@Maarten141BOXES: Bilingual Digital Interactive Internet Artwork in Progress (Artist: Maarten van der Heijden, 1947)
Introduction @Maarten141BOXES is a Bilingual Digital Interactive Internet Artwork in Progress. It is an egodocument: an autobiographical archival artwork on the internet about the unpacking, archiving, documenting, photographing and clearing away of the content of the 141 moving boxes that were in my house. I was carrying these boxes with me my whole life and during my life their number was growing.
My personal motivation for making @Maarten141BOXES is the fact that my (past) life is a mess: I totally do not know when and in what year what happened. With @Maarten141BOXES I want to bring my life in order and make a chronological archive of my life. Because of the impossibility of this task (to archive my whole life) the project will remain incomplete and unfinished: it will be an “Artwork in progress” for ever.
You can find @Maarten41BOXES on the internet:
http://www.maartenvanderheijden.nl/141-boxes
Artwork in progress From 5 March 2008 till 28 Septembre 2009 I worked in the real material world on the 141 BOXES-project. In March 2008 I had no idea of what was inside the 141 boxes: books, piles of paper, old agenda's and diaries, familyphoto's and a lot more. Stuff from the different houses and places I lived in, and things I did put in these boxes after the death of my mother, my father and Omi, my grandmother . . . From 5 March 2011 on I work on the digital virtual version of it. From 5 March 2011 on I will fill the 141 boxes on the website with the results of the project and with commentaries on them. I will do this on irregular points of time and I will inform the followers of the artwork about the progress by tweets and by a newsletter. Relatioships will be made with other forms of autobiographical archival artworks of other artists (for example Christian Boltanski, Andy Warhol, and Sol LeWitt).
Interactive artwork @Maarten141BOXES is an interactive artwork. People can follow it and share it with their friends and connections on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. People can give a rating (like/dislike) of the content of the 141 boxes, and people can comment on the artwork and start a discussion. The comments and discussions will become part of the artwork and may be will be of influence on the direction and development of the artwork itself.
About the artist: Maarten van der Heijden I am a second-generation-jew born in Amsterdam in 1947. I have had previous careers in Baroque Music as a Violone player, and in science and clinical practice as a Child Psychologist. After a midlife-crisis I did entrance-examination at Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, where I studied from 2005 till 2010.
Midlife-crisis I always knew that I was Jewish, but that fact had untill about my five fortieths year little meaning to me. About Judaism and about the war at home there was no talking. And in terms of faith, we were 'nothing'. When I was 45 years, I ended up in a - what belated - midlife crisis: job gone, wife gone, everything totally uncertain. I needed support, love and hope. And then I realized, well I can go to the Baghwan, but I am Jewish, so why not go and explore what Judaism has to offer me? My search for my Jewish roots began with a course on Jewish Spirituality and a course in Jewish History, and ended, via double-bass playing in a klezmer group and attending various rabbinical lern-groups, with a second-generation support group at the Jewish Social Work on the impact of the Holocaust. Finally, in November 2001, I made a trip to Auschwitz (and back!) with the Auschwitz Committee. I was speechless and I was beaten utterly perplexed: the history of Judaism appeared at the same time outrageously and clamant beautiful (the Talmud and Jewish mystical traditions) and also inconceivable awful (the horror of the Holocaust). This was for my narrow little shoulders almost unbearable. And I thought: I have to do something with this; how can I do something with these vehement and contradictory feelings? My answer was: that is only possible by means of VISUAL ART. So I did entrance exam at the Gerrit Rietveld Art Academy Amsterdam.
Gerrit Rietveld Academy 2005-2010 When I was admitted at Rietveld Academy it was my plan to make art about my jewish identity and about the Shoah, using horrible images. My - excellent - teachers tried to talk me out of that, they encouraged me to develop my own visual language. But how to do this? As a way out of a artistic crisis I started in 2008 a conceptual artwork 141 BOXES about the unpacking, archiving, documenting, photographing and clearing away of the content of the 141 moving boxes that were in my house. In my last academy year however I did find my own visual language and in 2010 I graduated with artworks in which I used the photographs the allied forces took at the liberation of the nazi concentrationcamps in 1945. These photo’s are so extremely horrific that they virtually disappeared from the public domain . . .
Artistic career since 2010 In July 2010 my Rietveld graduation project was nominated for the Best of Graduates Show of Ron Mandos Art Gallery Amsterdam. Since April 2011 I am participating in the international art project 'In My Own Backyard I can See the World' of Artists React Globally (ARG) based in Chicago. From 7 May till 13 June I have my first solo exhibition in the Bornse Synagogue. This synagogue was built by my ancestors in 1842.
See my website for more info on my CV: http://www.maartenvanderheijden.nl
Attached images: [1] Stills from video 15-3-2009: 141 BOXES [2] The archive of my father.
