today

a brightness in my day, and genuine excitement after visiting the Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven - One of the things that I enjoyed seeing there was an exhibition of drawings and maquettes by the guy who built this hot pink structure, which is a covered bridge and entrance to the cafe at the rear of the building. His name is John Kormeling. The text on the top of the shed reads echt iets voor u, which translates as "really something for you" and was commissioned by the museum to respond to community perception that the organization is elitist. (not for "them").

The covered bridge crosses the water that surrounds the museum on two sides, and the text is perhaps an invitation for the uninitiated to make the leap of faith over the water and find, on the other side, that there really is something for them ...

this makes me think about what is currently so problematic about our relation to one another - it is what always is problematic, knowing who is outside, who 'you' is (not I), know who "I" is (not you) and the more specific problems to do with (advanced) culture, it's audiences and its aspirations. Because it can never really be one thing for everyone. The more complex question, which makes this work seem, um ... cynical (?), is about how we enable people to feel that they have ownership of culture in the public domain, and are able to enter the critical discourse - rather than insisting that they like it necessarily.

So perhaps the reason that I liked this work is that it is forcing me (one of the "I") to think about what the problem is. I wonder if the people who "they" are trying to encourage to cross the bridge are thinking about it.

I liked the Van Abbe Museum, anyway.


and I liked Dan Perjovski.


and I'm glad that I liked Lily van der Stokker as much as I thought I would.

[rather a beastly way to treat an artist] ... [not a penny gets you ... a large solo exhibition in a large museum]