R.S.O.L.
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Room for the Study Of Loneliness : space for contemporary art in Overijssel, the Netherlands
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constructs of dwelling
20.05. - 17.06. 2023
with work by:
Jorieke Rottier info / Ellen Yiu info / Jue Yang info / Lee Eun Young info / Cecile Reijnders info / Wapke Feenstra info and with drawings by amongst others:
Wanda Schaap, Carel Lanters, Anna Rudolf, Alida Kruse and Anna Bakker done in the plein-air tekenklas of Wapke Feenstra |
introduction by Inez Piso, artistic director Hotel Maria Kapel info
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Man becomes human because he 'dwells' on earth, says Martin Heidegger in his essay "Building Dwelling Thinking" (Sun, Nijmegen, 1991, p. 48). The word dwelling derives from the Old High German word for 'building' (buan) and that, Heidegger says, involves both 'taking care of' and building residential structures (p. 49). The dwelling ‘frees' the place in which to dwell, Heidegger reasons - in German that is: 'freien'. The dwelling or residence is a demarcated (freed) place for which care is taken, that is: kept in 'peace'. Peace is free-ness, according to Heidegger (p. 50). In this way, can man, as the 'dweller,' reside along with the other things the earth bears (p. 54). That dwelling-place, once constructed (built) spatializes the world, Heidegger says in his neological thought-language. And by this he means, that before a certain place became a dwelling, there assuredly existed things already - but it all was there in an indeterminate way. By erecting a construction somewhere, that indeterminacy suddenly becomes a particular place, a particular 'haven' (p. 57). The things that exist around that dwelling are – because of the dwelling-place - suddenly given their specific place: a space has been assigned to them, Heidegger says. The boundaries of the dwelling-place are therefore important, for these determine the dwelling, of what belongs inside it and what is outside of it - but what is outside of it also receives its place from that boundary of the dwelling-place (p. 57). Everything thus gets its 'measure,' because things exist at a certain distance from the delimited dwelling-place. There arises: 'spatium,' an intermediate space between the domicile and other things, in which people, animals and things can exist (p. 58). Importantly, Heidegger is not primarily talking about dimensions in the sense of the three spatial dimensions, but about the significance that things thus acquire in relation to each other (p. 59). In a deeper sense, it is about being 'there'. And so, we, as human beings, come to dwell 'somewhere'. It is about our relation to the bounded dwelling-place - as well as to all things around it (p. 61). Heidegger says: we are not 'just' somewhere - but we are involved in that 'place' in a specific way. Building and dwelling are thus worth questioning, Heidegger says: they are 'acknowledgable' (p. (64). Housing need, then, is not primarily a lack of 'houses,' but rather an appeal that calls upon us to 'dwell' - to start 'dwelling'.
In precisely this way, R.S.O.L. has been a dwelling-place. A dwelling for the practice of contemporary art. Not just any place, but R.S.O.L. has been a dwelling for art in a specific way. Not only is art within R.S.O.L. conceived and done in a particular way, but from R.S.O.L., art also relates in specific ways to all that is and happens around it. It would here go too far to define this definiteness entirely; much has already been said about that, that can be found. Some can be found via the web-page 'about' R.S.O.L. But what this presentation is about, is that R.S.O.L. is a place where people are involved with art in this particular way, and thus with the specific location of R.S.O.L. That place is and has been 'cared for', and now that this dwelling is going to be demolished, that care must be set free and left behind. Traces of that dwelling of art in R.S.O.L. will remain visible on this location. Traces that will slowly disappear: the garden will become overgrown, the windows will no longer be washed, the stoop is no longer swept, the furnishings will be moved et cetera. And then the demolition hammer will come.
Not for nothing does Wapke Feenstra, among others, participate in this presentation; her collective MyVillages has a Rural School of Economics, which motto is 'how we see the rural is how we want to relate to it.' It is about relating to the specific place where you are staying and being involved in that specific place by the way you understand it. That is the 'housing need' Heidegger was referring to. And so, all the work included in this presentation has to do with ways of relating to and being involved in one's home - and with the traces of care for ones dwelling and its shaping, that one leaves behind in and on that place. As well as with the place and status of art in our society today. Because it is not just R.S.O.L. that has to move, but this is the situation that many artists, in all our cities, are now facing. And not just artists.
