| Jeanne van Heeswijk (Wapke Feenstra) |
| NEsTWORK, Manifesta 1, Rotterdam 1996 |
| In May 1995 the Manifesta 1 organisation put there tents up
in Rotterdam. They invited a number of artists (among others also Edwin
Jannsen, Karin Arink and me) to take part in the panel discussion during
their first open house meeting, in which they presented a daunting
challenge for artists and curators: the organisation of an international
platform with the objective of creating new means of communication in visual arts. Manifesta's ideas include notions such as a new European identity, migration, translation, communication, community, politics and more. Faced with this ever-increasing flow of concepts, I wondered how all of this was going to take place and what role would be reserved for the artists' community of Rotterdam. Rotterdam has its own history of art events. It is known as a city with an enormous number of festivals such as Poetry International, R' festivals and Hoboken. In addition to this it is open to every other festival that would like to put its tent in the Museumpark. Rotterdam has one temporary event after another without having a clear idea as how to place this in to the daily life of the city. Was Manifesta 1 to become another travelling art-circus, another quickie? Apart from the Museumpark, our festival arena, Rotterdam has an intensive network of artists, artists' groups and studio-buildings. Artists have created their own basis in this city by means of exhibitions, exchanges, discussions and collaborative efforts in creating and maintaining spaces to work and think. How should this existing infrastructure relate to Manifesta 1? Would it be possible to give a meaning to the idea of being the first city to host Manifesta beyond merely satisfying the basic need for space and, of course, money? Big events like this put a tremendous claim on the energy and funds of a city. Certain questions arose in my mind: What is the position of the local host when receiving an international platform? What is the meaning of flying around the world if you never connect with anyone else besides other members of the art family? How can the international group of artists participating in Manifesta be connected with their Rotterdam colleagues? And how can the city be more than just a few square meters around the Museumpark? After leaving the open house meeting it seemed logical to call another meeting to discuss the position of being a local host and the possibility of contributing collectively. I was motivated by the idea that merely opening a Manifesta office in Rotterdam is not enough to plan the involved ideas. Real hosting can only be done by the people of Rotterdam itself. Motivated by this thought, I asked for an official 'artist place' in Manifesta 1 which I was also given by the curators. I use the expression 'artist place' because neither a side programme made by a curator nor the binary position of the local community versus Manifesta 1 would work. The position I wanted to investigate is that of deconstruction. Deconstruction can only happen from the inside, both belonging to here and there and constantly moving back and forth, fostering the connection between the local and the international. Letting the home team play, so to speak. Internationalism is a popular concept however, it is empty unless it takes the local community on board. I invited people who work within different areas in the field of culture in Rotterdam. I invited people from the areas of visual arts, philosophy, criticism, music, dance and even administration. I choose them on the basis of their affinity and because they all showed a strong engagement with the city and the ideas involved in Manifesta 1. Furthermore, they needed to be willing to work collaboratively in a non-hierarchical, self-structuring group, in the process of putting the ideas 'local' and 'place' into question during the eight months that followed to the opening of Manifesta 1; a process in which there would be no hierarchy which would privilege artwork, text, place or even the generation of money and creation of a publicity framework. The intention was not to fully represent the city of Rotterdam -an impossible task- but, by interweaving the different narratives and connections of the people involved, to make it present. This is how NEsTWORK was born. NEsTWORK (Karin Arink, Wapke Feenstra, Edwin Janssen, Menna Laura Meijer, Kamiel Verschuren, Ruud Welten and myself) is a group which developed its own concepts that were shaped by concrete, daily practices of giving information, encouraging reflection, unravelling strategies and offering hospitality. We chose to house NEsTWORK at four different locations of which the normal aims and activities are relevant to our projects. This meant we activated and redefined the Documentation and Information Centre of the Rotterdam Centre for the Arts, the Auditorium and Café Zaal De Unie, Boijmans Van Beuningen and the artists' initiative B.a.d., inserting our ideas into the existing structures in order to begin a dialogue. In these venues (all except Boijmans were added to the list of Manifesta 1 locations) we were a temporary, yet familiar guest confronting both the host and the visitors with our ideas, both in theory and practice. Supplying information is an essential aspect of the contemporary art experience. We think the actual work of art does not exist and that we are a part of a network that attaches value and meaning to contemporary art. This means that the artist in a studio is as important as the curator, the person who grants the funding, the one who gives out information or passes quality judgements. The documentation and Information Centre of the Centre for the Arts has been reorganised and staffed daily by us. It served as the office for the co-ordination of all NEsTWORK activities, and information on art in Rotterdam could be obtained at this centre. The already extensive archive, normally made up of works by individual CBK artists, was expanded with information on artists' run spaces and special projects as well as activities made by Rotterdam artists and projects created in relation to Manifesta 1. To complete the information given on all Rotterdam activities, we created a special city plan showing all cultural activity sites in Rotterdam. We did this knowing that Manifesta 1 would only provide a map of the area around the Museumpark. Exhibitions normally make maps