With: Alena Alexandrova, Natasa Bodrozic, Jeroen Boomgaard, Yane Calovski, Doplgenger, Marjoca de Greef, Rumiko Hagiwara, Hristina Ivanoska, Sarah van Lamsweerde, Aram Lee, Luiza Margan, Anastasija Pandilovska, Antonis Pittas, Richtje Reinsma and Ivana Vaseva.

When planning the initial symposium, our aim was to bring the symposium to the domain of visual arts, to approach it as an artistic practice and focus on the performative capacity of presentations. We were looking forward to everyone meeting and mingling and differing or fusing into new collaborations. The spread of COVID-19 interrupted the process and steered instantly all movements. Like everybody, we had to readjust. We decided, quite briskly, to move the symposium from the wonderful space of puntWG to an online environment.

The main objective of our symposium was, and still is, to explore how (artistic) practices coalesce with cultural heritage. The main feature of our symposium was, and still is, interconnection and cooperation: "to allow for various practices from the cultural domain to touch each other and to move from their own fields of interests."

For this, we present a complementary group of artists, writers, curators and researchers whose practices address topics such as "heritage activism", "objects in the dark", "collective memory", "forgotten histories", "critical nostalgia", and the "dimensions of time and space".

Find the online presentations for In the pause of a gesture there might be an echo here: On a possible passing from the inscription to the body by Aram Lee / Skopje 2014 by Antonis Pittas / The spread of a crack is halted by a hole by Sarah van Lamsweerde, Anastasija Pandilovska and Marjoca de Greef / Museum collections - cultural heritage with the power to democratize the contemporary society by Ivana Vaseva and Anastasija Pandilovska / Snimak pejzaza bez predistorije by Doplgenger / Sightless Seeing #5: Rehearsing the Archive by Sarah van Lamsweerde / Undisciplined: A Construction of an Archive by Yane Calovski / For there was nothing, but matters touching, matters talking by Anastasija Pandilovska / Moving in Still Time: A Series of Consecutive Exercises by Hristina Ivanoska and Luiza Margan / The Untouchables by Aram Lee / Public as Practice by Jeroen Boomgaard / Called Whatever, It Goes on by Rumiko Hagiwara / The Weight of an Image: Photography and the Afterlife of Images by Alena Alexandrova / Art Practices and Cultural Heritage: The Critical Capacity of Nostalgia by Anastasija Pandilovska and Marjoca de Greef / I want to be a shell by Rumiko Hagiwara / 30-4-2020: 17.14 Jeroen Boomgaard and Yane Calovski started a conversation by Jeroen Boomgaard and Yane Calovski
 

Printed before completing the Collective Domain of Cultural Memory project, this book cannot be seen as a conclusion. Instead the book is a trajectory, a dendritic trail through the artistic practices and methods that were involved in the process of the becoming of the Collective Domain of Cultural Memory. In order to make space for discussing new ways of relating to and understanding cultural heritage, CDCM departs from three local cases in which each of the partner organizations have invested independently for years.

A critical reflection on and examination of the protection of modernist architecture from the second half of the twentieth century in Croatia.

A proposal for a more dissociative logic of archiving in a context of institutional neglect of modern architectural heritage in post-socialist North Macedonia.

And an exploration of unorthodox approaches to cultural heritage collections in the Netherlands.

These independent cases are connected in their methods; they consort with cultural heritage through artistic practices.

Any discussion regarding cultural heritage draws attention to the sociopolitical and cultural tendencies of the specific period from which the heritage originates as well as those of the present moment. Critical artistic practices open up possibilities for nonlinear perceptions of history. This allows us to recognize the discrepancies between the past and the present and to consider the multiplicity of viewpoints within them.

Some of the essays collected in this book represent empirical and theoretical explorations of artistic practices dealing with heritage, while others emphasize the political context in which the relations between heritage and artistic practices emerge, suffer, survive, or bloom. They all offer alternative understandings of cultural heritage in Europe in today's transitional times.

Even though the discourse is stretched towards the locations where each of the partner organizations operates, we see throughout these texts how questions about the status of cultural heritage cross geographical borders.