In Jorieke Rottier's practice, the place of dwelling plays a defining role. Her work arises and is done at and from the specific place of dwelling of that moment. Rottier works attentively, observantly, caring. The work adjusts itself to and in the place of its origin and is often even inseparable from it. At the time of invitation, she was working extensively from her motherhood residency, an initiative of Lenka Clayton info. The audacity to work on works that possess no, or only a very poor sustainability fits with that. For works that pass, dissolve, wear away or scatter are, in fact, much more durable than object-like work, in which materials, energy and time were perpetuated into a product. An artifact, which then again requires materials, energy and time to be preserved, to be kept. And after all, to receive a child means to take the courage to believe in a future for that newly formed human being. In this time of climate crisis, we must also begin to transform our contemporary art practices according to the "parenthood model": they must become practices that build a world that does possess permanence, but a type of permanence that does not approach the world (nor humans) as "standing-reserves" (Martin Heidegger, The Question of Technology, Vantilt, Nijmegen, 2014, p. 18). So, Jorieke draws with chalk on walls and pavement. She also draws in the sand on the beach. She creates collections, and gives them away in parts, during the development of her work that she follows and directs. She does work that arises from the place of dwelling. They are temporary formulations, which in their enduring fluidity never solidify into a final or definitive statement. She speaks, but the formulations that emerge are always the building blocks of her next word.
Yiu Kwan Kit Ellen has a 'double' name: a Western and a Hong Kong one. This duality becomes meaningful in her work. For as a Hong Konger with a British nationality living in the Netherlands, the place of dwelling has a different gravity than that of a person living where she comes from. Many know the uprootment of going to study in another city. And perhaps even of going to study in a different cultural 'class' than that of one's origin. But all such dimensions are intensified in Yiu. One of us. One from there. But also from there - the third place... So the place of dwelling is not a given in Yiu's work. A residence or dwelling place is about building a place where you can be yourself, where you can reconcile, accept the differences between inside and outside. Making a place where you can be who you are, a world within a world - that does not fully understand your culture of being and thus can only partially appreciate it. Living somewhere is for Yiu a form of caring, of paying attention to softness, smallness, a form of self-care as well. Not for nothing does the miniature play a key role in Yiu's work. Because one can carry a small world with you on one's journey. It fits in a suitcase. I asked Yiu to use the floor plan of the building that houses R.S.O.L. for Constructs of Dwelling, instead of the diagram of a doll's house she used before. A building nominated to disappear, it must make room for housing development. Yiu used the pigment of flowers from her parents' garden in Hong Kong. She also made her hair wall with hair from all the participating artists in this exhibition. In the care, attention and time spent on it speaks the true value of our place of dwelling. Even if this is only a temporary tent on this earth before we must move on....
A possibly similar experience has Jue Yang. At R.S.O.L.'s fellow art space Daily Practice info, which has since had to make room for housing as well, Yang did fascinating and meaningful work. Work that combines care and attention with a temporary and soft materiality. Plant materials. Organic substances. Grown formulations that danced in the space of Daily Practice, which was also a dwelling place for contemporary art practice. She also wove a fantastic (family or self) portrait that I unfortunately did not get to include in Constructs of Dwelling. From Yang, I received "just" a video that incorporates all of the above dimensions. The point is that there is a transition between a previous place of dwelling and the current one. The previous place and time does not disappear, but is, even actively, present in and at the current place of dwelling. The solidification of events through material actions - however impermanent they are - plays a key role in Yang's work. They are fragile solidifications in which the past becomes present in the here and now. We absorb them and preserve in them who we were, what we cared about and spent our time on, what existed around us and how we took our place in it. To capture this in the here and now. When the solidifications dissolve, melt, wear away in the here and now, they have already grown into our present place of being on an invisible level.
