 6 p.m. Performances by Nils Bech, Michael Dudeck, Bradford Kessler, Sands Murray-Wassink and Sébastien Lambeaux from 5 to 8 p.m. Queer Zines panel discussion with Philip Aarons (zine collector), AA Bronson, Raymond Cha (editor of Queer Zines), Jessica Gysel (editor and publisher of GIRLS LIKE US) and Scott Treleaven (artist) from 6 to 7 p.m. AA Bronson (b. 1946, Vancouver) is both artist and curator, subject and object, in this hybrid project that includes his recent solo work, his collaborations with younger artists, and works by friends, both queer and not. Also included are two of his curatorial projects: Queer Zines, incorporating more than 100 queer zines from the punk era until today; and Ancestors, a personal archive of books, editions, and ephemera that form a fragmentary and incoherent historical underpinning to the overall project. Themes of body, spirit, sex, religion, community, death, ritual, and magic collide throughout The Temptation of AA Bronson in sigils, crystals, mirrors, nudity, and bodily fluids. Moving up through the old school rooms of Witte de With, the style of exhibition moves back in time: the white cube gives way to the immersive environment of the surrealist exhibition, and to the cabinet of curiosities, to finally arrive at the threshold of magic: the phantasm of images, smells, sounds, and action that contains the potential for healing. The exhibition features a new commission by AA Bronson and Michael Bühler-Rose, The City of Nine Gates, consisting of two large cubes, each containing the remains of a performance. Bronson’s Invocation of the Queer Spirits (Rotterdam) will be enacted privately by a small group of invited participants at midnight prior to the opening. Bühler-Rose’s ritual, Invocation by Fire, is open to the public a few hours later at dawn. A new iteration of Marina Abramović’s major installation Transitory Objects: Beds for Human and Spirit Use invites visitors to don white laboratory coats and earphones, and to lie down on wooden tables to experience the healing energy of crystals, which she calls “the most simplified computers of the planet”. Abramović says: “If you put in any impulse—that’s how you get digital watches—the impulse never leaves the crystal. […] They’re regenerators.” During the opening, The Temptation of AA Bronson will be baptized with a confusion of simultaneous and continuous performances by Chrysanne Stathacos, Michael Dudeck, Nils Bech, Sands Murray-Wassink and Sébastien Lambeaux. The Temptation The title The Temptation of AA Bronson alludes to Gustave Flaubert’s The Temptation of Saint Anthony, the many references Flaubert’s tightly-knit text brings together and its subsequent reverberations in art, literature and theory. Flaubert began writing The Temptation of Saint Anthony in his twenties in the 1840s and published three versions over his lifetime, the last in 1874. It was his Gesamtkunstwerk, his life’s work and remained incomplete and inchoate. Michel Foucault describes it as the first modern text, the text that activates modern literature, that sets the library on fire: we look over Saint Anthony’s shoulder and witness a kind of movie within a movie enacted on the Egyptian desert and indexing the temptations which form our physical, moral, intellectual and emotional life, sourced from the paintings and books of Flaubert’s world and founded in The Bible, “The Book” itself. Like Freud, Flaubert could not escape sexuality, he spent his life immersed in cataloguing the perversions of humanity. Saint Anthony was a very particular figure, the father of the desert fathers, the hermits who prefigure monks. He lived in North Africa at the end of that mostly undocumented period when Christianity centered in Africa, and Christians were primarily black. He died in 356, two decades after the center of Christianity was moved from Alexandria to Constantinople (Istanbul today) in Asia Minor. Only 1000 years later did the center of Christian power move to Rome, that is, to Europe. Flaubert freely wrote of his own sexual encounters with prostitutes, mostly in Egypt and Turkey, both male and female, even with boys. He shared a history with Saint Anthony, not only of life in Egypt and Asia Minor, but also a life lived in continuous dialogue with temptation. Salvador Dalí created his seminal painting The Temptation of Saint Anthony in 1946, using classicism, eroticism, and Surrealism to invoke the intermediaries between heaven and earth. It was his first painting on a religious theme and has become one of his most ubiquitous images. It is included in the exhibition in the form of a jigsaw puzzle. Saint Anthony, Flaubert, and Salvador Dalí share a particular skill in representing a practice through personae. Their life work is not constructed as a sequence of cultural products or even achievements; rather, each represents a practice encapsulated in lifelong dedication to being present in the world. Blessing The collaboration between AA Bronson and Witte de With started with ‘AA Bronson Blessing’ on 14 March 2012 at the time of the waning half moon, when Bronson led a ritual blessing, with no audience, to inaugurate the program of Witte de With’s Director, Defne Ayas, who invited AA Bronson to create an exhibition for Witte de With. Participants AA Bronson, Marina Abramović, Nils Bech, Ryan Brewer, David Buchan, Michael Bühler-Rose, Elijah Burgher, Oisin Byrne, Nicolaus Chaffin, TM Davy, Tom de Pékin, Michael Dudeck, Robert Flack, General Idea, Matthias Herrmann, Reima Hirvonen, Derek Jarman, K8 Hardy, Mike Kelley, Bradford Kessler, Terence Koh, Sébastien Lambeaux, Gareth Long, Mr and Mrs Keith Murray, Sands Murray-Wassink, Chrysanne Stathacos, Scott Treleaven, Jeffrey Vallance, Louwrien Wijers Curators AA Bronson Supported By Support for participating artists in The Temptation of AA Bronson has been provided by the Alberta Foundation, The Canada Council for the Arts, Office for Contemporary Art (Norway) and the Austrian Ministry of Culture. For the presentation of K8 Hardy’s work Witte de With thanks Hans Boodt for their kind support. A ritual of queer rituals is co-sponsored by The Institute for Art, Religion, and Social Justice, Union Theological Seminary and the city of Rotterdam. Flag of Ecstasy is presented in collaboration with WORM and Peter Taylor. Special thanks to Philip Aarons and Shelley Fox Aarons, Nature Morte (Berlin), and Esther Schipper (Berlin) for their generous contributions. <div class="
