Bik Van der Pol

publieke ruimte, Experimenteel, cross-over, Conceptueel, Community, Artistiek onderzoek, Archieven

Through their practice Bik Van der Pol aim to articulate and understand how art can produce a public sphere and space for speculation and imagination. This includes forms of mediation through which publicness is not only defined but also created. Their work follows from research of how to activate situations as to create a platform for various kinds of communicative activities. Their practice is site-specific and collaborative, with dialogue as a mode of transfer; a “passing through”, understood in its etymological meaning of “a speech across or between two or more people, out of which may emerge new understandings”. In fact, they consider the element of “passing through” as vital. It is temporal, and implies action and the development of new forms of discourse. Their practice is both instigator and result of this method.

**What Is This World? (2022)** - What is this world? is a project that is gradually taking shape. It explores, connects and projects a multitude of perspectives on and of the world, in dialogue with the public and participants. A large ball, inflatable up to 8 meters, fills the space and forms a backdrop and background for discussion, and a stand-in for the 'world'. Participants and the public are invited to respond to the work in a series of informal workshops and conversations, to actively contribute against the backdrop of this decor and fill the space with their ideas and imaginations about the current state and future of this world. The world as object and site in relationship to which we, people, need to negotiate our actions wisely so that we will in the future be able to speak, and speak of ‘world'. While the current crises impact on a global scale, this question, has gained more and more momentum. What is this world? takes and makes time to listen to sounds and voices, to sense the space, hear each other, and talk back. Bik Van der Pol are interested in the potential of transposing the classical chorus into the present. Who is speaking, in the past, today, and for the future? What is this world? aims to be the arena for that multiplicity of voices that make up the chorus and deliberate with each other: How do we learn from what we see, or don't see, hear, or don't hear? Where is there room for change? What do you let go, what can we miss? And where do or should we head to?

**Far too many stories to fit into so small a box (2019-2020)** - The collection of Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art was created in relation to the program that CCA ran since the 1980s, and reflects the political and social events in Poland timely to its creation. It formed “a permanent context for temporary exhibitions, presenting attitudes and trends”. In the meantime, artistic and curatorial strategies have been re-evaluated and the format of the institution has changed. By inviting Bik Van der Pol, the CCA wants to bring different approaches towards the archive, to introduce a critical, outside point of view through the approach of an artistic practice, which would develop as ‘the collection as an artwork’. The collection is largely built on gifts, deposits, and works that ‘just stayed’. Part of the collection is ‘clandestine’, some highlights have an unclear or ambiguous status. Bik Van der Pol critically examine – from the vantage point of outsiders – the history of the CCA as well as take on board its founding myth. From the beginning CCA has been associated with theatre. The first director after 1989, Wojtek Krukowski, was also director of Akademia Ruchu (Academy of Movement), and the concept of process and movement is fundamental to the first 20 years of the CCA. The potential of collecting as a process is connected to not only it being rooted, here, in theatre and performance, but is also connected to Bik Van der Pol’s premise to understand process as an art practice and part of the production of work. The exhibition speaks about what is elusive and transitory and how such qualities relate to the complex mechanisms of remembering and forgetting. Bik Van der Pol aimed to understand the commonality of the archive and how we may include in the collection those stories that have been passed on only by the word of mouth. The artifacts, artworks, films, documents, snippets, and leftovers in the exhibition are connected through the ‘dynamic’ performative script, built of the complex history of the institution. Performance of the scirpt by Agnieszka Ayen Kaim, Mamadou Góo Bâ, Billy Morgan, Ania Nowak, Jagoda Szymkiewicz. Soundscape played on thirty speakers, activated and carried around by the public, by Wojtek Blecharz, Posters designed by Fontarte function as markers throughout the spaces. Curator Joanna Zielinska.