What can an archive from the Institute for Town Planning and Architecture in Skopje destroyed in a fire, the neglect of Yugoslavian modernist architecture in Croatia, and depots piled high with well-preserved objects in the Netherlands teach us when redefining cultural heritage?

This book presents the unsettled ideas and explorations of the founders and curators of Press to Exit Project Space: Yane Calovski, Loose Associations: Natasa Bodrozic, and Suns and Stars: Marjoca de Greef and Anastasija Pandilovska, which arose in the process of the becoming of the CDCM project. Each partner organization invited a writer; prominent and meaningful voices in the fragmented and wandering discourse of artistic affiliations with cultural heritage. Loose Associations invited Ivana Bago, Press to Exit Project Space invited Jovanka Popova, and Suns and Stars invited Lucy Cotter. Their contributions bring new light to the ongoing project.

The residue of The spread of a crack is halted by a hole is a presentation of the interrupted artistic process developed in the social, historical and physical space of the TIN-collection: the theatre collection of the Allard Pierson Collections in the IWO boekendepot.

On the 15th of March, you would have been invited to enter our process. At 17:00 we would have opened our collective studio at M4gastatelier, from there, we intended to descend to the Marmeren Hal to perform a prelude of the performative tour: Sightless Seeing#5: Rehearsing the Archive.

Sarah van Lamsweerde, Leroy de Bock, curators Anastasija Pandilovska and Marjoca de Greef and conservation specialists Julia Hartendorp and Gonneke Janssen practiced and intimately worked together. Leroy counted his steps to find his way in the depot. Julia's hand was his tool to touch the fragile objects in the collection. Anastasija and Marjoca produced a model of the depot, so Leroy could practice at home as well. The cooperation moved beyond the boundaries of professional expertise and knowledge and transformed our relationships. Working towards the opening of the exhibition, the spread of COVID-19 interrupted the process and steered our movements in different directions. The preparations, rehearsals, handiwork, deliberations and reflections are compressed and dehydrated. It is the residue of our process that is presented.

In the live exhibition, no external audience was allowed, just the passer-through and resident of Tetterode could conceive the presentation. The residue of The spread of a crack is halted by a hole showed that there would have been an exhibition.

In his book Seeing Dark Things, Roy Sorensen asserts that we see in the dark, we see about as much as we do in plain daylight. The spaces of research entered by Sarah van Lamsweerde, Luiza Margan and Hristina Ivanoska are dark spaces and therefore sanctuaries for objects hiding for light. These vulnerable objects can easily arouse protective feelings, however, their fear of light does not preclude robust potentialities.

The spread of a crack is halted by a hole is part of the artistic processes developed in the social, cultural and physical space of the Oude Kerk by Hristina Ivanoska and Luiza Margan, and of the IWO boekendepot by Sarah van Lamsweerde.
On the 15th of March, you are invited to enter the practices of these artists.
At 17:00 they open their collective studio at M4gastatelier. From there we will descend to the Marmeren Hal.

The spread of a crack is halted by a hole is organised by Suns and Stars in the context of the European project Collective Domain of Cultural Memory (CDCM). This project which previously took place in Skopje and Split is organised as a threefold in cooperation with Press to Exit Project Space and Slobodne Veze.
The CDCM project in the Netherlands examines artistic affiliations with collected and protected objects, to explore and reinforce unorthodox approaches and associations with cultural heritage collections. Suns and Stars has developed a programme containing a number of events: an artist in residence research project made accessible with a process exhibition, and a symposium working towards a publication.

Hristina Ivanoska, Luiza Margan and Sarah van Lamsweerde
The spread of a crack is halted by a hole is a residency and research period developed in the social, cultural and physical space of the Oude Kerk by Hristina Ivanoska and Luiza Margan, and of the IWO boekendepot by Sarah van Lamsweerde. These artists gathered, and worked in M4gastatelier.
The studio of M4gastatelier is situated in the large building complex Tetterode, a building with a rich activist history. 17 october 1981 Tetterode was squatted, the 11.000 m2 building complex now comprises a cluster of artist studios, residents and cultural companies. It was from this operating base that several new works of art and a residue exhibition arose.

