AS ABOVE SO BELOW in now stored in the space of Google maps

oct. 15

Bik Van der Pol on instagram and twitter

sep. 16

Take Part - Is There Room in San Francisco for San Francisco? 2018-2020

apr. 19

With Take Part, Bik Van der Pol Take Part seek to create a shared public vision of the city by anchoring discussions about its past, present, and future, as well as its challenges and opportunities, to a tangible object—a thousand-square-foot scale model of San Francisco built in the late 1930s—at the city’s public libraries. Take Part involves a multitude of voices in discussions and inviting participants from diverse backgrounds, skills, and ages to infuse the scale model with their perspectives. Public libraries, the primary site for the project, were once and continue to be a core infrastructure of public culture in the United States. Take Part explores the potential of the public role of these hubs for citizenship and communal gatherings, and pillars of public life.

Take Part - Is There Room in San Francisco for San Francisco? is a project by Bik Van der Pol, commissioned by Public Knowledge at SFMOMA in partnership with San Francisco Public Library.

see also: this website

publications

mar. 20

Public Space? Lost and Found, a collection of essays, projects, and interviews on the shape and status of public space-making in art and architecture today. MIT Press.

WERE IT AS IF, many-voiced case study that enlists the power of archival fragments of this institution, as points of provocation to engage with methodologies of the contemporary. Contributions by Defne Ayas, Bik Van der Pol, Manuel Borja-Villel, Marianna Hovhannisyan, Brian Kuan Wood, Doreen Mende, Peter Osborne, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Samuel Saelemakers, Terry Smith, Ana Teixeira Pinto. Designed by Bardhi Haliti.

School of Missing Studies, Contributions by Liz Allan, Bik Van der Pol, Charles Esche, E. C. Feiss, Laymert Garcia dos Santos, Sarah Pierce, Eloise Sweetman, Paulo Tavares, Nato Thompson. Design by Anja Groten. Sandberg Series n°1. Sternberg Press

In the vacuum of the Gwangju Uprising: endless struggles. A conversation between Binna Choi and Liesbeth Bik in newspaper Nossa Voz (Our Voice), Casa do Povo (Sao Paulo). download pdf here

Far Too Many Stories to Fit into so Small a Box, Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw

apr. 20

Exhibition project Far Too Many Stories to Fit into so Small a Box by Bik Van der Pol, based on the collection and archives of the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art. Bik Van der Pol critically examine – from the vantage point of outsiders – its history as well as take on board its founding myth and remind of the creator of its concept in the early nineties, Wojciech Krukowski, art historian and founder of the avant-garde theatre Akademia Ruchu (Academy of Movement). Concept, research and script by Bik Van der Pol, curator Joanna Zielinska, Visual Identification by Fontarte, Exhibition Design by Matosek Niezgoda, Choreography Ania Nowak, Performers Agnieszka Ay?en Kaim, Mamadou Góo Bâ, Billy Morgan, Ania Nowak, Jagoda Szymkiewicz, Soundscape Wojtek Blecharz.

Performances (subtitled) by Agnieszka Ayen Kaim, Mamadou Góo Bâ, Billy Morgan, Ania Nowak, Jagoda Szymkiewicz.

Soundscape by Wojtek Blecharz based on the script by Bik Van der Pol

more on Far Too many Stories To Fit Into So Small A Box

Recent
political developments: here
and here

Reviews:
Exhibition Far Too Many Stories to Fit Into so Small a Box featured by Weronika Trojansnka in MetropolisM
Review by Adam Mazur. See english translation here
Review by Stach Szablowski, english translation here
AlJazeera

Take Part #GuessWhereSF Instagram

may. 20

#GuessWhereSF Then and Now. Scale model sliding then and now images, part of the Take Part #GuessWhereSF Instagram series #takepartsf

Take Part: Update

jun. 20

Take Part is a project by Bik Van der Pol, seeks to create a shared public vision of the city by anchoring discussions about its past, present and future, to the tangible: a 1000 square foot detailed wooden scale model of the city built in the late 1930s by the WPA under the New Deal program.
(due to coronacrisis the final stage of this project is postponed)

San Francisco model on David Rumsey's website
SFMOMA
Stories from the model city and 99percentinvisible
on Living New Deal
SF WAP model at Libraries

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

jun. 20

Basic Income, webinars Akademie van Kunsten (in Dutch)
Texte Zur Kunst
Naomi kKlein in Intercept
SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM MEETS THE CORONAVIRUS SHOCK DOCTRINE
disobedient objects: everyday items that have been turned to a new purpose
Seth Siegelaub: The Artist’s Reserved Rights Transfer And Sale Agreement (1971)
null
CENTRE PARRHÈSIA, The Society of the Friends...AND
16 Beaver Group

Now What?

aug. 20

Now What?, Fieldwork International Summerschool, Hospitalfield, Arbroath, Scotland. 4-5 September online, 10am-2pm GMT
With curators Binna Choi, Galit Eilat, Tessa Giblin, and artists Ashanti Harris and Olivia Plender, and a screening of the film What is Democracy? by film-maker Astra Taylor. Programmed by Bik Van der Pol.

Upcoming: School of Casablanca

sep. 20

KW Institute for Contemporary Art and Sharjah Art Foundation, in collaboration with Goethe-Institut Marokko and ThinkArt, initiate a collaborative venture 2020–2022/23 revolving around the approach of The School of Casablanca—a school that developed innovative education and exhibition strategies in 1960s Morocco.
During a residency in Casablanca between 2020–2022/23, artists will conduct research, produce new work, and create a public program focused on the subject(s) addressed in their research.
With Céline Condorelli, Fatima-Zahra Lakrissa, Marion von Osten, Manuel Raeder, Bik Van der Pol, Abdeslam Ziou Ziou.

Upcoming: Don't Fence Me In

sep. 20

In collaboration with TAAK and Public Art Amsterdam, Bik Van der Pol are developing Don't Fence Me In. This research project responds to the removal of a work by Peter Struycken from De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) in Amsterdam, which has to make way to create a more transparent appearance of the building. The fencing to which the artwork is attached would become redundant, because of the relocation of the banknotes and gold-stock from DNB to Zeist. Bik Van der Pol's research focusses on (the illusion of) visible and invisible fences that give or deny access.

The School of Missing Studies

sep. 20

The School of Missing Studies started in 2003 as a collective made-up of artists and architects, who recognized the missing as a matter of urgency in public space and how cultural education was so close yet so far removed from cultural production. They investigated what cultures laid the foundations for the loss that we are experiencing from modernization, and how we can learn from this loss. The School of Missing Studies is calling for a space to turn existing knowledge against itself to affect our capacity to see things otherwise, to trust that seeing, and to set our own pedagogical terms.