This is what we did during the covid years: a lot of in-depth reading as site-specific research, into the pile of circa 50 Mosaic Magazines, from the first Issue (October 1967) to now. Mosaic issue 54.2 is a special archival issue developed as the first part of a collaborative project between us, the magazine and Shep Steiner. Shifting through fifty odd years of old issues and forty times as many published essays, we collectively selected twelve to republish.
The second part of the project involves a series of lectures that will be published in a subsequent issue (55.1).
introduction about our work and collaboration with Mosaic, by Shepherd Steiner and Karalyn Dokurno.

Many recent works of contemporary art, performance, and film turn a spotlight on sleep, wresting it from the hidden, private spaces to which it is commonly relegated. At the Edges of Sleep considers sleep in film and moving image art as both a subject matter to explore onscreen and a state to induce in the audience.

Far from negating action or meaning, sleep extends into new territories as it designates ways of existing in the world, in relation to people, places, and the past. Sleep also expands our understanding of reception beyond the binary of concentration and distraction. Jean Ma brings together an array of interlocutors—from Freud to Proust, George Méliès to Tsai Ming-liang, Weegee to Warhol—to rethink moving images through the lens of sleep. Ma exposes an affinity between cinema, spectatorship, and sleep that dates to the earliest years of filmmaking, and sheds light upon the shifting cultural valences of sleep in the present moment.

School of Casablanca, SCHOOL OF CASABLANCA PUBLIC SERIES
OCTOBER – DECEMBER 2022, which contours are taking the shape of a Walking School, slowly moving through urban layouts, historic texts and textures of minds.
With workshop and walks initiated by Manuel Raeder, a workshop and study day conceived by Fatima-Zahra Lakrissa, Walking Series on the invitation of Bik Van der Pol, Lecture Series by Céline Condorelli, Workshops with Peter Spillmann.

Levend Landschap/Living Landscape, with works from Jeroen Jongeleen, Bik Van der Pol, Tone Bjordam, Marisca Voskamp, and works from Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Kröller-Müller Museum, Museum Rotterdam, Dordrechts Museum, Rijksmuseum, National Archives, Stadsarchief Rotterdam and Gemeentearchief Schiedam, emphasizing six centuries of the Maas delta, one of the most densely populated areas in Europe.

Our text Speechless: Some Notes About Birds, in this beautiful 436 pages thick book. Order here. Edited by Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin, published by K.Verlag and HKW

These Birds of Temptation. Edited by Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin. With contributions by Eddie Bartley, Ari Bayuaji, Bik Van der Pol, David Bonter, Xavi Bou, Tiffany Bozic, Lêna Bùi, Bertolt Brecht, Wallace Craig, Mark Dion, Andreas Doepke, Jimmie Durham, Anne Geene, Sophia Gräfe, Mary Ellen Hannibal, Nina Katchadourian, Bernie & Kat Krause, Barbara Marcel, Anaïs Nin, Arjan de Nooy, Megan Prelinger, John Paul Ricco, David Rothenberg, Juliana Spahr, Bruno Schulz, Anna-Sophie Springer, Frank Steinheimer, Yoko Tawada, Anna Tsing, Etienne Turpin, and Francesca Woodman. Design in collaboration with Katharina Tauer.
English
436 pages
ISBN 978-3-9818635-4-3
K. Verlag and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, 2021

Did you know that ...Little Liars "was the name of radio receivers in Soviet Union that would receive only a certain government-approved frequency (the same formula was used in North Korea.) You could listen to “Voice of America” in USSR, but mere exposure to an opposite side of propaganda had tragic effects as well: a number of guerrilla fighters stayed for many years with radio receivers in forests of USSR-occupied countries like Lithuania waiting for “Americans to come.”
(Cited from Raimundas Malasauskas, text for Plug in 28, Van Abbe Museum)

Little Liars (collection from Kyiv, models 1-9), consists of nine unique bronze casts of one-channel radios, collected by Bik Van der Pol at flee-markets and from private persons during a residency in 2007 in Kyiv. 'Little Liars' was the (nick)name of these radio receivers in the Soviet Union, that would receive one single frequency controlled entirely by the state. Usually installed in the kitchen, they had to be part of every Soviet household, and were the only source of information about events in the Soviet Union and the rest of the world. As part of their continuous research on how knowledge affect a community or society, Bik Van der Pol investigated how information about the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl was disseminated to the public, and how the events following this event have implanted and continue to manifest in the private and public life of Ukraine.
In the casting process one single duplicate is cast from an original object. The original, the mould, is destroyed to remove the cast item, while every detail, inscription, mark, or structure, is conserved in the bronze, a material that is traditionally used to cast monuments and public sculptures.

HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME

Little Liars (collection from Kyiv, models 1-9). Little Liars used to be the (nick)name of the radio receivers in the Soviet Union. These radios would receive only one single frequency. Usually installed in the kitchen, they were part of every Soviet household, and had to be on all day. They were the one and only source of information about what took place in the Soviet Union and the rest of the world. Like the newspapers also this medium was controlled entirely by the state.
Between a Rock and a Hard Place "Early in an introductory geology course, one begins to understand that rocks are not nouns but verbs— visible evidence of. processes: a volcanic eruption, the accretion of a coral reef, the growth of a mountain belt. Everywhere one looks, rocks bear witness to events that unfolded over long stretches of time". (Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World, by Marcia Bjornerud, pp. 8)
WHAT IS THIS WORLD?
Life Once More by Sven Lutticken
Interview with Bik Van der Pol by Lucie Kolb & Gabriel Flückiger in Issue 21 (New) Institution(alism), Both a radical and mild change
The Chorus and the Contemporary Ruin by Maeve Connolly. See also: Public Arena
On lazyness and boredom, Sven Lutticken
The School of Missing Studies at Sandberg Institute 2013-2015
Art Meets Science and Spirituality in a Changing Economy, Louwrien Wijers 1990
The World Question Center James Lee Byars 1998

A Catastrophe is Unfolding: Nikita Kadan on the Situation in Kyiv: "We urgently need your solidarity. Please demand that your governments shut down Ukraine airspace. We are being bombed. Please demand sanctions. Please find a way to stop Putin. Our country is already partly in ruins and the situation is deteriorating every day. We know there are hard times ahead. After the war will come famine, and then we will really need your help. If we speak about the needs of the artistic scene – we’ll need your support to reconstruct our cultural institutions and to restart our artistic lives, by increasing visibility for Ukrainian artists. But, ultimately, this is not about saving Ukrainians; it’s about protecting yourselves, too. We are all in danger, because this is a war against the very idea of democracy and human rights."
Atlas of places
Cahier and Webinar on Universal Basic Income (Dutch only)Hollandse Meesters
CENTRE PARRHÈSIA, The Society of the Friends...AND
16 Beaver Group
The Lab
Naomi Klein in InterceptSURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM MEETS THE CORONAVIRUS SHOCK DOCTRINE
disobedient objects: everyday items that have been turned to a new purpose
TURN ON, TUNE IN, COP OUT By Steven Warwick, Texte Zur Kunst
Seth Siegelaub: The Artist’s Reserved Rights Transfer And Sale Agreement (1971)
A New Bauhaus? The Debate for a More Inclusive Europe, by Hicham Khalidi en Rolando Vázque

A dérive through Casablanca, history and minds. A public programme by Bik van der Pol in two parts, November 2021, and autumn 2022.

Throughout November, Bik Van der Pol had, as start of their research, a number of meetings, discussions and conversations in Casablanca and Marrakech, with various cultural actors; Bert Flint, Mamma Group/Lahbib El Moumni, Mohamed Rachdi, Kenza Sefrioui, Sabrina Kamili, Florence Darsi, Maud Houssais, Fatima-Zahra Lakrissa, Maria Karim, Mohamed Jibril, Mehdi Azdem and Eric Van Hove.
In Autumn 2022, as an extension of their artistic practice focus on encounter and collaboration, BIk Van der Pol invite Fatima Mazmouz to embody Casablanca mon amour- Résistants, 2014-2018, as well as Hassan Darsi, Maria Daif, Manal Aziz & Hamza Boussedra, and Mohamed Fariji to a series of public walks.
The School of Casablanca is a collaborative project that takes as its starting point the legacy of the Casablanca Art School and its innovative pedagogical methods and exhibition strategies in 1960s Morocco.
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 Casablanca Art School—a school that developed innovative education and exhibition strategies in 1960s Morocco. During a residency in Casablanca between 2021–2022/23, artists 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, Gilles Abray, Marion von Osten †, Manuel Raeder, Bik Van der Pol, and Abdeslam Ziou Ziou.

In 2020-2021 Bik van der Pol developed in collaboration with TAAK and Public Art Amsterdam, Don't Fence Me In, with the intention to eventually make a film, a public program and an online research platform.
Don't Fence Me In responds to the renovation and the removal of the fence around the building from De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) in Amsterdam, to make way to create a more transparent appearance of the building, now that DNB aims to create public access to the building. The fencing to which the artwork of Peter Struycken is attached also has become redundant, also 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, as well as on the deconstruction of modernity by focussing on the slow process of the dismantling of the building towards the exposing of its carcass.