Ludic Landscapes and Political Parks: Revisiting Aldo Van Eyck in Mexico City

Aldo Van Eyck's first playground, Bertelmanplein, constructed in 1947

In partnership with Temporary Art Review we're pleased to share this essay on the legacy of Dutch architect Aldo Van Eyck and the social and political importance of making public space for play. Temporary Art Review is an international platform for contemporary art criticism that focuses on alternative spaces and critical exchange among disparate art communities. 

by Henry Osman

 

The Dutch architect Aldo Van Eyck once claimed that if cities are not “meant for children they are not meant for citizens either,” and that “If they are not meant for citizens- ourselves- they are not cities.” For Van Eyck, citizenship was intimately linked to play and how city-dwellers interacted with, and constantly formed, the city around them. This is a radical thought — a citizenship based on social engagement and an ongoing search for joy in life (in the city) rather than a citizenship based on national origin or place of birth. To be a citizen is to imagine, explore, and play. In the lean post-WW2 years, Van Eyck took his theories of play and urban life and made them real, designing over 700 playgrounds across the Netherlands. Less than a hundred of these spaces remain but the impetus behind them and the questions they try to answer are more relevant than ever.

The Netherlands in this era was a country, it may be fair to say, obsessed with play. Figures such as Dutch historian Johans Huizinga and artist Constant Nieuwenhuys and avant-garde movements like CoBrA helped found the field. Huizinga, in his seminal 1938 book Homo Ludens, tried defining play by arguing that:

    1.    Play is free, is in fact freedom.
    2.    Play is not “ordinary” or “real” life.
    3.    Play is distinct from “ordinary” life both as to locality and duration.
    4.    Play creates order, is order. Play demands order absolute and supreme.
    5.    Play is connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained from it.

Van Boetzelaerstraat, 1961

Where, then, do playgrounds fit into this definition? Does play create playgrounds or do playgrounds create play? Van Eyck grappled with these issues and the rigidity of contemporary playground design. He aimed to create a new form of playground that did not force a single vision of play but rather
served as a theater for the city, offering basic structures to free, not chain, children’s imagination. If the dominant logic of modernist urban planning was to remap and recreate the city — bulldozing and destroying organically created neighborhoods — Van Eyck then intended to work within existing structures and place his playgrounds in often-untraditional places.

A classic Van Eyck playground was, at first glance, strikingly utilitarian. He often centered his playgrounds on a simple sand pit and instead of having large colorful jungle gyms he would place a few concrete blocks, serving as stepping or jumping stones, and simple curved climbing frames. These were often asymmetrical compositions and existed within the city. They were not raised, sunken or walled plazas; Van Eyck tried to use pre-existing spaces like an empty lot or a small intersection to integrate his designs into the surrounding community rather than trying to override it. Even his first playground, Bertelmanplein, embodied these principles. While it at first looks like a simple urban plaza, none of the elements are perfectly centered, rather existing in their own tenuous relationships. These playgrounds were sites of creative potential; there were no cartoonish statues or musical steps, just simple structures that children could transform using the power of play and imagination.

Van Eyck argued that his playgrounds produced space, predicting Lefbevre’s The Production of Space decades before it was written. Van Eyck theorized argued that “whatever space and time mean, place and occasion mean more. For space in the image of man is place, and time in the image of man is occasion.” While Lefbevre switched the definitions of space and place, the similarity of their thoughts is clear. Van Eyck’s playgrounds sought, to follow his definition, to create places rather than simple spaces and prioritized social value over physical structures. He was also heavily influenced by the philosopher Martin Buber, who famously explored the relationship between “I and thou” (Ich-du). Buber focused on these small, almost unobservable dialogues and mutual exchanged between strangers. Van Eyck integrated Buber’s concept of “ich-du” in his playgrounds, trying to create places of encounter that used play to bridge “I” and “thou.” His playgrounds can be read as engines of radical encounters, creating new places, occasions, and citizenships through the simple act of playing.

Final Model for Riverside Park Playground, 1965

This spring two exhibitions opened in Mexico City that grapple with these issues and deeply resonate with Van Eyck’s designs. The first, The Playgrounds of Noguchi at Museo Tamayo, brings together for the first time a series of designs for unconstructed playgrounds by Isamu Noguchi. Noguchi’s playgrounds are strange landscapes, filled with colorful and geometric concrete forms. Instead of using just swings and slides, Noguchi constructs large concrete forms, ranging from orange trapezoids and chartreuse triangles to serpentine walls. These large versions of his sculptures are liberated and activated through play and, to a certain degree, democratize his practice. Only a few playgrounds were built — such as his Playscapes in Atlanta’s Piedmont Park — and the majority only exist on paper or as small maquettes. His most famous designs are perhaps his series of unfinished proposals for a new playground in New York’s Riverside Park with Louis Kahn, displayed through a series of concrete models. The proposals vary, but they all show a deep interest in elongated sinuous forms that recall prehistoric tumuli. His landscapes ebb and flow, creating dense spaces that cry out to be discovered in a similar, if less utilitarian, way to the playgrounds of Van Eyck. Further, both often include simple details — like plain concrete forms — instead of elaborate jungle gyms. Yet, they are also always divorced from their surroundings, either by walls or artificial hills; these playgrounds exist in spite of, not because of, the city and are in many ways the opposite of Van Eyck’s small, more discrete interventions. Finally, the exhibition includes a small reconstruction of a set of his swings and concrete blocks.

