Output details

A Future Museum of the Present

Following an invitation from the Centre of Contemporary Art (CBK) Dordrecht in collaboration with the Amsterdam based curatorial collective ‘UnFixed’, I was invited to undertake a two month residency researching historical and contemporary material held in the ‘DiEP’ Archive, Dordrecht. I undertook to spend the period of the residency interacting with local residents and artists towards the formation of a ‘museum’ of the present.

Transforming a local shop-fronted building close to the CBK into ‘A Future Museum of the Present’, I explored ideas derived from Bourriaud’s notion of ‘Relational Aesthetics’ to devise a series of socially engaged ‘micro projects’. Each of these projects was designed to engage with and scrutinize contemporary notions of ‘Dutchness’ as viewed from the perspective of the non-Dutch outsider, in a subversive twist on the role of the historical anthropological archivist. These acts of ‘tricksterism’ (the playful subversion of dominant power relationships) were framed in full collaboration with local residents and members of the Dordrecht arts community, who actively contributed to a growing ‘museum’ of ephemeral objects featuring the Dutch national colour ‘orange’, and in many cases agreed to having their portraits taken juxtaposed with chosen objects from the collection.

The ‘Museum’ opened to the Public in September 2010, alongside the group exhibition ‘UnFixed’, in which I also had work. A series of six ‘Micro-Publications’ documenting various elements of the project were published digitally. A publication ‘UnFixed’ (ed. Blokland and Pelupessy) containing artist pages I produced has been published by Jap Sam Books, Heijningen.

At the end of the project, the entire Museum was acquired by the City Archive Dordrecht ‘DiEP’, for its contribution to the documentation of local histories.

The output is presented via portfolio, which should be viewed in order to gain a proper understanding of the research.