A Conversation with Michiel Huijben by Warda El-Kaddouri

“How do we shape the world?” That is the question that is always on Michiel Huijben’s mind, a visual artist whose work centres around how architecture and space influence our lives. Huijben studied in Breda, Amsterdam and London, and currently lives in Rotterdam. He explains how he sees the world: “I am trained as a fine artist, but I look at everything through an architectural lens.” The question of space in a broader sense inspired Huijben to dive into the Open Archief in search for the history of the social function of public places, such as the Malieveld in Den Haag.
When Huijben used to focus on space in his artistic works, he would do so intuitively. As he reflects back on his works he says: “At one point I realized that the intuitive approach I used was not a choice. It was all I had.” That realization came when Huijben read the book Eccentric Spaces by Robert Harbison. “That book was a real eye-opener,” he declares, “Harbison discussed architecture in a different way than I did, connecting it to imagination and fiction. I started researching him, and when I discovered that he found a course in architectural theory in London, I decided to do that.”
Eight years later, Huijben finds himself doing archival research as an artist-in-residence for Open Archief. “Honestly I am overwhelmed by the amount of material that is open access.” For the exhibition Huijben plans to use a mix of moving images from the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision as well as scans from the International Institute of Social History (IISH) and Het Nieuwe Instituut. He describes his current state of his work: “I am making a timeline to create a story with all the material I have collected.”
Due to the Covid-19 measures, physical access to the archival institutions was very limited. Huijben completed most of his research online. “I was a bit sad about that. Online ­research is much more direct. You type in a keyword and it brings you exactly there. But when you are in the physical space of an archive, you can also find something by accident. Sometimes the folder you searched for contains other things as well.” Huijben also points out that digital archival research also brought practical questions to light that would otherwise not have been addressed. He exemplifies this by mentioning how the user interface works or how archival material is indexed online.

The only archive Huijben was able to visit physically was Het Nieuwe Instituut. That experience of physically being in an archival institution, gave him the intimate feeling of being close to history. “In online research you are researching representations of something, whereas in the physical archive you are looking at the object, without a filter,” he says, “when I am holding a drawing of the 1800s, then I am the link between history and present. The same goes for architecture and the city. The house in Rotterdam where I live was built in the 1940s because the city was bombed during the Second World War. That is also history persisting into the present. You could say the city and its architecture are in fact also an archive. You can read history from them, but unlike the archival institutions, they don’t come with a description.”
During his research process Huijben started thinking about the relationship between democracy, public space, and the archive. At Sound and Vision he found a silent black and white moving image from 1924, portraying a homeless couple living presumably somewhere outside Amsterdam. You can see the man making the bed in a seemingly improvised sleeping space and handing over a cup of water to the woman. “It was a haunting image. It really touched me. But what surprised me was that this was the only material I found depicting homelessness in the city. How is that even possible?”

This question inevitably poses further questions on representation and whether the archive itself is a democratic space. “The archival ­institutions try to be. But we know that there are principles and committees who decide what is considered acceptable in the archives. People experience the city in different ways. Women’s experiences are not comparable to men’s experiences. But that is not reflected in the archives,” he points out and adds “archives are supposed to be national archives. I grew up in the countryside, but you don’t find places like where I am from represented in them. The archive is a very urban environment.”
At some point Huijben realized that he wanted to start localizing portraits of public spaces in all three archival institutions by focusing on the Dam Square in Amsterdam and Malieveld in Den Haag. “They are prototypical architectural public spaces, so the choice was obvious.” Huijben achieved that by following three trajectories. First, he researched the design process of the artists and architects involved at Het Nieuwe Instituut. Then, he tried to find moments of celebration in Sound and Vision, like the Queen’s visit to Dam Square. And finally, he searched for moments of conflict in the IISH.

He clarifies: “I am aware that this is not a realistic portrait. The material I found is beautiful, but it is incomplete. There are lots of gaps in regular daily life between these moments.” That is why Huijben also found some material outside of the three archival institutions. “I started researching material on the internet that is free of rights. And I found footage that would make the image more complete. For example, I came across a YouTube video of a tourist filming Dam Square in a very methodical way, showing everything that was going on, just on a regular day.” Huijben thinks that this is one of the inherent problems of the archives as he says “what they focus on and what they show are rarely those non-­moments. Just a regular day in someone’s regular life.”
“The Dam and the Malieveld are the places that are pronounced in the archive. And that is quite a challenge, because I don’t necessarily want to make a work about the Dam Square or Malieveld. They have been documented extensively already.” But then, how to tell a story about public spaces if some are already represented more than the others? Huijben’s experience is an illustration of the vicious cycle that many archives can find themselves in. Because when a particular place, event or person is so evident in the archives, there is inevitably more research about it which in turn creates more representation in the archives. Huijben responds: “I decided I want to make a more general story about the idea of public space. Something more general, that is not tied to specific events of conflict, celebration, or to a specific time frame. Only then, can people fill in that gap with their own imagination and feel the liberty to project what they see onto their own environment.”

During a rare moment of physical research in Het Nieuwe Instituut, Huijben stumbled upon an architectural model of the monument of Dam Square. “The architect who was in charge of the monument and the artist who made the ­allegorical sculptures surrounding the pillar used the model as a speaking object. It was a way for them to have a discussion on the possibilities of how the monument would look like.” Yet, what intrigued Huijben was not necessarily it’s mere function, but the idea of two men holding, touching and passing the object around the table.
Although he came across this physical object, he decided not to use it for the exhibition. The idea behind his decision was to share with the audience the same online screen experience as the artists-in-residence had while doing their research during Covid times. “We had very limited physical engagement with the archives, so I wanted to reflect that in the work itself.”
Huijben came up with the idea to show a split screen video via two upright screens. “That is how people engage with space now­adays: through their phones.” By fusing moving and still images together, he hopes to create a video essay. The model of the Dam will only be present as a moving image. Huijben describes his process: “I will film the object, so that it will still maintain its role in the exhibition. Maybe I will even show the practice of archiving and how the model is handled; it is very neatly packaged, and you have to wear gloves when you touch it.”
When looking at specific moments of protest in public space, Huijben realized that a lot of materials were not accessible due to copyright and licensing issues. “Thanks to the IISH, I came across these beautiful photographs by Maya Pejić of the Telegraaf riots in Amsterdam dating back to 1966. Pejić was a photographer and anthropologist, who was really in the crowd and not reporting from a distance. She donated her archive to the IISH, so it became license-free.”
Huijben explains how requesting licensed materials can be quite a bureaucratic challenge: “Materials by the Dutch architect ­Gerrit Rietveld are almost never license-free and will almost always cost you. I think that system is based on the myth of the artistic genius. As if Rietveld himself was never inspired by other artists. His work may be copyrighted, but all the intertextual materials that he drew from the other artists that also influenced him are in there as well.”
“To have been able to work with and have open dialogues with the archivists as well as with the other artists, who each have their own ways of searching through and looking at the archives were so enriching. This artist residency at Open Archief brought me a lot of inspiration for future projects and artworks.”

Femke Dekker is a curator, educator, and broadcaster who is one of the main contributors of Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee, an online radio about art. In recent years her artistic practice moved from the physical to the auditive. She says: “Through Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee we have necessary conversations about the field such as the precariousness of art practices or sexual and power misconduct. There are also autonomous contributions of artists doing audio collages or radio performances.” With the Open Archief residency, Dekker wants to explore the role of the archive as a catalyst for activism. Fuelled by her living conditions in the urban environment of Amsterdam, her work is inspired by the counterculture. She states: “Physical spaces for artists have been pushed outside of the city centre as a result of gentrification. With this residency, I would like to focus on squatting as a counterculture and radio as a medium.” 