**Take Part (2018-2020)** - TAKE PART – IS THERE ROOM FOR SAN FRANCISCO IN SAN FRANCISCO? is a project by Bik Van der Pol that started as part of the Public Knowledge program on the invitation of SFMOMA and the San Francisco Public Library. The project was planned to take place in 4 stages: 1. Cleaning (2018), 2. Bringing the Neighborhood to Your Neighborhood (2019), 3. Making Room for San Francisco (2020) that would bring the model together as a whole, and a publication as a document that would shed light and reflect on the project. TAKE PART explores questions about public rights to space, changing communities, and how decisions are made. In a time when community is getting erased and dispersed by different dynamics and accelerating crises in our current times, all related to an untamed and uncontrolled capitalism, Bik Van der Pol sought with this project, to develop a way to think and discuss these dynamics. The project anchors these overwhelming and expansive issues – their past, present, and future—as performative dialogues on to the staging of a physical object: a 1000-square-foot model of the city built in 1938 by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) as part of Roosevelt’s New Deal. Can these issues be addressed through this model? Can this model be shown again as a whole, is there room for San Francisco in San Francisco? The different stages of the project involved the participation of a multitude of voices to infuse the model with their perspectives on and relationship to the city, opening perspectives on how cities like these could deal with the current rushes that generates loss and leaves only a few winners. From the gold rush in the 19th century to the abundant growth through private data and time as the main accelerator of global capital today, notions of civic participation and inclusion in San Francisco and in cities across the globe have undergone profound changes, prompting questions around how to make and protect space for ‘proper living’. San Francisco can be seen as a lens to reflect on global processes. Through creative civic participation, TAKE PART re-imagines the city by way of its people. The project addresses and involves audiences through open rehearsals and work-sessions where making, speaking and performance is brought together in forms of interacting with the model in spaces and sites in the city, countering social media and democratic deformation and misinformation through encountering, proposing to take matters in one’s own hands and to think aloud considering that what makes a city. Through different stages, moving slowly in accelerating times, TAKE PART is an exploration of the changing relationship between body, voice, and assembly, exactly what has currently disappeared from the public eye.

**Czigane – not the whole story (2019)** - This story starts with objects in a museum collection. A black and white photograph of a dog, a skull, a collar, on display in a vitrine, in a room. The skull of a dog. Its name: Czigane. He was one of the Siberian sledge dogs that took part in the British Antarctic expedition to the South Pole, called the Terra Nova Expedition. New Land. White, icy new land. Scott, the captain of the mission, never returned from this mission, but Czigane did. The race to the South Pole was high on the agenda of the British. Each of the 33 sledge dogs on the mission was officially named by a British school. To engage the public, through an early form of crowdfunding. Czigane died of old age. His portrait, his skull, his skin, and later his collar, were donated to the museum. Why would a museum keep a skull and a collar, and display it too? Taking the story of Czigane and the objects from the collection of the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter as point of departure, Bik Van der Pol developed a one channel video work in collaboration with the Met Office and the children and teacher of St David’s C of E Primary School in Exeter. The film explores and unfolds the complex relationship between objects, images, empire and language, ownership and naming, global trade and climate change.

**Mama, was ist eigentlich Natur? (2019)** - On the invitation of Kunstmuseen Krefeld Bik Van der Pol explored the museum's collection and vast archive of history of exhibitions, books, leaflets, documents, newspaper clippings, and recorded speeches. Departing from the Krefeld collection, Bik Van der Pol explore what shaped the 20th century and still shapes the present. As a result they curated this exhibition project, presenting a selection of more than 70 works from the collection that address the landscape in art, industrialisation, climate change and the disappearance of nature. Bik Van der Pol have also realized a sound and wall piece based on reviews from the museum’s archives. The soundpiece Gesammelte Stimmen - Gathered Voices is built from fragments from the archive's newspaper reviews from the 1970s: Krefelder Kurier, Westdeutsche Zeitung, Rheinische Post, Neue Rhein Zeitung, Vorwärts, Der Spiegel, Die Welt, Frankfurter Rundschau, Badische Zeitung, Deutsches Allgemeines Sonntagsblatt. The wall piece is made in collaboration with graphic designer and typographer Thomas Artur Spallek. His Saint Helena typeface was named after the Saint Helena olive tree that has been extinct since 2003. Here, an extinct life form is given voice and shape. Mama, was ist eigentlich Natur? is developed in collaboration with curator Constanze Zawadzky. With works of Andreas Gursky, Andreas Slominski, Heinrich Steinicke, Josef Albers, Abraham David Christian, Jan Dibbets, Robert Morris, Ulrich Rückriem, Yves Klein, Hans Haacke, Vito Acconci, Lothar Baumgarten, Mamma Andersson, Edith van Leckwyck, Christo, Michel Sauer, Robert Voit, Michael van Ofen, Bik Van der Pol, Dan Flavin, Jannis Kounellis, Bernd Becher/ Hilla Becher, Dieter Roth, Hein Engelskirchen, Arman, Christopher Williams, Peter Hutchinson, John Chamberlain, François- Marie Banier, George Segal, Haus Rucker Co., Thomas Ruff, Constant, James Webb, Martin Schwenk. The Umweltzentrum Krefeld, located on the grounds of a former cement factory, developed a public program inside the museum.