Lee Eun Young's work possesses great eloquence. Included in Constructs of Dwelling are works from three series. The images from The Offering consist of fruiting bodies of fungi (turkeytails, mushrooms), candle wax and dried flowers on mostly Catholic home saints. St. Anthony was a Portuguese Franciscan who was a traveling preacher. At the end of his life, he stayed at Count Tiso VI's estate in Camposampiero, in a treehouse. This count has told that he noticed light shining in the hut one night and when he had gone to look, he saw the child Jesus sitting on Anthony's arm. Entirely familiar and at ease. This image became the iconographic representation of Anthony. The work Lee made of such a domestic statue of Anthony is fragile. The impermanence of the home saint is reinforced by the candle wax, dried flowers and a turkeytail fungus. Placing such an image of a patron saint in your home is a lost custom. The significance of such images has shifted. I suspect Eun Young found it at a flea market, because children often have not adopted this custom from their parents. The saint statues are often taken to a thrift store when clearing out deceased parents' homes. Some use them today as vintage decorative objects, but few still buy them to seek protection and help from the saint that is depicted, which purpose they once served. Lee's sculpture has thus become a trace of a relinquished dwelling place and a lost custom.
In Constructs of Dwelling, I combined Eun Young's sculpture with a series of Inner Images by Cecile Reijnders. Actually, the image, a rectangular line containing a dot of the same color on a rectangular support that is often painted, is a dream image of Reijnders. I gather she dreams it quite literally in that way. As a series, that self-repeating image takes on a symbolic significance, as if it were a pictogram referring to a defined meaning. And the inner image does just that: it defines a rectangle. And within it is a dot. Like a place of dwelling that defines inner space versus outer space. And the dot is inside. When this inner image of Reijnders is read not as a specific and unexplained dream of herself, but as an autonomous image that says something about the world and about being in the world, insights arise about the role of demarcation, judgment, furnishing, dwelling, et cetera - all of which complement what is explored in this presentation.
From Lee's poignant series Dancing Souls, two photographs of Korean women are included in the presentation. Lee manipulated the photographs with fire. Fire has a rich semantics, but here its application lingers with burning. Burning, of itself, also has a wide space of meaning. It can be violent, used to keep people in line or force confessions (torture). And it also has the connoation of self-incineration, where the violence is internalized and used against oneself. But burning also has the meaning of cleansing. Of, for example, burning one's bridges behind you. You can burn memories of a past, wanting to rid oneself of that past. Or at least of the burden of it. Letting go. Because Lee is female and from South Korea, the poignancy becomes even greater. These could be family portraits. Through photographs, we take our loved ones with us and give them a place in our homes. As a result, they stay with us even when they are not here or are no longer there.
Finally, Lee's sculpture Evolving Intelligence is included in the presentation. It is a sculpture without a fixed form, consisting of endless intersecting copper-plated wires, always angling at set distances. The color is ton-sur-ton with the frantic color of R.S.O.L.'s floor and therefore it partially merges into the space. The sculpture delineates in a flexible way, it is adaptable but remains itself.
Often, the gender roles of mother and wife were imposed on women. On the one hand, this was a highly valued role (for those who had learned to see its meaning), but on the other hand, it was primarily an un- and under-valued role - that particularly trapped, restricted and even forbade. It was a role that was about making a home and about caring for one's place of dwelling and ofspring. In the status and market oriented art world (fortunately, very different art worlds do exist), women artists still are severely undervalued, and not just in a financial sense (because values, of course, are always related). Whereas, in my view, what have mostly been called feminine qualities actually belong to the core of contemporary and autonomous artisthood. These are ethical qualities and dimensions, and so I see contemporary art practice as primarily an ethical practice, revolving around developing high values, knowledge and skills. I mentioned my fellow art space Daily Practice earlier, and then I am talking about Suzanne Weenink, and she said this about caring for the art space: "It starts as just sweeping the floor, but your attitude changes over time. At first the hairs on the floor are just hairs, but then those hairs become people and a dead fly becomes a person. You begin to imagine the journey these things have taken in this space." (Kunstlicht 4, VU Amsterdam, 2022, p. 59) This concern for the space where art dwells indicates what matters in art. The ethical attitude of wanting to be a good artist does not require prestige, money or a large audience. If it was masculine to pursue such success, then it could be feminine to care about your practice, and take care of it. So, I recognize my myself mostly in the latter. And I also believe, that the former, the commercial and globalized art world of production of, and trade in art objects, is no longer sustainable. For this earth, that is the place of dwelling for all of us: humans, animals, plants and things, in the great cosmos that receives its measure from this.