Do It Yourself (DIY) culture refers to the idea of believing in creating and organising things for yourself, just like squatting movements do. Coming from DIY, Dekker is drawn to the idea of Open Archief. “The purpose of the artist residency is to work with available and license-­free archival material to create something new. And DIY culture is also about sharing and creating, so it made sense for me to stick to that.”
Dekker already has some experience with archival research. “This time it was more ­extensive, and also more challenging.” Due to the Covid-19 measures, there were some restrictions to physically visit the archival institutions. “When I finally made it into Het Nieuwe Instituut it was such a joy! The difference between searching the archives digitally and digging in the institutions physically is that in the first case you don’t know where the objects actually are or what other material is in the folder. So, when I went to Het Nieuwe Instituut, I found all these giant folders with posters, besides the ones that I asked for.”
The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision contains officially televised and broad­casted shows, and archives of private home videos. “That did not really fit my purpose. The squatting movement operated underground and did not use these mainstream media channels for their message. I did find national news reports of the squatting movement, where you could see how negatively the squatters were portrayed. Sometimes they were invited to voice their opinion, but the format was always fixed. That material was still helpful for my own research, but I will not use that material for the exhibition.” 

Dekker knew from the start that she wanted to work with audio. “Radio is my medium. I initially started researching archival radio materials in the broadest sense. This led me to find such items like the feminist radio show ‘Rok & Rol’ from the 80s.” But then she came across the immense radio archive of Radio De Vrije Keyser, which ran from 1980 until 1998, in the collection of the Staatsarchief, a collection of archival material about squatting which is a part of the International Institute of Social History (IISH). “They started broadcasting from the squatted complex De Groote Keijser in Amsterdam, using different FM frequencies to avoid shutdowns.” Radio De Vrije Keyser broadcasted daily and brought news on squatting and protests.
“I knew that the Radio De Vrije Keyser existed, but I never had the chance to go through their entire archive. And I never knew they broadcasted for that long. The excitement of finding their archives was huge. Through sound, I was immediately transported to 1980. It really felt like a time machine.” When she listened to an episode, in which the radio hosts were discussing what the medium of radio could mean for the movement, she immediately knew she found something precious. “That feeling when you know you found something that is going to be at the centre of your research is amazing. It was more than I could have hoped for.” 

Her artwork for the exhibition will be twofold. First, Dekker plans to disclose episodes of the sound archive of Radio Vrije Keyser, consisting of the first years when they were most active between 1980 and 1986. “During this period, radio was still being developed and the radio makers were trying to navigate in a new world of broadcasting audio. And this coincided with the greatest squatting riots in Dutch history.” Second, Dekker will broadcast herself for three episodes about her research for Open Archief via Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee. 
In the first episode “RE:ACTIVATE: the archivist as activist” she talks with the archivists of the three institutions who helped her during the process of her research residency. In another episode, she will have an open conversation with people involved with both the squatter’s movement and Radio De Vrije Keyser in the 1980s.
“It was not easy to find them. The radio shows were illegal. The hosts operated under aliases or remained anonymous because they faced a constant threat of being dismantled or authorities tracking their physical location.” After some weeks of what Dekker calls “detective work”, she was able to identify and contact one show host called Els. “The starting point was of course the radio show itself, where some of the hosts went by their first names. But I also read Eric Duivenvoorden’s book Voet Tussen de Deur about the squatting movement, in which he talks about Radio Vrije Keyser.” 
Dekker got in touch with Duivenvoorden, who gave her a couple of names. “Then it all came together when I watched the VPRO-show ‘Andere Tijden’, where they investigated the Pierson-riots in Nijmegen and they interviewed some people about Radio Rataplan. Through them and a few other connections, I was able to find Els.”

By using radio as a medium, Dekker hopes to create a form of intimacy. “After listening to hours of Radio De Vrije Keyser, I became intimate with the radio hosts. When I first emailed Els, it felt like I knew her already.” Radio is not only an activist tool but also an instrument for community building. “Maybe that is my secret agenda with this project: showing people that they can use radio and mainstream media for activist purposes.”

Yet, Dekker does not consider her work activist. “It’s a call for subversiveness maybe, but not activism.” Dekker has a history in animal welfare activism but had to take a necessary step back from activism and had some time to reflect upon it. “With Jessica [de Abreu], I had a few conversations about activism. People don’t realise that being an activist is exhausting and traumatizing. You are always with a small group of people, always by yourself, always fighting. And your call for awareness makes your opponent aggressive.” Maybe Dekker will return to activism someday, but for now, she is content with just raising questions. “That’s another reason why I felt such a strong connection to Radio Vrije ­Keyser. They were discussing their strategies together and often disagreed. Activism can give you a lot of positive energy, but also a lot of negative energy.”

“When people think about the archives, they think about objects that are categorized and frozen in time. And by being in the archives, they have acquired the status of objectivity and impartiality.” Dekker expresses how one of the topics was also raised while talking to the archivists of the Open Archief for her first broadcast: “The previous edition of the Open Archief artist residency was about the archive as such, whereas this year’s second edition was more about the role of the ­archive.” For this reason, Dekker invited the archivists from the three institutions of Open Archief to have a broadcasted conversation on questions like “what is archival research?”, “who is in charge of the archive?”, “what material are they disclosing?” and “how are they telling their stories?”.
“With a renewed interest from the cultural field, where visual artists are using archives more and more in their work, I felt like that development also needed to be discussed. It was a very open talk with very experienced people. I asked them, for example, how their work has changed in the past five to ten years. They told me that now the cultural community is more involved in disclosing the archives, it helped them see the material that they have been working with for so long with new eyes.”

Although the focus of the exhibition will be sound, Dekker plans to also add a visual component. “I gave Marius Schwarz, the designer in charge of the exhibition, a lot of amazing posters I found at Het Nieuwe Instituut and the IISH to make a collage.” Her goal is to create the same impression as walking through a city and seeing posters of the squatting movements hanging on the walls. “There will also be sound umbrellas where you can listen to the radio episodes and see the posters at the same time.” All of the posters that Dekker selected are anonymous. “None of them are signed by the designer. That is the output of DIY culture: the message is more important than the maker. Besides, it was a form of protection because hanging those posters was an illegal practice.”
In the future, Dekker sees herself working with archives more often. “This residency really set me on a path. I will definitely continue using archival material. Maybe I will dive even more into the squatting movement.”

A Conversation with Jessica de Abreu by Warda El-Kaddouri

Jessica de Abreu is an anthropologist and co-founder of The Black Archives. Her initial goal for the Open Archief residency was to document and archive the contemporary black anti-racism movement in the Netherlands. By using materials from Open Archief as well as from The Black Archives and Kick Out Zwarte Piet, she wanted to connect institutional and personal archives of Black activists by collecting photographs, videos, and any other digital data.
However, throughout the process, de Abreu became more interested in the idea of portraying Black people in a context that is not necessarily political. “I would like to see today’s anti-racist activists laughing and making jokes instead of portraying them in constant pain or suffering.” As an anti-­racist activist herself, de Abreu experienced the impact of activism on mental health firsthand. Her efforts in the Anti-­Zwarte Piet movement have led to a recent burnout, from which she is still recovering. “I am known for doing social community work, but I am also a human being with emotions.” During her research for Open Archief, she was emotionally challenged. 

She explains this process: “Going through the archives has been overwhelming. It forced me to explicitly deal with what I am going through in my head. I cannot grasp everything, so I have to simplify each of them. In the end, my art will be a result of me dealing with an overload of information and emotions, while trying to make sense of it all.” The main question that de Abreu finds herself confronted with is: “How do you deal with colonial imagery in archives, which is inherently violent?”
When entering keywords such as ‘Zwarte man’ (Black man) or ‘Zwarte vrouw’ (Black woman) during her online research, de Abreu found fewer results than she expected. When searching for words such as ‘Suriname’ or ‘Surinamer’, she found more material depicting Black people, but almost exclusively in a colonial context. “It was either people fighting and suffering, or people dancing and being exoticized. Images of Black people doing mundane things were difficult to find.”
During her research, de Abreu discovered that there were more human zoos in the Netherlands and Europe than she knew of. “Human zoos were places where Black people and people of colour were displayed; initially for racist scientific purposes and later for the sake of entertainment. The most known human zoo is the one at Museumplein in Amsterdam during the International Colonial and Export Exhibition (also known as the World Exposition) of 1883. And I thought – together with a lot of other people I suppose – that was the only one in this country, but I found out that there were more than I can count on one hand.” 