• The Crime Was Almost Perfect
  The Crime Was Almost Perfect is an exhibition that brings together over forty artists who cross the bridges linking art and the aesthetics of crime. Like any good detective story, art history is filled with enigmas, myths, and riddles waiting to be unraveled. Solving these intellectual puzzles is a common pleasure and few are immune to such a cultural temptation. Although the link between art and crime can be traced back to ancient times, Thomas De Quincey explicitly theorized this connection in his notorious essay “On Murder Considered As One Of The Fine Arts” (1827). The nineteenth century also saw the growing importance of photography both in the development of criminology and in the new sensationalism of the tabloid press—two phenomena that popularized the genre of the detective story. Cinema soon became the perfect medium for capturing the dubious charm of violence and transforming it into pleasurable images. Following De Quincey’s ironic proposal to analyze murder from an aesthetic point of view, The Crime Was Almost Perfect is an exhibition that invokes the spirits of visual art, architecture, cinema, criminology, and the modern crime genre, transforming the rooms of Witte de With and the streets of Rotterdam into multiple ‘crime scenes’. Beyond crime, there is Evil. Thus The Crime Was Almost Perfect necessarily examines the relationship between ethics and aesthetics. Questioning the role of authorship, authenticity, trickery, and fraud, the exhibition blurs the dichotomy between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ taste, while also highlighting the double bind of ‘crime as art’ and ‘art as crime’. The exhibition brings together over forty local and international artists who cross the bridges linking art and the aesthetics of crime, including challenging works encompassing a multitude of artistic strategies. New and already existing projects as well as a collection of unexpected objects are immersed in unorthodox ways within an environment specially designed by Fabian Marti, that guides the viewer through routes containing different chapters. Some of the works in the exhibition reflect the detective’s obsessive curiosity and interpretation, the narcissistic identification with the criminal, as well as the spectator’s fetishistic pleasure. A few projects deal with authenticity and frauds that could be considered as ‘art crimes’; some play with the artist’s role as subversive and marginal; others with law, order, and transgression; certain projects tend to represent crime as macabre and sublime as in the cinematic; while a few proposals provide evidence of public historical events—social, political crimes. A few projects could be said to combine selections of these main tendencies. Eva Grubinger puts up a flag and a brass plaque on the facade of Witte de With, turning it into the Embassy of Eitopomar, a utopian kingdom ruled by the evil master villain Dr. Mabuse. Close to the entrance desk, a wall painted by Jean-Luc Blanc resembles the cover of a pulp magazine signed with the show’s title. Monica Bonvicini presents a large hanging sculpture resembling something like a macabre carousel of harnesses casted in black fluid rubber. The ductility of the harnesses seems to combine sexual desire with the exploitative force of labour where protection turns into torment. “Why is desire always linked to crime?”, a quote from Karl Holmqvist’s film, will be constantly on the spectators’ mind, whereas Rupert Norfolk’s Guillotine represents the ultimate symbol of capital punishment, a disquieting presence that remains emblematic. In the film Murder in Three Acts, Aslı Çavuşoğlu mimics the television crime genre (exemplified by the series Crime Scene Investigation) showcasing exhibitions as crime scenes and art works as weapons, while Fabian Marti leaves imprints of his hands throughout the gallery spaces. Gabriel Lester creates a cinematographic loop of crime scenes in a park and projects it onto the surrounding walls and on the visitor, fetishizing violent images. The cinematic is also present through uncanny paintings by Dan Attoe, Richard Hawkins, and Dawn Mellor as well as with Brice Dellsperger’s and Aïda Ruilova’s films. Lili Reynaud-Dewar stages an elaborate installation addressing Jean Genet’s life and work as a writer, an activist, and a thief, while Dora Garcia invites the audience to steal a book. A monumental installation by Kader Attia evokes an oppressive labyrinth where images from his own private collection of newspapers and comic strips repeatedly depict the non-Western person as a beast or monster—like in the manipulations undertaken by colonialist propaganda. Jim Shaw ironically portrays businessmen as zombies through a set of paintings and a film, while Saâdane Afif presents the Centre Pompidou as a coffin softly killing the museum. These are just a few examples of the types of works that will be offered to the audience to be discovered during their visit to The Crime Was Almost Perfect. Exhibition Architecture by Fabian Marti in collaboration with Charlotte Truwant & Dries Rodet Participants