TK 31-05-2023
In precisely this way, R.S.O.L. has been a dwelling-place. A dwelling for the practice of contemporary art. Not just any place, but R.S.O.L. has been a dwelling for art in a specific way. Not only is art within R.S.O.L. conceived and done in a particular way, but from R.S.O.L., art also relates in specific ways to all that is and happens around it. It would here go too far to define this definiteness entirely; much has already been said about that, that can be found. Some can be found via the web-page 'about' R.S.O.L. But what this presentation is about, is that R.S.O.L. is a place where people are involved with art in this particular way, and thus with the specific location of R.S.O.L. That place is and has been 'cared for', and now that this dwelling is going to be demolished, that care must be set free and left behind. Traces of that dwelling of art in R.S.O.L. will remain visible on this location. Traces that will slowly disappear: the garden will become overgrown, the windows will no longer be washed, the stoop is no longer swept, the furnishings will be moved et cetera. And then the demolition hammer will come.
Not for nothing does Wapke Feenstra, among others, participate in this presentation; her collective MyVillages has a Rural School of Economics, which motto is 'how we see the rural is how we want to relate to it.' It is about relating to the specific place where you are staying and being involved in that specific place by the way you understand it. That is the 'housing need' Heidegger was referring to. And so, all the work included in this presentation has to do with ways of relating to and being involved in one's home - and with the traces of care for ones dwelling and its shaping, that one leaves behind in and on that place. As well as with the place and status of art in our society today. Because it is not just R.S.O.L. that has to move, but this is the situation that many artists, in all our cities, are now facing. And not just artists.
In Jorieke Rottier's practice, the place of dwelling plays a defining role. Her work arises and is done at and from the specific place of dwelling of that moment. Rottier works attentively, observantly, caring. The work adjusts itself to and in the place of its origin and is often even inseparable from it. At the time of invitation, she was working extensively from her motherhood residency, an initiative of Lenka Clayton info. The audacity to work on works that possess no, or only a very poor sustainability fits with that. For works that pass, dissolve, wear away or scatter are, in fact, much more durable than object-like work, in which materials, energy and time were perpetuated into a product. An artifact, which then again requires materials, energy and time to be preserved, to be kept. And after all, to receive a child means to take the courage to believe in a future for that newly formed human being. In this time of climate crisis, we must also begin to transform our contemporary art practices according to the "parenthood model": they must become practices that build a world that does possess permanence, but a type of permanence that does not approach the world (nor humans) as "standing-reserves" (Martin Heidegger, The Question of Technology, Vantilt, Nijmegen, 2014, p. 18). So, Jorieke draws with chalk on walls and pavement. She also draws in the sand on the beach. She creates collections, and gives them away in parts, during the development of her work that she follows and directs. She does work that arises from the place of dwelling. They are temporary formulations, which in their enduring fluidity never solidify into a final or definitive statement. She speaks, but the formulations that emerge are always the building blocks of her next word.
Yiu Kwan Kit Ellen has a 'double' name: a Western and a Hong Kong one. This duality becomes meaningful in her work. For as a Hong Konger with a British nationality living in the Netherlands, the place of dwelling has a different gravity than that of a person living where she comes from. Many know the uprootment of going to study in another city. And perhaps even of going to study in a different cultural 'class' than that of one's origin. But all such dimensions are intensified in Yiu. One of us. One from there. But also from there - the third place... So the place of dwelling is not a given in Yiu's work. A residence or dwelling place is about building a place where you can be yourself, where you can reconcile, accept the differences between inside and outside. Making a place where you can be who you are, a world within a world - that does not fully understand your culture of being and thus can only partially appreciate it. Living somewhere is for Yiu a form of caring, of paying attention to softness, smallness, a form of self-care as well. Not for nothing does the miniature play a key role in Yiu's work. Because one can carry a small world with you on one's journey. It fits in a suitcase. I asked Yiu to use the floor plan of the building that houses R.S.O.L. for Constructs of Dwelling, instead of the diagram of a doll's house she used before. A building nominated to disappear, it must make room for housing development. Yiu used the pigment of flowers from her parents' garden in Hong Kong. She also made her hair wall with hair from all the participating artists in this exhibition. In the care, attention and time spent on it speaks the true value of our place of dwelling. Even if this is only a temporary tent on this earth before we must move on....