For instance, in the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, de Abreu found moving images of a family of African descent, who were exposed in a human zoo in Rotterdam in 1928. “It is not just written in a book, there is actual footage of these people.” She found the video by entering a more controversial keyword. She says: “I entered the n-word in the search system and that video was one of the things I found.” With this example, de Abreu touches upon a crucial question for institutional archives: How do you make Black people visible in the archive? De Abreu further questions: “Black history is very invisible. So how do you then make Black people visible? What words do you use? How can you make them traceable without using the n-word and without being colour blind at the same time?” de Abreu does not have the answer herself yet. “I don’t think I should do all the work to find a solution. The institutions need to do their part as well.”

“How do you bring back humanity to people who have been dehumanized?” is another question that de Abreu found herself struggling with, and which created the change in the scope of her research project. In a colonial context, she explains, Black people are almost exclusively portrayed as passive beings. “That is the Western narrative, but that was not reality. Yes, colonization and slavery happened to us, but we also resisted. I want to bring that particular historical resistance to the present and make it visible.” However, that does not mean de Abreu wants to portray images of Black people fighting. “That might work for a white audience, but Black people are in need of images showing us that we are human too. How often do you see Black people without them being dehumanized? And how do you then bring back that humanity?”
With regard to the footage of the human zoo in Rotterdam, de Abreu has found two ways to humanize Black people again. “The main thing I am sure of is to search for and use the actual names of the depicted people. They were human beings, not scientific objects. Calling out their names is one way to humanize them again. I already found some of them in the subtext of the images in the archives.” Another decision that de Abreu made was not to use the actual footage in her artwork. “I am participating not only as an intellectual but also as an artist. And art always entails an element of entertainment. So, I decided to provide the information, but not reproduce the image itself. If I would do that, I would be reproducing the dehumanization of those colonized communities.”
For the final artwork in the exhibition, de Abreu plans to create a media installation titled The New Plantation. “Colonial history is still on repeat. We have undone ourselves from the shackles of slavery but are we truly free? I don’t think so. The changes are insufficient for us to live away from stress and poverty.” The installation will consist of a compilation of video material and visual images from Open Archief as well as digital data from her personal archive, such as recorded WhatsApp videos and audio voice notes. “I will also use a lot of colours in the installation. For me, colour functions as a form of therapy. Colonial history is very dark, I brought some light and colour into it. For myself.”  

With her project, de Abreu hopes to open the conversation about mental health in the Dutch anti-­racism movement. “Art is not just art, but an extension of me and a way to deal with the past and the present.” Though, she does give a warning: “I don’t want to hide behind my political message. I am not abstract nor subtle; I am very clear and direct. And I mean what I say.”

During her research in the Sound and Vision archive, de Abreu found a video of a Dutch market, where a Black man is smiling and eating a herring. He is in the frame for only six seconds, but those six seconds meant a lot to her. In her research blog for Open Archief ­titled “The New Plantation: A Postcolonial Depression” she describes the image as a “loving portrayal of a Black Dutch experience that soothes my memories that we are human too.” She adds: “Within this art project it was important to me to find counter images or produce counter material to make me understand that Black people are more than their skin colour, more than slavery, and more than a legacy of colonialism.” She experienced archival material of Black people doing mundane things as healing. “Resistance can come in the form of images of Black people just being happy and having pleasure in a society that continues to dehumanize and stereotype them.”
Next to the ‘fish-eating-man’ she also came across license-free images at Sound and Vision of Josephine Baker, an American-­born French singer, actress, and activist who was in the resistance movement during the Second World War. “Although Baker used colonial imagery herself, she was aware of that and used it to reclaim power. In the footage, you can see her just enjoying herself and her success.”
Unfortunately, de Abreu did not find any other images besides these two which she considered healing. “And that is a problem. If this is what archives are able to produce, then that is all we can make of it. Research­ing the archives comes with mental challenges as there is limited material of Black people, simply living their lives outside imposed ­colonial frameworks, political contexts, and stereotypes. My art installation reflects a healing process, but I also see it as being part of the conversation rather than the final product.”
The fact that Open Archief focuses on archival material free of copyright and licenses was a crucial factor for de Abreu. “Most of the images I used date back to more than seventy years ago, so in most cases, they were license-free. But for new images, I had to request access, which was a bureaucratic procedure. To me, open access is important because you need accessibility in order to reach a wider audience. I want to be able to pass on what I see and learn. So, people can also look into this archival material easily themselves.”

The residency for Open Archief brought de  Abreu a little bit closer to answering the question of how to bring back humanity to those who have been dehumanized. “I will let everyone see that Black people also do mundane stuff. I will show images of Black people eating fish. I will also show images of Black people loving each other and laughing, and just… being.”

The past months Jessica de Abreu, Femke Dekker and myself have engaged with three different archives with the aim of making new works from our findings in them.

The installation States of Place began as an attempt to locate specific public spaces in these archives. I was interested in the relation between the representation of places within the archive and the actual locations, to see if the combined finds from the three archives could draw a more or less accurate portrait of such places. Portraits that would show how the design of public spaces influences our usage of them. Through the sheer abundance of material, this research grew into a wider search for the transformation of post-war public space in the Netherlands, trying to make some sense of what the archives remember of this period of transformation.

Archives gather history as it is being made. They keep (constantly growing) collections of materials together, and apply ordering principles to them, so that this history can be searched. The archive is physical and it is spatial to such an extent that its contents are often listed in length. For example, the Staatsarchief, the archive from which Femke compiled a series of squatters’ radio broadcasts, is described as being 63 meters in length.
63 meters is the width of several buildings. That fact alone reminds us that the archive is an actual place you can go to. After all, it needs to store things. Still, you might be forgiven for thinking of it mainly as an interface. During this project, the three of us have only been able to engage with the archives online, their front ends’ search bars.

Online, it’s so much harder to find things you’re not looking for. To be able to find, you have to search and to be able to search, you first have to define. So you sit at your keyboard, your fingers resting on the keys, the cursor blinking in the search box… but no words come to mind. Somewhere between your brain and your fingers, the terms slip through the cracks and get lost. To search like this means first to have to search for your own definitions of things, which perhaps makes it harder to find things you don’t secretly already know?

So the question is how the archive makes things available: what terms it uses to describe and how these definitions may differ from person to person. Having a different perspective (and thus having differing explications) may render something invisible. Jessica’s project shows how this influences the relation that the archive has to visibility and representation. From the archives, she pulled video footage of (among other things) human zoos and the Bijlmer, and brought these in proximity with one another, in order to tell a story that the archive can’t, because it keeps the primary sources it stores separate from one another.

Apparently, the verb ‘to define’ comes from the old French word ‘defenir’ which means "to finish” or to complete. In the presentations now on view at Het Nieuwe Instituut, all three of us ended up adding to the material found in the archives. Femke makes her own broadcasts, to contextualize the historical ones in her presentation; Jessica inserted personal video and audio into her work and I’ve used YouTube as a complementary source to build on the material found in the archives. This isn’t because there wasn’t enough material to work with (I’d say it was more like the opposite), but maybe because this is what the archive, in some ways, demands: that the only way you can get something from it is if you bring something to it yourself.

For her project RE:ACTIVATE RADIO Femke Dekker discloses a series of broadcasts from the immense audio archive of Radio De Vrije Keyser, the notorious Amsterdam based squatters radio station running from 1980 until 1998.

LISTEN NOW!

Radio De Vrije Keyser started broadcasting on January 13th, 1980 from the squatted complex ‘De Groote Keijser’ in Amsterdam. Using different FM frequencies in order to avoid shutdowns, the daily shows brought the local squatters-community news on squatting, protests, demos, extra- parliamentary activism and other free and alternative information.

