With 'No You Won't Be Naming No Buildings After Me', guest curator Vincent van Velsen investigated how memories live on. The title of the exhibition was taken from the song 'AD 2000' by singer Erykah Badu, which she wrote in memory of 23-year-old Amadou Diallo, who was killed by police violence.
“No you won't name no buildings after me
To go down dilapidated
No you won't be naming no buildings after me
My name will be misstated, surely"
- Erykah Badu
Monuments, street names and national holidays are the official forms to commemorate a person or event. The public space functions as a physical public archive. But remembrance and appreciation also manifest themselves in other ways – especially when it concerns people and histories that are not automatically represented in the public domain.
No You Won't Be Naming No Buildings After Me questioned our physical forms of remembering, and drew attention to other ways of passing on memories, or of rescuing events from oblivion or denial.
The artists involved traced how movement, dance, music, language, textiles, visual documents and material traces can be intimate witnesses to histories of vulnerability, but also of resilience. The body plays a central role in this — as a carrier of memories and as a militant beacon of continuing histories.
live events
Part of the exhibition was a series of live events, with performances by Alexis Blake and Quinsy Gario & Glenda Martinus, music events with Marcel van den Berg en Morabeza Records, and presentations by Uriel Orlow and Pieter Paul Pothoven.
Stories on Vers Beton
Parallel to the exhibition, a series of interviews appeared on Fresh ConcreteIn it, Rotterdammers took readers to places in the city that are connected to personal memories and events that should not be forgotten.
Artists in the exhibition
Alex Blake worked with breakdance to tap into the history of empowerment that is connected to hip-hop culture. With an installation and performance, she wanted to test how 'breaking' can be a gesture to claim your freedom. She designed a dance floor and elements of glass, and invited a percussionist, a singer and a group of B-girls for public rehearsals and two performances around vulnerability and strength: SKETCH ACT ONE en ACT TWO.
Artist and contemporary troubadour Bart Scholten sang about forgotten Dutch traditions in a new sound artwork. Consuming a body made of bread turned out to play a central, ever-changing role in this.
Kader Attia's film 'Reflecting Memory' connects phantom pain and social trauma. Attia wants to repair history by making visible the wounds left by practices and patterns of violence.
Aimée Zito Lema investigated together with the Portuguese Theatre of the Oppressed Group how memories are transmitted from generation to generation through theatre techniques. Can we become carriers of the memories of others?
Kristina Benjocki observes how, as distance increases, sometimes conflicting memories and points of view on history arise. In a new textile work, she continued the weaving tradition of three generations of women from her own family. Each of them managed to survive dramatic histories.
The changing perception of history was also the subject of a film by Yoeri GuépinThe ruins of the last imperial palace in China have retroactively been the subject of official and unofficial reinterpretation and appropriation by various ideological groups.
Gert Jan Kocken meticulously researches visual sources of loaded histories. He made a new version of his map of Rotterdam. For this he assembled various maps that were made by the parties involved in the Second World War into a complex image of the city in wartime.
Aslan Gaisumov lets found objects bear witness to Chechnya's turbulent history. His installation of Soviet-era street signs testified to a struggle that continues to this day.
Names also played a role in Uriel Orlow's 'What Plants Were Called before They Were Given a Name'. This sound installation functions as an oral lexicon of indigenous plant names, and recalls the indigenous knowledge that was erased by European scientific and colonial expeditions.
Powerful language plays a leading role in the paintings of Marcel van den Berg. He draws his inspiration from hip-hop, funk, techno, jazz and reggae — music genres that give voice to inequality, injustice and racism, but also to protest and pride.
Pieter Paul Pothoven showed part of his long-term research into the motives behind the activism of RARA (Revolutionary Anti-Racist Action) in the 80s and 90s. In his sculptural installation, a historical façade forms the key to an alternative perspective.
Photographer Dana Lixenberg showed a selection from her famous project 'Imperial Courts'. For twenty years she created portraits of and with residents of Watts, Los Angeles. Lixemberg recorded how they – against stigmatizing media attention, segregation politics and lack of everything – try to give shape to their lives.
Starting point for the performance video of Taus Makhacheva his conversations with fishermen. They talked about survival on the Caspian Sea and their fear of disappearing at sea. The work is at the same time a critical mirror, in which the interest of the art world for marginal stories is painfully illustrated.
Want to read more? Download it here exhibition booklet.
With thanks to the Mondriaan Fund and the Stokroos Foundation.