A possibly similar experience has Jue Yang. At R.S.O.L.'s fellow art space Daily Practice info, which has since had to make room for housing as well, Yang did fascinating and meaningful work. Work that combines care and attention with a temporary and soft materiality. Plant materials. Organic substances. Grown formulations that danced in the space of Daily Practice, which was also a dwelling place for contemporary art practice. She also wove a fantastic (family or self) portrait that I unfortunately did not get to include in Constructs of Dwelling. From Yang, I received "just" a video that incorporates all of the above dimensions. The point is that there is a transition between a previous place of dwelling and the current one. The previous place and time does not disappear, but is, even actively, present in and at the current place of dwelling. The solidification of events through material actions - however impermanent they are - plays a key role in Yang's work. They are fragile solidifications in which the past becomes present in the here and now. We absorb them and preserve in them who we were, what we cared about and spent our time on, what existed around us and how we took our place in it. To capture this in the here and now. When the solidifications dissolve, melt, wear away in the here and now, they have already grown into our present place of being on an invisible level.
Lee Eun Young's work possesses great eloquence. Included in Constructs of Dwelling are works from three series. The images from The Offering consist of fruiting bodies of fungi (turkeytails, mushrooms), candle wax and dried flowers on mostly Catholic home saints. St. Anthony was a Portuguese Franciscan who was a traveling preacher. At the end of his life, he stayed at Count Tiso VI's estate in Camposampiero, in a treehouse. This count has told that he noticed light shining in the hut one night and when he had gone to look, he saw the child Jesus sitting on Anthony's arm. Entirely familiar and at ease. This image became the iconographic representation of Anthony. The work Lee made of such a domestic statue of Anthony is fragile. The impermanence of the home saint is reinforced by the candle wax, dried flowers and a turkeytail fungus. Placing such an image of a patron saint in your home is a lost custom. The significance of such images has shifted. I suspect Eun Young found it at a flea market, because children often have not adopted this custom from their parents. The saint statues are often taken to a thrift store when clearing out deceased parents' homes. Some use them today as vintage decorative objects, but few still buy them to seek protection and help from the saint that is depicted, which purpose they once served. Lee's sculpture has thus become a trace of a relinquished dwelling place and a lost custom.
In Constructs of Dwelling, I combined Eun Young's sculpture with a series of Inner Images by Cecile Reijnders. Actually, the image, a rectangular line containing a dot of the same color on a rectangular support that is often painted, is a dream image of Reijnders. I gather she dreams it quite literally in that way. As a series, that self-repeating image takes on a symbolic significance, as if it were a pictogram referring to a defined meaning. And the inner image does just that: it defines a rectangle. And within it is a dot. Like a place of dwelling that defines inner space versus outer space. And the dot is inside. When this inner image of Reijnders is read not as a specific and unexplained dream of herself, but as an autonomous image that says something about the world and about being in the world, insights arise about the role of demarcation, judgment, furnishing, dwelling, et cetera - all of which complement what is explored in this presentation.
From Lee's poignant series Dancing Souls, two photographs of Korean women are included in the presentation. Lee manipulated the photographs with fire. Fire has a rich semantics, but here its application lingers with burning. Burning, of itself, also has a wide space of meaning. It can be violent, used to keep people in line or force confessions (torture). And it also has the connoation of self-incineration, where the violence is internalized and used against oneself. But burning also has the meaning of cleansing. Of, for example, burning one's bridges behind you. You can burn memories of a past, wanting to rid oneself of that past. Or at least of the burden of it. Letting go. Because Lee is female and from South Korea, the poignancy becomes even greater. These could be family portraits. Through photographs, we take our loved ones with us and give them a place in our homes. As a result, they stay with us even when they are not here or are no longer there.
