Bik Van der Pol
search
· index · notes · books
preface
This book as a site fluctuates between moment and stability, between the informal, the immediate and the ever-lasting.
It embodies the drifting of our projects and working method, engaging with functionality, site sensitivity, and in-depth reading into what establishes a 'space of experience'.

This book as a site is continuously in a state of becoming, an active dynamic construction, a support system for a way of thinking, acting, and working.
8
preface
Since 1995, Liesbeth Bik and Jos van der Pol work collaboratively as Bik Van der Pol. They work and live in Rotterdam (NL).

Through their practice Bik Van der Pol aim to articulate and understand how art can produce a public sphere and space for speculation and imagination. This includes forms of mediation through which publicness is not only defined but also created. Their work follows from research of how to activate situations as to create a platform for various kinds of communicative activities.

Bik Van der Pol’s mode of working consists of setting up the conditions for encounter, where they develop a process of working that allows for continuous reconfigurations of places, histories and publics.

Their practice is site-specific and collaborative, with dialogue as a mode of transfer; a “passing through”, understood in its etymological meaning of “a speech across or between two or more people, out of which may emerge new understandings”. In fact, they consider the element of “passing through” as vital. It is temporal, and implies action and the development of new forms of discourse. Their practice is both instigator and result of this method.

9