Talk
Critical Spatial Practice XI: Jeanne van Heeswijk
Title of lecture: Training for the Not-Yet
In our rapidly changing cities we must train ourselves to work collectively to imagine a just future with complexity and care, both militant and empathic.This requires setting up an open conflictious and radical inclusive process, which questions: How to collectively shape the places we live, influence the processes of design, regulations, policy making and take responsibility.
How to engage in deep cultural exchanges among different communities? How to commit ourselves to other realities? Training ourselves in civic engagement, radical collectivity, and active empowerment, requires bringing together collaborators from various fields and communities to create and practice alternative imaginings of being together in the face of the pressing emergencies that shape the world today which is a steep learning curve full of political uncertainties for all involved.
Jeanne van Heeswijk (NL) is an artist who facilitates the creation of dynamic and diversified public spaces in order to “radicalize the local”. Her long-scale community-embedded projects question art’s autonomy by combining performative actions, discussions, and other forms of organizing and pedagogy in order to assist communities to take control of their own futures.
Noted projects include Hotel New York P.S. 1 in New York (September 1998 to August 1999); De Strip (The Strip) in Westwijk, Vlaardingen (May 2002 - May 2004); Het Blauwe Huis (The Blue House) in Amsterdam (May 2005 - December 2009); Homebaked in Liverpool (November 2011 - present); Freehouse, Radicalizing the Local in Rotterdam (September 2008- present), Philadelphia Assembled in Philadelphia (2015-2017) and Training for the Not-Yet in Utrecht (2018-2019).
Her work has been featured in numerous books and publications worldwide, as well as internationally renowned biennials such as those of Liverpool, Shanghai, and Venice. She was the 2018-19 BAK Fellow, the 2014-2015 Keith Haring Fellowship in Art and Activism at Bard College and she has received the 2012 Curry Stone Prize for Social Design Pioneers, and in 2011, the Leonore Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change. She lives and works in Rotterdam.
The lecture is organized in cooperation with MAPS (MFA Art & Public Space; KHiO – Oslo National Academy of the Arts) and ROM, Room for Art and Architecture, Oslo and OAT (Oslo Architecture Triennale).
ROM for kunst og arkitektur, Room for Art & Architecture, Maridalsveien 3, 0178 Oslo.