Parque Experimental El Eco, APRDELESP

The second, Parque Experimental El Eco, by architectural firm APRDELESP at Museo Experimental El Eco, creates “a space within another space” that transforms the institutional setting of the museum into a democratic “park” where anyone can hold an event. While not a traditional playground in the sense of Noguchi’s or Van Eyck’s designs — there are no jungle gyms, sandboxes, or traditional playground accoutrements — the space carries on Van Eyck’s project. Parque Experimental El Eco is completely open to the public and anyone can, through a website, schedule their own event. The space consists of a grass-filled courtyard, complete with barbecue grills, tables and an inflatable pool, inserting a quotidian backyard scene into the museum. It fulfills, in many ways, Van Eyck’s goals; a few objects in a plain setting unleash the imagination and its public nature creates the possibility of chance encounters and new unforeseen dialogues between “I” and  “Thou.” Although the project is not directed towards children like a traditional playground, its sparseness and desire to create new forms of citizenship, albeit through an art museum rather than the city at large, certainly echoes Van Eyck’s goals.

Even if these playgrounds, playscapes and parks use play to create new sets of social relationships and, potentially, to democratize the city and its cultural institutions, they are not all equally

Parque Experimental El Eco, APRDELESP

democratic. Mexico City, like most others, does not have equal access to parkland or playgrounds across its 16 delegations. Azcapotzalco and Iztapalapa have less than half the green space per resident than Miguel Hidalgo, where Museo Tamayo is located. Even Noguchi’s parks — like his designs for Riverside Park — were marquee playgrounds in wealthier areas. If we imagine that Van Eyck’s thesis is correct, and that play and child-focused urban design is central to citizenship, then this is a damning conclusion as inequalities in play become inequalities in citizenship. Informal playgrounds and play exist, of course, everywhere. But true playgrounds exist as social and political theaters even if this facet is all too often lost in questions of aesthetics, and the radical potential of playgrounds should not be ignored.

 

*  *  *  *  *  *  *   *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *    

Henry Osman is an independent curator and writer based between New York and Mexico City. He debut book, Privacidad Total/Total Privacy, was published in February with Gato Negro Ediciones. He is an editor at Drippy Mag and he has recently curated shows at Preteen Gallery (Mexico City) and Free Paarking (St Louis).

Making It: The Hown's Den

This summer we're pleased to partner with Temporary Art Review to share the work of cultural workers raising kids with a broader audience. Temporary Art Review is an international platform for contemporary art criticism that focuses on alternative spaces and critical exchange among disparate art communities. They're profiling projects that support the work of artist-parents, and we suggested the Hown's Den, a nomadic and domestic exhibition space where artists are invited to transform the living spaces of its three inhabitants:

Amy Kligman, "Interruptions"

The Hown's Den
Current Address: 63 Meade St. Buckhannon, WV 26201
Contact: Crystal Ann Brown
Email: crystal@thehownsden.com
Website: www.thehownsden.com
Open Hours: by appointment or at a scheduled event

How is the project operated?
 The Hown’s Den is not officially a non-profit but we would like to be some day.

How long has it been in existence? 
Almost 3 years, our fist official show was January 23, 2014.

What was your motivation?
 I wanted to experiment with an art environment that was family friendly and non-exclusive and to play around with a non-traditional art venue. At the time my family had just relocated from Athens, Ohio to Kansas City, Kansas. My partner and I were fresh out of graduate school and I was at home most of the time with our then 1-year-old while my partner worked. Faced with this new community and my role as a stay-at-home caregiver I craved inclusion into our new art scene and thought what better way to get involved in the community than to invite artists and people into our home for an art experiment. Now we have been happily experimenting in Kansas, Missouri, and West Virginia ever since.

Caitlin Horsman, "_Place_Plateau"

Number of organizers/responsible persons of the project: 1-3. I usually promote and organize on my own with the occasional help from my partner, but I am always working with the artist(s) installing their work depending on their individual needs.

How are programs funded? 
In the past we have had fundraisers like silent auctions to help fund the travel of artists coming to install work, but we are still working out other avenues of funding for the project as a whole. Currently, we are unable to pay artists for their involvement, but I hope to change that in the future.

Who is responsible for the programming? 
Myself (Crystal Ann Brown) and the artists(s) involved.

Number and average duration of exhibitions/events per year.
In the past there has been one exhibition every few months, however in our current location we are limited in what we can have installed in the space, so we have started a miniature installation project titled *not to scale that will exhibit multiple shows/installations seasonally.

