for immediate release - fundament foundation
TRANSCRIPT
Phyllida Barlow (GB)
Diego Bianchi (AR) Burkard Blümlein (DE)
Broersen & Lukács (NL) Peter Buggenhout (BE) Žilvinas Kempinas (LT)
Robert Kusmirowski (PL)
Thomas Léon (FR)
Jorge Macchi (AR) Josiah McElheny (US)
Saskia Olde Wolbers (NL)
Tsang Kin-Wah (CN) Tarek Zaki (EG)
06.04 – 23.06.2013
Spoorzone 013
Tilburg
NL
Phyllida Barlow GB
Diego Bianchi AR
Burkard Blümlein DE
Broersen & Lukács NL
Peter Buggenhout BE
Žilvinas Kempinas LT
Robert Kusmirowski PL
Thomas Léon FR
Jorge Macchi AR
Josiah McElheny US
Saskia Olde Wolbers NL
Tsang Kin-Wah CN
Tarek Zaki EG
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
In 2013 Fundament Foundation, which has received international
acclaim for its recurrent editions of Lustwarande at De Oude Warande,
a park in Tilburg (NL), will focus on the redevelopment of Tilburg’s
railway zone. From April 6 until June 23, the international exhibition
Slow Burn – an index of possibilities will take place in the former
locomotive depot, one hundred and fifty years after the start of the
construction of the railway depots in Tilburg.
Slow Burn will centre around two themes that can be considered
characteristic of both developments in contemporary art and the
redevelopment of the railway zone: time and entropy. It will feature
works by thirteen artists, most of which have been specially created
for this exhibition.
As in many other Dutch towns, Tilburg’s railway zone (spoorzone) is currently
being redeveloped. The railway zone in Tilburg is a large, elongated area of
55 hectares running through the city centre. It is not uniform but has three
distinct subsections, of which the NS (Dutch Railways) workshop section to
the immediate north of Central Station is the most interesting, since this
subsection will eventually become a dynamic extension of the current city
centre.
Exactly one hundred and fifty years after construction of this workshop area
began, Dutch Railways have moved out and returned the site to the city.
Redevelopment of the NS workshop section, with its monumental buildings,
will reinvigorate Tilburg’s cultural heritage. These historic structures – along
with other railway elements such as rails and signals – imbue the area with a
unique quality and energy, making the railway zone a fascinating combination
of urban renewal and industrial heritage.
As the first international cultural project in Tilburg’s railway zone, Slow Burn
will play a pioneering role.
The question is whether the meaning and function of art in the public space,
including art in areas that are new or under development, is always controlled
and exploited as an instrument of political strategy. However, the totally
independent status of Fundament Foundation ensures that Slow Burn will not
in any way serve as an instrument of ideology or city branding. The exhibition
will in fact be both a vehicle for developments in contemporary art and a
site-responsive reflection on the distinctive features of the railway zone as it
undergoes redevelopment.
If there is one term that captures the essence of the railway zone, then it
is undeniably “time”. The railway zone has a history, a past in the form of
vacant buildings from different periods that represent a considerable range
of late-nineteenth and twentieth-century industrial architecture, and the area
is also profoundly marked by remnants that evoke the theme of passage.
These vestiges of the past include not only the workshops once used for train
maintenance, but also the extant infrastructural elements, such as rails, switches
Concept
and signals, which relate directly to transport and travel, concepts that are
inseparable from the notion of time. The past can clearly be felt in this place,
and yet the entire redevelopment zone is oriented towards the future.
Time is hardly a new theme in visual art, but over the past decade it has risen
to new prominence within the oeuvres of many artists. All manner of imaginative
variations on this theme – reflections on passage, transformation, the cycle of
life and death, the collective or personal past (whether factual or invented), the
deceleration or compression of time, progress, visions of the future (sometimes
based on technological advances, occasionally apocalyptic, featuring both new
orders and new disorders) – have resulted in fascinating works that have greatly
enhanced our ever-expanding insight into the slow burn that is known as time.
The intention is for the railway zone to remain an area where the concept of time
is an almost literal and continual lived experience. Between that historic past
and the future, all that exists is a vacuum, a ghost town where every option is
open. That brings us to another role played by time in a redevelopment area like
the railway zone. Michel de Certeau has argued that the definition or redefinition
of a place can be regarded as a victory of space over time. When a space that
was part of the ineluctable passage of history, with the potential to assume
many forms, becomes the subject of a land-use plan, it is cut off from change
indefinitely, if not permanently. From that moment onwards, strict codes and
rules apply (Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, 1984).
The redevelopment of Tilburg’s railway zone is still in the planning stages.
What is actually going on remains hazy (a slow burn...) because of the obstacles
posed by the present economic crisis and political quagmire. The current
vacuum offers, at least in theory, the potential for forms of action that undermine
the supposed consensus and the dominant ideology and take dissensus as
their fundamental principle. In the above-mentioned book, De Certeau contends
that the natural tendency of the individual or small community is either to
appropriate ideology, social structures and codes for self-serving purposes,
or to evade them, and thus to tend towards an orderly chaos that he refers to
as “entropy”, a term with its origins in thermodynamics, which describes the
most fundamental form of unpredictable chaos or derailment within a system.
The melting process of ice cubes in a glass of water is a good example of
this unpredictability.
Slow Burn will present a collection of works that investigate and express the
concept of time in various ways, along with works that focus on the concept
of entropy. The combination of these two themes will provide insight into the
possibilities or impossibilities encapsulated within an area that is in the process
of redefinition, like Tilburg’s railway zone: an index of possibilities.
Slow Burn will take place in the industrial, monumental locomotive depot
(constructed in 1933) located in the railway workshop section, directly north
of Central Station. It will be the first time that these interiors, with more than
15,000 m2 of floor space, are open to the public.
Location
Participating artists will present new works, which they have specially created
for the exhibition. These new works will be presented alongside a number of
recent works that have never or rarely been exhibited in the Netherlands.
Phyllida Barlow (GB)
Diego Bianchi (AR) Burkard Blümlein (DE) Broersen & Lukács (NL) Peter Buggenhout (BE) Žilvinas Kempinas (LT) Robert Kusmirowski (PL)
Thomas Léon (FR)
Jorge Macchi (AR) Josiah McElheny (US)
Saskia Olde Wolbers (NL)
Tsang Kin-Wah (CN) Tarek Zaki (EG)
Curator: Chris Driessen
Slow Burn – an index of possibilitiesSpoorzone 013 – Tilburg – NL April 6 – June 23 2013Entrance via NS-Plein 3 – 5014 DA Tilburg
Press preview: April 5, 2–5 pmOpening: April 6, 3 pm
Open: Wed – Sun, Ascension Day and White Monday from 11 am – 5 pm
www.slowburn.nl
For photographic materials and other information:[email protected]
Slow Burn is financially supported by: Mondriaan Fonds, gemeente Tilburg,
Provincie Noord-Brabant, Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, SNS Reaalfonds,
VolkerWessels, Rabobank Tilburg e.o., Vlaamse Gemeenschap, Institut Français
Participatingartists