We swear we saw this

For the fourth cycle of Shimmer’s exhibition program Sequins, Bik Van der Pol made a new work. We Swear We Saw This (in deference to Michael Taussig) is questioning the working of memory - of the individual as well as of the institution. With wallpaper print, teleprompter, model, carton boxes.

At Shimmer one can see a large scale wallpaper of The Bookshop Piece installed at Boijmans van Beuningen Museum in 1996. It shows someone walking past the back side of the artwork that looks like a box. The right side of the image is black due to a technical mistake of the photographer. But we see a small part of a drawing, supposedly, as the artists remembered, by Dutch architect Ad van der Steur from the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum archive. It was installed right next to The Bookshop Piece. At the time, this drawing was brought to the artists by the conservator of the print collection of the museum, and it accompanied The Bookshop Piece for three months.
Where is that drawing that Bik Van der Pol remember as a drawing of a conservator sitting behind his desk, amidst his exhibition? That image that shows how a museum may function if the desk is in the space, and the curator part of the show. Where is it? Does it really exist? Can we return to the memory of the institution, what traces are kept there?
Obviously the drawing must have returned into the archive after the installation was taken down.

We swear we saw this

Though it could not be located for many years, it surfaced during Bik Van der Pol’s investigations in the archives of the museum. But what was left of The Bookshop Piece in that archive other than in memory? For sure, dissemination of knowledge carried by bodies, memory of the project in the minds of many minds, traces of the 4000-5000 books (every book was stamped) on private bookshelves and in public and university libraries worldwide, as well as digital traces in texts and images referencing this project. Other than that there are not many traces left of this work, nor of any of the other time-based projects that happened, in the archives of the museum. A few documentation images, a bit of information, that’s all. What is the responsibility of a museum with regards to preserving their own exhibition history? What is the value of a collection that is also the fabric of society? Departing from The Bookshop Piece as a site which brings audiences together and while circulating knowledge through their active participation, Bik Van der Pol organised a drawing workshop and a conversation with Mariana Françozo and Merijn de Waal on loss of objects and what such a loss might mean for a shared understanding of collective histories and stories.They also dispersed the project as an insert in 4000 copies of Metropolis M magazine. The insert enters into the rhythm of circulation, keeping the exhibition continuously open and alive in memory and collective ownership.