Periferic 7 Biennale
Strategies for Learning
Iasi (Rumania)
2006
Teach Me Something focuses on processes of learning and generating knowledge through experience and improvisation, sometimes passed on from one generation to another. These kind of processes tend to create situational and often everyday knowledge, embedded in language, culture, or traditions. Critics of cultural imperialism argue that the rise of a global monoculture causes a loss of local knowledge. Rather than a tool to think about what can be shown or even taught to others, or an invitation to explore and reflect on a specific site, Bik Van der Pol choose to interpret the invitation to participate in an international Bienale as a challenge: to ask others to teach us (the artists, the public) what we don't know or what we might have forgotten.
During a visit to the flee market under the Podu Ros (the Red Bridge) in Iasi, Bik Van der Pol observed that a lot of objects on sale would have been throw away in the part of Europe where they live: mobile telephones, hi-fi equipments, old watches, radios, various elements from unknown machines and household material has, apparently, still a purpose.
These objects raise basic questions on value, use-value and the importance of knowledge of improvisation skills. Skills and knowledge that are quickly disappearing in Iasi under pressure of increasing capitalism.
The artists asked different people who were said to have specific skills or knowledge, to show and teach these skills. A series of video interviews is presented as part of an installation in the Cultural Palace. How to repair a lamp, how to make an umbrella, how to knit, knowledge in mouse traps, tin ornaments and utensils, and bookbinder skills are amongst the different explanations archived, in what functions as a potentially - on-going manual.
Through this project, Bik Van der Pol are focusing on the different degrees of awareness of what is valuable and what is not, what can be transformed into something else, here and there.