**One by One (2017)** - One to One takes the viewer through two case studies of landscapes where remaking in terms of art is activated against the destruction of that landscape, as 'examples' of colonial observations that usually and almost immediately mandated eradication of that very landscape. Von Humboldt believed that works of art could provide important information and that artists could visualize aspects of the environment and uncover the complexities of the earth, in a way that scientists could not. These case studies speak to that. In 1855, landowner James Dawson asked painter, botanist and former gold-digger Eugene von Guérard to paint Tower Hill, a volcanic area in Victoria, Australia. In almost photographic detail this painting depicts the vegetation as the Aborigines knew it and just before intensive European settlement caused rapid degradation of the site by the 1860s. By then, the vegetation on the sides of the volcano was cleared or burned to create land for livestock and crops, while most of the trees were taken for fuel or building material. In the 1960s, one century later, Von Guérard's painting was used as a model, map, guide and botanical template, when the land was systematically reclaimed, reforested with native flora, and made into a state park. About 80 per cent of the re-planting of trees and shrubs was done with the help of hundreds of school children, naturalists and volunteers. Today, Tower Hill resembles the painting of Von Guérard, though the landscape is still far from what it was before its destruction. “I can make more and better landscapes in this way than by tampering with canvas and paint in the studio”, wrote Frederic Church, the artist who made the famous painting The Heart Of The Andes in 1859, four years after Eugene von Guérard painted Tower Hill. So, Church stopped painting and created a one to one, life size landscape of 1 km2 at Olana on the Hudson River, now one of the most important surviving picturesque landscapes in the United States. Remaking the world as an earth sculpture. Both observational practices are privileging details and a mode of representation, on the page, on the canvas, in the world. The video One to One reflects on what it means to see in detail.

**Eminent Domain (2015)** - With Eminent Domain Bik Van der Pol investigate on the ways that human activity in the globalised age has a direct effect on (ecological) systems. The title references the concept coined by author Hugo Grotius in 1625. Eminent domain is understood as the power that the state may exercise over land within its territory, whereby the government or one of its agencies has the right to expropriate private property for public use through payment or compensation. By foregrounding this concept, Bik Van der Pol’s project alludes to the increasing privatisation of previously public goods including territory, property and the public domain at large. Using mirrored panels that follow the architecture of the space and reflect the texts woven into the carpet on the floor, Bik Van der Pol have conceived of an environment in the gallery that makes it possible to grasp the overwhelming collection of data related to ecology and species extinction figures. These data are derived from the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, more specifically the archived list of extinct species as counted from the year 1500. Bik van der Pol collaborated with soundscape ecologist Dr. Bernie Krause, who contributes to the installation with a selection of sounds from his archive, more specifically those produced in the 1990s in previously healthy habitats in Borneo, Costa Rica, Sumatra and Zimbabwe. Since their original recordings, each of these habitats has changed drastically as a direct result of human intervention and natural disasters. Krause’s soundscapes coupled with figures affected by ecological changes results in a project that moves collections of data from abstraction to experience. By physically situating and mirroring the viewers amidst these statistics, they shift from spectator to immersed participant. During the exhibition, the space is regularly used as a site for discursive activities that examine both the re-articulation of public and private property and the threat of such activities on natural environments: No Reading After the Internet, by Cheyanne Turions and Extraction Empire, program of short films curated by artist Charles Stankievech.

**Accumulate, collect, show (2011)** - accumulate, collect, show is a full size live-scoreboard, an open framework with modular text-elements that can be changed and replaced, and that performs as a generator of constant activity, made on the invitation of Frieze Projects (Frieze Artfair London, 2011). It is animated live by assistants who constantly change the text to spell out a number of abstract idioms, quotes and maxims, presenting a narrative to visitors of the fair. Emphasising the temporary visibility of a continuous flow of language -as a form of capital so much part of any economy the work reflects on the value of buzz and the unfolding of language, as a perhaps futile fluidity that connects action and change. The work makes reverence to Cedric Price's Aviary designed for the London Zoo. This structure, as the architect envisioned, would be handled by its inhabitants. Flexible and impermanent, just like the Frieze art fair with its temporary tent structure for the art community gathering annually, the aviary was designed for a community of birds. The temporal and provisional aspect is important, but also the visual aspect is. The colors of the boards are inspired by Mondrian's last and unfinished painting [Victory Boogie Woogie; a work that reflects the rhythm of jazz and frantic and ongoing city movements. This living billboard is a sketch board, a test site; continuously changing, sometimes to the point, sometimes off the point, and always entertaining. During the 31st Sao Paulo Bienal, the scoreboard tkaes on a new mode. It accompanies Turning a Blind Eye, a public program of workshops, lectures and walks, conceived, organised and compiled by Bik Van der Pol. The scoreboard is animated by activators, and as such becomes a marker following the developments of the biennial, and invites the public to become participants. The temporaryness of the structure not only accommodates these voices but also renders them as language to be made visible and to be made heard; a space where learning, looseness, and focused experiences are anticipated in continuous changing dynamics. Educators together with the public changed the short statements on the live scoreboard on a daily basis. Increasingly these statements became more political, more critical, as well as more poetic.

