Imaginary Museum
Projects
Tjebbe van Tijen
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| Madrid metro: "hold on together "- 2005 |
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| Bangkok: public market - 2004 |
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| Ljubljana 2007: ventilated smokers aquarium in Café Métropole |
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| quandering seed spring - 2001 |
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| autumn storm - 2002 |
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| eastern snow 2008 |
Coming Up & Current Events ..
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Website for the "Orbis Pictus/Theatrum Mundi Congress" that will take place in October 2008 in Amsterdam, its aim is to give a 21st century perspective on World, Picture and Theatre; it is the 9th international congress of the Gesellschaft für Theaterwissenschaft". The website was launched in the beginning of March 2008. Designed by Imaginary Museum Projects in collaboration with Joachim Rotteveel & Elwin Zuiderveld. This project was commisioned by Kati Röttger, professor at the Theatre Studies Department of the University of Amsterdam, she also wrote the documented 'call for papers' that can be found both in German and English on the website: www.theatrummundi.com  This website has 'deep-documented references', using a system of dynamic transposing windows combining the ideas of the pioneer of hypertext Ted Nelson with the tradition of citations/quotations collections in 'commonplace books" and 'florilegia' from the Renaissance to the Middle Ages.The website will grow during the months to come before the actual event. The themes of the conference are also dramatized in a series of vsiual narratives/scrolls by Tjebbe van Tijen. The first one is now on-line with the title/theme "Orbis Digitalium Pictus", playing on the double meaning of the word 'digital' (signals or information represented by discrete values [digits] and relating to fingers [digitus in Latin], and referring as well to the title of the 17th century visual/textual primer by the Czech pansoph Comenius: "Orbis Sensualium Pictus [the world excplained in pictures]). Other scrolls will be added a.o. "Dionysia and other parades", Potemkin's Trompe-L'-Oeil" ... |
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| "AgitPop 1968-2008 - activists graphics, images, pop culture" is an exhibition curated by John Phillips of The London Print Studio that opened in February 2008 and will run untill May 31 2008 at the gallery connected to London Print Studio at Harrow Road 425, London W10. John Phillips is one of the co-founders of the forerunner of the London Print Studio: Paddington Printshop, starting in the mid seventies. It combied social action with graphic arts, having a big impact on the history of the Padington neighbourhood with its actions against property speculation and inititiaves for communal facilities like Meanwhile Gardens, a park created by a "grass-root" movement, famous for its pioneering skateboard piste and still a lovely spot next to one of the grotesque highrise public housing estates of the early seventies. As a curator of the Documentation Center of Social Movements of the University Library of Amsterdam I did collect over the years many of the posters printed at Paddington printshop (now in the collection of the International Institute of Social History (IISG), Amsterdam ). Two friends of mine were also in close contact with Paddington Printshop: Steef Davidson, who was the initiator of the Amsterdam poster collective "Vrije Zeefdrukker" (free silk screen printer), and Pieter Boersma , who made a photo reportage on Paddington Printshop in the early eighties (slides from this reportage have been reused in a big print at the 2008 AgitPop show). |
This reportage was earlier shown in the context of a poster exhibition on art and readical protest curated by Steef Davidson in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in 1981). A visual resume of the catalog can be found online on my archive website. This year John Phillips asked if I would like to come up with some materials /suggestions for his exhibition celebrating the 40th aniversaty of the 68 movement. It resulted in the making of a series of five big documentary collage prints that are now part of the AgitPop London show . One is a 18 meter long print hanging from the ceiling, a digital recycling of a series of looping slide projections  made in 1989 together with Suzanne Outshoorn for another poster exhibition as part of the 1989 Amsterdam manifestation "Europe Against the Current" . There is an online catalogue of the AgitPop show in PDF format with an essay by Damon Taylor and with an introduction by John Phillips that can be viewed/downloaded by clicking here Related to this subject is a text published, now twelve years ago, by the French sister institute of the IISG the BDIC/Paris, documenting a series of lectures on the roots of the French May 1968 movement ("Les années 68: événements, cultures politiques et modes de vie" ). I was asked to do a talk on "Les Provos" - the Dutch radical and playful movement of 1965-1967 and its reception in France - it can still be found on-line as a PDF. |
| Untill December 2008: Museum voor Communicatie The Hague "Eye opener: the power of visual language" is an exhibition at the the Museum of Communication (formar Postal Museum) in The Hague, the Netherlands, from 16 October 2007 till the end of the year 2008. The ideas originated in an earlier show in Lisboa - ExperimentaDesign in the year 2005 - curated by Max Bruinsma with designer Ed Annink and additional input by Jan van Toorn and Rob Schröder. Logos, icons, pictograms and photographs used for persuading the public, to inform and activate. Showing advertisement strategies that go beyond beauty & the photomodel by brands like Diesel and Benetton, as well as anti-publicity tactics by groups like Ad-Busters. The aim of the exhibition is to support and stimulate 'visual literacy'. |
Also in this show my installation "Ideas of Visual Language": an associative panorama in which insights, disputes and misconceptions about image and language over thousands of years, and from many different cultures are shown on meters long scrolls. The public can handle these scrolls both in a 'low tech' and 'high tech' way: a wooden box with handles to be turned by hand and a computerized scroll with a touch screen giving access to one hundred documentary overlays. The redesign of the touchscreen interface has been made by Joachim Rotteveel. The wooden scroll boxes were originally designed for an installation on neo-Shamanism for the Royal Tropical Institue/Museum in Amsterdam in 1997 by Gert Jan Leusink and the workshop of Frank Hoogveld in Wormer. |
Passed Events in the years 2008 - 2006
on sunday January 27, with among others, documentation on the MovieMovie shown at the EXPRMNTL December 1967 (an expanded cinema performance with a big dynamic inflatable structure) by Eventstructure Research Group & Sigma Projekten: Theo Botschuijver, Jeffrey Shaw, Sean Wellesley Miller, Pieter Boersma and Tjebbe van Tijen; live music by the group Elettronica Musica Viva with Frederic Rzweski and Richard teitelbaum, fluid projections by "The Overheads". Also the Continuous Movie by Jeffrey Shaw, Willem Breuker and Tjebbe van Tijen has been shown .. 
