Collaborative exhibition work
May 2008
Work produced in collaboration with other students of the Dutch Art Institute and curated by James Beckett.
In May of 2008, the Dutch Art Institute took part in the annual Kunstvlaai (“art tart”) exhibition at the Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam. The purpose of this participation was to highlight the Here As The Centre Of The World project, a series of workshops in six cities worldwide: Taipei, Damascus, Beirut, Khartoum, and finally two in which I was personally involved: Diyarbakır and Enschede.
Preparing a coherent work which would sufficiently explain the aims and results of this long and ambitious project was not straightforward, especially if it was to be done in a way which would work within the slightly chaotic and overwhelming context of the Kunstvlaai. The idea which was developed in collaboration with curator James Beckett was to construct a physical archive, an imposing structure with numerous drawers, panels, and sliding elements which would accurately visualise the fragmented and interconnected nature of the six workshops; whilst each took place in a different city, there were participants from the other cities involved in every case. This and the underlying common purpose of promoting intercultural artistic research and exchange meant that it was important to produce a work which would underline the unity of the project as a whole as well as the specific results from the six cities. It was decided that the archive would effectively achieve this.
Furthermore, since an important part of the DAI’s participation at the Kunstvlaai was to promote the forthcoming book about the project, there was an important conceptual relationship to the idea of printed matter. As a means of democratising the flow and dispersal of information, we provided a photocopy machine with which members of the public were encouraged to make copies of the “archived” material in the drawers; this material was designed to be readily assembled and re-assembled as needed.
In the interests of efficiency and because everyone was also very busy with other things, the many tasks involved in planning, developing, and constructing the exhibit were divided up amongst the various members of the group. My personal responsibility was the realising of one of the more fanciful elements of the design: the idea that the drawers of the archive would be physically interconnected, so that opening one would close another and vice versa, in a totally unpredictable way. This would further help to underline the connections inherent in the project, as well of course helping to create a work which was intriguing in itself.
This involved several long but entertaining days putting together a mechanical system involving cranks, levers, nylon cables, tubes, and lots of petroleum jelly. Perhaps surprisingly, it proved to be a reliable and effective system, and survived the rigours of public display.