Saâdane Afif, Kader Attia, Dan Attoe, Dirk Bell, Bik Van der Pol, Jean-Luc Blanc, Monica Bonvicini, Ulla von Brandenburg, Aslı Çavuşoğlu, Claire Fontaine, Mike Cooter, François Curlet, Brice Dellsperger, Jason Dodge, Gardar Eide Einarsson, Matias Faldbakken, Keith Farquhar, Douglas Gordon, Eva Grubinger, Richard Hawkins, Karl Holmqvist, Pierre Huyghe, Joachim Koester, Gabriel Lester, Erik van Lieshout, Jonas Lund, Teresa Margolles, Han van Meegeren, Bod Mellor, Fabian Marti, Rupert Norfolk, Raymond Pettibon, Emilie Pitoiset, Olivia Plender, Julien Prévieux, Rodolphe Archibald Reiss, Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Aïda Ruilova, Allen Ruppersberg, Markus Schinwald, Jeremy Shaw, Noam Toran, Herwig Weiser Curators Cristina Ricupero Supported By Support for the artists in The Crime Was Almost Perfect is generously provided by: Bundesministerium für Unterricht und Kunst (Vienna), Institut Français, Galerie Krinzinger (Vienna), Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA), Outset Netherlands, Pro Helvetia, SAHA, Galerie Peter Kilchmann (Zurich), Yvon Lambert Gallery (Paris), Nagel-Draxler Gallery (Berlin-Koln), Galerie Georges-Philippe & Nathalie Vallois (Paris). Additional support is provided by Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen and Sjarel Ex. <div class="
• Rotterdam Cultural Histories #1: R.A.N.
  Contemporary art has a history too. Under the header Rotterdam Cultural Histories, Witte de With and TENT present a series of small presentations to highlight the treasures that hide in libraries and archives to give glimpses of the lively contemporary art of the past in Rotterdam. These vignettes are presented in a vitrine that was originally made for Museum Boijmans van Beuningen and that today can be found in several Rotterdam art institutes. “With Rotterdam Art News a part – a living part – of Dutch culture looks for contact with foreign countries. The network through which communication takes place within the global village thus acquires another link” wrote then Director of the Rotterdamse Kunst Stichting (RKS) Adriaan van der Staay in 1972 in English in the introduction of the first edition of Rotterdam Art News (R.A.N.). Initiated by writer and critic Jan Donia and edited in collaboration with curators Gosse Oosterhof and Johannes van der Wolk, the publication R.A.N. sought to bring the new art in Rotterdam way beyond the borders of the city to find like-minded pioneers abroad. Part elaborate newsletter of the city’s art scene, part mail art project in itself, R.A.N. gives a beautiful cross section of the scene of the early 1970s. Twelve issues of R.A.N. were published in total, between 1972 and 1974, a time when both the International Film Festival Rotterdam and Poetry International just realized their first editions, galerie ‘t Venster was showing the new developments in contemporary art, and the art space of the RKS, the Lijnbaancentrum (1970-1982), was rising to international fame because of its highly advanced video colour studio. In these years the Rotterdam art scene was small (some say maximum 70 artists and organizers in total) and tightly knit, with many collaborations and crossovers. In those years fertile seeds were sown for the flourishing and diverse scene of today. The thematic setup of R.A.N. reflects these developments, and its pages present an image of an art scene that is bold, energetic and ready to venture out in to the world. R.A.N. was the follow up of the semimonthly artist’s book series Atlas voor een Nieuwe Metropool, that Jan Donia edited for the Lijnbaancentrum in 1971/1972. Just like R.A.N., these publications were sent (for free) by mail to several hundred addresses. Unlike R.A.N., this series was not designed to inform about art, but contained art projects in its envelopes, pushing the boundaries of what an artwork could be and how it could be (re)presented. With both projects the RKS proved to be a governmental pioneer in recognizing the possibilities of printed matter for the distribution and production of new forms of art and the discourse surrounding it. Rotterdam Cultural Histories is a collaborative project between TENT and Witte de With that explores our common roots in Rotterdam and articulates meeting points between both of our programs. Rotterdam Cultural Histories #1: R.A.N. will be followed by a second vignette in 2014. Rotterdam Cultural Histories #1 was researched and compiled by Annick Kleizen. Advisor for Rotterdam Cultural Histories is Hans Walgenbach. Artist Wim Gijzen collected the full edition of R.A.N. and Atlas voor een nieuwe metropool – in both of which he is represented – and we are grateful that we can show his copies. Many thanks to Jan Donia, Gosse Oosterhof, Johannes van der Wolk, Adriaan van der Staay, and all artists and organizers who shook up the art in Rotterdam and made it evolve into the lively and many-faceted scene that we know today. Network TENT Series Rotterdam Cultural Histories <div class="
• The Part In The Story Where A Part Becomes A Part Of Something Else
