Wendelien van OldenborghNo False Echoes, 2008
Wendelien van Oldenborgh is an artist based in Rotterdam whose practice explores social relations through an investigation of gesture in the public sphere. She often uses the format of a public film shoot, collaborating with participants in different scenarios, to co-produce a script and orientate the work towards its final outcome, which can be film, or other forms of projection. (source: website dutchartinstitute) No False Echoes was screened for the first time in the exhibition Be(com)ing Dutch at Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven (2008). The film introduces a 1913 essay (“Als ik eens Nederlander was” ; “If I were a Dutchman”) on national freedom by Soewardi Soeryaningrat, an Indonesian nationalist. In a discussion held by KUNCI Cultural Studies Center (Indonesia) she said that this text which she actualizes in the film by a performative act, not only brings the historical text as a given fact, but as a material to rethink the meaning of both the historical moment and the situation in which we live today. The reader of the text is Salah Edin, a Dutch-Moroccan rapper. The text refers to his own situation coming from an immigrant family. Because he is a strong performer he can bring emotion to the reading, which allows the text to show its strength. The setting is Radio Kootwijk, a monumental 1923 building in Art Deco style which was the first transmitter built and owned by the Dutch government to facilitate telecommunications, particularly phone conversations, with the Netherlands East Indies and other parts of the world. Apart from the rapper we see three invited speakers - philosopher Baukje Prins (University of Groningen), programme maker Wim Noordhoek (VPRO Radio) and Edwin Jurriëns. (See his article in IIAS Newsletter #48, summer 2008). |
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