In a city like Rotterdam, over a thousand works by famous and less famous, international and local, dead and living artists were added to its streets in half a century. Spearheaded by masterpieces such as Ossip Zadkine’s ‘The Destroyed City’ and Paul McCarthy’s ‘Santa Claus’, the collection is a feast for the imagination. But it is also a collection that gradually threatens to perish under its own weight – it squeaks, creaks, and suffers due to different effects of aging. How much is enough? Which artworks should be preserved and maintained, and why?
De-collecting
With its programmes BKOR (Art in Public Space) and SIR (Sculture International Rotterdam), CBK Rotterdam is in charge of policy plans for art in the public space of the city. BKOR takes care of the vast public collection of works by Rotterdam artists. SIR manages the city’s international collection. Less Is More, More or Less was one element of BKOR’s response to Rotterdam Municipality’s commission of a de-collection plan.
Case Studies
Six young artists presented their views on de-collecting and collecting, as well as concepts such as absence, immateriality, and planning, with specific proposals.
The Force of Freedom (Micah Princes and Roel Roscam Abbing) often make use of new technologies and social media that they cheekily apply as a means for critical reflection.
Sarah Sonsbeeck explores how humans can be present without leaving physical material traces, or actually being physically present. In a memory, a space, or a sound. She captures silence in cubes, offsets the noise from her neighbours in rent, and translates the Dutch political climate into weather conditions.
Saskia Noor van Imhoff is interested in systematically capturing and classifying our physical world. She operates almost as an archivist when compiling her installations full of photographic works, objects, and videos, in which the distinction between the final artwork and the objects is blurred.
Architects Lilith Ronner van Hooijdonk work according to the metamorphosis-method, ‘an apparently pointless transformation under the influence of impulses from other genres – literature, music, visual arts’. Spaces become performative, interiors become backdrops, and an urban plan becomes a play in three acts.
The work of Witte van Hulzen and Sander Breure is often closely related to human shortcomings, and in particular codes of conduct: the dos and don’ts of the art world. They held a surreal mirror to the art world by manning gallery stands on major art fairs with actors and presenting paintings by fictional artists.
In monumental sculptures Yasser Ballemans seeks the point where an image manifests itself as autonomously as possible. Yet Ballemans is also the co-organizer of major alternative art events such as the Kunstvlaai and projects such as Inexactly This, in which he rubs against and distorts the experience economy.
TENT also presented filmed interviews with Co Westerik, the heirs of Gerard Héman, and Lom Pennock about the loss and change of art in public space. In a SIR documentary Wouter Vanstiphout discussed the recently removed work ‘Wall Relief No 1.’ by Henry Moore, which was going to be reinstalled in its original location, but in a new building. How would this affect the meaning of this work?
Field trips
How do artists and curators anticipate the issues of collecting and de-collecting in daily practise? To understand this the audience was taken on tours of exceptional examples of public art in Rotterdam.
The artists collective Observatorium are placing orphaned sculptures on pedestals under the Kleinpolderplein flyover. This sculpture park of art from the last century helps to keep the memory of the city alive.
Publicist Ida Jager visited Rotterdam’s former Station Post Office. This building by the Kraaijvanger brothers is typical of the architecture of Rotterdam’s post war reconstruction period. The building’s integral artworks refer to ideas of progress, growth, and optimism.
In a former factory area in Rotterdam’s Vierhaven, Joep van Lieshout was about to open AVL-Mundo with the sculpture exhibition Territory.
Hans Abelman, former coordinator of the International Sculpture Collection Rotterdam, gave a guided tour of renowned international sculptures located in public space.
In 2001, the designers of 75B were commissioned to design a skate park on Rotterdam’s Westblaak. Graphic designer and former skater Marco Jongeneel argued Skatepark Westblaak had become a dated collection of objects that should be de-collected.
Artist Kamiel Verschuren saved ornamental works by the artist Gerard Héman from demolition; they once adorned the old Zuidplein Theatre and he gave them a new place in the Zuiderpark: De Schouwplaats.