A collection of documents from Redlight Art Amsterdam introduction to the artists' contributions

City

Volumn 16, Issue 1-2, 2012, Pages 172-176

  Serino, Angela ^a  

^a Kunsthuis SYB   (Netherlands)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84860322418     PISSN: 13604813     EISSN: 14703629     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13604813.2012.663554     Document Type: Article

References (15)

1. 'The City of Amsterdam is removing the underlying criminality and achieving greater balance in the famous Red Light District, and housing corporations are purchasing buildings currently used for prostitution. Nevertheless, prostitution without the underlying criminality will remain in this district, as it is legal in the Netherlands. Before the purchased buildings are given a permanent function, the City of Amsterdam will give national and international top talents from the creative industry a unique chance to display their creations in the famous windows for the duration of one year.' Official statement of the Municipality of Amsterdam (January 2009), from www.redlightartamsterdam.com. Redlight Art Amsterdam followed Redlight Fashion and Redlight Design, which saw the involvement of fashion and jewelry designers on similar bases.
2. For more information see: www.redlightfashionamsterdam.com, www.redlight designamsterdam.nl
3. Rather than considering the artist as a creative entrepreneur, I highlighted the idea of the artist as a (new) resident of the space, and as such a privileged observer of this phase of transition. The title RED A.i.R., artists in residence in the red light district, was hence added to the original project Redlight Art Amsterdam.
4. The title of the final presentation takes its inspiration from 'Role Exchange', a performance developed by the artist Marina Abramovic in 1976 in the red light district of Amsterdam in which she swapped places with a prostitute. By referring to the intervention by Abramovic in the same area, I wanted to highlight the different reasons and strategies behind the two projects. In Abramovic's case, the performance stemmed from the artist's interest in 'the space of the brothels and the moral values attached to it'. This time artists were invited to occupy the vacant brothels as part of the gentrification initiated by the city planners to replace undesirable elements of the sex industry. However, here the bodies of the artists become again important sites for negotiations of powers and visions. In this changed panorama, it is clear that the artists of this second exchange work as insiders, where they express their positions and express their visions on the reality that surrounds them.
5. RED A.i.R./Redlight Art Amsterdam took place between January and October 2009. You can see all the documentation of the artists' projects, the program of the public events developed over the nine months and the recordings of the public talks on the website: www.redlightartamsterdam.com
6. Francesca Grilli's video-installation 'Bergstraat 16' was a highly poetic funeral ritual to commemorate the death of Truus Krieger, a prostitute who was murdered in May 1959 in the same studio occupied by the artist (at Bergstraat 16). It was presented at the Amsterdam Historisch Museum, and lately proposed as permanent intervention in the original studio building. The performance by Meiro Koizumi 'Melodrama for Men#2' was inspired, instead, by the real testimony of Jan Ruff O'Herne, a comfort woman who was forced to prostitution during the Second World War in Japan.
7. The Fall, written by Albert Camus in 1956, is a novel set in Amsterdam. The protagonist, Jean-Baptiste Clamence, is a French judge who through a series of monologues tells his personal story of 'fall': from being a well-respected and just man, he discovers he has lived hypocritically and selfishly.
8. The recording of Diederichsen's intervention is available on Vimeo at: http://vimeo.com/ user2901414
9. Letter from Gordon Matta-Clark in Paris to his lawyer in New York, October 1975, in Gordon Matta-Clark, IVAM, Valencia, 1993, pp. 383-384.
10. Daniel Buren, 'The Function of the Studio', in Annette Michelson et al. (eds) October: The First Decade, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1987, pp. 51-53.
11. This has been pointed out by various scholars. See, in particular: Miwon Kwon, One Place After Another: Site-specific Art and Locational Identity, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2004
12. Claire Doherty, Contemporary Art: From Studio to Situation, Black Dog, London, 2004; Claire Doherty, ed., Situation, Whitechapel, London/MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2009.
13. Here a definition of 'cultural entrepreneur', as it was elaborated by the Culture Profit Committee established in the Netherlands in 2007, at the request by Ronald Plasterk, Minister of Education, Culture and Science between 2007 and 2010. 'The cultural entrepreneur operates from his own artistic ambition, but at the same time takes saleability, accessibility and public preferences into account.' Source: Ingrid Commandeur, 'Organized Magnanimity the New Art Patron', MetropolisM, No. 3 (June/July), online at: http://www.metropolism.com/magazine/2008-no3/georganiseerde-vrijgevigheid/english (accessed 27 September 2010).
14. Chantal Mouffe, 'Art as Agnostic Intervention in Public Space', Open 14, NAi, Rotterdam, 2008, pp. 12-13.
15. Written in November 2010.