What kind of events are usually organized?
 We mainly host art exhibitions, but we have hosted a backyard film festival and artist talks. We are currently looking at experimenting with lectures and presentations that compliment the miniature series *not to scale, and we are always open to proposals for other events from artists.

How is your programming determined?
 We move pretty organically, I try to gauge what my family can handle considering we live with the work and then coordinate programing from there.

Do you accept proposals/submissions?
 We do not have an official application process but I will look at proposals sent to the email addresses listed above.

Casey Whittier, "Translations and the Memory of Things"

What is your artistic/curatorial approach?
 I try to work with artists that are willing to experiment with a nontraditional art venue, while keeping in mind that the artwork will live with us and be regularly exposed to young children. I look for work that engages domestic architecture and invites imagination.

What’s working? What’s not working? 
I have found that having events on Saturdays between 11-3 works the best for families including my family. This is important because we aim to be more family friendly. I did not always do that and even now it’s hard to hold openings during that time because other art events like art walks are held in the evenings usually on a Thursday or Friday evening, which we try to piggyback on to increase audience turnout.

Having the artist(s) here for the opening has always worked well, the atmosphere allows for a more casual and honest dialogue between the artist and audience.

Creating an environment where the artwork is more integrated into the domestic setting allows for a more intimate reaction or response to the work, which is always a good thing.

In the past, artist presentations, lectures, and film screenings have not worked as well in comparison to art exhibitions, which I attribute to my focus being torn between the needs of my child and that of the presenter or film. That being said, I am interested in trying to have an in-house babysitter for nights when we will have presentations and screenings.

Cory Imig, "Linear Spaces"

What kind of role do you hope to play in your local art scene or community? 
We move around a lot because of our career paths and due to that it seems that we are moving from one community to the next. Within each community I try to engage the neighborhood that we live in. I invite neighbors to events and try to encourage people to look at art in an environment that might be outside of their comfort zone. We are use to looking at work in institutions, but being invited into the intimate space of a stranger’s home can be uncomfortable for some. It is important for us to offer an alternative space to engage in and respond to art. I also hope to perpetuate family inclusivity in the arts by engaging the domestic space as a place to look at and discuss art.

What idea are you most excited about for the future?
 I’m really looking forward to the miniature installation series *not to scale. This series was created out of not knowing how to continue on with The Hown’s Den once we moved to our current location in Buckhannon, West Virginia. We are renting and are very limited in what we can and can’t do to the interior of the home so as a solution I am building miniature mockups of rooms in our home, that I then mail out to the artist. Once the artist receives the miniature they are free to do whatever they want with the room. There are limitless possibilities for installation. Once the work is complete the artist will send the miniature back and we will hang it from the ceiling in the room it was intended to be a miniature of. We will host an opening at The Hown’s Den for our local community, but will also have a digital opening for more intimate photos of the miniatures. I am currently pairing up 2-3 artists to exhibit their miniatures at the same time, because I love the idea of bringing artists together and seeing the dialogue between art works unfold.

Dawlene-Jane Oni-Eseleh, "Inside Voices"

The Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home: an interview with Lena Šimić

The Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home protesting with UK Uncut in London, March 2011, photo: unknown protestor who was asked to take a snapshot

For artist / mother / academic / activist Lena Simic, art-activism and parenting are inextricably linked.  She and her family (partner Gary and children Sid, Neal, Gabriel and James) make up the artist initiative The Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home, which is based in their four-bedroom house in Anfield, UK.  Envisioned as a place where artists and activists can meet, study, protest, and perform, the Institute has hosted a number of events, residencies, and conversations since 2008. Their activities as an initiative are numerous and vary from participating in demonstrations to organizing reading groups to most recently presenting at the Playing It Up  Symposium at the Tate Modern in London.  In 2015 the Institute joined with 12 other families to form the Family Activist Network in order to discuss family life and climate change.  The Institute joined with other members of the Network in North Wales this May for a performance including a reflection on The Paris Agreement on Climate change.  We are so grateful Lena was able to take sometime out of her very full schedule to share some of her thoughts on motherhood, art and activism.    

Lena and James at Time to Act Climate Protest
London, 2015. Photo: Gary Anderson

 Cultural ReProducers: As an artist, mother, and academic, in which areas do you face the most challenges, personally or professionally? Are there any strategies or advice you’d pass on to new parents struggling to maintain a creative practice while raising a family?

