Kunstenaars filmen collecties

This programme will feature a selection of short films showing collections through the eyes of visual artists. For Depot (2015) Fiona Tan filmed in the depots of natural history collections, accompanied by films by Tacita Dean, Camille Henrot, Amie Siegel, Nashashibi/Skaer, Mels van Zutphen and Ben Rivers.

Artist and filmmaker Fiona Tan regularly explores collections, museums and archives in her work. For instance, in the video installation Inventory (2012), on view in the exhibition Mountains and Molehills, she focuses her cameras on the house of eightteenth-century architect and collector Sir John Soane.

For Depot (2015), Fiona Tan filmed in the depots of natural history collections. This work, not on display in the exhibition, will be screened in the cinema on the occasion of this evening’s programme together with films by Tacita Dean, Camille Henrot, Amie Siegel, Nashashibi/Skaer, Mels van Zutphen and Ben Rivers.

People collect to get a grip on the world around them: collections reflect scientific thinking, personal taste, power structures and dilemmas. Not surprisingly, collections are regularly the subject of artworks, and museums regularly invite artists to respond to their collections.

This programme, curated and introduced by Marian Cousijn (Eye), will feature a selection of short films showing collections through the eyes of visual artists.

Programme

Depot
Fiona Tan's Depot (2015) focuses on the complex relationship between humans and nature. The natural history collections she filmed were amassed in the nineteenth century. To preserve species in this way, they must first be rendered lifeless.
Grosse Fatigue
Artist Camille Henrot created Grosse Fatigue (2013) during a residency at the Smithsonian Institution, which manages a total of 142 million objects. Centered around various creation myths, countless images of objects pass by restlessly. Until we know why we are here, our hunger for knowledge will never be satisfied.
Manhattan Mouse Museum
In Manhattan Mouse Museum (2011), Tacita Dean films pop art sculptor Claes Oldenburg, renowned for his large sculptures of everyday objects. In playful commentary, he founded in 1972 the Mouse Museum: a collection of small curious objects collected throughout his life.
Fetish
Artist Amie Siegel filmed for Fetish (2016) the annual nocturnal cleaning of Freud's personal collection in his London museum. Fetish enables a reverse view of Freud's collection – alternately tender, projecting and voyeuristic, as the conservator carefully removes the fine layers of dust
Flash in the Metropolitan
For Flash in the Metropolitan (2006), artist duo Nashashibi/Skaer filmed the famous museum at night using a flash light. Object from the African and Oceanic collections pass by fleetingly: without context, without stories. Museal contemplation is rendered impossible here.
The Shape of Things
Harvard Art Museums invited artist Ben Rivers to respond to their collection. He filmed ethnological artefacts accompanied by William Bronk reciting his poem At Tikal. The Shape of Things (2016) asks: to what extent can you capture a collection?
Het topje van de Mont Blanc
Teylers Museum in Haarlem holds an extraordinary piece of stone in their collection: the summit of Mont Blanc, taken by geologist De Saussure in 1787. In Mels van Zutphen's film, anonymous mountaineers decide it is time to return the famous souvenir to its original spot, Europe’s highest point.