Crushed Mountain revisited for Amsterdam Art Week
After the 2021 Rietveld Graduation show I faced the challenge of removing my installation Crushed Mountain, consisting of two large wooden stiles and three tons of Norwegian granite stones, from the academy grounds. The solution for the over three-meter-tall wooden ladders was to transport them to my apartment in Nieuw West. One of the stiles was placed inside the garden and one just outside the garden fence, on a patch of dirt between the private garden and the public sidewalk.
Before moving out of the apartment and leaving the country in 2022, seeing as the structure had stood for a year without complaints from the neighbors or municipality officials, I placed the other wooden stile outside the fence, to clear the garden space for the new tenants. The structures became an unsanctioned public artwork, and a climbing structure for the neighborhood children. When visiting the neighborhood a year later I was pleased to see the stiles still standing, now in a lush flowerbed. Clearly visible on google maps street view, they were still there in 2023.
In 2023 I replied to an open call from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie for an exhibition intended for alumni artworks to be displayed on the roof of one of the academy buildings for Amsterdam Art week. Incidentally the same location as my graduation work, I applied to the open call and was selected among a group of former students. Having followed the work of the student group “Gerrit Rietveld Academie and Sandberg Instituut students for Palestine” (@gra.si.students4palestine on Instagram) I contacted them to discuss a possible collaboration. They had among other things been construction a monument in solidarity with Palestine that kept being dismantled by the school staff under the ridiculous trope of the phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” being classed as hate speech in the Netherlands.
I thought it would be a good opportunity to revisit my work that originally dealt with colonial land relations in Norway, in the context of the ongoing genocide in Gaza. I invited the group to collaborate for the Art Week exhibition, potentially using my structures as a host for their Palestine monument, as It would in theory be protected from censorship by my right to artistic freedom. Due to their connection to the school administration, I did not mention this plan in any of my communication with the exhibition curators.
Before flying to the Netherlands I had a friend check that the wooden stiles were still there outside my old apartment, nervous that they would be removed before I could transport them back to the academy. They passed by on two different occasions, one several months before and another time just a few days before the exhibition build-up, and confirmed they were still there. I arrived in Amsterdam in the evening on Monday 27thof May. Tuesday morning, I rented a van with another of the alumni exhibiting, and drove towards my old neighborhood. As we rounded the corner, I was remarking how clean the street looked, saying how there was always continuous construction work going on in the five years I resided there. My heart dropped when the garden became visible, and I saw an excavator standing in the street and a big hole in the ground where the wooden stiles were standing. A couple workers from the municipality were standing in the street nearby, and I asked them if they might have seen some strange wooden structures that used to be here. They informed me that another construction crew came by to clear the area the day before, but they didn’t know who it was or where they might have taken the structures. After standing untouched for almost three years, I managed to be just one day too late to keep them from destruction.
Arriving to the Rietveld Academie for the buildup of the exhibition, I had to break the news to the curators that the work they were expecting me to exhibit had essentially been destroyed by the municipality of Amsterdam. They were understanding, and open to figuring out a way to create a work for the exhibition opening, that was still a few days away. While a small relief, the loss of the original artwork meant I no longer had the platform I intended to offer the student group. In conversation with them I learned that the attitude of the administration towards them had also changed in the past months. Their work was no longer being actively censored by the school, and the monument was allowed to stay – although regularly vandalized by Zionists not connected to the academy. While having successfully fought for their right to express themselves, the students were growing increasingly frustrated by the failure of the administration to engage in public discussions with them, and their activities being co-opted as a “cute” manifestation of free speech that the progressive institution is tolerating while simultaneously refusing to listen and answer to their thoroughly grounded and very real demands. Their demands can be found here. After months of censorship, neglect and gaslighting from the administration, the heads of the bachelor and masters programs agreed to join an open meeting on Tuesday may 28th, on the condition that they would only be there as spectators and should not be addressed directly by the panel hosting the meeting. That the only two people in the room with actual power should be able to conveniently step out of their position was not tolerated, and the institutional representatives were directly addressed by both members of the panel and audience. After failing to give any real answers to the questions they were posed, the student group decided to start an encampment in the auditorium, and announced they would stay there until their demands were met.
In the following days I returned to the academy to try to create a work for the exhibition, and engage in the activities of the student encampment. I had many conversations with the encampment students, other students, staff and faculty and felt a broad support for the student encampment at the academy. The buildup of the exhibition went on as planned despite the encampment being present in the same building; the encampment on the first floor and the exhibition on the roof of the building. When discussing the placement of my artwork, one curator remarked that it shouldn’t be too close to the banners of the encampment, while I remarked that I didn’t mind my work interacting with the encampment. After many discussions as well as exploring what would be possible in the short time frame, I decided to print photos of the objects that had been destroyed by the municipality and glue them to the stairs leading up to the roof, where there would be a remnant of the three tons of stones that had been used for the original work. Following the route of the original work, the visitor would now see the steps in the process of destruction of an artwork that talked about the process of destruction of the natural landscape in Norway, for the purpose of urban construction in the Netherlands. The new version of the work would seek to communicate the absurdity of the situation, while fittingly surrounded by banners calling for and end to the colonial occupation of Palestine and an end to Israels ongoing genocide in Gaza.
