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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Matthijs Vermeulen once read from Kafka, a writer he appreciated: 'You cannot write the truth. You can only live it'. That statement hit him like a bomb, and unsettled everything he thought he knew. Should he be involved in art at all? And what is the relationship between art, truth and life anyway?
R.S.O.L. is about exactly that, the place autonomous and contemporary art has in society, the relationship between art, truth and life. Apart from a substantive dimension, which focuses on the intrinsic goals of art practice - the truth of the work of art, art practice and artisthood - R.S.O.L. also has a political dimension.
The presentation ex hibition, showing Vermeulen's 'proposal', is realised through the faculty of imagination. Moreover, the presentation exists only in imagination. In relation to the upcoming relocation of R.S.O.L. (the municipality wants to demolish the building in which it is located for housing), I found this interesting, because in this way the 'physical' place can continue to exist - but at the same time, in the imagination, the real place is also in transition. After all, the imagination can adjust all the details of the real space, if so desired, according to any changed understanding and view. So it is about the: ex habere / habitare (latin) - the place where one comes from.
Vermeulen's text talks about emptiness, referring to the solitude of art practice, artisthood and the work of art in our here and now. The art space and studio as a Room for the Study Of Loneliness. Because this is their true place: on the edges of, and in the margins of our society.
Vermeulen: "I was recently talking to someone about R.S.O.L. He had also visited you, but according to him it was not a gallery, definitely not! I said, 'Yes it is! A room with white walls and paintings, carefully installed...' 'No, no.... It's like a classroom...' And those weeds along the path... No way a gallery!' Talking about status..."
But the empty space in Vermeulen's proposal is also about becoming empty of intents and intentions, and in this proposition, the emptiness moves towards openness. This is a core value for the practice in R.S.O.L., pointing to the intention of wanting to learn and understand - and also pointing to the question that a work of art asks of its viewer, according to Adorno in his Aesthetic Theory: "What the work asks of its viewer is knowledge, and knowledge that does justice to it: the work wants its truth and untruth to be understood." (Bloomsbury Academic, London, 1997, p. 19) However, this openness simultaneously refers back to solitude, in which and through which a person can become "open" to "relationship" and thus: to "meaning".
By presenting Vermeulen's text as spoken word rather than as writing, it becomes (again) elusive, fluid. Because one can't read back a spoken text, one has to listen and grasp what is being said 'at once' - in other words: grasp it. At the very moment. Once spoken, what is said immediately disappears and exists merely ephemerally, in memory.
The robot reading the text, however, is not a person. The robot is an emptiness. A machine has no intents and intentions. However, this machine can still evoke a presentation which forms a true experience in imagination. The text happens by being read aloud. The gathering and collecting of meaning by the listener contrasts with the emptiness of intents and intentions of the robot that is speaking the text. It mirrors the emptiness of the medium that the artist employs to shape the artwork through, in and with, as the place where art happens.
Vermeulen: "I understand your consideration... The main thing, of course, is to collaborate with a robot that has an affinity for emptiness."
Finally, there is also something in Vermeulen's work of: diving behind language. Something, going beyond language - although that is found and happens in language (namely the text in question). The letters of the alphabet, lying arbitrarily and mixed up in the dustpan, having lost or passed their syntax. They have become detached and even empty signs. They were captured in their flight through emptiness. There are no more words, no more sentences. The text dissolves: ssst (shush).
Vermeulen told me something more about that 'ssst': "My son Tomas once drew his sleeping brother, and wrote underneath: 'David is asleep. Ssst...' At school, my son David, then six years old, drew a skeleton lying among the flowers in a meadow. Under it he wrote: 'Deat says: I am in the worlt to enjoy life'. An explanation for the text he could not give..."
Can we really explain truth? Can we even speak of 'the' truth of an artwork? 'You cannot write the truth. You can only live it,' Kafka wrote. And this sentence struck the young Vermeulen 'like a bomb'. 'It is not about intents and intentions,' Vermeulen says in his work. The space is (almost) empty (and white and fresh). The robot reads without understanding; it is empty. In a sense, the robot is open. It does what it is given to do - without intents and intentions.
