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Too much to fit in an institution
collections should always travel, to continuously be brought to the people, as these collections are a ’public good‘. We brought the collection to TENT, a contemporary art space in Rotterdam. The transportation of the works was sponsored, so we were able to bring 150 works to Holland.
Liesbeth Bik and Jos van der Pol from the What was your working method? Dutch collective Bik Van der Pol, interviewed by Agnieszka Sural about usability, site The FRAC collection consisted of sensitivity and adding what is missing. During about 650 pieces. When we visited their residency in Warsaw, they worked on an their storage space for the first time, we thought it was very inspiring. The exhibition of the collection of the Ujazdowski crates of artworks were full of labels, Castle Centre for Contemporary Art. Agnieszka Sural: You have been collaborating since 1995. How has the art world changed during that time? Bik Van der Pol: In the 1990s, the art world was still relatively small. It was basically dominated by Western Europe and the United States, with not that much communication with or interest in other art worlds. This essentially meant that other art worlds did not exist in the perception of the Western world. After the wall that had divided Europe fell in the early 1990s, everything cracked open: capitalism accelerated, travel and interests also accelerated, and the art world became more global. Just like the economy, pushed by capitalism and the global market. So as a result of these dynamics, Chinese, African, South American and Central European cultural worlds have become more visible. You have worked before with collections in France and South Korea. We worked with the collection of FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais in Dunkirk. That was in 2002. We were asked to develop a new work and make a solo show of our existing work in the FRAC space there, and also to work with their collection. The point of departure of all the FRACs in France is that their
with names and addresses. So one could see where the various pieces had travelled to and been exhibited worldwide. The boxes open up as much an imagination as the art works inside them. After a lot of thinking and trying out the many possibilities that we could explore, the premise for selecting a work became the discussion that a piece inspired between us. Some pieces might be less interesting by themselves, but they nevertheless played a role in our discussions. Sometimes a work had been very influential on our own thinking, sometimes we knew a work from hearsay or from books only, and then found it in the collection. So we grabbed the chance to finally see such works for real. Based on this, we made a pre-selection of 150 works and then asked ourselves: what would this choice mean for other people? We invited nine groups or individuals: artists, writers, curators, a filmmaker, a group of architects, a chef – among them Polish artist Paulina Ołowska who teamed up with American artist Jill Magid. We asked them to make their own selection from our selection. It was important that the people we asked would be able to justify and talk about why they felt a collection is important, and why they were interested in the works they had chosen. We interviewed them about their choices