The archive represents both Dekker’s interest in ‘Do It Yourself’ culture as well as the ability of radio to function as a call to action and as an instrument for community building. Listening to hours and hours of Radio De Vrije Keyser it struck Dekker that the topics discussed by the broadcasters resonate with today’s issues of gentrification and housing shortage (but also the need of fringe culture like the one brought about by the ’80’s squatters community to feed urban environments) and are still relevant today.
Dekker’s installation for Open Archief showcases those broadcasts from the Radio De Vrije Keyser's archive where the conversations mainly focusses on the function of the medium ‘radio’ itself. From running and organising independent broadcasts to the malfunctioning of the record player to the need for activist actions and talks with fellow squatters broadcasters.

Besides these broadcasts from the archive, Dekker also created a series of new broadcasts that look into the role of archivists as activists, artist and activists and activists as archivists. These broadcasts are added to the exhibition over time and are broadcast live on Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee.
The exhibition also contains a selection of posters found in the collections of the archives and represent the protest movement caught in amazing designs and prints by mostly anonymously makers.
For those unable to attend the physical exhibition, Dekker has created this online repository for a wider audience to enjoy the broadcasts selected from the archive.

All the Radio De Vrije Keyser broadcasts are in Dutch. The broadcasts produced by Dekker herself for Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee are in English.

RE:ACTIVATE RADIO is a project by Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee contributor Femke Dekker and focusses on the reciprocal relationship between media and activism and discloses the strategies used to reinforce and exploit each-other’s mechanisms.

As a part of Open Archief RE:ACTIVATE RADIO equally investigates the relation between archives and activism and will involve the archives of all three participating institutes.
RE:ACTIVATE RADIO ‘The Archivist as Activist’ is an open dialogue with Clara Still-Haardt (Archivist, HNI), Eric de Ruijter (General Manager Collections, IISG) and Erik Lucassen (Archive Researcher, B&G), discussing their various roles within the collection of their respective institutes, the renewed interest in archives in general and how or if activism comes into play.

The “Nieuwe Plantage” (New Plantation) shows how history seems to be on repeat. Where we often think that racism, colonialism, and imperialism is a thing of the past, its legacy can be found in poverty, social inequality and human right violations in present-day societies. My aim is to open the conversation about how racism and structural oppression are related to our (mental) health. This underlying conversation is not much found in the actually art piece, but in the approach and process on how to deal with realities of racism and xenophobia as we enter archives, museums and exhibitions. How do we deal with archival material that reproduce (colonial) violence, despite the fact that we consider them as educational and informative about hidden histories?

Answers can be found in how society is divided: those who do remember colonial history, and those who do not and feel traumatized by it. It is a fact that Black people experience racism on a daily basis. However, we don't always have the time and space to heal from such violent events. Additionally, societies often ask victims of racism, rape and trans-/homophobia and more to also come with solutions to these problems. Often they are asked to do this emotional and intellectual labor without being paid for their time, knowledge and experience while they are also vulnerable at the bottom of the social ladder. Experiencing social inequality besides these human right violations is a headache, to say the least.

I refer to postcolonial depressions when one realizes that colonialism happened and there is nothing they can do about it. Some find that activism can serve as a great way to tackle these institutional problems. However activism also expose us to (continuous) stress and trauma. In this context, art can provide a space for postcolonial healing. Within this art project it was important to me to find counter images or produce counter material to make me understand that Black people are more than their skin colour, more than slavery and more than a legacy of colonialism. The only way to take back our humanity is to show we are not passive beings as colonial history tried to portray us, but that there has always been resistance.

The “Nieuwe Plantage” is about showing resistance against dehumanization on these new plantations. We might perceive resistance as pro-active deeds as demonstrations and protests but we should also remember that resistance can come in the form of images of Black people just being happy and having pleasure in a society that continues to dehumanize them. And why not also on film, in the archives? Despite my periods of postcolonial depressions, I take great joy in seeing Black people smile on camera, in archives. During archival research, I was lucky to encounter a Black man in the Netherlands enjoying his herring in this filmpiece at 0.35 – 0.41 min. It is a glimpse of his daily life in 1935 when Black people were exoticized. However, I also embrace this loving portrayal of a Black Dutch experience that soothes my memories that we are human too.

RE:ACTIVATE, the working title for my project, focusses on the reciprocal relationship between media and activism and to disclose the strategies used to reinforce and exploit each-other’s mechanisms. Activists have always used mass media strategically, as a platform to broadcast their ideas and my project will explore both the notion of mediated activism, and the notion of activist media.

Over the past few years, my artistic practice has moved from curating the physical towards a practice of interpreting contemporary themes through conversations, and the production of autonomous sound collages, using radio as my main medium and collaborative initiatives as my main method. For RE:ACTIVATE sound will function as the carrier to both document the process of the research as well as to formulate the outcome of the residency.

During the initial phase of my research I stumbled upon the collection of the Staatsarchief at the IISG, founded in 1991 in the Amsterdam neighbourhood ‘Staatslieden’, hence the name of the archive. In total, the archive covers some 90 linear meters of paper, about 6000 posters, 1500 photographs and hundreds of hours of videotapes and audiotapes. Amongst them, the immense audio archive of Radio de Vrije Keyser, running from 1980 until 1998.

Radio de Vrije Keyser started broadcasting on January 13th, 1980 from the squatted complex ‘De Groote Keijser’ in Amsterdam. Using different FM frequencies in order to avoid shutdowns, the daily shows brought the local squatters-community news on squatting, protests, demos, extra-parliamentary activism and other free and alternative information. The shows hosts operated under aliases or remained anonymous, as is apparent in the broadcast presented here.

Documented is a conversation between Radio Rataplan - another squatters station based in Nijmegen - and two broadcasters from Radio de Vrije Kyser. Radio Rataplan came to national fame as the mouthpiece of the Nijmegen squatters' movement, during the Pierson riots in Nijmegen in February 1981. The riots were among the heaviest squatter riots of the 1980s and Radio Rataplan was on air 24 hours a day, playing a central, directing role in the preparation and execution of the actions.

The conversation of the broadcast you can listen back to here, centers on the role of radio as a catalyst for activism and must have been recorded prior to the Pierson riots, although the archive lists the broadcast as recorded in 1982 - the year after the riots took place. But as is evident from this Dutch spoken broadcast, the riots had not taken place yet and the interviewers are clearly discussing possible strategies and the role radio could play, with their interviewees from Radio de Vrije Keyser.

The final installation is set in a dystopian future after an event called The Great Blackout, when electrical devices were greatly damaged and things we now take for granted are suddenly not available anymore. Among these, the production of new visual content is momentarily not possible since cameras and phones were also damaged. The country is ruled by The Institute, whose scientists managed to barely restore some screens and footage. In order to keep the people up to date with new developments, The Institute has set up news stations consisting of clusters of restored screens, where the news is being broadcasted. However, the form of news has changed in this future, the news anchors are normal citizens discussing different aspects of this unstable situation. The installation is one of these news stations where visitors can hear news about The Blackout from six citizens.

The project uses past and present news rhetorics to make a speculation about how information will be presented in the future - and by whom. It is essentially an extension of post truth, an exaggeration of today’s tendencies, transplanted to a future with a society in an unstable situation: facts are replaced by opinions, appeals to rationality are replaced by appeals to emotion. Another theme I found very interesting to explore is the relationship between government and media outlets, as informed by research in the archives of the past.

Looking back at the process, my project changed quite a bit from my initial proposal, which is a pleasant surprise, a sign that I let myself explore and had the freedom to follow certain interesting threads that appeared along the way. In general this project has a lot of ‘firsts’ for me (for example first time working with video and trying to develop an actual narrative) and I definitely say it was a very interesting process. In the future I plan to pick up some threads I didn’t follow yet and see where they lead!

The ghost from the last chapter is not a terrifying one: it is no one else than myself. The abandoned black and white stages waited too long, thus I finally carve through their two-dimensionality and walk in - an uncalled guest. I take part in endless meetings, open drawers and water plants, knock on heavy doors and climb up yet another staircase to - where?

I leave no traces behind, but an echo: hesitant murmurings, human mooing, underwater breath taking, counting in an unrecognisable language, shattered porcelain.