Finally, Lee's sculpture Evolving Intelligence is included in the presentation. It is a sculpture without a fixed form, consisting of endless intersecting copper-plated wires, always angling at set distances. The color is ton-sur-ton with the frantic color of R.S.O.L.'s floor and therefore it partially merges into the space. The sculpture delineates in a flexible way, it is adaptable but remains itself.
Often, the gender roles of mother and wife were imposed on women. On the one hand, this was a highly valued role (for those who had learned to see its meaning), but on the other hand, it was primarily an un- and under-valued role - that particularly trapped, restricted and even forbade. It was a role that was about making a home and about caring for one's place of dwelling and ofspring. In the status and market oriented art world (fortunately, very different art worlds do exist), women artists still are severely undervalued, and not just in a financial sense (because values, of course, are always related). Whereas, in my view, what have mostly been called feminine qualities actually belong to the core of contemporary and autonomous artisthood. These are ethical qualities and dimensions, and so I see contemporary art practice as primarily an ethical practice, revolving around developing high values, knowledge and skills. I mentioned my fellow art space Daily Practice earlier, and then I am talking about Suzanne Weenink, and she said this about caring for the art space: "It starts as just sweeping the floor, but your attitude changes over time. At first the hairs on the floor are just hairs, but then those hairs become people and a dead fly becomes a person. You begin to imagine the journey these things have taken in this space." (Kunstlicht 4, VU Amsterdam, 2022, p. 59) This concern for the space where art dwells indicates what matters in art. The ethical attitude of wanting to be a good artist does not require prestige, money or a large audience. If it was masculine to pursue such success, then it could be feminine to care about your practice, and take care of it. So, I recognize my myself mostly in the latter. And I also believe, that the former, the commercial and globalized art world of production of, and trade in art objects, is no longer sustainable. For this earth, that is the place of dwelling for all of us: humans, animals, plants and things, in the great cosmos that receives its measure from this.
TK 31-05-2023
PS
During the build-up, Ellen Yiu requested me to further arrange the layout of her wall drawing of the floor plan of the Panta Rhei building, as she was short of time to finish it herself. Ellen herself would have placed some parts differently, of course, but because I had to make all the hanging systems for placing the pieces myself for her, and the other artists also had to build-up - and many other things had to be organised, there was no time left for rehanging before the opening. In the end, Ellen felt that her artistic vision was compromised in that work as a result. In mixing the work of different artists into a collective practice, a formative principle in this presentation and for R.S.O.L., she also ended up feeling uneasy. In her opinion, this meant her work had been appropriated too much after all. Therefore, from 8 June onwards, her wall drawing has been emptied, which is surprisingly fitting in this presentation, which is after all about building and caring for dwelling places and their meaning when they are abandoned. After all, with the decision to demolish the Panta Rhei building, the dwelling of art practice that is R.S.O.L. will also be left empty and the traces of care and devotion will eventually disappear. In a few other places too, Yiu's work has disappeared in presentation from that date on and earlier.
During the build-up, Ellen Yiu requested me to further arrange the layout of her wall drawing of the floor plan of the Panta Rhei building, as she was short of time to finish it herself. Ellen herself would have placed some parts differently, of course, but because I had to make all the hanging systems for placing the pieces myself for her, and the other artists also had to build-up - and many other things had to be organised, there was no time left for rehanging before the opening. In the end, Ellen felt that her artistic vision was compromised in that work as a result. In mixing the work of different artists into a collective practice, a formative principle in this presentation and for R.S.O.L., she also ended up feeling uneasy. In her opinion, this meant her work had been appropriated too much after all. Therefore, from 8 June onwards, her wall drawing has been emptied, which is surprisingly fitting in this presentation, which is after all about building and caring for dwelling places and their meaning when they are abandoned. After all, with the decision to demolish the Panta Rhei building, the dwelling of art practice that is R.S.O.L. will also be left empty and the traces of care and devotion will eventually disappear. In a few other places too, Yiu's work has disappeared in presentation from that date on and earlier.
opening:
Join artist Wapke Feenstra's drawing class at R.S.O.L.
and add your own work to the exhibition
On Saturday, May 20, a plein air drawing class was held at R.S.O.L. Deventer, led by Wapke Feenstra (MyVillages, Boerenzij, Brutus Award, Documenta 15). The Panta Rhei building, which houses R.S.O.L., was captured. The drawings were added to the exhibition: 'Constructs of Dwelling' and will be presented to the Deventer city archives afterwards. So that memories will be kept once the building is demolished for housing development.
