This summer, publicist and art critic Ingrid Commandeur interviewed artistic director Ruud Reutelingsberger about this 11th edition of The World of Witte de With and the new departure the festival has taken.
Together with art collective Observatorium, you’ve been realizing projects in public spaces for years, which are focused on interaction with the audience. Now you’ve been made artistic director of the festival The World of Witte de With. What does your ideal festival look like?
Ruud Reutelingsberger: ‘My vision of the festival is in line with my work as an artist, although it offers a totally different challenge. To give you an example: in 2007, I did a project with Observatorium that was called Perron Mozaïque. We built a stage on the old Hofplein platform that, during the day, functioned both as a gallery and podium and, at night, as a motel. A variety of performances, workshops and activities took place there. What concerned us was creating a spatial structure, a platform that would offer the conditions for audience interaction. Similarly, I see Witte de Withstraat as a framework; a space consisting of various facets – the car-free street, inner spaces and outer spaces – which have to be filled with artistic and cultural activities. In that sense, I truly see this festival as a laboratory or workshop.’
An important aspect of the way you work is creating public spaces into which the spectator can retreat and that offer a moment of reflection and contemplation. “Seclusion is a form of participation”, as you once said. A festival like The World of Witte de With, on the other hand, has an event-like character. Can the two aspects be reconciled?
‘It’s about finding ways to combine these two things. Recently, Observatorium did a project in the Ruhr Area as part of Emscherkunst 2010, a large-scale, Biennale-esque art event. I think it’s a very nice example of how to involve local inhabitants in art. Parties were organized as part of the event, where people have a beer, listen to bands, etc. In short, it’s a party, but it serves as a way of tempting people to become curious about the world surrounding them. People, often enough, set off in large numbers to look at ‘difficult’ art and become informed. This is also the task at hand for a festival like The World of Witte de With. The festival’s design plays an important part in this. In a way, you have to literally walk through the art: to be confronted by it, without consulting the programme booklet. Once you’re standing in the street surrounded by some art works, you could walk away, but hopefully you’ll be challenged to do something with it.’
Has this design other roles to play as well?
‘The coherent design of the whole thing forces you to focus more on the thematic content. Art enters the festival in three ways: the institutes invite artists, artists can enrol themselves and the festival’s artistic team invites other artists. The festival originated in the idea that the art institutes present themselves as a whole at the beginning of the new season and especially for this occasion they invite artists to realize exceptional projects. Those are all separate, but the interesting thing is to see whether these projects can fit together in some way, so they become more of a narrative whole.’
Was this the reason to express the ambition that apart from temporary works of art, permanent ones should also be realized and that the festival should be characterized by a more international and cross-border outlook?
‘Yes, I think it should. A lot of energy and money is put into such a festival. And after three days it’s over. Of course, that’s the nature of festivals, but perhaps more can be done in both a programmatic way and by creating longer-lasting projects or collaborations. Slowly but surely you should really come to a two-fold question: what is urgent now in the visual arts and what do art and culture in public spaces mean to the city and how do you implement them? That is also something that can take root and endure after the festival.’
How do you see your task as artistic director of the festival in that respect?
I see the street as a given space, in which the art and projects have to take their place in such a way that a certain concentration becomes possible. Which isn’t easy, as the festival is made up of so many different facets: art, theatre, performance and fashion, and you have to able to tempt the artists to work in such a way. A variety of so-called ‘artists in focus’ have been invited this year, among them British artist and researcher Luke Jerram, the Danish collective Bureau Detours and the Argentinean artist living in Berlin, Daniel Gonzáles. Jasper Niens is an artist from Rotterdam, who handed in a project proposal in collaboration with theatre company Bonheur. I find it important to supervise such a proposal to help it become an exceptional project. In this way, the festival provides a professional environment for a young artist to realize a substantial project. A festival with so many different activities on the same scale needs that: to emphasize a number of projects that elevate the whole, so to speak. That goes beyond ‘city dressing’, just decorating the street. Upload Cinema is another example: an initiative from Amsterdam that facilitates the viewing of web-films on the internet. Museum Boijmans van Beuningen invited them to make a 90-minute programme of internet shorts. We came up with a collective theme, ‘Art Without Walls’, which links to the festival, but will afterwards be presented to the nation. In this way the festival’s range of ideas is also propagated on a wider, national platform.
Many of the invited artists operate on the interface between art and architecture, some more activistic than others. Jasper Niens, for example, builds architectural installations, with which he wishes to investigate people’s experiences with safety and risk in public spaces. Bureau Detours calls itself ‘an inspiring mix of architects, designers, sound engineers, light enthusiasts, gardeners and artists, who test the boundaries and limits for the public space, with great social engagement.’ Did this become the underlying leitmotiv or theme of this edition?
‘Yes, that’s very true. Ideally, art to me is concerned with three things: it is an imaginative work, it evokes something of the location and time in which we live and it is a building block for communality. Furthermore, the collection of art you exhibit at such a festival, its collectivity in other words, should become a landmark to how art and culture play their part in spatial processes of change. The well-known American city designer Allan B. Jacobs, in his book entitled Great Streets, described it as follows: “Great streets should help make community: should facilitate people acting and interacting to achieve in concert what they might not achieve alone (...) and the best of the best streets are likely to involve some magic as well.” The latter especially holds true for The World of Witte de With. The festival should stimulate people to think about and observe the city. The city’s design isn’t just the domain of architecture and town planning, no, art and culture play an ever greater role. Artists are more programmatic these days, they organize various activities, are focused on research and are beginning to master that language. Especially in a city like Rotterdam, where particularly the work of a young generation of artists and architects is beginning to show more common ground.’
The motto is ‘the city is complete!’. Isn’t this at odds with what The World of Witte de With wishes to convey?
‘I would rather say: the city comes alive through its diversity. Here’s a good example: at the moment, Vancouver is seen as the world’s model city. Architects and town planners flock to downtown Vancouver in droves to study it. I’ve also been to Vancouver and I can confirm it’s a very beautiful city, which is also clean, safe and comfortable. Which city wouldn’t strive for this? Canadian town planner Larry Beasly is largely responsible for the planning changes in Vancouver. He also came to Rotterdam as a ‘visiting critic’. I spoke to him recently and he said: “it’s true that the planning is a success, but it’s also become kind of boring.” And that’s something that all town planners or civil servants are familiar with: the quality of a city exists merely by the grace of diversity, paradoxes and unfinished places and that is also part of a city that is complete.’
