Archive in M4gastateliers Tetterode/Amsterdam
The Archive has been split up to different homes. Part is in institutions, part I keep and use in my ongoing research, and what is left has a new home and has moved to Chateau de Blagnac in France. During La Tournee des Ateliers 2023, I unpacked these 60+ boxes live during a 10 day performance. It became a meeting ground and conversation place again.
Chateau de Blagnac, Cabara France 2023
M4Gastateliers, Amsterdam Netherlands 2022
End Residency Archive M4gastatelier
Already nostalgic for these past months I spent in Tetterode M4gastatelier residency, I have begun to wrap up this fase of my artistic research project.
The first part UnBoxing the Archive went smoothly. At this moment you can access all the (more than one hundred) unboxing videos on my NinaLawina youtube channel, and my Instagram account ‘unboxing the archive’ is overflowing with pictures of boxes and their contents.
But the second part, Mining, Staging and Performing the Archive, didn’t go as planned. The original idea to host with my brother, writer Maarten van Hinte, paleontologist Jan Smit and visual artist Robbert van der Horst evenings in the archive, was not possible in large part because of Covid surge in the Netherlands and the Dutch Covid restrictions. The project then became primarily my own personal research, supported by Maarten, Jan and Robbert, wherein the archive functioned as a meeting place where I had conversations and interactions, live and online, with different people from science, art and others.
These conversations were about the traces someone leaves in a lifetime.
About the science that is contained in this archive. About how mind-blowing deep-sea research expeditions are. About what it’s like to be part of a development in science where thinking about time and the history of the earth dramatically changes from how it was seen by the former generations. About how the academic world is. About how being talented doesn’t always lead to being successful. About how the ways of the world can break you or bring you to great heights. About how knowledge can be destroyed. About how we can suffocate in stuff, material, knowledge and facts. About how people’s personalities seem to have toned down in recent years. About how difficult it is to partly live in a world of deep sea, deep time, deep space. About the worth of analogue archives. About the worth of digital archives. About the beauty of geological maps. About how small and beautiful foraminifera are. About parents who are ill. About parents who disappear. About childhood and the direct and indirect influence of your elders on who you become. About my fabulous mother. About being in awe of the beauty of nature. About good books, good food, good music and everything that makes it all worthwhile. About truth. About art. About curiosity for uncharted territory, a realm where scientists and artists connect. About ‘how can you do this to your children leaving them all this stuff they have to sort out’. About ‘how do you go about it respectfully’ or ‘should you just throw it in a dumpster’. About a man, Jan van Hinte, my father, and what it feels like to hold on to the notebook he had with him in the field, and where he wrote down for the first time the ideas that later made him famous in his expertise. Or what it feels like to find children’s doodles on important files and to know it must be my brother’s or mine. About mourning, sorrow, and loss. About how it is to be in conversation with him through his archive. About the inescapable fact that one must go on.
The last week of january the archive was physically together for the last time in this form. I built a walk-through installation where every day a different aspect of the archive was disclosed; at the same time the archive was gradually dismantled during the week.
All these elements that surrounded him during his scientific life will form new constellations around other entities than my father. Some will go with me, some will go with my brother, and the rest will go with others. Both an ending and a new beginning.
We celebrated this moment with soup, conversations and food and drink that people brought.
This installation was not the completion of my research but the starting point of a new phase, Archive Afterlife. I hope to use the knowledge and inspiration I have gathered these past months to travel new pathways.
First #Legacy
Second #Archive
Third #Globalsystems
Fourth #World
Fifth #Sea
Sixth #Time#Memory
Last #watdoenwemetdespullen
Second #Archive
Third #Globalsystems
Fourth #World
Fifth #Sea
Sixth #Time#Memory
Last #watdoenwemetdespullen
https://www.facebook.com/unboxingthearchive
Box #1
part 1: UnBoxing the Archive
You can follow the UnBoxing beginning October 20 2021 every day a new unboxing video will be posted
NinaLawina YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoz6-RCTPTLfxiVeyBMo8hQ
on Instagram:
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