**Elements of composition [As above, so below], 2011** - For Living as Form, organised by Creative Time, Bik Van der Pol made a work in 3 parts: a site-specific public text piece on the empty parking lots adjacent to the Essex Street Market to be incorporated in Google Earth, daily walking tours in collaboration with NY citizens open to visitors, and a publication. The text piece, As Above, So Below, points towards the contentious (re)valuation of space in the neighbourhood, including vertical development and the issue of air rights, which apply to owning the space above plots of land and buildings as a capitalisation of space. The text, read as abstractions from the ground, is completely legible from above. While looking into the void of these plots that were once occupied by tenement houses, one may realise that this empty space - now a parking lot –also allows us also a glimpse of the future, to what will be. A look at the empty sky that at some point will crystallise and capitalise. In collaboration with Google Earth the textpiece is stored in Google's archive to immediately become part of history while this empty site will be developing in time. This empty space is filled up by the voices and imagination of NY citizens, who are invited to give public walking tours based on their personal knowledge and experience with the city and its urban developments. The publication contains the research gathered for this project through interviews with scholars, urban planners, activists, and organizers. This publication was available in the exhibition Living as Form in the historic Essex Street Market at the South side of Delancey Street, and is also published online. The tours consider not only what is visible at street-level but also those elements of the built environment that have been erased or are yet to exist in three dimensions. The tours are determined by the concept of the void, and potentially move both horizontally and vertically around the empty space, from the parking lot to an aerial view of the project and surrounding Lower East Side. The tours start inside the Essex Street Market, where the projectspace functions as information hub and starting point for the tours.

**are you really sure that a floor can't also be a ceiling? 2010** - Increasing globalisation not only forces economies to become more and more dependent from each other; also the global ecological system is influenced by the continuous increase of all human activities. The complexity of this impact on the environment can be compared with the butterfly effect, a term used to describe the sensitive (inter)dependence of different actions on initial conditions, showing how tiny variations can affect giant and complex systems. The flapping wings of a butterfly - just a small change in the initial condition of the system - can cause a chain of events leading to large-scale alterations. Had the butterfly not flapped its wings, the trajectory of the system may have been vastly different. True or not, small actions can certainly affect change in complex systems in unexpected ways. Mankind is only slowly starting to become aware of their role. Changing direction not easy, when economic growth is the magic word. If we as a species want to survive, radical steps are needed to bridge the gap between growth and sustainability. Butterflies are indicator species for climate change, as they are particularly sensitive to environmental degradation. Their decline therefor serves as an early warning on environmental conditions. Also Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth house (built in 1951, and considered one of the most radically minimalist houses ever designed, conceived as an indoor-outdoor architectural shelter fully intertwined with the domain of nature) can be seen as an indicator of man's impact on the environment. It can also be perceived as the transformation of the museum vitrine to the scale of a large glass bos-like-house, as something that renders something else visible. The actual house, located near Fox river, was built on poles and designed in such a way that high water would not reach the house. But, as a result of urbanisation and climate change, the river began to rise dramatically in the 1950s, and since the past ten years, the river regularly floods the house. Are you really sure that a floor can't also be a ceiling? brings these elements together in an architectural model loosely based on the Farnsworth house. But here the model-vitrine functions as the temporary home for butterflies - ultimate agents of transformation, change and recycling. Radical change is in their life cycle. Transforming from one state to another, they never are what they appear to be. Visitors can enter the house. The glass walls allow full view on the man-made greenhouse and its visitors inside, as actors on a stage-set. Also they are on view. The transparent walls protect the climate inside and create a membrane between interior - and museum space. Both nature and audience become a spectacle inside the confinements of the museum wall. With thanks to Enzo Moretto, ethymologist Butterflyarc, Padua (IT)

TAKE PART Is There Room For San Francisco In San Francisco?

Locatie: San Francisco

In samenwerking met: SFMoma in partnership with SF Public :Libraries

Take Part, a project by Bik Van der Pol, seeks to create a shared public vision of the city by anchoring discussions about its past, present and future, to a tangible object: a 1000 square foot detailed wooden scale model of the city built in the late 1930s by the WPA under the New Deal program. It was displayed in sections in 1939, and as a whole in 1940-1941 in City Hall.

https://publicknowledge.sfmoma.org/take-part/guesswheresf-then-and-now/

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