  The Part In The Story Where A Part Becomes A Part Of Something Else is a group exhibition with works by over forty artists. Playing with variation and repetition, resemblance and difference, synchronicities and slippages, this exhibition marks the end of Moderation(s), a long-term program (August 2012 – August 2014) initiated by Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam and Spring Workshop in Hong Kong. But if everything is potentially everything else, complained the translator, what am I doing here? From “Afterword: The Death Of The Translator” by George Szirtes Works by artists from across the globe – including a strong contingent of Hong Kong-based artists, many of whom have never shown at Witte de With before– are gathered around key concepts such as time, duration and space (Douglas Gordon, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, On Kawara), memory and inscription (Ang Song Ming, John Cage, Sharon Hayes), transformation (Bik Van der Pol, Nicolás Lamas), pleasure (Ivan Argote, Chu Yun, Willem de Rooij, Haegue Yang), and encounters (Lee Kit, Narcisse Tordoir). The relations and transferences between the presented artworks are guided by notions such as tension, repetition, variation, and momentum, reminiscent of Contact Improvisation, a dance method developed by choreographer Steve Paxton. How can one work of art moderate another one? Can an audience become a moderator of the works on view? How much translation is needed to bring out meaningful relations between works created by different artists? If everything is connected, what is the shared connective language? The Part In The Story deals with the transmissive qualities of objects, situations, and storytelling, where one can dissolve into the others. Guilty Pleasures, Incidents of Travel, A Thing At A Time, A Fictional Residency, Stories and Situations, and The Social Contract, each project installment of Moderation(s) questioned or redefined the conditions which impact the creation and production of objects, situations, and stories. As such, the dynamic triangulation between these three axis is the central topic of The Part In The Story, which can be seen as an epilogue and a reprise of the manifold motifs at play in the Moderation(s) program. An epilogue is the final chapter at the end of a story. It can occur a significant period of time after the main plot has ended, and may offer scenes only tangentially related to the subject of the story. An epilogue can continue in the same narrative style and perspective as the preceding story, although occasionally the form can be drastically different from the overall story. Participants A Constructed World, Nadim Abbas, Allora & Calzadilla, Song Ming Ang, Ivan Argote, Bik Van der Pol, Pierre Bismuth, John Cage, Leung Chi Wo, Yun Chu, Cevdet Erek, Tim Etchells, Ceal Floyer, Aurélien Froment, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Douglas Gordon, Minja Gu, Ho Rui An, Vlatka Horvat, João Vasco Paiva, On Kawara, Patrick Killoran, Lee Kit, Sheung Chi Kwan, Nicolás Lamas, Michael Lee, Lucas Lenglet, Gabriel Lester, Katarina Löfström, MAP Office, Anthony Marcellini, Ahmet Ögüt, Pages, Babak Afrassiabi, Patricia Reed, Willem de Rooij, Mor Shani, Ho Sin Tung, Praneet Soi, Koki Tanaka, Narcisse Tordoir, Freek Wambacq, Adrian Wong, Magdalen Wong, Sara Wong, Haegue Yang, Trevor Yeung, Johan Zetterquist, Chen Zhen Curators Samuel Saelemakers, Heman Chong Network Spring Workshop Supported By Support by AMMODO, Iaspis, Mondriaan Fund, Outset Netherlands, SAHA. Supporting galleries: Bugada & Cargnel, Edouard Malingue Gallery, Hanart TZ Gallery. Media support by Randian. <div class="
• Rotterdam Cultural Histories #2: Bik Van der Pol
  This presentation and accompanying newspaper document Bik Van der Pol’s research into George Rickey’s kinetic sculpture Two Rectangles Vertical Gyratory (1971), and its history. This second edition of Rotterdam Cultural Histories is presented in conjunction with up close (2014), a new work by Bik Van der Pol, produced as part of the group exhibition The Part In The Story Where A Part Becomes A Part Of Something Else, on view at Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art from 22 May – 17 August. For this exhibition, the artists duo Bik Van der Pol decided to bring the sculpture Two Rectangles Vertical Gyratory (1971) by George Rickey, and install it in Witte de With’s exhibition space. This kinetic sculpture, normally installed on Rotterdam’s busy Binnenwegplein, has somewhat of a contested history. After recent renovations of the square causing an elevation of the ground, the blades of the sculpture rotated at a mere 2.11 meters above street level. The sculpture was hence considered a safety hazard because of the danger of it hitting the heads of passers-by. In prevention of any accidents, the sculpture was fenced off in 2012 and temporarily removed later that same year. Since then Sculpture International Rotterdam (SIR), to whose collection the sculpture belongs, and the Public Works Department have attempted to find a solution in close conversation with the estate of the artist, who passed away in 2002. With no concrete date set, the sculpture is now presented immobilized and in parts, awaiting its return to the public space. Rotterdam Cultural Histories is a collaborative project between Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art and TENT that explores our common roots in Rotterdam and articulates meeting points between both of our programs. Rotterdam Cultural Histories is conceived by Defne Ayas (Director of Witte de With) and Mariette Dölle (Artistic Director, TENT). Participants Bik Van der Pol Network TENT Series Rotterdam Cultural Histories <div class="
• Dai Hanzhi: 5000 Artists