I wrote to Vermeulen: "Fantastic Matthijs. Living the truth - how does one do that? After all, an intention still... ;)"
He sent me this, from Kafka:
THE PASSENGER
I am standing on the balcony of the electric tram and am absolutely uncertain about my position in the world, in this city, in my family. I wouldn't even be able to state roughly, what claims I could legitimately put forward in one sense or another. I can't even defend standing on this balcony at all, holding on to that loop, allowing myself to be transported by this trolley, having people move aside or stand still for the trolley or remain standing in front of the shop windows. - Admittedly, no one is demanding this of me, but that has no relevance. The trolley approaches a stop, a girl stands by the treadboard, ready to disembark. She appears so clearly in front of me, as if I had groped her. She is dressed in black, the folds in her skirt hardly moving, the blouse is close-fitting and has a collar of fine white lace, the left hand she holds flat against the wall, the umbrella in her right rests on two but the top step. Her face is tanned, the nose, somewhat compressed at the sides, ends round and wide. She has a lot of brown hair and some loose hairs at her right temple. Her small ear sits close to her head, yet as I stand close, I can see the entire back of the right auricle and the shadow at the root. I then asked myself : How come she is not surprised with herself, that she is keeping her mouth shut and is not saying a thing about it?"
to ex hibition
TK 15-12-2022
R.S.O.L. is about exactly that, the place autonomous and contemporary art has in society, the relationship between art, truth and life. Apart from a substantive dimension, which focuses on the intrinsic goals of art practice - the truth of the work of art, art practice and artisthood - R.S.O.L. also has a political dimension.
The presentation ex hibition, showing Vermeulen's 'proposal', is realised through the faculty of imagination. Moreover, the presentation exists only in imagination. In relation to the upcoming relocation of R.S.O.L. (the municipality wants to demolish the building in which it is located for housing), I found this interesting, because in this way the 'physical' place can continue to exist - but at the same time, in the imagination, the real place is also in transition. After all, the imagination can adjust all the details of the real space, if so desired, according to any changed understanding and view. So it is about the: ex habere / habitare (latin) - the place where one comes from.
Vermeulen's text talks about emptiness, referring to the solitude of art practice, artisthood and the work of art in our here and now. The art space and studio as a Room for the Study Of Loneliness. Because this is their true place: on the edges of, and in the margins of our society.
Vermeulen: "I was recently talking to someone about R.S.O.L. He had also visited you, but according to him it was not a gallery, definitely not! I said, 'Yes it is! A room with white walls and paintings, carefully installed...' 'No, no.... It's like a classroom...' And those weeds along the path... No way a gallery!' Talking about status..."
But the empty space in Vermeulen's proposal is also about becoming empty of intents and intentions, and in this proposition, the emptiness moves towards openness. This is a core value for the practice in R.S.O.L., pointing to the intention of wanting to learn and understand - and also pointing to the question that a work of art asks of its viewer, according to Adorno in his Aesthetic Theory: "What the work asks of its viewer is knowledge, and knowledge that does justice to it: the work wants its truth and untruth to be understood." (Bloomsbury Academic, London, 1997, p. 19) However, this openness simultaneously refers back to solitude, in which and through which a person can become "open" to "relationship" and thus: to "meaning".
By presenting Vermeulen's text as spoken word rather than as writing, it becomes (again) elusive, fluid. Because one can't read back a spoken text, one has to listen and grasp what is being said 'at once' - in other words: grasp it. At the very moment. Once spoken, what is said immediately disappears and exists merely ephemerally, in memory.
The robot reading the text, however, is not a person. The robot is an emptiness. A machine has no intents and intentions. However, this machine can still evoke a presentation which forms a true experience in imagination. The text happens by being read aloud. The gathering and collecting of meaning by the listener contrasts with the emptiness of intents and intentions of the robot that is speaking the text. It mirrors the emptiness of the medium that the artist employs to shape the artwork through, in and with, as the place where art happens.
