Hedwig Fijen is director of the biennial Manifesta, which descends on a different European city every two years. In 2020, Manifesta will take place in the French port city of Marseille and is one of the few biennials in the world to go ahead - adapted or otherwise. Ammodo spoke to Hedwig about freedom of movement, telling unheard stories and the role of the curator.
The thirteenth edition of Manifesta has just opened. How were the preparations for Manifesta13 in Marseille?
Once again, we found that starting a dialogue is complicated. When we arrived in Marseille in 2018, Les Gilets Jaunes uprising began. That revolt is, among other things, an expression of aversion to neoliberalism and the erosion of public institutions. That is why the main exhibition, Traits d'Union.s, is about connections: how can we respond to polarisation, hatred, extremism and the violence that results from it? But also: how can existing public institutions regain their value, their urgency, their importance? This of course includes the question of how art can relate to this.
When we settled in Palermo for our last edition, I knew we had to develop a different kind of methodology for the formation of the biennial. Palermo is a complex city, because of its history and, for example, the function it serves between the North and the South. At the time, I asked Rem Koolhaas to do an urban study of the city that not only examined urban planning, but also looked at religion, the impact of the Second World War on Palermo, crime, corruption, and how these have affected urban formation. For the Marseille edition, I asked Rotterdam architect Winy Maas of architecture firm MVRDV to do the same type of research. That research - Le Grand Puzzle - addresses the complexity of Marseille: corruption, immigration, the Pieds-noirs (French colonists born in Algeria during the French occupation from 1830 to 1962, ed.), but also poor housing, navigation through the city, mobility, air pollution and ecological warfare. We have been criticised by the French. It is complicated for them when foreigners take a critical stance towards their policies and culture, even if it is scientific.
What purpose does the book Le Grand Puzzle serve in practice?
Winy Maas and I visited cultural historian David van Reybrouck, who questions democratic decision-making models. Van Reybrouck has developed a model called deliberative democracy, for which he randomly brings together people from all kinds of backgrounds to decide on important issues. As a result of the book, we rolled out such a process in Marseille: we brought together various people and asked them about their experience of their own city. What are the alternative processes and narratives in the city that are not really recognised by anyone? So we go a step further than signalling what is happening in the city and making a poetic or artistic translation and interpretation of it. We want to lay down concrete action plans in the city and see what residents do with them. This is a process that we hope will continue even after we have left Marseille.
But has the value of public institutions such as museums been lost in Marseille?
Around the world, schools, hospitals, museums etc are facing cuts. One might then ask: what is the role of the public institution, what is the role of the public government? And what connecting role can public institutions play in interpreting the past, present and future? The past two years in Marseille have seen houses, even whole neighbourhoods, collapse; a lot of protests, a lot of people unemployed and neglect of public institutions. But, the positive thing is that in France art is not pushed to the margins. The French respect the position of artists and visionary thinkers. Marseille was a gathering place for all kinds of artists and thinkers during the Second World War: Marcel Duchamp and André Breton, for example, sought asylum and worked there. Now we want to explore what remains of that safe haven for the new, contemporary generation of migrants. Marseille is a port city, so there are a huge number of different ethnic groups living together there. So we have been exploring how to bring people from all those groups to public institutions.
In 2022, Manifesta will descend on Prishtina, Kosovo. What are your expectations for that edition?
Financially, there is a challenge because Kosovo is not yet an EU country. And besides that, we have to ask ourselves: how critical can we be? It is a country that has a history of genocide, so we feel we should mainly simply listen to the local people. Politically it is very unstable at the moment. The government has collapsed a few times since we started working there, so we hope we can continue what we want to do both for and with the people.
We have talked and thought a lot together with the artistic community over the past six months, and we actually hear Kosovars saying: we want a permanent institute. An institute that can bring inspiration to our culture, but can also serve as a monument to the genocide that took place and the stories that go with it.
How do you envision the future of Manifesta?
The nomadic nature of our biennial will always remain very important because it allows us to really get under the skin of a city and its communities. Each time, we look at a particular city as if through a magnifying glass. We try to develop transformation processes in that city, to bring people together almost like a mediator and observe critically. In that sense, I think there is added value in the biennial. At the same time, I do wonder what is the relevance of the 140 biennials that exist, which only focus on making exhibitions. That’s why with Manifesta we might want to go in a completely different direction, further removed from the concept of the biennial as an exhibition. We want to further democratise our decision-making processes, which means working not only with curators, but also with the people from the institutions in the city itself. I find the model of an external curator who just has to come and indicate the main trends outdated and actually totally uninteresting. It feels politically incorrect - but also not very realistic - if you make an exhibition for 5 to 8 million. Who are you doing it for? For the artists, the galleries, the commerce? What then is the profile of your visitors? Aren't there other more important issues and topics that can be addressed? So it could very well be that we are moving in a more social, political direction with Manifesta. We could also continue as a movement, rather than a biennial.
What relevance does a curator have these days?