Lena Simic: I try to think of myself as artist / mother / academic / activist. My arts practice, activism, pedagogical and research work are all interconnected. The Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home was set up in order to facilitate and name my and my partner Gary’s art-activist practice as well as our parenting practice. We are concerned to bring up our children critically and lovingly. This spills into our pedagogical work at university. As far as I can, I try to work across all of my roles/identities. However, I do find myself ‘having a break’ from one activity whilst doing another. I am currently on the train, having just been to examine a PhD practice element of a doctoral thesis which has to do with birth story telling and deep listening. I am away from the children, I miss them. I am still wrapped up in guilt for being away from them, but I am also grateful for this ‘time alone’ when I can be more focused and uninterrupted. I went for a run by the sea down the Aberystwyth promenade this morning and that felt like a real treat. My academic self allowed for this run. My personal life, if I choose to call it that as the Institute is about blurring the boundaries of the private and public and allowing them to infiltrate one another, is harder. Professional, institutional, academic life has its rules and regulations. No matter how committed you are to the role, you are on someone else’s time. You are a worker, and you are a member of a union, which gives you a sense of protection and security. Personal life is tougher. You are much less prepared for the challenges, which partnership and parental life throw upon you. The same can be said for friendships and artistic collaborations, with all their unpredictable demands. There are no rules, no guidelines, no contracts. Children are very demanding and in my case, having four of them, I also have to deal with the dynamics between them. They are each specifically positioned in our family, and therefore have very different needs and requirements of me, and their father, and each other. Family life is chaotic and erratic. Having our Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home helps us frame it, contain it and sustain it. The Institute is a foreign element, a shock/surprise/visitor/guest, who intervenes into our nuclear heteronormative unit and helps us be nicer and better and more accommodating. We act for it, with it.

As for advice to new parents who are artists, I would advise them not to be scared of having (more) children whilst young. There’s never a good time to have a baby. If you have them young, you will have more energy and fewer inhibitions. I loved having children in my 20s and just getting on with it. I grew up together with my children, and my career was always in line with my being a mother. There was no before the kids/after the kids divide in terms of my career as an artist. Having children has been transformative and the most creative thing I have ever done. Children and creativity are interconnected. You will have to learn to manage your time differently, but that’s a part of the experience. Embrace the challenge, enjoy it, work with it and all its ambivalence. And remember that you don’t have to do it all now.

Friday Records: A Document of Maternity Leave, 11122014
Photo: Lena Šimić

CR: How has the newest member of your family changed the structure or activities of your creative work?

Lena: James was born when I was 39. He is my last baby and he is my fourth boy. We tried for a girl, and instead we got another gorgeous, determined and strong-minded boy. Being the youngest (he’s now 2) he’s loud and willful; he needs to be heard amongst us all, he’s fighting for his position in the family. He’s just learnt to play us off each other – my dada, my mama. He understands his cute baby-boy power, probably not intellectually, but emotionally. James is our limit. He’s stretched us to the limit of what we are capable of as a family. We are beyond the comfortable now. Having two teenagers, a toddler and an 8 year old is hard work. Having four kids is on par with having one, I feel. Two and three was easier. That’s my experience. James brings us so much joy, intensity, love and chaos. It’s as demanding as it was at the beginning of parenthood – really intense.

James threw me back into my ‘maternal arts practice’. This was another chance at ‘doing-it-right this time’. With James I engaged in a blog project called Friday Records: A Document of Maternity Leave (2014). The project was year long, invisible and enjoyable in its loneliness. Even when I was recording my maternity leave online I never advertised it much. I wanted to experience it – semi-privately, semi-publicly. Now, once it’s finished, it’s a document. This was the development of a work I did with Sid, my third child, and which took the form of a journal, photographs and the text Contemplation Time: A Document of Maternity Leave (2007/2008).

I’ve noticed that, in the style of Mary Kelly’s Post Partum Document (1973-1977), many contemporary artists engage in a kind of durational maternal arts practice, for example Elena Marchevska, Helen Sargeant, Lenka Clayton, Lizzie Philps, Natalie Loveless, Paula McCloskey to name but a few. This arts practice contains a certain kind of ‘laboursome aesthetics’. We are all working so hard as mothers and artists, proving our creative work, intense, repetitive and everyday.

Medea/Mothers’ Clothes performance at Studio 12, Bratislava, 2016. photo: Jakub Čajko

Labour and repetition have always been present in my ‘maternal art’. When I first had Neal and Gabriel in the early 2000s, my arrival to ‘maternal arts practice’ was through the live art event Medea/Mothers’ Clothes (2004), in which I engage in the act of washing mothers’ clothes on stage in a baby bath. I juxtaposed Medea, the archetypal anti-mother with images of contemporary Liverpool mothers whom I photographed and who each gave me a piece of their clothing for the performance. I recently revived this performance in Bratislava, Slovakia – a jump from 2004, when it was made and my first two boys were 3 and 1, to 2016 when they are 15 and 13.

With James, I feel I am in a completely different stage now artistically. I am more interested in contextualizing, theorizing, writing, networking and organizing research events. Hitting my 40s has propelled me into a much more academic and facilitating – or should I say mothering or maternal – role.

The Institute boys, 2007 Photo: Gary Anderson

CR: Your practice exists in physical space that is expanded and disseminated online. As your sons get older has your approach to the virtual world of the internet changed?

