Bik Van der Pol – WERE IT AS IF. Beyond An Institution That Is

€20,00

Author: Bik van der Pol, Defne Ayas et al.
Publisher: Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art
Year: 2017
ISBN: 978-04-91435-49-2

Softcover, unpag.(292 pages) , English,  210 x 297 x 16 mm
design: Studio Bardhi Haliti, Amsterdam, photography by Bob Goedewaagen, Aad Hoogendoorn
Condition: as new

Whom does a contemporary art institute like Witte de With belong to? How are its stories told and untold? And could a staging of its exhibition history through traces, remains, and scars constitute an act of resistance against the tide of accumulation? This publication follows WERE IT AS IF by Bik Van der Pol as a case study and much more. Many-voiced, it enlists the power of fragments as points of provocation to engage with methodologies of the contemporary.

In a book and an exhibition with the same title in the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, the artist duo Bik Van der Pol used Witte de With’s exhibition archives to investigate what its memory looks like. Inventorying what was left they have now given the remnants or traces a new home. This conceptual book is a report of the duo’s critical examination and can be seen as an artwork in itself.

With a well edited visual narrative composed of photographs taken during this process, we are led through the book like a forensic investigator examining the boxes of archives. Here and there our progress is interrupted briefly by inserted pages of text. The typography here, like that of the boxes, is staggered; the inventory list at the back gives us some wonderfully designed pages. Nicely printed on soft Cyclus Offset.

Although the book is difficult to take in at a single sitting – and regrettably the complex blurb does little to make penetrating it much easier – it is only right to give credit where it is due: here we have an established arts institution bold enough to question its own role in this way, and to publish a well turned-out publication of the results.
(from: The Best Dutch Book Designs 2017)

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