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27 June – 27 July 2009

"Weak Signals, Wild Cards"

 

 

 

Curatorial Statement:

 

 

A shared image of what is to come is not only healthy but is also a form of prophecy; the fulfilment of the only future we can imagine, whether utopian or apocalyptic, is, on some deep level, satisfying – as revealed by the perverse relish with which we currently absorb media reports of financial breakdown. If a new future is to be developed, is it reasonable to ask art to contribute to its construction?
-Jonathan Griffin, Future Conditional.

For the project Weak Signals, Wild Cards, we have asked artists to do two things. Firstly, to imagine a potential future, in reaction to the current plans for Amsterdam-Noord – the largest borough of Amsterdam which is undergoing a major architectural and social renewal process. They must also make a work stemming from that future. Misprediction is more or less a given, as the societies addressed by the resultant works have not yet come into being, and nor have the infrastructures and institutions instigating and framing the works. So, they can exist as proposals, fully out of place in the present, unintentionally speaking to the now. This temporal shift is instigated in reaction to the overwhelmingly limiting neoliberal intent for art within current urban planning. The situation of art as yet another predetermined and incentivised factor in an urban masterplan is becoming emblematic of curatorial and artistic working conditions worldwide. If we cannot genuinely contribute to the creation of the context in which we work now, perhaps we can destabilise, or recreate, the future.

"God made the world, and the Dutch made Holland" so the saying goes. Every field, furrow and canal, every line of trees was put there by someone. It's about the make-ability, or maakbaarheid of the land, and it seems that this logic extends to the society living on it. Social engineering is a living practice, and Amsterdam-Noord is a veritable museum of social housing initiatives since the 1930s. Historically this area, separated from the city proper by the body of water het IJ, has been regarded as a separate space for 'dirty work'. In the 17th C, it was used for hangings, and in the 20th C for the enforced social 're-education' of the criminalised poor. Meanwhile, the shipbuilding industry and its working population flourished until the 1980s, when the industry collapsed. Much of this working class population remains today, along with third generation Dutch citizens of diasporic origins, as well as an increasing number of young families acquiring their first house. Such a narrative of ‘outsiderhood’ underpins much of the rhetoric of the city’s redevelopment; it was no surprise to anybody when then-housing minister Ella Vogelaar designated Van der Pekbuurt in Amsterdam-Noord as a ‘problem neighbourhood’ in need of special investment.

An economised and instrumentalised understanding of creativity - based largely on the Creative Industries (CI) - is central to the planned reshaping of Noord. The CI appeal to government leaders and policy makers as the cultural producer unwittingly reshapes the social fabric of the city. They need cheap space, making them perfect users of the remnants of Fordism: abandoned industrial sites, unfashionable neighbourhoods, and unused office spaces. In this way, the ruins of a former time can be reactivated. (more)