Lena: I haven’t really thought about this much. When the Institute first started in 2007 and when we got out first website in 2008, the kids were 7, 5 and a few months. They weren’t using the internet at all. Now, all that has changed.  The Institute website is an important part of our identity, but the Institute has also thrived on being a real physical space where people meet, talk, perform, discuss, drink and have a domestic row. The children are happy with the online content of the Institute website and their representations on it, and at times I sense that they are kind of proud of the Institute, its difference and eccentric character. That changes all the time though.

As parents we try to emphasise ‘the now’ as opposed to an abstract ‘the future’, which can make you feel paranoid and overwhelmed. As technology advances we will find ourselves in different realities and in different human relations, but the Institute is interested in combating the immediate conditions and providing a living, breathing alternative. As things stand we haven’t really worried too much about face recognition software developments or any other spying/tracking devices, even when there’s a massive inquiry underway at the moment into unethical undercover policing techniques used by the British police force to infiltrate activist groups.  We are all less and less free and further restricted, but we live in the present and try not to obsess with the dystopian future. It’s so seductive to obsess about a bad future.

CR: Who have been your models for artist-parenting / parent-artisting?

Lena: When we started I genuinely didn’t know many artist-parents as we were in our mid-twenties when we had babies. We were trying to make our careers as artists and trying to manage new responsibilities as parents. We didn’t really have any friends who were parents as well. We seemed to be the first ones with babies in our group of friends.

When we felt settled in Liverpool and started attending toddler groups, we found a new group of friends who were also parents and activists (not necessarily self-identified as artists). We used to talk about alternative, anti-capitalist and cooperative structures of living. We dreamt of setting up some kind of utopian autonomous spaces which would include home schooling/education, leisure, shared labour and lots of organic gardening. These conversations in toddler groups were really formative and important.

Once we had set up the Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home, our children were 6 and 4, and I was pregnant with a new baby. The Institute’s first year of residencies was primarily concerned with unpicking relations between art and capitalism and issues of financial transparency. Our children were around, but we weren’t necessarily focused on ourselves as parents/artists. We identified ourselves as anti-capitalists, activist, anarchist and feminist.

The Institute boys, 2015 Photo: Lena Šimić

In 2009 we were invited by Townley and Bradby to join ‘artists as parents as artists’ weekend at Wysing Arts Centre near Cambridge and whilst this was a memorable experience, we also realized that we weren’t necessarily interested in fitting in with a group of artists just on the basis of being parents. We identified with the art activist scene in the UK much more strongly and later on engaged in research around historical alternative pedagogical practices with children such as The Liverpool Anarchist Communist Sunday School and a number of similar schools from the beginning of the 20th century in London. In 2011 the Institute organized ‘family residencies’ in order to hold conversations about art-activism and the upbringing of children. We hosted Helena Walsh, Kevin Biderman and their daughter Ella from London, a place of their own collective from Sheffield, Townley and Bradby from Norwich and Reverend Billy, Savitri D and their daughter Lena from New York who were touring the UK.

In 2015 we set up the Family Activist Network in order to discuss family life and climate change. We initially invited 20 families across Europe into the project – they all got a letter and a post card asking for slow-mail correspondence on the issue of climate change with a view that we all meet together in Paris for COP21, as a part of the social movement for ecological justice. 12 families responded and 24 of us, parents and children, went to Paris in December 2015 for demonstrations and actions around COP21 and climate change. Unfortunately some of the families dropped out of the Paris trip due to terrorist attacks in Paris last November, but for all of us who went it was a wonderfully memorable experience. All dressed in red, with toddlers and prams, with primary school aged children, with teenagers, joining in the Redlines march at The Arc de Triomphe, playing with Inflatable Cobblestones, eating croissants, feeling empowered by belonging to the social movement for ecological justice, travelling across Paris by metro, eating together in a brasserie, walking around Père Lachaise Cemetery. 30 of us from the Family Activist Network will now meet again for a weekend in North Wales in order to create a chaos-filled performance about climate change and family life, reflecting on our slow mail correspondence, Paris trip, The Paris Agreement on Climate Change, future generations and the dying planet.

Family Activist Network at Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris 2015, Photo: Townley and Bradby

CR: Every year the children decide if they want to continue being a part of the Institute. Would the dynamic of your family change if someone opted out… or if the Institute ceased to exist?

Lena: One of our favourite lines, when presenting the Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home, is to say that the Institute is always in the state of collapse. Whilst this is true, the Institute has also become too precious to all of us (except of course James). The Institute is our critical space, and a kind of political consciousness, but it’s also lots of fun. As I have already mentioned, the Family Activist Network are meeting soon to try to figure out a strategy on how to create a performance about family life and climate change. Our children are looking forward to meeting other artists/activists’ children again. This is effectively a working holiday.  Protests and demonstrations are fun family days out. Visitors to the Institute bring newness and excitement into our household. The Institute room is a space for weird kind of activities but also a spare room where one can lie down and, whilst looking over all the changing banners, leaflets, correspondence and post cards blu-tacked on the wall, reflect on one’s life and activities. Neal (15) recently said the Institute was his favourite room in the house.