Recorded, these voices and sounds constitute my parallel archive, paired with the original photos of empty spaces I collected in the last months in the National Architecture Archive. It is the gap between these two archives - between presence and absence, between institutional and personal, between still and moving, between silence and sound, between historical and contemporary - that I find most interesting. And this is where I invite you to come in, linger, watch and listen, and make up your own part in it.

In de jaren '50 heeft er een ontmoeting van Het Genootschap plaatsgevonden op het Vuurtoreneiland in het IJmeer. Daar heeft men een verbond gesloten. Nu, 60 jaar later krijgen Qamilla en Arianna de opdracht van Het Genootschap een aantal archiefstukken te ontvreemden uit verschillende Rijksarchieven. De stukken moeten op 2 januari 2022 openbaar gemaakt worden.

De thriller The Stolen Archive wordt in Het Nieuwe Instituut vertoond in de vorm van een video-installatie. We volgen Qamilla en Arianna op hun zoektocht door verschillende Staatsarchieven. De hoofdstukken worden vertoond op diverse monitoren.

De maquettes verwijzen naar twee gebouwen die als ontmoetingsplek dienen tijdens belangrijke gebeurtenissen. Het mensfiguurtje, gemaakt door Lida Licht-Lankelma (collectie Het Nieuwe Instituut), dat op zaal te zien is in Het Nieuwe Instituut, speelt een cruciale rol in het verhaal. De fragmenten van filmrollen uit de collectie van het Nederlands Instituut voor Beeld en Geluid en de maquettes en objecten uit de collectie van Het Nieuwe Instituut geven ruimte om te speculeren; wat ligt er opgeslagen, wat voor verhalen liggen er? We zien stapels filmrollen en in elk blik zit weer een ander verhaal. Achter de façade van elke maquette en gebouw schuilen misschien onwaarschijnlijke en niet eerder vertelde gebeurtenissen.

De bezoekers kunnen de cijfers volgen die op de sokkels aanwezig zijn, maar is ook van harte uitgenodigd zelf de volgorde te bepalen waarop ze het verhaal tot zich nemen!

Having made several new experiments, I think I am slowly able to formulate a “method” for creating my “collection” – a series of small works, based on (but not interfering with) archival materials, that are personal (but not naïve), political (but not provocative), diverse (but not representative), actual (but also historical), non-narrative (but not boring), confused (but not senseless) …

At the moment I concentrate on photographs from the different architects’ archives of Het Nieuwe Instituut. During the visual research I encountered several “typologies” of completely empty spaces that repeatedly appear in the archives: for instance large staircases, diverse meeting and conference rooms, entrances (corridors and doors), as well as intimate interior settings (in private and semi-public spaces).

In my eyes often culturally symbolic, these empty spaces seem to provide a stage – though not necessarily an accessible one. I cannot simply enter them (technically- they are two dimensional; legally- their copyrights are not clear; historically- they are of a time passed, etc.). So, since I cannot – and do not want – to inhabit them, the question arises: what does it take me to pass through these spaces?

The black-and-white “monumentality” invites a “minor” action – and I think that I might have found an answer in the present-absent figure of the GHOST …

The last weeks I’ve been working on defining my story about a dystopian future, which my final work will be about. I’ve been writing things down, connecting ideas and writing small scripts. One big realisation was that all the small themes I wanted to touch (that I mentioned in the last blogpost) were mostly summed up by one idea – post-truth.

In short, my work will be set in a near future where an event has happened and, as a consequence the situation is quite unstable. Various news items presenting the situation are trying to keep citizens calm.

As I probably wrote in all the blogposts, I am trying to weave the fact that I am using archival materials into the story. At this moment I am still undecided between two scenarios:

• The ‘event’ has somehow damaged people’s ability to produce new visuals and perhaps partly destroyed existing footage.
• It’s not allowed to produce/show new visual content anymore, and the usage of archival materials is a tool of propaganda.

In my initial proposal automation played an important part, but now I am not sure if I will still address that, although there is still a possibility.

While also making a few videos as sketches, I had to gather a lot of small clips and photos from the archives. While I thought I had gone through most of it by now, it’s nice to discover that there are so many parts of it I didn’t look at so far, so that makes every search very surprising.

As I continue with my research I wonder if the “spatial strategies” in which I was initially interested are not actually similar to the policies that created (and keep maintaining) the archives I am working with. A look into the collection policies of the collaborating institutes reveals formulations like “het veiligstellen van het geheugen van de natiestaat Nederland” or “de taak, een representatief tijdsbeeld te distilleren.”

These institutional (and corporate) procedures, I realize, might be contradictory (or counter-productive) to my intention to create a “personal” collection that could have the potential of destabilizing the Past, rather than reframing and cementing it anew.

As an attempt to frame the content of my collection-in-becoming, I came up with a series of possible titles – which might only “do the work” if remaining a never-ending list:

• The collection will have multiple titles
• Things that change hands
• All the things that you can’t know
• All the things that you can’t have
• All the things that you can’t be
• Wat daarbuiten valt
• Collection of
• Comments on
• Notes about
• Spaces no longer possessed, moments indefinite
• Ownscapes
• Non-representative samples
• It requires a certain amount of optimism, and heavy loads of endurance
• Mixed media feelings
• Exercises in belonging
• …

Er is geen ontkomen aan, er heeft zich iets afgespeeld aan de kust, Wat er precies gebeurt is, wanneer en wat de gevolgen ervan zijn is nog niet duidelijk. Het is moeilijk te zeggen wie de betrokkenen zijn geweest. Ook weet men niet waar het bewijsmateriaal zich bevindt, maar dat het er is, staat buiten kijf.

Misschien zijn er antwoorden te vinden in de rijksarchieven van architectuur, beeld en geluid. Er moet toch iets vastgelegd zijn. Het archief van Dudok bevat documentatie over het Monument op de Afsluitdijk dat hij heeft ontworpen. Een perfecte locatie voor een geheime ontmoeting? In een brief van de voormalige directeur van het monument vraagt hij Dudok een aanbouw te maken, De desbetreffende directeur geeft in de brief aan dat er op hoogtijdagen maar liefst 200 auto’s langs het monument komen en dat men die enorme aantallen niet aankan!

Op Texel hebben een aantal suïcide bunkers zichzelf laten zakken in de zee, waar ze nu bevolkt worden door luipaardgrondels, zeedahlia’s, kreeften en mosselen. Ze leken niet bestand tegen de hoeveelheid water dat ze binnen kregen. Een roemloos einde van een tijdperk dat nog diep in ons collectief geheugen gegriefd staat.

Feeling some pressure from the timeline, I spent the last weeks narrowing down the story around my project.
Continuing to watch newsreels on various topics and brainstorming possible futures, I’ve made a list of themes I would like to explore in in a more substantial form (or the final project):

• The relation (merging) between private news media and governments – more specifically the way governments use the formats of private news media to promote their agendas, especially in times of war or instability – resulting more visibly or not in propaganda
• The decaying belief in photographic realism due to AI and advenced image editing techniques when it comes to news / information
• The current tendency to not trust official news channels and growing belief that multiple personal accounts of an event on social media can paint a more realistic picture of a situation – and the role of AI/bots in this
• The current tendency to address the viewer with emotional techniques rather than facts in order to sway beliefs in one direction or another
• The possible merging of govenrments and corporations which hold large amounts of personal data

I constructed a future scenario for a video installation: a series of videos exploring how propaganda could work in the future, based on the points above.

However, another question was always on my mind, which I didn’t manage to answer in the previous stages: how to create material ‘from the future‘ using archival images and videos, which are so strongly linked to the past? At this point I might have found the answer, or at least one answer for now: the archival images could be a tool of propaganda, using nostalgia to evoke and idyllic past and a feeling of safety.

I’ve been doing some visual experiments to come up with a tone for a first video and drafting a script, as well as starting to come up with a ‘visual identity‘ for the future news agency which will be producing the videos in the installations.

Having made some decisions on how to proceed brings a new wave of energy and excitement.