@Maarten141BOXES: Bilingual Digital Interactive Internet Artwork in Progress (Artist: Maarten van der Heijden, 1947)
Introduction @Maarten141BOXES is a Bilingual Digital Interactive Internet Artwork in Progress. It is an egodocument: an autobiographical archival artwork on the internet about the unpacking, archiving, documenting, photographing and clearing away of the content of the 141 moving boxes that were in my house. I was carrying these boxes with me my whole life and during my life their number was growing.
My personal motivation for making @Maarten141BOXES is the fact that my (past) life is a mess: I totally do not know when and in what year what happened. With @Maarten141BOXES I want to bring my life in order and make a chronological archive of my life. Because of the impossibility of this task (to archive my whole life) the project will remain incomplete and unfinished: it will be an “Artwork in progress” for ever.
You can find @Maarten41BOXES on the internet:
http://www.maartenvanderheijden.nl/141-boxes
Artwork in progress From 5 March 2008 till 28 Septembre 2009 I worked in the real material world on the 141 BOXES-project. In March 2008 I had no idea of what was inside the 141 boxes: books, piles of paper, old agenda's and diaries, familyphoto's and a lot more. Stuff from the different houses and places I lived in, and things I did put in these boxes after the death of my mother, my father and Omi, my grandmother . . . From 5 March 2011 on I work on the digital virtual version of it. From 5 March 2011 on I will fill the 141 boxes on the website with the results of the project and with commentaries on them. I will do this on irregular points of time and I will inform the followers of the artwork about the progress by tweets and by a newsletter. Relatioships will be made with other forms of autobiographical archival artworks of other artists (for example Christian Boltanski, Andy Warhol, and Sol LeWitt).
Interactive artwork @Maarten141BOXES is an interactive artwork. People can follow it and share it with their friends and connections on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. People can give a rating (like/dislike) of the content of the 141 boxes, and people can comment on the artwork and start a discussion. The comments and discussions will become part of the artwork and may be will be of influence on the direction and development of the artwork itself.
About the artist: Maarten van der Heijden I am a second-generation-jew born in Amsterdam in 1947. I have had previous careers in Baroque Music as a Violone player, and in science and clinical practice as a Child Psychologist. After a midlife-crisis I did entrance-examination at Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, where I studied from 2005 till 2010.
Midlife-crisis I always knew that I was Jewish, but that fact had untill about my five fortieths year little meaning to me. About Judaism and about the war at home there was no talking. And in terms of faith, we were 'nothing'. When I was 45 years, I ended up in a - what belated - midlife crisis: job gone, wife gone, everything totally uncertain. I needed support, love and hope. And then I realized, well I can go to the Baghwan, but I am Jewish, so why not go and explore what Judaism has to offer me? My search for my Jewish roots began with a course on Jewish Spirituality and a course in Jewish History, and ended, via double-bass playing in a klezmer group and attending various rabbinical lern-groups, with a second-generation support group at the Jewish Social Work on the impact of the Holocaust. Finally, in November 2001, I made a trip to Auschwitz (and back!) with the Auschwitz Committee. I was speechless and I was beaten utterly perplexed: the history of Judaism appeared at the same time outrageously and clamant beautiful (the Talmud and Jewish mystical traditions) and also inconceivable awful (the horror of the Holocaust). This was for my narrow little shoulders almost unbearable. And I thought: I have to do something with this; how can I do something with these vehement and contradictory feelings? My answer was: that is only possible by means of VISUAL ART. So I did entrance exam at the Gerrit Rietveld Art Academy Amsterdam.
Gerrit Rietveld Academy 2005-2010 When I was admitted at Rietveld Academy it was my plan to make art about my jewish identity and about the Shoah, using horrible images. My - excellent - teachers tried to talk me out of that, they encouraged me to develop my own visual language. But how to do this? As a way out of a artistic crisis I started in 2008 a conceptual artwork 141 BOXES about the unpacking, archiving, documenting, photographing and clearing away of the content of the 141 moving boxes that were in my house. In my last academy year however I did find my own visual language and in 2010 I graduated with artworks in which I used the photographs the allied forces took at the liberation of the nazi concentrationcamps in 1945. These photo’s are so extremely horrific that they virtually disappeared from the public domain . . .
Artistic career since 2010 In July 2010 my Rietveld graduation project was nominated for the Best of Graduates Show of Ron Mandos Art Gallery Amsterdam. Since April 2011 I am participating in the international art project 'In My Own Backyard I can See the World' of Artists React Globally (ARG) based in Chicago. From 7 May till 13 June I have my first solo exhibition in the Bornse Synagogue. This synagogue was built by my ancestors in 1842.
See my website for more info on my CV: http://www.maartenvanderheijden.nl
Attached images: [1] Stills from video 15-3-2009: 141 BOXES [2] The archive of my father.