The Dinner
Het avondetenDuration: 12.03.1993, 26.06.1993 and 01.10.1993
Location: At home, Rotterdam
Participants: 6
Visitors: 25
Number of Events: 3
The project Het avondeten (The Dinner) (1993) springs from Jeanne van Heeswijk‘s fascination for how other people‘s stories and histories come into being. She came up with it so she could be present as a spectator and facilitator at the exact moment that these histories were made. She invited the artists Q.S. Serafijn, Suchan Kinoshita and Marcel Wanders as her guests because their work fascinated her and she wanted a deeper understanding of how it came about. She wrote each of them, offering them the opportunity to do a project for one evening in her house, as well as the use of her dining table with twelve chairs and her services as butler, but also stating that this would give her the position of a voyeur into the way they would respond to her invitation.
The invitations led to heavy discussions with the artists on the concept, Van Heeswijk’s dual role and why they would participate. Things brought to the table included ‘organising your private theatre’, ‘the involved spectator’, ‘over-organising something that should be as natural as having dinner’ and ‘why don‘t you just follow me for a day?’ The discussions eventually led to three proposals for an evening, a specially prepared dinner for each of the artists and his or her personal guests. The evenings took place on 12 March 1993 (Q.S. Serafijn), 26 June 1993 (Suchan Kinoshita) and 1 October 1993 (Marcel Wanders) and focused on the prominent use of language in today‘s society and the more minor position of the visual arts, as well as how to create a collective history and portrait session showing what colleagues really think about one another.
As a voyeur, Van Heeswijk was able to observe how the artists and their guests responded to her invitation and the evening. From this she learned what it means to literally give ‘shape’ to space by creating space, but also by breaking open spaces, and the energy that is released when other people contribute and listen to each other. All the material of the evening became part of her private archive and would only be made public in her lectures about her experiences. 1993, Rotterdam |