Behind YOUR NAME IN LIGHTS

From June 1 to 26, the Stedelijk continues its commitment to bringing international artists to Amsterdam for the Holland Festival, exploring the relationship between the visual and performance arts.

This time, it will involve a 30 meter-wide LED screen.

I spoke to Curator of Exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum, Martijn van Nieuwenhuyzen, about how this project came to be. Over the past three years, he has been working closely with the Holland Festival and this year sees the Museum taking on more of the production responsibilities.

Martijn told me about how he and a Holland Festival representative saw Marina Rosenfeld’s TEENAGE LONTANO at the 2008 Whitney Biennial. Rosenfeld’s live performance involved a remix of György Ligeti’s 1967 work LONTANO with several young people taking vocal cues from iPods. Bringing this to the 2009 Holland Festival was the first formal collaboration between the two organizations. For the performance in the Westergasfabriek, Rosenfeld recruited Dutch teenagers.

The second project was South African artist William Kentridge’s TELEGRAMS FROM THE NOSE, with music from French composer François Sarhan. An orchestra played alongside Kentridge’s visual representation of the Stalinist purges against the avant-garde.

This year, Martijn told me about how the imminent opening of the new Stedelijk expansion was a major factor to the project’s initial planning. Behind his head at his desk is a large print of the Museumplein with the new building. He pointed out to me how the repositioning of the museum’s entrance to face inwards was an exciting opportunity to imprint public space with cultural activities. I tried to make a point how it felt like turning this large grass square from a back garden to a front garden.

Martijn and Stedelijk Director Ann Goldstein wanted the new expansion to be a space for public art. They came up with criteria of what they wanted: It had to respond to the new architectural forms; it had to establish the surroundings as an art environment; it had to be a public artwork that could actively reach out to the public rather than relying upon the typical passive relationship.

Whilst creating a shortlist of artists, Ann Goldstein put forward the idea of working with American artist John Baldessari, who she knew from her former position as senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

For all of Baldessari’s influential work, he isn’t really known for his public art. Whilst Martijn was researching the shortlist of potential artists to work with, he discovered Baldessari’s YOUR NAME IN LIGHTS. It was part of the Sydney Festival and it fit exactly what the Stedelijk was after. The high level of audience participation was too good to pass up. Baldessari agreed to bring it to Amsterdam, the only other time the work is planned to be on display.

YOUR NAME IN LIGHTS will occupy a transitional space between the institution’s walls and the public square. The large LED screen blurs the boundaries between the two. In return, members of the public get to add their name to be displayed right on the side of the museum. I said to Martijn that I hoped people, regardless of their global location, could feel part of the Stedelijk by being part of the artwork. Martijn hopes that it could kickoff the possibility of more public art projects in the future.

You can sign up to YOUR NAME IN LIGHTS for your 15 Seconds of Fame at http://www.yournameinlights.nl/