Projects

NEsTWORK

Rotterdam, Jan 1996

Duration: 06.1996- 09.1996
Location: CBK, De Unie, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, BAD., Rotterdam
Participants: 100
Number of events: 87 daily programmes

In May 1995, Manifesta held an open-house meeting in Rotterdam presenting a daunting challenge for artists and curators: the organisation of an international platform with the aim of creating new means of communication in visual arts.
Manifesta's ideas included notions such as a new European identity, migration, translation, communication, community, politics and more. Faced with this ever-increasing flow of concepts, van Heeswijk wondered how this was all going to take place and what role would be reserved for the artists' community of Rotterdam.
She asked the curators for a space in the artists-list for a group still to be formed, referring to the World Cup, where the hosting country is always allowed to play. Then she invited people working in different areas in the field of culture in Rotterdam, such as the visual arts, philosophy, criticism, music, dance and even the administration. They were invited on the basis of affinity, and all showed a strong engagement with the city and the ideas involved in Manifesta 1. Furthermore, they needed to be willing to work collaboratively in a non-hierarchical, self-organising group, on a process of interrogating the ideas of 'local' and 'place' during the eight months following the opening of Manifesta 1; a process in which there would be no hierarchy that privileges the artwork, text, place or even the generation of money and creation of a publicity framework. The intention was not to fully represent the city of Rotterdam - an impossible task - but, by interweaving the different narratives and connections of the people involved, to make it present. NEsTWORK was born.

NEsTWORK consisted of Karin Karin van Arink, Wapke Feenstra, Jeanne van Heeswijk, Edwin Janssen, Menna Laura Meijer, Kamiel Verschuren and Ruud Welten. Together they created eighty-seven daily programmes with activities, performances, concerts, films, lectures and debates, focussing on the notion of 'local'. NEsTWORK saw itself as an entity integrated in the friendships and networks already existing in Rotterdam and its professional field. In a time when internationalism seems to be the magic word, NEsTWORK wanted to focus on the place where the work is done. Art always takes up space. This space is never a blank page. The framework of the host determines the functions and the importance of all activities. However, when receiving a guest, the host must, in some respects, be open to different ideas as well. NEsTWORK asked itself questions about the function of place. 'How does art relate to the place where it is made or exhibited? What is the current status of visual images? What role does locality play in contemporary art?"

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Sep 2016

meeting from NEsTWORK team in rebuild Documentation center CBK Rotterdam
meeting from NEsTWORK team in rebuild Documentation center CBK Rotterdam

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