Duration: 1998 - 1999
Location: P.S.1 Studio New York
Participants: 72
Visitors: people visiting P.S.1 on Sundays
Number of Events: 15
Additional presentations: Alice Smits continued Hotel New York P.S.1 for one year

From 1998 to 1999 Van Heeswijk was invited to represent the Netherlands in the International Studio Program in the P.S.1 Center for Contemporary Art in New York. As she always works together with others and her work often takes place outside art institutions, she needed a hotel room to receive guests more than a studio. Inspired by the many travels and extensive emigration from the Netherlands to America in years gone by, she asked artist and designer Dorine de Vos to convert her studio into a hotel room, in the style of the rooms De Vos created for Hotel New York, a hotel restaurant housed in the former headquarters of the legendary Holland-America Line in Rotterdam. In creating this space, the room became an asset to Van Heeswijk's collaborative network and she developed a cultural Holland-America Line.

Over a period of a year, Dutch artists, writers, curators and critics she had previously worked with were invited to stay in the room for a minimum of three days and a maximum of three weeks. Her guests could use their stay to create new work, to explore New York, make contacts, etc. A crucial element of their stay was to examine contemporary issues of migration. In exchange for the stay in the hotel room, the guest would organise lectures, presentations, or an exhibition. A modest idea, but one that had a major impact on the institution's framework. As a result P.S.1 deeply resented the project at the outset. Under the contract P.S.1 required all participants to sign, artists in the studio programme had 24-hour access to the studio wing but were not allowed to sleep there or to share the space with anyone else. The exception to this rule applied to participants collaborating with other artists, who could then apply for an extra key to the building. With her working methods Van Heeswijk easily proved a long record of acknowledged collaborations and submitted an extensive list of visitors. She also registered Hotel New York as an art object, a continuous installation. This frame finally provided the necessary identity for both the city of New York and P.S.1 to designate a space between the private and the public - a space were people stayed and met to discuss and to share a journey. Van Heeswijk used the grant she received to stay in P.S.1 to expand her cultural network and to present New York with a broader overview of Dutch creative work and thought.