For a long time I was not really interested in, or familiar with, copyright concerns. I worked mainly with materials that I created myself, so it did not seem very relevant. However, since I began working also with found materials in the last couple of years, such questions started to pop-up. I admit that as an artist I find the ethic and moral aspects of re-use more interesting than legal formalities. I perceive it as part of a larger discourse on cultural appropriation, decolonization, privilege, etc. Personally I usually take the freedom to transform found elements and/or embed them in my work in order to make an independent statement without much hesitation (for instance in the self-made publication Present Absence, photographs of which I have published here on my first post). I did believe that since my work is mostly material, usually exhibited or performed in art-institutions, does not circulate online very much, and is neither of a high commercial value, I should not feel “threatened” by legal complications. I now understand however that this might has been naïve.

In several particular earlier cases I have asked permission to use graphic or film works from other artists (or their heirs), and also paid fees to archives to be able to use photographic materials they posses.

Our discussion and conversation with Maarten Zeinstra has been helpful in several aspects. First and foremost it has reminded and cemented the notion that copyrights work in both directions – as a restriction and protection – an issue I tend to forget, since I generally believe that nowadays it is very hard to protect one’s creations (or even distinguish them so strictly from creations of others). It also clarified to me that the responsibility to re-used materials is completely in the hands of the artist. Even when working with professional institutions and archives, that might believe to have certain rights on the sources they hold, it does not mean that they can transfer these rights to others. As an artist one thus should be aware of the regulations, make the necessary research and eventually take the decisions accordingly.

It was actually refreshing to realize that all myths concerning alleged conditions and possibilities of re-use are wrong. It makes the decision to violate or not to violate others’ copyrights (or in other words – “risk management”) clearer. Things appear to be more “black and white” than “grey” in this case!

To conclude, I would like to remind myself that despite the positive side of being more informed and having a detailed understanding of these issues, such discussions could also have as a result certain “self-censorship.” Constantly asking oneself what is allowed and what is not allowed, and the frustration involved in the complexities can have a “chilling effect” and possibly prevent from engaging with specific materials from the first place. In a broader sense it could mean that we “leave” the past untouched and unquestioned to a moment, in which it might already turn irrelevant.

In my practice I use a lot of materials that I find online in different formats (photos, GIFs, short videos etc.), which I collage or modify with different techniques. The main reason why I like to use found materials is adding an extra layer of meaning to certain works – I use mostly recognizable images from the (pop) cultural sphere. In my view I am creating new images from combining lots of found images, but it’s important for me that these resulting new images directly reference the original source.

As many people, I did not know a lot about copyrights, assuming that if the materials I use are sufficiently modified, form a new work and are used for non-commercial purposes, it would be fine. However, the meetings and discussions we had as part of Open Archief, especially the last meeting with Maarten Zeinstra, were very helpful in clarifying these aspects. I can definitely say that now I have a more solid base of knowledge in regards to types of copyright, their timelines and how these are determined for different materials. And although the (legal) reality is quite depressing, having realized that my assumptions were far from the actual truth, I definitely believe that it is good to be correctly informed and make decisions while being aware of the possible consequences. In addition to this, it was very interesting to see how two different institutions like Nederlands Instituut voor Beeld en Geluid en Het Nieuwe Instituut deal with it, and it makes me feel a bit better that some things are not 100% clear even in their case sometimes.

In my works so far, I know that some images I used are for sure copyrighted and some of them I’m not sure about. I deliberately chose to ignore it because of a number of reasons, but since my recent works depend on it, if I would have to go through copyright clearing for all of them, the works would probably not exist at all. I firmly believe that, especially in our development as an artist or designer (or any type of creative output), we shouldn’t limit ourselves because of this.

Personally I grew up with artistic appropriation and remix culture as a constant presence around me, from sampling in hip hop music I saw on MTV to collage and ready-made artists I learned about in art history. This made a mark on how I see creative re-use, combined with the fact that today we live in a world where so many new images are created every second. In my opinion that should be reflected in the concepts and aesthetics of new artists and the law should make that easier. Making visual content easier to use for artists can bring so many new forms of expression.

I believe all visual content should be available under the creative commons license for artistic use.

Deze blog beschrijft een reeks gebeurtenissen die tijdens en na de excursie over copyright plaats hebben gevonden. Het is een collectie van referenties, (online) archieven, documentaires, GIFs, licenties en fragmenten van gedachten.

Quodlibet

Ik luister naar Bach’s dertigste Goldberg Variatie uit 1741, een Quodlibet. Een vernuftig in elkaar geweven compositie vult mijn hoofd. Verschillende melodieën volgen elkaar op, haast alsof ze een estafette lopen. We horen een canon, in twee minuten en tien seconden. In die minuten passeren een aantal bekende volksliederen de revue, van Ich bin so lang nicht bei dir gewesn’ en Kraut und Rüben, tot Mein Junges Leben hat ein end.

Quodlibet; Latijn voor “Wat je maar wil / naar believen” van Quod “wat” en libet “believen”.*

In 1544 gebruikte Wolfgang Schmeltzl het begrip Quodlibet voor het eerst om een meerstemmige compositie te beschrijven, waarin de componist verschillende fragmenten van bekende melodieën of liederen had verwerkt. Dat kon gelijktijdig of na elkaar zijn. Het 18e-eeuwse Quodlibet van Bach is een re-mix!

©

Een blog schrijven over ©. Ik merk dat ik het lastig vind hierover een statement te schrijven. Waarom? Ik gebruik en remix beelden waar © op rust.

Grijs gebied

Als maker opereer ik in een grijs gebied als het gaat om hergebruik van materiaal. Dit gebied blijkt tijdens de excursie niet zo grijs te zijn. We leren het woord risk-management.

Piraterij

Ik ben een piraat
Een piraat op jacht naar remix materiaal.
Ben ik wel een piraat?
Is de mens niet vanuit nature nieuwsgierig, en wil het informatie delen?
Waren de vroegere verhalen-vertellers die van dorp tot dorp gingen niet ook al aan het remixen?

Détournement

Na de excursie besluit ik wat meer te weten te komen over de materie die we hebben verkregen.
Ik ga het web op en kom vast te zitten in de netten van licenties, creative commons en publiek domein. Onderweg las ik een aantal passages van Gilles Deleuzes – A user’s guide to Détournement.

Ik scande door Nicolas Bourriaud’s Post-Production:

Ik keek, op aanraden van iemand een podcast van H3H3 over hoe UMG content claimed op Youtube.

Er werd mij een aflevering van Southpark over copyright aanbevolen:

Wanneer ik ontwaak uit mijn verwoede poging meer te weten te komen over c, cc en pd, ben ik verstrikt geraakt in het interweb. Drie vensters met respectievelijk 105, 168 en 85 tabbladen staan open. Ik begin met bookmarken. En mijn hoofd staat bol van de input!

Tijdens het boodschappen doen zie ik een dame rondlopen met de definitie van copyright achter op haar sweater gedrukt. Ik vraag of ik een foto mag nemen. Het mag, de sweaterkomt van de Berschka, de dame in kwestie heet Rafaela en later glimlachen we naar elkaar in de supermarkt. Wat voor bronvermelding moet ik onder deze foto zetten?

Online collecties

Ik zocht naar online digitale collecties die materiaal beschikbaar stellen onder cc-licenties en materiaal dat valt onder het publieke domein (iedereen die hier tips over heeft; neem contact met me op! info@donnaverheijden.nl). Er doken een aantal interessante websites op zoals:
Europeana.com, euscreen.com, cc-mixter.org, creativecommons.org.au/learn/fact-sheets/find-cc-materials, search.creativecommons.org

Remix manifesto

Ik stuit op een mooie documentaire van Bret Gaylor: RIP – A Remix manifesto.

RIP Remix manifesto, Bret Gaylor (2008), cc-by-sa 3.0

Het manifesto is gebaseerd op een aantal statements:

1. Culture always builds on the past
2. The past controls the future
3. Our culture is becoming less free
4. To build free societies you must limit the control of the past

De documentaire is geïnspireerd op Lawrence Lessig’s boek Free Culture.