Gary and I have had a few conversations about finishing the Institute – making it extinct, ‘selling it’, passing it on. We might invite a residency one day where we commission someone else to run it for a year. We were invited to Tate Modern to deliver a talk on ‘Beings and Things’ as a part of the Symposium  Playing Up: Live Art for Adults and Kids. Whilst it’s great to see that big cultural institutions like the Tate are becoming more open and interested in children as artists, this might also be a sign for us that the Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home has become too easy to commodify. Therefore, we must remember to engage in ways that help us to stay real, radical and challenging because the world we all inhabit is itself radically unjust.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *   *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *    

Interview by Christina LaMaster: an artist and independent curator currently making her home in central Illinois. She is particularly interested in the concept of Maternal Gaze and the representations of motherhood within visual culture.

Mothernism: An Interview with Lise Haller Baggesen

Lise Haller Baggesen left her native Denmark for the Netherlands in 1992 to study painting at the AKI and the Rijksakademie. In 2008 she relocated to Chicago with her family, where she completed her MA in Visual and Critical Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In the meantime, her work evolved from a traditional painting practice toward a hybrid practice that includes curating, writing, and installation work. Her ongoing transdisciplinary project Mothernism (2013-) stakes out the mother-shaped hole in contemporary art discourse through writing and installation that radically reframes the language of the mother-artist. The project includes a 152-page book expanding conversations about intergenerational feminism, art, career, and politics, with essays that double as personal letters from an artist to her daughter, sister, and mother.  Embodying this work is Haller Baggesen’s nomadic audio installation camp, complete with tent, library, and revisionist protest banners that reference both color field painting and feminist slogans. 

Mothernism has toured Europe and the US extensively, including exhibitions at London South Bank University (UK), Upominki (NL), Vox Populi (PA) The Elmhurst Art Museum Biennial (IL), The Elizabeth Foundation (NY), A.I.R. Gallery (NY), and a solo project for The Contemporary Austin (TX), where it’s currently on view through May 22nd. We caught up with Lise as she wraps up a new body of work for her solo exhibition HATORADE RETROGRADE, which debuts at Chicago’s Threewalls from May 6th through June 11th, 2016.

Cultural ReProducers: So Lise, could you briefly describe your kids?

Lise: My son Adam (16) is a super mellow, gentle, human being. Even as a small child, when I was getting in a tiff over something, he would take my hand and pat it and go “There, there, Mom. This too will pass.” I have learned a tremendous amount about patience, compassion, and endurance from him, if only by osmosis. His favorite subject is physics, which also just demonstrates how entirely different he is from me.

My daughter Eleanor (10) on the other hand, is so like myself it sometimes seems like she was born from immaculate conception. She is whip-smart, precocious even, and she will tell you what is on her mind. Her favorite subject is art, and she wants to be an author. They are both competing slam poets, which is a lot of fun and also puts their combined talents to good use. 

  

CR: You grew up in Denmark and then relocated to the Netherlands to study art. Both countries provide generous paid family leave and affordable childcare for their citizens, whereas in the United States… well, here we have nothing even approaching that level of support. What was the transition like when you moved to the US? Do you notice broader implications within the culture of motherhood?

Lise: Both my kids were born in Amsterdam. In the Netherlands there is (still) quite an ingrained “motherhood cult” and mothers are generally expected to stay home until their kids start school at age four, and also to be around to pick school-going kids up for lunch at home and such. As a result, a lot of Dutch women work part time. It was something I frowned upon at the time, but not so much now, as I am getting more critical of the neo-liberal notions of “lean in feminism,” for women –and men—to be at the disposal of the work market at all times.

However, when I became pregnant with Adam, I had just finished a two-year residency the Rijksakademie, which has a highly competitive and professional environment. I did not count many parent-artists among my friends, and I, too, bought into the idea of child-rearing being at odds with a creative practice, so I sent my own kids to child care from pretty early on (about 9 months).  There was not much economic reasoning behind this but I really wanted to get back in the studio, and my painting practice at the time was not entirely child proof. 

too often are mothers expected to check in their motherhood at the door and instead don some kind of “male drag” to be granted re-entry to the arty-smarty-party of art and academia.  

 

Coming to the United States wasn’t much of a culture shock in that regard – but it did take me a while to find traction with my work here, as you (still) don’t meet many artists hanging around the playground after school. Being at home with my children (again) during this transition reminded me of ways that spending time with them was not only a hindrance, but also an inspiration with regards to my creative practice. It was something I had started touching on in the Netherlands, where it had not been entirely positively received – but which reconfigured itself over here through writing etc. It must be said that this didn’t happen overnight, though; it wasn’t really until I went back to school –initially with the intent of shaking myself of the “mother-artist syndrome” –that I fully realized how profoundly the child rearing and care work I had been engaged in the previous decade had changed not only my practice, but also my critical thinking related to it. That realization was the impetus for writing Mothernism, which originated as my MA thesis in Visual and Critical Studies.