  Welcome by exhibition curator Marianne Brouwer and Samuel Saelemakers (Associate Curator, Witte de With), 6:00 p.m. Dai Hanzhi: 5000 Artists is dedicated to the life and work of Dutchman Hans van Dijk (1946 – 2002). The exhibition outlines his seminal role in Chinese contemporary art. Van Dijk, whose Chinese name was Dai Hanzhi, was active as a curator, art historian and gallerist in China throughout the nineties. Though hardly known in the Netherlands, Van Dijk is still revered by Chinese artists today. Dai Hanzhi: 5000 Artists includes historical installations, paintings, video, and photography by artists who were close to Van Dijk. A number of artists, including Ding Yi, Liu Ding, Ni Haifeng, Wang Xingwei and Zhang Peili, created new works or proposed a personal selection from their oeuvre. The works on view are supplemented by rare archival material from Europe and China, including letters, photographs and unique “Ming-inspired Rietveld-style” furniture made by Van Dijk in the early ’80, as well as a digital presentation of Van Dijk’s hitherto undiscovered life’s work, a lexicon of 5000 Chinese artists born between 1880 and 1980. Two contemporary art spaces that have been profoundly influenced by Van Dijk’s model for a gallery and archive, Vitamin Creative Space (Beijing – Guangzhou) and BizArt (Shanghai), will also be present with their own contributions. Dai Hanzhi: 5000 Artists aims to archive and present van Dijk’s curatorial projects that enabled the bridging between contemporary artists from China and elsewhere. For this exhibition, his various curatorial, scholarly and commercial endeavors have been thoroughly researched, giving special attention to his ability of promoting and showcasing the works of emerging artists, many of whom thanks to Van Dijk found their first opportunity to become known to a larger international public. The exhibition is co-commissioned by Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam and the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing. Exhibition curator Marianne Brouwer notes: “There has been a longstanding awareness of Hans van Dijk’s importance to the art scene in China—as a curator and a dealer, creating relations between art in China and the Western art system, particularly in the early nineties. Finding the lexicon has decisively changed the way in which we must consider his legacy. In this exhibition, we are showing a digital version that Hans created, though he also designed a book he meant to publish in print form. We are now well on our way to setting up a foundation to maintain his legacy and one of our first concerns is to research and unpack the lexicon but also to see through the possibilities of having it published.” Witte de With Director Defne Ayas describes her motivation behind Witte de With’s dedication to Hans van Dijk’s legacy: “When living and working in China (2005-2012), it struck me how so many of my peers and colleagues – artists, curators, and gallerists alike- all spoke so fondly of Hans van Dijk, acknowledging him as a mentor and an important influence on their own respective practices.” Upon joining Witte de With, Ayas realized that the Center had only worked with one artist from China in its twenty-four-year history (the late Chen Zhen was invited by Daniel Buren in 1994) and set about to change this. “When noted Dutch curator Marianne Brouwer approached us with her research and exhibition plans around Hans van Dijk, we immediately said yes.” About Hans van Dijk Long forgotten in the Netherlands, Hans van Dijk (1946-2002) began his career as an artist studying at the Arnhem Arts Academy and at the Eindhoven Design Academy. He took an interest in Ming furniture and decided to study Chinese language and culture. In 1984 Van Dijk left the Netherlands for China, where he passionately devoted the rest of his life to documenting, archiving and promoting the work of Chinese contemporary artists, until his early passing in 2002. Hans van Dijk acted as a teacher, curator, dealer, and scholar in a time when art infrastructure in China was virtually nonexistent. He taught artists how to manage themselves and the minutiae of the art world: how to curate and have their shows curated, pack artworks, fill out loan forms, and show to local and international collectors. Critically, he was one of the first to view these artists within their larger context, both as a continuation of Chinese art history and as a part of international contemporary art practice. Van Dijk despised the label “Chinese contemporary art” and similarly post-colonial attitudes, encouraging Chinese artists to see themselves as equal contributors to a global cultural dialogue. Hans van Dijk was instrumental in launching the careers of many important artists and in generating early international interest in Chinese contemporary art. He studied Mandarin and Chinese art history in Nanjing from 1986 until 1989, during which time he traveled around China visiting exhibitions and meeting artists. Once he returned to the Netherlands in 1989, he began promoting Chinese artists to a continental audience, culminating in the seminal China Avant-garde exhibition at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in berlin. Van Dijk returned to China in 1993 to immerse himself in the Beijing art scene, and in 1994 he founded the New Amsterdam Art Consultancy as an umbrella for his exhibitions, writing, and dealership. The 1990s saw the scholar undertake many curatorial and business projects with mixed success. He organized several exhibitions of Chinese art in Europe, especially in Germany. Hans van Dijk was at the helm of the Central Academy of Fine Arts Gallery for a mere six months in 1996, managing to put on six of the greatest shows of his career at a breakneck pace. In 1998 he co-founded the China Art Archive and Warehouse, van Dijk’s first commercial venture, with Ai Weiwei and Belgian collector Frank Uytterhaegen. The Archive contains detailed information on more than 450 Chinese contemporary artists and thousands of documents on the history of van Dijk’s exhibitions both in China and abroad. Yet these career triumphs were marred by frustration. Van Dijk was a mediocre businessman, more focused on what was vanguard than what was sellable. Official protest sank his landmark 1997 project Face to Face, a three-part collaboration with Siemens that would exhibit Chinese and German artists together. During the late 1990s, several of van Dijk’s closest artist friends left his stewardship for more commercially successful dealers, while an influx of