At the opening of the Amsterdam Art Week exhibition, while visitors were cheering with free drinks, the student encampment predictably staged a peaceful protest disrupting the opening speech by the curators, chanting and beating on drums and stating that there will be “no business as usual during genocide” and calling out the complicity of the academy and the curators employed by the academy. Some of the artists and visitors joined in on the chanting, some stood by spectating, and some left. While no doubt uncomfortable for the people called out, disruptive and loud, the protest was entirely peaceful end ended after about an hour.
The following morning the Gerrit Rietveld Academie made the following announcement: “We are sad to share that due to the unrest at the academy following students4palestine demonstrations, it is no longer feasible and safe to host the Amsterdam Art Week exhibition with alums on the roof. We decided that the exhibition won’t open again to the public.” The announcement faced widespread critisism, for effectively weaponizing the alumni that were part of the exhibition, againts the students that were part of the encampment. The statement also implies that the students created “unrest” and unsafe conditions. The statement and the decisicon to close the exhibition, was also made without consulting or informing the exhibiting artists. The same morning, us alumni got invited to an emergency meeting with the curators and the director of bachelor’s education at the Rietveld Academie, Miriam Bestebreurtje. Notably the meeting was held outside of the Academy premises. Miriam explained the schools reasoning for closing down the exhibition, and the artists and curators got a chance to voice their opinion. Among expressions of frustration of the closure of the exhibition, complaints about the protest disrespecting the artistic work and artist expressing solidairty with the student encampment, the question of the claim of unsafe conditions was discussed. Some voiced that the feeling of unsafety among those “targeted” by the protest, was enough to justify the closure of the exhibition, even stating that the feeling of unsafety equals unsafe conditions. When pressed about whos safety they were referring to, Miriam answered the safety of the artworks exhibited. A general consensus that came out of the meeting was the dishonesty of the phrasing of the statement the school made, and an expression of dissatisfaction that it was made on behalf of the alumni without their consent. After the meeting the Rietveld Academy issued this update: “We have read all the reactions to this post about the cancellation of our Amsterdam Art exhibition with alums and we realise that our communication should have been better and more precise. The Gerrit Rietveld Academie has to take a different approach to security from the moment the campus opens its doors to the public. The safety of the students in the protest, our staff and the public are our responsibility. Due to the mixed responsibilities of hosting a public exhibition and a sleep-in protest on campus, we decided to close the exhibition because we could not predict who would enter our premises and with what consequences. The Gerrit Rietveld Academie supports our students' right to protest, and our extra attention to safety is not a criticism of the protest. We apologize to all involved.”
In my opinion there is a clear distinction between emotionally feeling unsafe and the conditions being materially unsafe. Protests are by design disruptive and uncomfortable, especially for those that become the target of the protests. It was very unfortunate that Miriam or other members of the administration were not present at the opening, and the curators representing the institution became the main “target”. However, the responsibility for this falls squarely on the Gerrit Rietveld Academie administration. If they truly cared about student alumni and staff safety, they could taken different measures before the opening. For instance they could have engaged in an open communication with the entirety of the encampment. If they truly cared about the safety of their students, they should have offered them support when just weeks earlier they were subject to immense police violence at the Amsterdam University encampments. If they cared about the safety of their students they would protect them from harassment by Zionists visiting the academy. If they cared about the safety of the students they would seize to legitimize a genocidal regime setting dangerous precedents for the dismissal of any human rights.
It is my belief that we as artists, curators and institutional representatives have a duty to examine our complicity in the ongoing genocide, decide whether we want to boycott and withhold our labor - and be accountable for that decision. When we connect our names and practices to institutions with connections to the apartheid state of Israel, we are complicit, regardless of whether we personally denounce the genocide or support a ceasefire. When we step out of an institutional role or a position of power and claim a personal victimhood, we are being deeply dishonest and doing an injustice to the tireless labor of those protesting for institutional boycotts and an end to the genocide.
The work of Gerrit Rietveld Academie and Sandberg Instituut students for Palestine continues and among their demands is the cutting of all ties to Israeli Universities that in the case of the Rietveld Academy has included student exchange programs. It is thoroughly documented by Israeli author Maya Wind that these exchange programs are the “oxygen” of the Israeli universities, and that these universities in return are inseparable from the Israeli army and defense industries – directly involved in the illegal occupation of Palestine, Apartheid and genocide. If educational institutions like the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and Sandberg Instituut are to have any legitimacy as liberal art institutions it is imperative that they employ any mechanisms available to isolate this illegitimate state.