Break Festival Ljubljana, Slovenia:held in November 2007 with 40 participants (visual artists, filmmakers, lecturers, performers and dancers) from 20 countries giving their interpretation of and reaction on the theme of the festival: "Potemkin Village" (a make believe strategy of hiding social distress behind a facade, said to be invented by the Russian Count Potemkin - lover and right hand of Czarina Catherine II -in the second half of the 18th century).
Stephanie Benzaquen was the artistic director of this festival assisted by Mateja Jurič, Špela Zidar and Miha Colner; Romana Zajce and Ana Fratnik made a video documentation of the festival that will be published in the first half of 2008.
"Potemkin Table Talks", a small interactive installation I made for the BREAK Festival Ljubljana Click for a detailed view of the installation and its content, using Zoomify..
for a detailed view of the installation and its content, using Zoomify..
Standing in Budapest Váci Utca Arcade 2006
in the city center of Amstelveen/Netherlands : "Give Respect Your Face" July-November 2007: Two huge inflatable faces on which short statements on 'respect' are projected in full daylight; anybody can go and record and project their opinion. Click image above for a full panorama of the installation ... (photographs by Pieter Boersma, Theo Botschuijver and Tjebbe van Tijen)
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| 19 October 2006 Dutch daily "de Volkskrant", web gallery Oog (artists reacting to the news): "MetaMap Saddam Hussein 1937-2007" door Tjebbe van Tijen de week van 17 oktober 2006: A visual navigator to on-line representations of power & violence in graphs, maps and ceremony. Searching for information sources for a multiple truth. An updated version of the MetaMap Saddam Hussein can be found at the Imaginary Museum Archive site click picture above for link (this MetaMap is in English).'El Pais'of 30/11/2006 had an article on this project "Van Tijen creas mapas de la violencia Humana", a PDF of this article can be dowloaded here |
20 March 2007 Dutch daily "de Volkskrant" web gallery Oog (artists reacting to the news) Meta-Statistics of a century of violence in the Middle East: putting Iraq in context.Click picture above for link ... (this web page is in Dutch. A PDF of the special page on this project in the 'Kunstbijlage' of 'de Volkskrant' of 20/22/2006 page 15, can be downloaded here |
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| Summer 2006 a Fifty Days War was ranging in Israel Gaza/Palestine & Lebanon. As often the case, the number of victims and damage claimed or denied by either side in this conflict, developed into a parallel 'information war'. During two months I have tried to document and compare these claims using 'visual statistics' in the tradition of the godfather of the modern icon and 'isotype' Otto Neurath (Blidstatistik). Click images above for a link | |
Bibliomania
and, once the new window opens, move your mouse over the scroll; to see a reference click ... Situationisten op drift / Situationists adrift
14-12-2006/11-03-2007. In samenwerking met Pieter Boersma (fotografie), Rolf Pixley (programmering), Fred Gales (geluid), Mazdak Wahedi (documentatie).The installation shows collections by and about fifteen people that were either involved with the Situationists or had an affinity to situationist ideas. Hundreds of photographs have been taken by Pieter Boersma in their homes and workshops, in archives and libraries - especially the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. These pictures formed the basis for 21 visual stories. Many digital scans were made as well, of posters, leaflets, books, pamphlets and periodicals; personal photographs and correspondence have also been included. Fred Gales searched for related audio materials in historical archives. A multitude of personal associations with situationist practice and thought is represented by the installation: "Situationist adrift."
The people who give access to their 'information landscape' are: Jacqueline de Jong, Simon Vinkenoog, Nic Tummers, Robert-Jasper Grootveld, Hans Mol, Roel van Duijn, Tjebbe van Tijen, Theo Botschuijver, Steef Davidson, Cor Gout, Iris de Leeuw, Tony Verlaan (through his archive at the IISH), Jan Ceuleers, and René Sanders.
': "we go into the circle by night" + "we are consumed by fire") on the lost paradise of the Situationist International, a collaborative project of the Centraal Museum Utrecht and the Tinguely Museum Basel.A visual summary of the public and private information-landscapes of the installation can be found at my archive site... click for a link
for a full size view ... |
| "Art Action Academia 1960-2006: social and technical context of events and collective creativity"; an essay and project proposal by Tjebbe van Tijen 2006/05 presented at PSWAR/Overtoom Amsterdam: "PIXELS OF REALITY..." Click for details |
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| Photo book on the work of photographer Pieter Boersma, pictures from 1965-2005, published by Uitgeverij De Verbeelding, Amsterdam; isbn 90-74159-88-5. Pieter Boersma has documented my work for the last 40 years. Click for details |
Imaginary Museum Projects Archives
putting the past in the present: 2 x
