On Mobility, Dirk van Weelden

Catalogue of the exhibition 'On Mobility' in De Appel Amsterdam, July 14 - August 27, 2006

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Participating artists:
Tiong Ang, Bik Van der Pol, Libia Castro / Ólafur Ólafsson, Banu Cennetoglu, Miklos Erhardt, Alicia Framis, Yona Friedman, Patricija Jurkšaitytė, Leopold Kessler, Andrew Miksys, Multiplicity, Marjetica Potrč, Tomas Saraceno, Tomo Savic-Gecan, Sean Snyder, Asa Sonjasdotter, Nasrin Tabatabai, Javier Téllez, Patrick Tuttofuoco, Judy Werthein, Xu Zhen.

The lives of many global citizens are affected by forced migration, while countless others are able to travel freely and frequently. The harsh reality of people who do not move of their own accord is at odds with the lives and freedoms of the privileged, such as artists, who are invited to exhibit their work around the world. Yet many artists are primarily concerned with their fellow human beings: and in their work today migration and mobility, assimilation and translation are key issues. In addition to cinematic and documentary approaches, the essentially visual discipline of contemporary artists even seems to be a sine qua non for analyzing and deconstructing the complex images and semantics involved.

The project 'On Mobility' explored different views on the subject and showed work by artists who explore mobility in the broadest sense. The project consisted of five relay exhibitions. The first exhibition was in Amsterdam, in De Appel. In November that year, BüroFriedrich organized a show in Berlin consisting of a selection of works of art shown in Amsterdam plus four new artists who were added to this selection. Subsequently, 'On Mobility' traveled to the Center for Contemporary Art in Vilnius (February 2006) and to Trafó / Stúdió Galéria in Budapest (May 2006). These institutions also added work by four new artists to a selection from the previous collection. The fifth and final exhibition was again at De Appel (June 2006), which now showed a completely different group of artists - all added by the partner institutions.

Travelling and mobility are recurring themes in the themes of Dirk van Weelden. In the essay he wrote for the On Mobility catalogue Van Weelden re-enacts 16th century rascal Tyl Uilenspiegel like an artist whose work he encountered during his trawls to the exhibitions in Amsterdam, Berlin, Vilnius and Budapest.

Van Weelden questions their balancing between artistic, individual freedom and social engagement. In his search for playful metaphors he is the fellow traveller of the reader and hands the essential luggage on this ongoing mentaljourney in a 21st century parable.

Philosopher Dirk van Weelden (1957) published several novels of which 'Mobilhome' was awarded with the Multatuli prize in 1992. For his complete oeuvre including essays on cinema, photography, literature, art and media, he received the Frans Kellendonk prize. Van Weelden is editor of De Gids and Mediamatic magazine.

Language: English

On Mobility, (text by) Dirk van Weelden, like new
De Appel, Amsterdam, 2006, first edition, paperback with flaps, 22,0 x 16,6 cm, 168 pages
ISBN 9073501695

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