UNLOCKED / RECONNECTED - MICHIEL BORSTLAP’S SOUND SCULPTURE 'AUDIRE ET VIDERE I'

Michiel Borstlap’s sound sculpture Audire et Videre I can be heard in the lobby of Fundatie Zwolle from 1 June to 1 September. The work is part of a collective exhibition entitled Unlocked/Reconnected, an initiative connecting around 200 ‘homes of art’ – museums, exhibition spaces, galleries, artists’ initiatives and corporate collections – throughout the Netherlands. The main idea behind Unlocked/Reconnected is solidarity. It is a celebration of the fact that museums and other ‘homes of art’ are finally able to open again after the lockdown.

'Home' is a word that has a different connotation for everyone. It is the close physical place, the space of our house, but also the place missed when we're away. Home is where history and ideas are shared, where a continuity of presence exists.

Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, this notion now has special meaning. What, after all, is 'home' in such times? Home can be where we find love and security, but it can also be associated with oppression and fear. And: in a world that is globalized, digitalized and in permanent flux, does our home still actually feel like a home at all? What visions of a home and what poetic reflections are generated by this?

The exhibition Unlocked/Reconnected aims to provide insight on the various notions of 'house' and 'home'. It is a project that brings together a wide range of 'houses for art': museums, institutes for presentation, galleries, artists' initiatives and corporate collections. The point of departure for Unlocked/Reconnected is the idea of solidarity, the will to reflect collectively on what home is. Our world must not become fragmented, fractured into enclosing walls: a consolidation of forces and locations, national and international, can in fact show us what the house/home can mean. As an initiative Unlocked/Reconnected stems from a sense that opening up the home, in the aftermath of the lockdown, will force us to reconsider our outlook on this. 

Unlocked/Reconnected is being held at a great many locations throughout the Netherlands, and each participant presents a single work – a painting, a sculpture, a performance or video installation – of its own choice. At every location the selected work is displayed in the 'entrance to the house'. Participants will resume their respective exhibition programs, and within that context Unlocked/Reconnected can serve as an extra stimulus, an interesting dynamic for joint reflection on the past weeks/months and especially on prospects for the future. Our diverse experiences of and thoughts on the isolation period can result in messages to the world which, like messages in bottles, may only wash ashore at some later point, but for now they are being sent off into time's current.

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