 

CR: In Mothernism, you argue that regardless of childcare, studio time, etc. nothing will really change for mothers in the arts until we reframe how motherhood is perceived, inserting ourselves both within and in opposition to the canon of art history.  This is an important idea, and it’s no simple task. Do you have any thoughts on how more mother artists might take up this charge?

Lise: The art world – as I’m sure you’ve noticed if you’ve hung around in it for longer than a minute — is not always as forward thinking as it would like to think itself to be. Despite its obsession with “the shock of the new” some pretty old-fashioned notions on creativity are still doing the rounds in contemporary arts education, for example. It’s all very Freudian and tied to the idea of creativity as sublimation, Lacan’s idea of the gaze etc. While enrolled in the MA program in Visual and Critical Studies (VCS) at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago I became aware of psychoanalytical theories by people like Lou Andreas-Salomé, Bracha Ettinger, and Melanie Klein, who linked the creative impulse to what has been coined a “non-pathological narcissism;” a reparative state connected with prenatal and early mother-infant relations and bonding.

As you suggest, to make that paradigm shift is no easy task: matrophobia (which means not only fear of mothers, but also fear of becoming like your mother) is rampant in the art world. Like other forms of (self) oppression – such as racism, sexism, homophobia etc — it is both institutionalized and internalized to the point of becoming invisible.  It passes under the radar, and is perpetuated in particular by those most likely to be affected – in this case female artists.

As a mother/artist you are expected to get “back to normal” as soon as possible after childbirth – disregarding that this entirely transformative experience you have just gone through with your body, and your mind, is also entirely normal. Way too often are mothers expected to check in their motherhood at the door and instead don some kind of “male drag” to be granted re-entry to the arty-smarty-party of art and academia. While identity politics have been crucial to the art and academic debate since the culture wars of the eighties, and various sexual and demographic groups are represented way better than just a decade ago – and considering what this plurality of voices has brought to the table in terms of form, content and context—I think not only mothers but also others could benefit from the maternal voice being heard. It is astounding to witness the degree to which pregnancy, childbirth, and care work, is trivialized as sentimental and unworthy as subject matters (or at best: as women’s matters) in the arts, literature, philosophy etc. –something Julia Kristeva touches on in her inquiry “is there a female genius?” and her statement that “we need a new philosophy of motherhood.” I am perhaps not suggesting that everybody need to journal “baby’s first year” by way of an art project –although Mary Kelly has done that to great and minimalist effect in Post-Partum Document — but that your art may benefit from this new vantage point from which you now may view the world.

But wait, this was all about “why” should we take up this change, and you were asking “how” …okay so, first we need better childcare, and studio time, and a fifty/fifty division of labor, and gallery representation… no wait… okay so, I think one thing to keep in mind is to be unafraid of ghettoization, by which I mean that the art world has become obsessed with the mainstream since the turn of the millennium; whereas in the seventies they would build a Woman House and get on with it, we are now debating “are all-woman-shows good or bad for art?” But, what is this “art” of which you speak? Changes in the conversation will happen on the fringes before they reach the center, and nobody is a more deserving (or receptive) audience than the people in a similar situation to your own.

I think it is important to pick your battles, and to keep asking yourself: where do I want to go with this? Who do I want to reach? Would the next stop on the Mothernism Tour be a Mothernist Base Camp at Art Basel? Now, Art Basel, if you are reading this, I would totally Mothernize the hell out of you! But would it be the end game of Mothernism? I don’t think so.

Which brings me back to why and how I wrote Mothernism. “Why?” is because I became increasingly frustrated that in this environment that was the VCS department, where we were talking art theory, queer theory, feminist theory, intersectional feminism, body politics, etc. I found little willingness to consider my experience of mothering, and how it had affected my view on these matters. I felt like I was being sent “back to the Mommy-blog” with my musings –like it wasn’t academic material. So I thought alright, if nobody in this room wants to have this conversation, then I will make it the subject of my thesis, and then we will have this conversation! But, (and this is the “How?”) since I was still convinced at this point that nobody in- or out-side of that room wanted to hear about it, I just wrote it to impress a handful of people, including my three thesis advisors and some future version of my daughter (the fifth being myself, I suppose)… I was really taken aback when Michelle Grabner offered to publish it, and again when Caroline Picard got onboard and offered to help editing it, and again when so many people (mothers and non-mothers) wanted to read it. I had never imagined it would find the audience it did. But then again, if you choose wisely the first few people you want to impress, that will set the bar high enough. So I actually never doubted that the book was “good enough” once it was out in the world.

CR: You taught a course at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago based on Mothernism that I’ve been dying to ask you about. SAIC isn’t exactly teeming with young parents. Were there mothers in the class? How did you go about framing this content for a population for whom motherhood is an abstraction?

Lise: No, I had no mothers in my class, but as I had written in my “elevator pitch,” you don’t need to be a mother to take this class, but it helps to have one. Riffing off of what I just said, Mothernism at its core touches on new ways of understanding the creative practice –and through that, a fundamental institutional critique. You don’t have to be a mother to sympathize with that. 