Blockchain?

Ik droom over een stamboom voor beelden en geluiden. Over een mogelijkheid de origine van een beeld terug te vinden. Re-Use, Blockchain? Tegelijkertijd kan je je als maker daar ook weer mee in de vingers snijden, met deze reverse-enginering manier van de origine van beelden achterhalen.

Conclusie

Na de excursie heb ik me ondergedompeld in een wereld vol informatie over verschillende licenties. Ik kijk ernaar uit me hier meer in te verdiepen en ben ook van plan meer onderzoek te doen naar online digitale collecties. Als maker pleit ik voor meer Free-flow tussen copyright-holders en makers, een evenwichtiger en meer genuanceerde balans tussen twee werelden ten behoeve van het hergebruik van beelden.

C = copyright
CC = Creative Commons
PD = Publiek Domein

To take a break from the many questions and constraints, I have concentrated for a while on a free visual research (strolling randomly through hundreds of scans at het Nieuwe Instituut), and some intuitive experiments. Making use of materials from both archives, I repurpose, invert, reverse, group, and collage, in order to “blow new life” into them, or into the spaces they depict – a notion that is very often repeated in documents on urban-renewal (“nieuw leven inblazen”). I will return to more concrete architectural methods in a later stage.

For now I still wish to follow the ambition to create an “own archive/collection” which will address (but not necessarily answer) the complexities of my personal position and the general concept of the ‘cultural archive’. I think that this can be achieved through polyphony, inner-contradictions, fragmentation, diversity of media, unequal proportions, incoherency, etc. Maybe I would like to see my actions, gestures (and attitudes) as camera-filters or optical devices; applied (practically or conceptually) on the materials I encounter and wish to utilize, occupy, or simply let-be, in order to load them with alternative meaning.

Nitraatbunker

De afgelopen periode heb ik vooral veel eigen beeld geschoten. Ik heb hiervoor onder andere de Nitraatbunker bezocht, waar ik heb gefilmd. Hier zijn alle nitraatfilms van het Nederlands Instituut voor Beeld en Geluid opgeslagen. De opnames kan ik later gebruiken ter aanvulling van het materiaal dat ik gebruik uit de collecties van het Nieuwe Instituut en het Nederlands Instituut voor Beeld en Geluid.

During the last weeks I’ve mostly been experimenting with combining different materials through collage, drawing and editing. I’m trying to find an aesthetic that I find interesting in developing a bigger narrative around and exploring my topic of rhetorics in news about technology.

At first I started making static collages with images from the archive of Het Nieuwe Instituut that are open for use, but I wasn’t satisfied with the retrofuturistic look that resulted (since all the images are black and white and just look like a collage of old images). Then I started using other techniques and integrating other elements in order to achieve a new aesthetic. What I found the most interesting so far was choosing different elements and putting them in a new context that gave them a completely new meaning.

I also worked with video materials from the collection of Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision. For example I cut out a performer from a video of a street theatre play and made it a character in a drawing found in the archive of Het Nieuwe Instituut. I also combined them with other elements and a traced animation of a video panel. Unfortunately I cannot put it on the blog because I really can’t find the link of a background drawing. I realised this is quite a big problem for my way of working which involves combining a lot of materials; I mostly let myself guided by the images but since I use so many it’s hard to keep track of all the source links, so that’s something I’ll have to find a solution for in the next stage.

My concept hasn’t changed that much but I also find it fascinating to build new worlds from all these materials with various characters moving through them. Now the challenge is to develop a narrative to follow.

In the next weeks I plan to carry on with visual experiments while building up the story I want to tell, which is slowly starting to take shape in my head. I hope to have the final story and aesthetic decided on by the middle of July so I can work on what I actually want to show in the final presentation and the form it’s going to take.

Een film over een film die nooit gemaakt had mogen worden. The Stolen Archive is een zoektocht in de archieven van Beeld en Geluid en Het Nieuwe Instituut. Elke post bevat een teaser die iets onthult over het verhaal achter een gestolen archief. Wil je het verhaal volgen? Dan kan je naar www.vimeo.com/stolenarchive of volg www.instagram.com/the_stolen_archive.

Since kick-off I have spent three days at the study centre of Het Nieuwe Instituut, inspecting materials that were registered at the search-portal with words such as: Herbestemming, renovatie, vernieuwing or Sloop. In the first two visits I went through books and publications, while in the last visit I have ordered some materials from the archives. The difference was quite interesting. Books are often dedicated in retrospect to realized projects (and are usually edited and published by external bodies), while the archives contain also documentation of work-in-progress, competition-contributions, unrealized projects, theoretical studies, general correspondences, etc. that are collected by the architects themselves (and are later selected by the archivist to be preserved).

Mostly through the books I came across numerous inspiring ways of architects and planners to “deal” with the built past: allowing nature to take over, selective replacement of materials, stripping surfaces to the core, defining (statistic) criteria for destruction or rescue, fencing and monumentalizing selected elements, displacing, reuse of discarded materials and temporal approaches.

Diagrams from the publication Ontwikkelingsplan voor de Westergasfabriek (Klazien Duijvelshoff, Evert Verstraten and Stadsdeel Westerpark, 1996, p. 34-35) show how specific buildings in the re-developed former industrial terrain are planned to be kept, and the surrounding areas are schematically allocated space according to desired functions (sport, flowers, parking, water, etc.).

In the self-made publication De Amsterdamse woningnood – sloop- en saneringskalender 1973 (author and publisher unknown) a reproduced newspaper clip describes the careful destruction of a small coffeehouse due to the construction works on the Metro line nearby the central station of Amsterdam: “All parts of the building are being numbered so that the coffeehouse can eventually be rebuilt in a different location in its historical shape.”

The publication Betonschade; oorzaken, herstel en financiële konsekwenties (P. Groetelaers, Delftse Universitaire Pers, 1985, p. 38 and 50) deals with the challenges of deteriorating concrete in after-war housing projects, and proposes among other possibilities, the selective replacement of ruined materials by new pre-fabricated elements.

The materials from the archives have so far surprised me in one main aspect, namely through the personal and emotional involvement. This is well exemplified in the case of a specific street corner in Alkmaar: In 1966 architect Piet Tauber (1927-2017) was commissioned to design an office building for the AMRO-Bank at the corner of the Voor- and Zijdam at the city centre. For this cause several very old traditional houses were demolished, despite large protest and critique. Thirty years later, the bank sold the building to a housing company, which decided to demolish the building in favour of a new housing complex. Now it was time for Tauber himself to protest. His archive holds dozens of determined complaint latters to the municipality, many newspaper clips, correspondence with the housing company, touching demands for support from colleagues, sketches for alternative renovation plans, etc. – spanning a period of more than three years. Tauber fought hard, but in vein. The last piece in the folder is a shiny brochure: invitation to the opening of the new building.

Parallel to the “architectural research” I was strolling through and around the online “cultural archive” of Sound and Image. Without a clear idea of what I search, orientation in this large pool is rather difficult. In general I find that despite its immenseness and the diversity of topics it addresses, this collection (mostly of polygon-newsreels) is quite homogeneous in character – it often presents a clear, condensed, formal and inauthentic perspective on a public event/issue, and correspondingly depicts mostly public, commercial or natural spaces (footage from private spaces is rare). Quite different are materials from the Amateur Film collection. Here the makers make use of an immediate access to personal life stories and spaces of their families, friends or neighbours, and since they do not have any time pressure (like on TV), the footage is edited – if at all – in a much more generous way. Hence, while it feels more “boring” these materials gave me the impression of documenting a more “real” and emotional past (similarly to the differentiation mentioned above between the materials I encountered in the library and the archive of Het Nieuwe Instituut).

After receiving an excel sheet with the detailed contents of the Sound and Image collection, navigation felt easier. I excluded the NSB part of the archive, and began scanning through the titles one by one – and upon interest viewed the video itself. In my own excel sheet I list links to interesting videos with a personal note, which usually refers to an aesthetic composition or thematic relation to my research (like the videos from my first blog-post).

