A Paper House

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A Paper House
Het papieren huisDuration: 10.2001 – 12.2001, 10.2004 – 01.2005, 05.2005 – 06.2005 Location: Witte de With, Rotterdam; Taipei Biennial, Taipei; Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna Participants: 45 groups, 5 groups, 14 groups Visitors: people who visited the exhibitions Number of Events: 2, 1,15 When Witte de With invited Van Heeswijk to participate in an exhibition called ‘Squatters 2’, she initially reacted with some scepticism. She wondered what it meant for such an institution to choose what she viewed as a politically laden exhibition theme. The poster she designed for ‘Squatters’ symbolically illustrates her own standpoint as well as that of Witte de With. In addition to the name and date of the exhibition, the poster has a big white area marked ‘plakken mag binnen de lijnen’ (‘posting permitted within the lines’). Rotterdam had recently banned posting without an official permit, the city council making ‘A-0’ billboards available for rent as an alternative. Van Heeswijk regards this regulation of what was once a free-for-all as symbolic of the limitation of civil liberties in general. Within the institutionalised framework, she used her posters to provide space for anyone to publicize his or her activities in the city. For the exhibition space, she proposed a closer look at what squatting meant for the city of Rotterdam. Het Papieren Huis (A Paper House) (2001) is a sculptural collage made in collaboration with Rolf Engelen, Siebe Thissen and Frans Vermeer, combining documents, posters, pictures and photographs of the Rotterdam squatter movement, past and present – telling the story of activists, artists and young people who fought against capitalism and housing shortages, establishing their own communes, initiating campaigns – by appropriating the many layers of posters illegally posted over the years on a kiosk in the city centre. Engelen rescued these when the kiosk was demolished, building panels sawn out of the thick layers of posters into a symbolic shelter. Although a paper house suggests fragility, affording little protection to the homeless, the artists transformed this precariousness into strength by using the peeling layers of weathered paper to evoke resistant, alternative voices calling for a more just world A fanzine to hand out to visitors was also published, with texts, documents and visual material about squatting, along with two evening events: one with Socialfiction.org & Urban Explorations, and the other with Arjen Mulder and Saskia Poldervaart. Each showing of the work incorporates new materials from the context in which it is exhibited – with its local housing problems and squatting practices – making the work resonate in ways both general and specific. When the house was shown in ‘Do You Believe in Reality?’ at the ‘Taipei Biennial in 2004, Van Heeswijk fully updated the Rotterdam archive and, with Rolf Engelen, added a new section on the Taipei squatting scene. After Taipei, W H Y displayed the house in the exhibition ‘freibesetzt’ in Kunsthalle Exnergasse in Vienna, also expanding it with a local section. <a href="http://www.wdw.nl/educatie/webprojecten/heeswijk/panorama.htm" target="_blank"><b></b>click here for panorama photo</a> 2001, Rotterdam (2001), Taipei (2004-2005), Vienna (2005)

projects
De Strip/ Freehouse/ From the Sidelines/ Room with a view (Dissonance)/ Room with a view (Positioning)/ Room with a view (Real Stories from Life)/ Outside Livingroom/ I + the Other. Art and the Human Condition/ Until we meet again/ A House for the Community/ NEsTWORK/ State of Mind/ Break. Dance./ The Secret City/ The world is bigger than Schijndel/ Hotel New York P.S.1/ Valley Vibes. The Vibe-Detector/ Water walker/ Welcome Package Welcome Stranger/ A Christmas Pudding for Henry/ Under the Spell of the Ring/ Subway to the Outside/ Wish for a Coffee/ Acte de Présence - Sans Valeur/ Draw a line/ Raising a Ruckus/ Casco-Mobile/ Z.T. (Duurzame Versterkingskunst)/ A Paper House/ Face Your World/ Beyond ethics & aesthetics/ Room with a view/ Room with a view (Private)/ Room with a view (Annex)/ Room with a view (Longing)/ Room with a view (The Neighbour)/ The Office/ Casco, Coffee and Communication/ In the Field of Players/ The Dinner/ The Blue House/ Face Your World, StedelijkLab Slotervaart/ Dwaallicht (Will o the whisp)/ Works, Typologies and Capacities/ Some 7/ Ariadne/ Narratives of Desire/ An Sich/ Brain Storm/ Amnesia of a Landscape/ Care-Taker/ Fields of (inter)action/ Shelter-07/ Face Your World, Museumpark/ You and the City. Diaries of a Future Avant-garde/ Shanghai Dreaming, Holding an Urban Gold Card/ It runs in the Neighbourhood/ Talking Trash/ Buiten Post/ The Resistance of Small Happiness/ Public Faculty No. 1/

essays
Networks, faces, membranes/ Creative Urge, annex a Zeal for Improvement/ A House for the Community/ Principles of Hope/ Germinal/ Freehouse/ Conquest/ The Miracle of Gorinchem/ In The Field of Players/ The Artist as Versatile Infiltrator of Public Space/ Noem mij maar gewoon een portretschilder/

general
Jeanneworks/ Contact/ CV Jeanne van Heeswijk/

news
Exhibition 'Reality 10'55 Odense'/ 'Some 7' at exhibition in RAM/ New website Jeanne van Heeswijk online/ Lecture at the NAi, Rotterdam/ Design Staalmanpark receives green light/ Kunst RAI 2006: 'Games People Play, Chapter 1'/ Exhibtion: 'Play! The Art of the Game' / 'Narratives of Desire. Realities Odense' in Arnhem/ 'Cascomobile' at the Busan Biennale/ Project presentation 'Care-taker'/ Visiting Scholar at Hunter College NY/ KONTROL #1 is online now/ Lecture at the MCA in Sydney/ 'FYW' nominated for Citizen Participation Prize/ Exhibition 'Room with a View' at Axel Lapp Projects/ Lecture at Architectural Association in London/ Evasions of Power, Sesion 4: 'Interventions'/ Symposium DEAF07: 'Interact or Die!'/ 5 projects at the Architecture Biennale Rotterdam/ 'Socially Yours', Seminar Hong Kong/ Kunsthal: Presentation 'FYW Museum Park'/ Presentation 'Systems' and 'Works, 1993-2007'/ 'Ariadne' moves to Sint-Oedenrode/ 'Memory Knight' at Art Rotterdam 2008/ International presentation ´Systems´/ 'The Urban Game Show' at the NAI/ Premiere 'It runs in the Neighbourhood'/ 'Narratives of Desire' at Axel Lapp Projects/ Breakfast lecture at the Design Publico Week / Fields of (inter)action at Venice Biennale/ New work coming up at 2008 Shanghai Biennale/ The Market of Tomorrow/ Women beyond the Verge/ Public Faculty no.1/ RAM opens 2010 with Citizens' Tales/ Nominated for Award for Participatory Art/ Talking Trash 13 April - 29 May/ Publications Jeanne van Heeswijk for sale/