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In 2012, Feenstra did her project The Hands of the Emperor info in Tuindorp/Keizerslanden. She was in search of "the silent economy" of this neighborhood in Deventer. People with two right hands, ten green fingers, handy talents or with all kinds of household know-how were approached - together with the professional and amateur artists from the neighbourhood. The founder of R.S.O.L., Ton Kruse, also participated info. It was just at the time he had to move from Nieuw Rollecate (Tesschenmacherstraat) to the Panta Rhei building at the Van Hetenstraat. With a closing manifestation, Feenstra then concluded her project there (see picture on the right) info.
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Mixing professional artists with amateurs and emphasising collaboration is typical of Feenstra's approach. Because of her innovative and visionary working methods, in which collaboration is more important than estsablishing one's "name" and the process is more important than a result, Feenstra was invited to the famous Documenta art festival in Kassel (DE). It was for the much-discussed Documenta 15 info by curatorial team Ruangruppa in 2022, where they expressly introduced lumbung: collectivism.
In R.S.O.L. Deventer, art as a practice rather than a product is also the focus. Here too, it is not the "name" that artists have or have not established that matters, but rather the work they do in R.S.O.L. as a collective project. R.S.O.L. stands for: Room for the Study Of Loneliness and so addresses a silent practice as well: the artist who works unseen, on the edges of society, on things that have an entirely different value and significance than an economic one. An artist's professionalism is defined in R.S.O.L. not by the amount of financial compensation she/he/they receive, but by the substantive significance of their work to the practice of art itself.
It is not for nothing that Feenstra is returning to "the scene" of her 2012 Hands of the Emperor project just now, because R.S.O.L. needs to move again. The municipality wants to demolish the Panta Rheige building for housing. Dozens of artists and creative professions will lose their workplaces, and the neighborhood will once again have to say goodbye to a beloved and familiar place. In previous urban renewal projects, many familiar places in Tuindorp/Keizerslanden already disappeared.
That's why on May 20, the plein-air drawing class took place, led by Wapke Feenstra info. We drew the building in which R.S.O.L. is housed, preserving the neighborhood's memories of this special place.
In R.S.O.L. Deventer, art as a practice rather than a product is also the focus. Here too, it is not the "name" that artists have or have not established that matters, but rather the work they do in R.S.O.L. as a collective project. R.S.O.L. stands for: Room for the Study Of Loneliness and so addresses a silent practice as well: the artist who works unseen, on the edges of society, on things that have an entirely different value and significance than an economic one. An artist's professionalism is defined in R.S.O.L. not by the amount of financial compensation she/he/they receive, but by the substantive significance of their work to the practice of art itself.
It is not for nothing that Feenstra is returning to "the scene" of her 2012 Hands of the Emperor project just now, because R.S.O.L. needs to move again. The municipality wants to demolish the Panta Rheige building for housing. Dozens of artists and creative professions will lose their workplaces, and the neighborhood will once again have to say goodbye to a beloved and familiar place. In previous urban renewal projects, many familiar places in Tuindorp/Keizerslanden already disappeared.
That's why on May 20, the plein-air drawing class took place, led by Wapke Feenstra info. We drew the building in which R.S.O.L. is housed, preserving the neighborhood's memories of this special place.
At noon, Martin La Roche would show a room from his Musée Légitime. With the Musée, La Roche constructs an invisible architecture of networks of stories, histories and descriptions around the collection. Due to illness, he himself was absent, but we were able to visit some of the works from the Musée by ourself. Works by Ken Montgomery and Carolyn Strauss.
The exhibition Constructs of Dwelling is on view until June 17 at R.S.O.L.
Sign up was possible until 19.05.2023
Sign up was possible until 19.05.2023
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Work from current and previous presentations is available for purchase.
Current and upcoming presentations can be found on this page. View work from previous presentations here
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Current and upcoming presentations can be found on this page. View work from previous presentations here
Questions and prices: contact
A payment arrangement is possible for prices above € 500. No additional costs will be charged for this.