Vermeulen: "I understand your consideration... The main thing, of course, is to collaborate with a robot that has an affinity for emptiness."
Finally, there is also something in Vermeulen's work of: diving behind language. Something, going beyond language - although that is found and happens in language (namely the text in question). The letters of the alphabet, lying arbitrarily and mixed up in the dustpan, having lost or passed their syntax. They have become detached and even empty signs. They were captured in their flight through emptiness. There are no more words, no more sentences. The text dissolves: ssst (shush).
Vermeulen told me something more about that 'ssst': "My son Tomas once drew his sleeping brother, and wrote underneath: 'David is asleep. Ssst...' At school, my son David, then six years old, drew a skeleton lying among the flowers in a meadow. Under it he wrote: 'Deat says: I am in the worlt to enjoy life'. An explanation for the text he could not give..."
Can we really explain truth? Can we even speak of 'the' truth of an artwork? 'You cannot write the truth. You can only live it,' Kafka wrote. And this sentence struck the young Vermeulen 'like a bomb'. 'It is not about intents and intentions,' Vermeulen says in his work. The space is (almost) empty (and white and fresh). The robot reads without understanding; it is empty. In a sense, the robot is open. It does what it is given to do - without intents and intentions.
I wrote to Vermeulen: "Fantastic Matthijs. Living the truth - how does one do that? After all, an intention still... ;)"
He sent me this, from Kafka:
THE PASSENGER
I am standing on the balcony of the electric tram and am absolutely uncertain about my position in the world, in this city, in my family. I wouldn't even be able to state roughly, what claims I could legitimately put forward in one sense or another. I can't even defend standing on this balcony at all, holding on to that loop, allowing myself to be transported by this trolley, having people move aside or stand still for the trolley or remain standing in front of the shop windows. - Admittedly, no one is demanding this of me, but that has no relevance. The trolley approaches a stop, a girl stands by the treadboard, ready to disembark. She appears so clearly in front of me, as if I had groped her. She is dressed in black, the folds in her skirt hardly moving, the blouse is close-fitting and has a collar of fine white lace, the left hand she holds flat against the wall, the umbrella in her right rests on two but the top step. Her face is tanned, the nose, somewhat compressed at the sides, ends round and wide. She has a lot of brown hair and some loose hairs at her right temple. Her small ear sits close to her head, yet as I stand close, I can see the entire back of the right auricle and the shadow at the root. I then asked myself : How come she is not surprised with herself, that she is keeping her mouth shut and is not saying a thing about it?"
to ex hibition
TK 15-12-2022
performance Kate Moore in ex hibition
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The internationally acclaimed composer, Kate Moore, will give a personal performance on the cello in this exhibition on January the 29th 2023. For this performance, Matthijs Vermeulen's ex hibition - which actually can only be visited by imagination - becomes reality for a very short time at R.S.O.L. The performance is thus a unique opportunity to hear the composer perform herself and to visit this unique presentation, for once, 'in reality'.
Sad Melodies Suite was originally written for the Amsterdam Cello Octet when the unexpected lockdowns started during the corona pandemic. (listen) For the Australian-Dutch composer, this music has become a diary of the lockdowns: expressions of and from an invisible, secret and private world. |
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Compositions by Kate Moore are performed worldwide by Asko|Schönberg, Bang on a Can, Slagwerk Den Haag, the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and the Groot Omroepkoor, among others. In 2017, Moore won the prestigious Matthijs Vermeulen Prize (!) for her composition The Dam. A year later, she was the festival composer during November Music and composer in residence at the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ, with the Herz Ensemble she founded, in the 'Soulmates' series. Moore received her doctorate from the Sydney University of Music.
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there is only room for up to 15 visitors twice, against a donation from € 6,50 per person
application deadline was 28.01.23, 12:00 Kate Moore has been struck with the flu - Sunday's 29.01 performance will be rescheduled more information will follow... |
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
Questions and prices: contact
A payment arrangement is possible for prices above € 500. No additional costs will be charged for this.
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.