Wed 20.05.09 | 11:00
On acting and being
enacting and re-being
In a moment of changing and charged cultural relations and heavy conservative forces reacting on these changes, a need seems to surface to focus on different modes of perception and production of narrative, as well as on the politics and construction of subjectivity. Identity to me is not the issue. The idea of “identity” – national or otherwise – is too rigid. We are talking about formation of subjectivities, which is never without paradoxes. The works take specific situations – historical or otherwise – as departure points to display social conditions by focussing on relations and gestures in the public sphere. The cinematic format is used as a methodology for production and as the basic language for various forms of presentation. An important stage in the work is the active and often public film-shoot, in which participants co-create the script in an active event of live performance and exchange.
In this lecture I would like to introduce my practice in which I try to make room for a multiple of voices, rather than just my own. My method of working has developed through the desire to research about how to produce – in a situation where I wanted to talk about the conditions of today and work through the difficulty to think around heterogeneity, conflict and contradicting realities. It is through a research/production series, called A Certain Brazilianness that I slowly came to a way of working where I invite others to contribute to a moment of production. This process started in 2004 and a number of pieces were produced until its latest stage in 2008 with Maurits Film.
Wendelien van Oldenborgh
February 2009.
Wendelien van Oldenborgh is an artist based in Rotterdam whose practice explores social relations through an investigation of gesture in the public sphere. Oldenborgh often uses the format of a film shoot, collaborating with participants in different scenarios, to co-produce a script and orientate the work towards its final outcome. Recent projects include No False Echoes (Van Abbemusem, Eindhoven 2008), Lecture/Audience/Camera (Muhka, Antwerp, 2008), Maurits Film, (in co-production with MAMAM, Recife and Capacete, Rio de Janeiro, 2008), Maurits Script (Casco, Utrecht, 2006), The Basis For A Song (produced for Die Regierung Witte de With, Rotterdam 2005)
Van Oldenborgh has also exhibited at São Paulo Bienale 2008, Apexart New York, MAMAM Recife, MAK Vienna, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart. She is currently working on new productions for Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam (March 2009) Contour, Mechelen (August 2009) and will participate in the Istanbul Biennale 2009.
For the academic year 2008/2009 she is guest professor for Kunst und Kommunikative Praxis at the Universität für Angewandte Kunst in Vienna.