One another level, the term Mothernism relates directly to both modernism and feminism –both of which I understand as positive connotations—but could also imply negative associations along the lines of sexism, ageism and abled-body-ism; a certain “othering” projected at the maternal body/mind, which I have certainly felt on my own body, but could equally well be experienced by a colored body, a trans body, a queer body and so on. These are not abstractions, but directly felt and lived realities, which we navigate on the daily.

I have to say that although there were both generational and cultural divides to be bridged, my students went all the way in and responded to my ideas and the primary text with I shared with them, with amazing work and challenging critical thinking and writing. I am very grateful to have worked with them and I hope they feel the same way –it was a leap of faith from both sides, but well worth it.

CR: For the past few years your Mothernism project has continued to evolve as it tours the world. In the meantime I know you’ve been hard at work on a new series. What has been happening in the studio?  

Lise: Yes, Mothernism is touring and is currently up at The Contemporary Austin (TX). For this iteration of the show, the museum commissioned a new work from me, namely The Mothernist’s Audio Guide to Laguna Gloria. It is a glorious walk in the park, during which I talk about the sculptures on the grounds and the history of the site in relation to (art) history, personal anecdote and (pop) cultural lore. It is very much about regarding the art of (m)others in this particular point in space and time –something I keep returning to in my writing. I was a very rewarding experience to get to do this in collaboration with a team of museum staff, who helped me research their collections, and something I would love to do again in the future.

In May Mothernism will travel to Canada for the exhibition and colloquium New Maternalisms Redux / Mapping the Maternal  organized by Natalie Loveless at the University of Alberta. I will be the visiting artist for the symposium, which means that I will get to hang out in my installation with some of my most favorite (and some of the most brilliant) mother-minds in the world—something I am obviously thrilled about.

Here in Chicago I am cramming in a few more weeks before my solo show opening at Threewalls in early May. The show is called HATORADE RETROGRADE, and as the title implies it is somewhat darker and more dystopian than Mothernism. I see it as my “Coming to America” show and it is a sartorial and satirical vision of the US anno 2033, where everything is covered in glittery pollution. It is very much related to my experience of American material culture, and it is as American as tie-dye, but is also revisionist view of a European avant-garde, seen trough an American vernacular.

The upcoming show consists of a collection of costumes against a backdrop of “lipstick formalist” revisionism – paintings inspired by female avant-gardist Sonia Delaunay, and her retrospective, which you and I saw together when we were in London. What I really loved about that show was how entirely un-hierarchically artistic and fashion production was presented, with her paintings, costumes, and textiles completely level pecking. A lovely baby blanket is credited as her first “abstract” work, for example. It reminded me how much I always enjoy a good costume in a museum setting, but also of my love of dressing up, which was one of my favorite games as a kid, and still to this day. I found it very stimulating to see how the costumes and paintings engaged in a figure/ground relation, so I really wanted some of that in my next show.

This new body of work relates directly to Mothernism, as it is the third installment in a trilogy on female genius (the first being So Deep in Your Room, You Never Leave Your Room, an allegory on studio practice from 2012), but instead of speaking in an internal voice (So Deep in Your Room), or in a direct 1st person address (Mothernism), HATORADE RETROGRADE speaks in a cachophony of voices, for which I have commissioned an all female cast of poets, writers, and artists to write the audio for the show.

CR: You reference so many important mother-artists through your work. If you had to pick just a few, who has most deeply impacted your approach to combining parenthood with creative practice?

Lise: It may sound weird, but that is not something I think about a lot. When I think about my own artistic heroes, I don’t think about them so much as being great mothers, as being great whores. In the essay Mother of Pearl I asked the question “if all our heroes are whores, maybe whoring is heroic?” But I also lash out at Simone de Beauvoir and her truism that “housewives are prostitutes” with a “Don’t Ho Me If You Don’t Know me, Simone!”

In other words: the people who inspire me are often folks who “do whatever you gotta do, in order to do what you gotta do.” Some of the people I mention in the book, like Louise Bourgeois and Niki de Saint-Phalle are probably not the finest examples of how to reconcile mothering and art making in an inspiring way… but then again: the book was never intended as a manual for how to combine a mother/artist practice and make the best of both worlds.

Looking a little closer to home, of course there are people who have inspired me: my thesis advisors Michelle Grabner and Romi Crawford are the first who come to mind. In the world of pop, I like how Yoko Ono performs with her son on stage, or how Björk defends hers against the paparazzi. I like it when Kate Bush makes a comeback album on which she sings about washing machines and her loverly-loverly Bertie, or how Patti Smith, when asked by an interviewer how it feels to come back to the stage after more than a decade of “doing nothing” answers “Nothing? What do you mean, nothing? I was raising my kids and writing poetry, that is not nothing!”

Lise Haller Baggesen inside Mothernism