Neo-beginners - LAb[au]

Neo-beginners
group exhibition

Witte de With, Tent gallery
Rotterdam, The Netherlands
from: 31.08 - 24.09.2006

curator: Reinaart Vanhoe and Roger Teeuwen

featuring:
liquid space04, collaborative design workshop

invited artists:
Forum Lenteng (I), Nilsmagnus Sköld (S), Rolf Engelen (NL), Gert Robijns (B), LAb[au] (B), Toine Horvers (NL), BAVO (NL), Ruangrupa (I), Taco Stolk (NL), Roger Teeuwen (NL), Roel Meelkop (NL), BMB.con (NL), Reinaart Vanhoe (B), Matthijs van Zessen (NL), Gunndís Yr Finnbogadóttir (ICE), Frans de Waard (NL), Matt Mullican (USA), Joëlle Tuerlinckx (B), Daniel Robberechts (B) and Kristof van Gestel (B). And: Michael Snow, Olivier Maarschalk/Pieter Kock, Messieurs Delmotte, e.a.

about the exhibition:

The contemporary city is increasingly covered by advertising and marketing slogans (Rotterdam Dares, I Amsterdam) and decor of festivals which should strengthen its economy and will authenticate identity. Each square meter should be filled by a banner, a logo, a new complex, a ban or an urban program. In all attempts to make the city visible it precisely gets invisible, masked by the abundance of symbols. With Neo-beginners Reinaart Vanhoe is trying to create a radical counterbalance.

________SEPARATOR________

Nineteen Rotterdam, Dutch and foreign artists (collectives) react with new and existing work on the mental and physical space of the city. Based on the urban condition of Rotterdam, they create perspectives on the city, in the attempt, and his failure. The catalog incorporates these attempts in Tent. and the urban space of Rotterdam and at the same time it also offers and creates a new place for interventions and reactions.

With Neo-beginners, Belgian artist Reinaart Vanhoe (curator of the exhibition) proposed a radical counterbalance against all attempts to make the city of Rotterdam visible through previous tried marketing and advertising efforts.

Artists and performances included: Nils Sköld Magnus (Malmö) who began work on the (water) map of Rotterdam. The duo BAVO (Rotterdam) held office in TENT where the essay "Argument for an Uncreatieve City" was published. The collective Lenteng Forum (Jakarta) stayed for a month in Rotterdam and reported through video stories of their explorations of the city. In the workshops of LAb [au] (Brussels), the audience discovered a fusion of sound and visuals and researched their way into the reality of space while formulating an autonomous personal interpretation from a new 4D architecture experience. And designer Roger Teeuwen, foresaw the entire exhibition by means of controlled communication.