OWNING AND UNDERSTANDING

The Reinwardt AIR programme sets out responses to the challenges posed by a rapidly changing world. How does the relationship of the human and the non-human need to be re-evaluated and understood differently in the face of climate disaster? How can the traumatic threads of imperial exploitation be unravelled in today’s societies, and what impact could they have on the idea of ownership and legacies? What role does technology have to play in all of this? Heritage professionals and heritage perspectives have a role to play in addressing these questions.

This year, we are lucky enough to host not just one artist but several Artists in Residence: three AIRs will join us for a series of masterclasses, teaching exchanges and guest lectures. They will roam around the halls of the Reinwardt sharing their expertise from October 2022 till March 2023. This edition is the first time we have three AIRs, justified by the theme ‘bezitten en begrijpen’ - to own and to understand. Given the different interpretations and perspectives possible for this theme in both content and form, these AIR’s were invited on the basis of their varied creative skill sets, allowing space for the ambiguity between the different notions of owning and understanding to be explored.

The three Artists in Residence the Reinwardt Academy is delighted to announce are: Eline Jongsma and Kel O’Neill - collectively and professionally known as Jongsma & O’Neill; scientist and natural historian Marc Argeloo; and Cecilia Hendrikx, architectural designer and co-founder of the collective Pink Pony Express.

Jongsma & O’Neill are a film-making duo who have become known for their creative storytelling methods and their meticulous attention to the hidden details embedded within genealogical or historical lineages. The pair show the aftershocks of such details to echo through time and across generations. Their ‘true stories told in unexpected ways’ includes PBS documentary series Empire, a four-year documentary project that one may encounter as a video installation, an interactive website or an artist’s book and His Name is My Name, a visual experience combining augmented reality, stunning animation, and a detective’s commitment to finding the truth in a family history.

Scientist and author Marc Argeloo is likewise interested in the revealing of a different kind of truth within a historical past. Coming from a natural sciences background, Argeloo’s work centres around the idea of the ‘shifting baseline syndrome’, the idea that our image of a rich biodiversity gets more and more limited each generation - implying a gradual change from the norm. In another project, he highlights the plight of birds of paradise, intertwined as they are with imperial/colonial legacies. In doing so, Argeloo situates issues of nonhuman beings in the exploitative processes of human history.

Cecilia Hendrikx’s Pink Pony Express investigates socio-political phenomena through embedded research and installations in public space. They have a unique approach to the idea of ownership, offering back through their work ‘what was never possessed in the first place’. During this residency Hendrikx will depart from a lighter, more intuitive position – taking the opportunity to put superficiality first. This is a deliberate deviation from the complex topics usually inspiring her work that are omnipresent in the current social and cultural debate. She will draw freely from architectural elements, nature, scale models and surtouts de table to shape her questions on ownership and – more provocatively – on stealing

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