Anarchitecture

Anarchitecture intends to question established structures and explore new ways of dealing with them, taking the building of De Appel as a starting point. Rather than using the exhibition space as a stage for independent artworks, the artists were invited to intervene in the architectural structure itself, in order to rethink and reinvent the building. ‘Anarchitecture’ was a term coined by Gordon Matta-Clark in 1973 for an artists’ discussion group. The name was supposed to reflect the group’s motives “to search for cultural paradox”. In contrast to this group, which meant “to push against the hard-shelled cultural reality”, we invited the artists to accept this reality and to move freely within the given structure, adjusting it according to their personal desires. The artists present architectural installations and walldrawings, films and videos and make use of sound, vibration and light, in order to make the visitor re-evaluate their usual perception of the building’s interspaces and the ruptures and links between the different rooms. The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication, which should be seen as a further manifestation of Anarchitecture.

The graphic designers, Experimental Jetset, who gave each artist a dummy of the publication, asked them to work directly on it. By supplying images and text and offering proposals towards aspects of its design, the artists could take an individual position within it.

Anarchitecture is organised by the participants of the Curatorial Programme 98/99: Lorenzo Benedetti (Italy), Anja Dorn (Germany), Machiko Harada (Japan), Rob Tufnell (Great Britain) en Suzanne van de Ven (Netherlands)