showing the centre of cultural activities, leaving out the periphery which constitutes the actual artistic life in a city. For NEsTWORK reflection includes discussion, thinking and confrontation with new ideas. We find the reflection to be as important as the image and we stress the necessity for an ongoing dialogue on the heteronomy of culture. We prefer the word heteronomy to heterogeneity because it counter balances the term autonomy, and acts as a critique to the idea of artists as independent and self determining. We are interested in constantly putting things in to question and not in providing definite answers. In the theatre space and cafe of Zaal de Unie we organised an intensive programme of events, offering lectures, films, meetings, discussions and refreshments creating the possibility of publicly questioning the idea of place. The open manifesto PORTABLE ART LOCAL ART serves as a starting point for discussion and reactions to the meaning of 'local' and 'image'. The terms portable art and local art were used to coin two notions of art that seem to rule each other out. At the prestigious museum Boijmans Van Beuningen NEsTWORK asked questions on art and its codes. How far can hospitality go if the guest and host do not understand each others' rules or, more importantly, do not value each others' rules? On the opening day of Manifesta 1 the concert REPRESENTING THE ROTTERDAM DOCKS was organised by NEsTWORK in collaboration with the Rotterdam Hip Hop scene. The most important question underlying this concert was how far one subculture - art and the institutions representing it - can or would go in providing space for another subculture -Hip Hop- and by that accept a strange element into its existing structure by temporarily abandoning its prevailing codes and rules to open up to the other; in this case the other inclusive of the inextricable connotations associated with Hip Hop, such as aggression (versus serenity), black (versus white) and street (versus salon). To open space for others and to be hospitable has not got so much to do with space for the physical presence of the other, but is related to accepting the difference of the other. And it is this feeling of confrontation that makes us create borders, codes and rules as a way to secure and define. To be a guest is not easy. Under the title NEsTWORK CREATES A SPACE we took the role of being a host ourselves. We offered space and funding given to us by Manifesta 1 to other artists and artists' initiatives. This included projects such as: distributing plastic carrier bags with printed texts; every day 40.0000 people searched for fresh content in contemporary art made by Omission; a photowall documenting all our activities, by Noelle Cuppens; and a video installation coinciding with the Hip-Hop concert, by Geert Mul. During the installation and duration of Manifesta 1 seventeen of its participating artists were offered hospitality by the artists' initiative B.a.d and NEsTWORK. The project entitled MY HOUSE: YOUR HOME offered the visiting artists the opportunity to live and work in and around the building of the B.a.d artists' initiative. To this end each B.a.d artist constructed a special home for his guest. The shape of the homes and their function reflected the maker's thoughts on hospitality and art. Apart from this B.a.d. offered dinners, breakfasts and events where social exchanges generated an artistic dialogue. They wanted to cause and visualise encounters between artists - both from abroad and those working in Rotterdam - in a very direct and personal way. This is to give an identity and significance to the period of stay of the Manifesta 1 artists in Rotterdam. By connecting different working and living conditions the city of Rotterdam became a true host rather than a short port of call. As a project NEsTWORK was successful, despite the fact that the intention of Manifesta 1 to be a platform for new means of communication were --in my view -- only accomplished during the ten days for construction and hanging, and the opening days. The big tent in the Museumpark that served as a meeting point for all the artists and the public involved in Manifesta 1 was taken down immediately after the successful opening and its events. After that every one left for other destinations, and NEsTWORK was left alone to carry on with the process. At the Documentation Information Centre of CBK where NEsTWORK gave all artists and side projects the possibility to publicise themselves, every day artists came by to renew their documentation in the archive or to bring additional information. They often spent time with us drinking coffee and discussing how they perceived Manifesta 1 and the work of the involved artists. NEsTWORK functioned as a message-board. At Zaal and Café De Unie the discussion programme was well attended, and NEsTWORK succeed in bringing different groups in the city together in order to exchange ideas. In these ways NEsTWORK created a new platform for communication in Rotterdam and even in The Netherlands. But what NEsTWORK also aimed at was to foster connections between the local and the international, however this was hardly the case. We attempted this, but given the situation it was nearly impossible. It would have been more interesting and challenging if the artists, curators and institutions of Manifesta 1 had been also involved in the programme. Perhaps than it would have been possible to extend the administrative network we shared with Manifesta to a level of content. Looking back today, in June 2000, Rotterdam is frantically preparing itself for being the Cultural Capital in 2001. What has changed is that due to the mirror NEsTWORK offered the city way back in 1996, the energy artists and artists' initiatives still constantly generate is a force no longer neglected by the city's official institutions. What we know now is that the occasional landing of biennials or possibilities, such as becoming the Cultural Capital of Europe, neither generate nor take energy. It will always stay the task of anybody living and working in a city to take care of its own receptive ground for cultural production. NEsTWORK delivered a blueprint for this. |
Parts of this text were published in 'A NEsTWORK REPORT FROM MANIFESTA 1', Art & Design 'Curating the contemporary art museum and beyond', February issue 1997 and in 'A Blueprint for NEsTWORKING, NEsTWORK activities during Manifesta 1', Rotterdam, June 1998 |