19 Jan 2011

Nicoline van Harskamp | Exhibition D+T Project

D+T Project is pleased to announce 'Yours in Solidarity,' Nicoline van Harskamp's first solo exhibition in Belgium.

YOURS IN SOLIDARITY,
by Nicoline van Harskamp

Between 1988 and 1999, on the threshold of what seemed to be a new political era, a post-communist era, the dutch anarchist Karl Max Kreuger exchanged letters with like-minded people all over the world.
After his death in 1999, his archive was stored at the International Institute for Social History (www.iisg.nl) in Amsterdam. Nicoline van Harskamp spent over a year reading and sorting about 1500 letters by over 400 people. This activity was supported with a research fellowship of the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam (www.rijksakademie.nl) and the IISG.
Her research results form the basis of an extensive film- and performance project named after a widely used sign-off in the letters: Yours in Solidarity. It does not attempt to portray Kreuger himself, but rather a complicated and somewhat diffuse global network of anarchist thinkers, confronted with questions such as: In a post-communist world, should anarchists cut or strengthen their collectivist roots? What does leadership entail within an anti-hierarchical movement? And how can one anarchist judge the integrity of another?

Yours in Solidarity is being produced in stages. First, van Harskamp will travel Europe and North America in search of actors who can bring the 100 most prominent correspondents alive. Each actor is given all the factual information from the letters, as well as a set of quotes and some political and historical background information. A handwriting analysis gives insight into the correspondents' characters. With each actor she will hold and record an improvised interview session, in a location thought relevant to the character.
Because on average, 15 years have passed since the last available letter, they will have to fill in and imagine the life story of the character since. For the second stage of the project, around 50 of these 'interviewees' will meet in the Netherlands for a scripted anarchist conference. Footage of both stages will be So far, Yours in Solidarity is funded by the Netherlands Film Fund (www.filmfonds.nl) and Stroom den Haag (www.stroom.nl).

In december 2010, the Brussels D+T Project (www.dt-project.com), co-produces all research and video shoots in Belgium, the first in the project as a whole. The results will be presented as a video installation at the Gallery from January 13, along with collages, prints and writing that support and illustrate the complicated nature of the project and the wealth of material and thought in the original archive.

Yours in Solidarity is the most recent in van Harskamp's large body of work on the role of personalities and spoken language within political processes. Other recent works include Expressive Powers Series Part One, performed at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the New Museum New York and Witte de With, Rotterdam; Any other Business, a scripted conference produced for the Spinoza festival Amsterdam; The New Latin, a performance in Romanian, produced for the 4th Bucharest Biennale; To Live Outside the Law You Must be Honest, a film produced at Nikolaj Copenhagen and presented at, among others, the Taipei Biennale, Gasworks London and Salon of the Revolution Zagreb. In 2004, van Harskamp was short listed for Becks Futures London. In 2009, she won the national art award of the Netherlands, the Prix de Rome. Van Harskamp (1975) works and lives in Amsterdam. More information: www.vanharskamp.net.