Scenographies

With installations, performances, a film programme curated by High&Low Bureau, artist's talks with curator Alexandra Landré, a panel discussion, and a seminar in collaboration with Arte Útil Museum ‘Scenographies’ offers a lively programme that conserves, combines and complicates the tradition of public art commissions in the Netherlands. The SKOR archive is not employed in an effort to present a well-organized survey of the public life of art, but as a source for the presentation of various practices that take an active part in public life. The participating artists and other guests play with the disappearance of monolithic modernism, and dramatize the theatricality of our contemporary media landscape. In doing so they create a mise-en-scène of reflections and commentaries on a generation-long history of art in public space.

Together with the flexible background designed by the artist Antonis Pittas, within which the exhibition programme takes place, the temporary presentations of ‘Scenographies’ underscore the transitory nature and disappearance of SKOR. At the same time this theatre of change brings new perspectives of art’s role in the public domain. With this in mind, all the participants have sought dynamic ways of employing the public archive so that this cultural heritage might contribute to the future of art in public space in the Netherlands. This is also one of the reasons why the archive is being made accessible to the public by the LAPS Knowledge Centre at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie. The aim is ultimately to keep all of the projects of SKOR and its extensive network of commissioners, civil servants, artists, publics, curators and others parties involved, available for research and inspiration.