In general, the journey hitherto has brought up two initial questions and thoughts:

First, I ask myself about my personal relation to the archives and the documents they hold. As a migrant by choice and privilege, I live in the Netherlands for more than a decade, and yet feel quite detached from its past (and in a way from its present as well). This position is ambivalent – it can be powerful and demotivating at the same time, and I wonder if and how I should define my position within the framework of this project. Notions of belonging, cultural appropriation, right to speak, (mis)use of language seem all very interesting and relevant to explore. For now, I am intrigued by the idea of “eigen-maken” (both in terms of the material and the things it symbolizes) as a means to begin my creative exploration.

Second, but still reflecting on my position, I am reminded by the archive that in many processes of urban renewal (and gentrification), artists play a significant role, often without realizing that they are being utilized by developers and municipalities. What is my take on that, understanding that my intention was to undertake a similar process of “renewal,” commissioned by two “national” institutions?

On May 4 and 5, instead of locally “celebrating” freedom, I have visited a series of exhibition openings and talks in Cologne. Under the title “Artist meets Archive” of the Photoszene Köln, six international artists were commissioned to work with a photographic archive and create/curate an exhibition in one of the city’s museums. Among their different approaches, most interesting, relevant and inspiring for my research was the exhibition project Noisy Images by Antje Van Wichelen at the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum. Van Wichelen researches colonial archives and speculates about the possibility of their destruction. Willing to work against the “classifying gaze” and “categorizing of the other” she asks: “What to do with all the images from the colonial past in our archives? How can we create new imagery on the basis of these? Do we need to keep looking, or start destroying them?” Her interventions include various methods – but for one of them she has let negatives from the archive be eaten by bacteria from Colognes Rhine water – every week one filmstrip is taken out of the water and put up for display.

In this stage of the process I am following two main directions:

1. Searching the archives

Since I have already quite a clear subject, newsreels & technology, I have mainly been looking at the archive of the Netherlands Institute of Sound and Vision through the Polygoon collection, which contains newsreels from 1921 to 1987. I’ve been making an inventory of newsreels which talk about technology / automation / factories and making notes about the subjects presented, year, words used in the descriptions, types of images, appearance of people vs appearance of machines, types of music, etc. I am currently trying to categorise the videos based on these notes in order to see some statistics more clearly.

Alongside this, I’ve also been browsing both the archives from Sound and Vision and Het Nieuwe Instituut quite randomly (searching random keywords) trying to find interesting images that spark ideas or that I can use in the future for visual experiments. Here are some examples that caught my attention:

This is an example of a very strong image that I found while watching newsreels which I definetly plan to use in the future for visual experiments and make use of it in the story I want to tell. It has a perfect mix of creepy and cute!

I found this poster and I liked the humor in the way it gives cars unpleasant human characteristics.

I really like the appearance of this train maquette made out of plaster, it makes it look like an ancient artifact. This would also be an example of an interesting object that I would like to somehow integrate in my story.

2. Doing theoretical research in order to refine my concept and define a more clear outline of the project

I’ve been reading about newsreels, their purpose, influence and uses, including an interesting case study about the way in which newsreels were basically used as propaganda in the USA to change the people’s perception about the nuclear tests from the Bikini Atoll. This helps me understand better their context and the conditions under which they were made.

Reading ‘The War of Words’ by Kenneth Burke, a study of news rhetorics. Here I plan to get a better understanding of rhetorical devices, identify some of them in the archive materials and possibly use some in the future (more here). Some questions naturally arise from both directions, for example:

• would the newsreel format be relavant today or in the future, in which context?
• what would be today’s equivalent of a newsreel, which format and which medium would it appear in?
• what is my relation with the archives and do I want to make that apparent in the project?
• while working with archives from The Netherlands, do I want to keep this context or make it more universal?

Since my initial proposal for this project I am gravitating towards making a video or a series of videos with a story that acts as a metaphor about news rhetorics on technology, made out of materials from the two archives, remixed. I am now trying to define the story, point of view and timeframe and writing down small ideas for the video(s). All in all, in this stage I am both browsing the archives for interesting materials and for identifying rhetorical strategies I can use for the final video, but also trying to develop my concept so that I have a more precise focus when looking for materials in the archives. The next step is starting to do some visual experiments with some archive materials, which is very exciting!

Con/de/struction (working title) is conceived as an attempt to learn from the diverse ways Dutch architecture and urbanism have been dealing with the built past, and to correspondingly develop creative methods to approach and engage with historical cultural documents.

In the initial part of the project I will focus on researching spatial and material strategies that were employed (over the last two centuries) by Dutch architects, urban planners and designers in processes of restoration and renovation, demolition and destruction, reuse and repurposing. I expect to trace such strategies in the State Archive for Dutch Architecture and Urban Planning (within Het Nieuwe Instituut).

These publications, among many others that can be found in the library of Het Nieuwe Instituut, demonstrate the scope of contemporary research relevant to this project.

Subsequently, my intention is to explore and experiment with different audio-visual techniques that are inspired by the findings of the first stage, and apply them on historical documentary materials from the publicly accessible media archive of the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision.

While addressing the socio-political responsibilities and challenges of safe-keepers of cultural heritage (such as the collaborating institutes) in days of accelerated media-production and growing demands for decolonization, equal representation and positive discrimination, the project will not look at specific historic wrongdoings or currently debated injustices. Instead it might declare neutral, random or even boring pasts as possible cultural battle fields.

This endeavor builds upon a series of earlier artistic engagements with the archive. For instance, for the projects Present Absence and The ___ You Work With I worked with visual and textual materials produced during the apartheid era in South Africa, found by myself during an artist residency in Johannesburg.

In Grand Kenyon I explore the life and work (and archive) of influential British archaeologist Dame Kathleen Kenyon (1906-1978), using techniques inspired by her own excavation and field recording methods.

As a artist, my main research focuses on mass- and social media, Its seductions and underlying power structures. The three most recent films which I have made, Kiss the Sky — Eye Trick the I, Land of Desire — Happy is the New Black and All the World’s a Stage — Ways of Seeing 2013 form a trilogy on our image culture. Within these films, found footage is being used, together with self-shot imagery in order to talk back at the media. What are the images we are surrounded with, and how to deal with them? To what extend are we seduced or deceived by those images?

The Stolen Archive

The (moving) Images, sound fragments, correspondences, objects and archival depots of the Nieuwe Instituut and the Institute of Sound and Vision will serve as props, actors and sets for a speculative thriller on untold (hi)stories.

“The issue concerned many of us, even though the act was hardly visible… A bad copy, they say, poor image quality…”

As a designer and artist I explore themes like language and contemporary communication influenced by technology and media. I move through collages, animations, drawings, installations and other various mediums and use mostly found online materials and footage.

My project for Open Archief will be a research into rhetorical tools from archival newsreels which present the early days of automation and technological development. It will also be reflecting on the rise of artificial intelligence and how it influences the news itself in the present. The provisionary title ‘The evening news and the automatic plough’ was inspired by a Polygoon newsreel in the open archive of the Netherlands Institute of Sound and Vision about the use of the fully automatic plough in agriculture:

Through this project I would like to analyse and deconstruct the rhetorical tools of archival newsreels about automation and make a link with the current developments of machine learning and artificial intelligence, as well as its current relation to news: it being an important factor in the rise of fake news, blurring the line between fact and fiction and users being targeted by new digital marketing techniques used to advance specific political agendas through emotional manipulation.

I plan to also integrate architectural plans, images and interesting stories from the archive of Het Nieuwe Instituut in my research.

In the past I’ve been working with various techniques and I’ve become more and more interested in working with found imagery as moving image and installations, trying to break out from the static 2D format so common in design.

Anthropolabour is a series of animated GIF compositions about labour, technology and media and are inspired by Kurt Vonnegut’s dystopian novel Player Piano, which analyses the societal e ects of workers being replaced by machines.

Disputation between rocks and hearts is an installation which makes a link between different stages of the history of writing, part of a research about the transition between communicating with text to communicating with images in online conversations and the use of animated GIFs as rhetorical devices.