Sarah van Lamsweerdes' research took place in the former Theatre Institute Nederland (TIN) Collection which is stored in the IWO book depot in Amsterdam Zuid-Oost.

The TIN-collection was once housed in a monumental Herengracht canal-house, which was forced to close as a result of severe cuts to cultural budgets in the Netherlands in 2011. The collection contains more than half a million artifacts and documents. In 2012, the Allard Pierson Collections took the collection under its wings and is now contemplating how to present parts of this collection to the public again.

During this residency, Sarah van Lamsweerde developed a new series of works collected in the project Sightless Seeing #5: The Tin Collection:

Sightless Seeing #5: Marble Hall, 2020 is a soundscape in which we hear Leroy de Böck calling out numbers while he moves around in the depot. His numeral commands fuse with the environmental sounds of the archive and of the Marble Hall, the entrance hall of Tetterode, to which the sounds are transmitted. Leroy is counting and measuring, labelling space. It is a dialogue with space. The intermittent stream of numbers is interrupted by unfamiliar sounds and pauses, sometimes long pauses. Nevertheless, it is driving the listener, the disconcerted traveller, to move in the same pace, inspecting the TIN collection in a in field of sound.

Sightless Seeing #5: Rehearsing the Archive is a preparation for the performative tour Sightless Seeing #5: The Tin Collection. It is a practice in progress which would have been performed live during the opening of the process exhibition The spread of a crack is halted by a hole. The cancellation of the opening and the public rehearsal provoked this new video by Sarah van Lamsweerde

Once the depot is reopened and it is deemed safe to gather in small groups again, we intend to present Sightless Seeing #5: The Tin Collection in real life.

Sightless Seeing #5: Jan Hessels 1989 24-pages scented booklet, Sightless Seeing #5: Jan Hessel 1989 is a 'burn after reading' booklet, with the story and scent of Jan Hessels. It is an attempt to give both Jan Hessels, and the performance a solid as well as a volatile derivative.

Sarah: "Each page is infused with the memory of Jan in fragrant form, recreated by Liza Witte. The text fragments come from letters Liza and I exchanged while trying to reconstruct Jan's scent and spirit. The strips should be set alight to release the smell. Burn after reading to remember, not to forget."

In March 2020, Hristina Ivanoska and Luiza Margan were invited to Amsterdam, where they shared the artist in residence space, M4gastatelier. The spread of Covid-19 ended their prepared research at the Oude Kerk premature.

Returned to their homes in Skopje (Hristina Ivanoska) and in Vienna (Luiza Margan), they communicated daily during a period of fourteen days of self-isolation. It was an exchange in "the spirit of intimacy", pursuant to the relationship between the Dutch writers Catharina Questiers, whose body is buried in the Oude kerk, and Cornelia van der Veer. During their short stay in Amsterdam, Luiza Margan and Hristina Ivanoska initiated a collaboration and started to explore the work and relationship of these seventeenth century Dutch poets, who were trapped in the domain of the middle-class women of that time. The outline of their domain was made clear by one of their male colleagues. In a letter to Constantijn Huygens, Jacob van der Burgh referred to Questiers as 'la grosse dondon d' Amsterdam, the fat woman from Amsterdam. He stated that although she was engaged in visual arts and other 'gentillesses', she was nothing but a daughter of a plumber from the Warmoesstraat.*

Luiza and Hristina: "By testing the importance of camaraderie and friendship in a time of emergency we exchanged emails, forming a kind of a diary of personal messages written as poems or prose accompanied by short videos. The responses are spontaneous gestures stimulated by the need to overcome self-isolation and create stronger bonds". Link: Moving in Still Time: A Series of Consecutive Exercises.

*) Porteman, K., & Smits-Veldt, M. B. (2008). Een nieuw vaderland voor de muzen: geschiedenis van de Nederlandse literatuur, 1560-1700. Amsterdam: Bert Bakker.

The projects are kindly supported by: