War as Ever!
Commissioned by the Nederlands Fotomuseum in collaboration with Rotterdam’s Atlas Van Stolk, WAR AS EVER! (2012) explores the relationship between conflict, spectatorship, and art.
The project’s starting point was the Van Kittensteyn Album (1613), a collection of over 500 prints and drawings from the Atlas van Stolk collection that graphically documents the Eighty Years’ War (1568–1648), the Dutch war of independence against the Spanish, which led to the formation of the Dutch Republic. In the collections of the Atlas van Stolk, the album was compiled by Willem Luytsz van Kittensteyn of Delft and portrays in bloody reportage the lengthy series of battles, sieges, executions, and plundering. Acting as artists, curators, and educators, we connected this historic album with contemporary media representations of violence, the Nederlands Fotomuseum’s archive, and various locations across Rotterdam.
The project comprised the following components:
Ten posters designed by Edwin feature quotes from Susan Sontag’s “Regarding the Pain of Others”, contextualising the exhibition’s viewing experience.
The two-channel video projection, “WAR AS EVER!: Eighty Years and One Day” pairs prints from the Van Kittensteyn Album with clippings from newspapers published on the 1st of April 2003, shortly after the Iraq War started.
Tracy travelled through Rotterdam as the “ Print Pedlar”, a historical street vendor, with a collection of black-and-white photographs from the Nederlands Fotomuseum and Edwin’s family photo album to spark public dialogue about violence and human suffering. These interactions were documented on “The Print Pedlar’s Blog”.
The Conference “WAR AS EVER?: The artist and the museum in the conflict zone”, chaired by curator Frits Gierstberg (Nederlands Fotomuseum), featured presentations by curators, historians, photojournalists, and us.
The book “WAR AS EVER!” was published by Onomatopee and designed by Stout/Kramer.
The journal article “WAR AS EVER! Art Practice as Interface” was published in The International Journal of the Inclusive Museum (2013).
Supported by Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, University of Dundee, The Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland and the Atlas van Stolk.