foreign curators diminished his role in Beijing. Yet despite this, Hans remained a beloved mentor and leading academic for a generation of Chinese artists up until his death in 2002. As Wang Guangyi posited, “If Hans were alive today, his space still running, I think he would be the most important figure in contemporary Chinese art. Not as a dealer, no, but as a scholar, able to influence the entire discourse of art.” Participants Hong An, Shaoxiong Chen, Yi Ding, Jianyu Duan, Thomas Fuesser, Jianyi Geng, Ni Haifeng, Lei Han, Hao Hong, Lei Hong, Ding Liu, Anping Liu, Yongjin Luo, Wu Shanzhuan, Yong Shi, Jinsong Wang, Xingwei Wang, Xin Kedu (New Measurement Group), Tan Xu, Lei Yan, Hai’er Zhang, Peili Zhang, Bandi Zhao, Shaoruo Zhao Curators Marianne Brouwer Network Ullens Center for Contemporary Art Supported By The exhibition Dai Hanzhi: 5000 Artists at Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art is kindly supported by AMMODO, DSM and the Mondriaan fund. <div class="
• Rotterdam Cultural Histories #3: Stone in Water
  In the 1970s, visual artists Teun Jacob (1927-2009) and Kees Verschuren (1941) made what at the time was the largest work of art in the Netherlands. On the 1st Maasvlakte, over a five year period, they created an impressive work of land art adjacent to a power station. The work was commissioned by the municipality of Rotterdam together with the Municipal Energy Company (GEB). Dozens of artists submitted proposals. In an open procedure, accompanied by much protest, the commission eventually went to Jacob and Verschuren. In a determined fashion, they worked on this massive environmental artwork, which also includes work by other artists including Marinus Boezem and Carel Visser, until it was completed in 1979. Then the work entered into oblivion. Over the years, it has increasingly suffered from a lack of maintenance and the power plant’s expansion. The vitrine presentation displays documents relating to the the work’s inception, public participation, and the numerous opinions and protests accompanying the process. Historic photos and drawings show how the work’s intimate spaces were combined with expansive views. The recently published Steen in Water – een onbekend aardwerk voor de 1e Maasvlakte (Stone in Water – an unknown earth work for the 1st Maasvlakte) is available in the TENT Bookshop. Rotterdam Cultural Histories is a collaborative project between TENT and Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art that explores our common roots in Rotterdam and articulates meeting points between both of our programs. Rotterdam Cultural Histories is conceived by Defne Ayas (Director of Witte de With) and Mariette Dölle (Artistic Director, TENT). Network TENT Series Rotterdam Cultural Histories <div class="
• Art In The Age Of…Energy and Raw Material
  The first installment of Art In The Age Of… focuses on how forms of energy and raw material shape, or are narrated by, contemporary artistic practices. Since early times art objects have drifted with the motion and transformation of raw materials like wheat, minerals, and cotton. How does contemporary art relate to geothermal energy? To oil, gas, or alternative sources such as the sun? Could it even fly on rays of cosmic energy? The installation Strobank by artist duo MAP Office examines wheat, its distribution and symbolic capital, alongside a history of the stock market’s trading pit. Nina Canell meditates upon the loss of information and energy that occurs during processes of transference in her sculptural constellation of stumps and cross-sections of telecommunication and power cables, each becoming sentences cut-off mid-flow or instances of material forgetfulness. In Children of Unquiet, Mikhail Karikis interweaves sound recordings of geothermal activity and industry in Larderello, Italy, with a cinematic and cultural history of Dante’s Inferno, whose vision of hell was inspired by that very location. Anton Vidokle’s This is Cosmos turns its eyes to the stars and charts the Cosmism movement in Russia and its disavowal of death through cosmic energy, positing the medium of film itself as an irradiation treatment. Through image and archive, Céline Condorelli addresses the relationship between Egypt’s cotton industry and its nationalization after Nasser’s revolution. Zircon, a 4,400-million-year-old mineral is excavated, dematerialized and reanimated in Nicholas Mangan’s A World Undone, whilst material is mapped to stock market fluctuations in Talk About the Weather. In Marlie Mul’s sculptural series Puddles, messy dark matter glistens and seeps, contaminated by human interaction. The exhibition includes Petrocultures, a section devoted to films, adverts and ephemera related to the development of the iconography of oil. Alongside artist presentations, a dedicated research blog has been founded. This blog will track the development of Art in the Age of… exhibitions for 2015 and acts as a visual reader accompanying artists work: http://artintheageof15.tumblr.com. Participants Nina Canell, Céline Condorelli, Mikhail Karikis, Nicholas Mangan, MAP Office, Marlie Mul, Anton Vidokle Curators Defne Ayas, Natasha Hoare <div class="
• Character Is Fate
  From 27 January 2015 onwards, twenty-five years to the day it was established, Witte de With presents a new installation by artist Willem de Rooij. Character Is Fate showcases an astrological birth chart Piet Mondrian had made in 1911. A special display system that relates to the solar calendar allows for the birth chart to be illuminated by the sun, best seen from 2.15 p.m. to 2.30 p.m. each day, all year long. While considering the conservational parameters of displaying historical objects, Character Is Fate also visualizes Witte de With’s physical position in relation to the sun. In late 1911 artist Piet Mondrian was about to move to Paris and leave his native country of the Netherlands behind. During this period of artistic and personal transformation he turned to theosophist Adriaan van de Vijsel for an astrological reading. Mondrian was born under the sign of Pisces on 7 March 1872, and according to his horoscope was “very susceptible and [had] psychic tendencies.” He was “able to feel things without being able to give an explanation of how this knowledge was obtained, [with] a mind that can express itself diplomatically, calmly and systematically.” Special thanks goes to the Netherlands Institute for Art History (RKD) in The Hague for their generous loan of Piet Mondrian’s original horoscope. The loan also marks a first-time collaboration between the RKD and Witte de With, which will be continued annually. Published on the occasion of this work, Willem de Rooij and Witte de With Publishers present the new publication Character is Fate: Piet Mondrian’s Horoscope. The book contains the facsimile, its transcription, and its English translation, alongside texts by Wietse Coppes and Kocku von Stuckrad. Character is Fate: Piet Mondrian’s Horoscope was launched on 21 May 2015 at Witte de With. The project Character Is Fate by artist Willem de Rooij was commissioned by Defne Ayas (Director, Witte de With) for Witte de With’s 25th anniversary year. Participants Willem de Rooij Curators Defne Ayas Network RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History <div class="
• Mahony — Safe Harbour
  The first iteration of In Light Of 25 Years is presented by artist collective Mahony (Stephan Kobatsch, Jenny Wolka and Clemens Leuschner). Their work Safe Harbour was prompted by the interview published in A Life Full Of Holes. The Strait Project, the publication accompanying French-Moroccan artist Yto Barrada’s eponymous solo exhibition at Witte de With in 2004. In this interview, Barrada discussed her work in photographing the Strait of Gibraltar and the impact it has on the lives of young people in Morocco as a geopolitical site of frustrated proximity, as she calls it. As a response, Mahony uses the light box as both an image case and a sculptural element, and addresses related contemporary issues and historical events, such as the harrowing circumstances of refugees caught during European border controls in the Mediterranean, or The Truth about the Colonies, an exhibition organized by the French Communist Party and a group of surrealist artists in response to the controversial Colonial Exhibition (1931, Paris), where both objects and people from French held territories were exhibited. The light box is partly covered with rescue blankets often seen in press photography of humanitarian or military operations. Some of these blankets carry embroidered attributes or emblems one would find on towels of private clubs or beach resorts. The embroideries depict ancient Greek gods, whose names have been used for various military missions to secure the European sea borders. One blanket carries the words “there is no need to be modern,” questioning the dominant position of Western modernism worldwide. The street-side of the light box carries a yellow pattern that could be associated with nets, grids, fabrics, and maps. Embedded in the grid are outlines of the fictitious modern bridge similar to the one shown on the €500 note. The combination of the grid and the bridge evoke a tension between confinement and movement, between entanglement and progress. Interview Samuel Saelemakers: What were your initial thoughts about the light box as a fixed display format? Mahony: To work with a fixed and defined format like this light box is a bit different to the way we usually work, where we decide on the appearance of the piece according to the content-related questions that arise in the process. But it is interesting to think about this object and the limitations or determinations it implicates, in the same way that we would think about the exhibition space. Here we had to develop a new piece in a relatively short amount of time, but as we had been working on a specific topic for a while already, it was obvious that it would fit into a series of works. Very soon we decided that the light box would be part of an installation, because apart from providing two surfaces for images, it is also an object dividing the space. What are the risks and advantages of archive based working methods? Using an archive gives the possibility to go deeper into a topic, but of course it´s not about merely showing the collected material, as a form of documentary or reproduction, but to use certain elements to create something new and autonomous. What drew you to Yto Barrada’s work? We were looking at the artists who showed at Witte de With in the past years, and came across Yto Barrada and then we were sent the exhibition catalogue, where we read the interviewbetween Barrada and the philosopher Nadia Tazi. We encountered several ideas that we could relate to, such as migration and movement or the idea of visibility and invisibility, which you could also find in her work. Yto Barrada´s work concentrates on a concrete space and a specific social reality that is produced for those people living next to the Strait of Gibraltar, and how the constant notion of waiting in front of what she called a “cosmic backdrop” could affect the daily life and the self-perception. The space we are having in mind is not one concrete space, because border space is not only a geographical space, but becomes quite ubiquitous while being reinforced by political discourse, media, a security apparatus and social realities. In your other projects you have a similar approach, where you find and define a topic but then work around it, more than actually show it up front. There is something about being too direct, or merely showing “facts” that makes us draw back. First of all it is problematic to define the so-called “facts” anyway, but being too concrete without leaving any intermediate space for the observer,could create the effect of dealing with something very quickly, without even starting to process the just perceived information. We think a lot about the possible dynamics that a work could take on and the communicative potential it could bear. So where do you leave doors open and where do you choose to be more concrete and precise? How do the anti-colonial poster from the 1930s and the € 500 bank bill symbols relate to each other? They relate to each other in the context of all the other elements, such as the military rescue blankets, the metal book and the embroidery of Greek gods on some of the blankets. We often arrange a group of object or images in relation to each other, whose particular aspects jointly are telling one or multiple stories. We found the poster of the counter-exhibition to the 1931 Paris Colonial Exhibition entitledThe Truth about the Colonies. The six-month colonial exhibition attempted to display France´s colonial possessions and demonstrate the economic success; it was a celebration of the French colonization. The French government also brought people from the colonies to Paris, to create native arts and crafts and to perform in reproductions of their huts or temples. The small counter-exhibition was organized by the Communist Party in alliance with the Surrealists and other anti-colonial groups and was held in a Parisian annex of the Maison des Sydicats. Compared to some 33 million visitors that came from around the world to see the Paris Colonial Exhibition, the counter-exhibition attracted only 5000 visitors in 8 months. It´s all about positioning; the position of the poster on the black wall and also a possible artistic and political position. The borders of todays Europe are represented in various ways, also, for example in the currency, the Euro. We took a closer look at the banknotes and realized that on their back they all show a fictitious bridge in the style of one particular architectural period. Since modernity is represented on the 500 Euro bill, we chose to reproduce this bridge like a kind of watermark on the other side of the lightbox. On one of the blankets that is hung over the box one could read the cut out sentence “There is no need to be modern” by Walter D. Mignolo, which refers to modernity not as an ontological unfolding of history, but the hegemonic narrative of Western civilization. Bridges might somehow stand as a symbol for connecting places or the freedom to travel. By opening up the borders inside the European Union, at the same time the outside European borders got reinforced. Europe today presents itself as this open, international and democratic space, but freedom of travel is still an issue. In Light Of 25 Years Presented as part of In Light Of 25 Years, this project celebrates Witte de With’s 25th anniversary. For In Light Of 25 Years, ten artists and curators each create an image-based work that analyzes certain sediments of contemporary art history, departing from Witte de With’s archive. Participants Mahony Curators Samuel Saelemakers <div class="
• Rotterdam Cultural Histories #4: Paul Thek
  In 1978-79 the Lijnbaancentrum in Rotterdam organized the exhibition Jack’s Procession: What’s Going on Here? with Paul Thek (1933-1988, US), displaying an environment that filled the entire exhibition space of the center. Thek had created large-scale environments in a number of European institutions in the late sixties and early seventies, this installation in Rotterdam was one of the last that he made in Europe. Jack’s Procession represented a dreamy landscape that contained some of the religious, spiritual and political symbols that he had used before, but also showed new iconographic elements that were, in Thek’s eyes, “typical for Rotterdam”. He integrated snapshots and newspaper clippings concerning environmental issues in the Rotterdam area, and asked a sand sculptor to create a tower, inspired by Rotterdam’s The Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel I (collection Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen). The Lijnbaancentrum played a key position in Rotterdam as a platform for contemporary art and other cultural activity from 1970-1984. Located in the center of the city, it strived to interest “the normal Rotterdam citizen” in all forms of art and culture through playful and associative exhibitions. Rotterdam Cultural Histories #4 features a series of photographs of Thek’s environment, as well as other archival material. Most of these photographs, loans from the Municipal Archive Rotterdam, have never been shown or published before. Also on view is a compilation of video fragments made for the exhibition The Wonderful World That Almost Was, the very first retrospective exhibition of Paul Thek in 1995 at Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art. Rotterdam Cultural Histories is a collaborative project between TENT and Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art that explores our common roots in Rotterdam and articulates meeting points between both of our programs. Rotterdam Cultural Histories is conceived by Defne Ayas (Director of Witte de With) and Mariette Dölle (Artistic Director, TENT). This fourth edition is curated by Adelheid Smit (PR & Communication Witte de With) and was conceived in collaboration with Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, that will present an exhibition and book Please Write! on Paul Thek on 6 February 2015 alongside Rotterdam Cultural Histories #4. Network TENT Series Rotterdam Cultural Histories <div class="