Holland Mania 

Opening May 16, 2009

Museum De Lakenhal and Scheltema in Leiden, the Netherlands announce the exhibition Holland Mania from May 16th to August 31, 2009. Eight artists are invited to reflect on the American and Japanese pictorial image of the Netherlands. The most recent instalment of my Manhattan Project looks not only at 400 years of Dutch colonial settlement in the United States, but the city of Leiden- 400 years after the Pilgrims settled and eventually departed to the new world. What types of images are conjured up through literature, historical texts, remnants of the past and oral traditions?

Using the museum context as a background with its collection of historical exhibits, prints, paintings and objects, this series of works gathers a range of perspectives in regard to constructions of identity, in the form of ‘Dutchness’ as well as contemporary Wampanoag peoples.  Imagery consists of a Pennsylvania Dutch quilt designed by the Amish yet composed from the Dutch and American flags. Dial Dutchness is an installation throughout the museum incorporating Leiden telephone book pages and eight multi-coloured PTT T-65 telephones with audio tracks from locals as well as Americans with Dutch last names. These ‘vox populi’ voices are contrasted in Pillars of Orange-expert opinions presented as literary silk-screened excerpts from literature, music and academic texts as if for an imaginary book on ‘Dutchness’, contrasted by real books from the secret Pilgrim Press. In the chapel of the museum the installation Wampanoag uses the existent paintings and objects as a staging for two drawings and a single channel video projection where the Wampanoag do not re-enact but rather answer specific questions regarding 17th century conventions, oral histories and the contemporary usage of wampum.

The museum has also kindly offered me a studio during the exhibition as an impromptu call centre in which to continue my Dial Dutchness installation as well as work on my forthcoming online platform Beaver, Wampum, Hoes. Please let me know if you plan on coming to visit or if I should call you instead.

For those Dutch readers the Holland Mania website.

November 19, 2007 at the Van Abbemuseum

Part of the caucus programme of Be(com)ing Dutch

Guest speakers: Sebastian Lopez (Director Iniva London) Shaheen Merali (Head of Art, Film, New Media, exhibitions at Haus der Kulturen der Welt ) Diana Franssen (Head librarian, Van Abbemuseum) Renée Ridgway (former Board member, Gate Foundation, artist, curator)

This workshop which addressed the acquisition of the Gate Foundation within the Van Abbe Museum and its present state and use value by exploring the cultural significance of its history, its accomplishment and ambition of its collection. Taking the Gate as a case study, as an ‘interpretative field of material’, we further contextualised this within the framework of alternative ‘autonomous insitutions’ (Iniva, Haus der Kulturen der Welt) whose mission is to reinstate internationalism, world culture, while working towards inclusion.

Part of the workshop was devoted to attempting to unpack some of the terminology associated with ‘cultural diversity’ used in policymaking over the years within the cultural sector, to question the autonomy of these institutions in relationship to areas of ‘positive discrimination’ as well as the ‘top down’ financing that supports such cultural initiatives. These questions were conceived together with Sarat Maharaj and are being further discussed and disseminated via a wiki. More soon.

A Short History of Dutch Video Art

224 pages, 340 illustrations, English/Spanish
design: Sander Boon
publisher: episode Rotterdam
ISBN: 9059730313
Price: € 27,50

This is the last publication of the Gate Foundation.

The publication catalogues the exhibition A Short History of Dutch Video Art, which was curated by Sebastian Lopez and organized by the Gate Foundation. With its 224 pages, this bilingual (English and Spanish) publication has already been shown in 7 museums around the world. It contains 340 colour illustrations and descriptions of the works as well as comprehensive videographies, thereby providing the most complete overview of the artist’s achievements. The publication also includes an essay by Sebastian Lopez, reflecting on Dutch artistic and cultural dynamics around the new medium of video introduced in the 1970s.