The traditional art curator? I don't really believe in that anymore. To what extent is it still a tenable model, that curators from anywhere in the world visit a country or city, and don't actually connect or understand what is happening there? They don't speak the language and can't spend enough time with local people. Yet a lot is said about curatorial autonomy. There’s the complexity: what do you attribute to the autonomy of an artistic project or an artistic curator, and what do you want to take into account? That has everything to do with tolerance and respect for locality. I believe in a new model of collaboration between local specialists and external professionals, who co-produce and take an interdisciplinary approach and really want to invest their time in the city or country where they do a project. I think that is very important.
Manifesta has enormous freedom of movement due to its nomadic nature. Corona forces the art sector to localise, how do you feel about that? How do you guard that freedom of movement anyway?
Mobility doesn't have to be physical. Freedom is in your head. Diversity is also in our genes and our history. We haven't lived in a homogenous society in the Netherlands for a long time. It wasn’t even the case 400 years ago, in the days of the Republic either. In 1641, Leiden was one of the most diverse cities in the world. People came here because of religious freedom. So in that sense, I think: let's find out a lot more about our own history, then we will know what tradition we are actually part of and what parts of it - the good parts - we can continue. We could concentrate more on the similarity, the dialogue that different people, communities and ethnic groups - living in the Netherlands - can bring about with each other.
Do we have enough stories for that?
We have an awful lot of stories! I myself have a German-French background, so that sensitivity - the backgrounds, family stories and personal mythologies, but also ethnicity, religion and persecution - how that changes your view of the world, that's really in my DNA, despite being white. I believe in three things when it comes to storytelling: first is interdisciplinarity. How can architects work with artists and musicians, and what richness emerges from those new connections? Secondly, I believe in collaboration between different generations. And finally, in inclusiveness; we need to bring together people from different ethnic backgrounds and also to give them priority. And then not only connecting Western with non-Western people, but also, for instance, connecting Eastern European and Western European people. I see the need for all three in our own organisation.
Are you considering organising an edition of Manifesta in the Netherlands?
Ever since 2015, there has been a plan for an edition in Amsterdam. Amsterdam's history is a very eventful one. Slavery, the industrial revolution, social inequality through the centuries, the story of the arrival of guest workers in the 1960s and 1970s - this is our history: how to deal with diversity and ethnic minorities? So many incredibly different stories. So we proposed organising an edition on the IJ. Mayor Femke Halsema was inspired by what we did in Palermo because that was a very socially political, engaged biennial. She asked if we wanted to do something for 2025, when Amsterdam celebrates its 750th anniversary. So we have to start thinking: for whom and in what sense is connection needed in the city?
Should that become a permanent place?
Honestly, I think the uniqueness of Manifesta is that we can embed ourselves for three to four years in a city, and we can ask questions - much more so than existing organisations - as a neutral outsider that others don't ask, take critical positions that other institutions might not be able to take. Manifesta can take many more risks because we are going to leave again. That helps enormously in connecting places, institutions, and people. For an edition in Amsterdam, I suggested connecting all sorts of cultural institutions via the water of the IJ to locations in the old centre of Amsterdam, but also, for example, to the Hembrug site, the harbours and gardens of West, Geuzenveld, locations in Zaandam, IJmuiden, the Haarlemmerliede, Velsen, Zaanstad. And also with Ruigoord, the Vuurtoreneiland, Pampus, nature: involve ecology. We have all these water ways in the Netherlands and in Amsterdam that we can make much more use of. Alternative means of mobility by water, like the Circle Line in New York, could connect all kinds of towns and villages along the IJ. There are opportunities that would allow Amsterdam residents and the occasional tourist to spread out over a wider area. Every cosmopolitan city has already achieved this: New York with MoMA PS1, in Hong Kong they do it well, in Berlin. Those might still be challenges for Amsterdam.
What are your thoughts on the current state of the arts in the Netherlands?
I think two things are important. The whole sector of art in public spaces seems to have disappeared; I see an urgency to pay attention to this again, in close consultation with social designers and ecologists. That could lead to process-based works of many disciplines, such as SKOR 30 years ago, or artistic practices that work with local communities and bring joint projects to fruition. Secondly, there needs to be huge investment in education; art education in colleges and secondary schools. In this regard, it is a real pity that wonderful institutions such as the Rijksakademie and De Ateliers do not get the full funding they deserve. The Netherlands has become so strong in those postgraduate courses, it needs to make sure that continues to exist. In Amsterdam, the entire middle tier of art institutions has disappeared, causing a huge decline in the representation and diversity of artists. There used to be smaller places where artists could experiment. Stepping stones, but also places where artists could take time and space to develop their practice. Other cities do offer those places, so that – together with the high costs of living in Amsterdam – is why many artists are leaving. These are all factors that need improvement.
Manifesta does a lot for the cities in which the biennial takes place. What do you get in return?
Well, what do we get in return? We take enormous pride in being able to produce about 25 to 35 new works every two years, and in my opinion there are not many institutions that can do that. There are always fantastic new works among them and that makes me very happy. That we can support artists, that's fantastic.
Published on 2 September 2020.
Photos: Florian Braakman
