Moving Archives
01/11/2009The Museums of Brugge invited me to be artist in residence for the Memling Museum Brugge, Sint-Janshospitaal, and to cooperate with the public assistance (OCMW) Archives Brugge for this purpose.
Our co-operation resulted in the project "Moving Archives".
In the title of my exhibition," Moving" means "to move" in the sense of changing places but also in the sense of touching. The Archives of Public assistance (OCMW), of which the oldest documents date from the 12th century, preserve centuries of care. "Moving" is also included in this sense of caring; it is a sign of the care of those who kept the archives during centuries.
I myself don't have full linguistic command of Middle Dutch, in which many of the texts were written.. For that reason I asked the staff members of the museum what struck them most in the texts. They told me about what was registered about foundlings and abandoned children. As a result of these vivid descriptions it seemed those foundlings and abandoned children could walk through the door any minute as I listened, here in the present
At the same time I got a sense of 'déjà-vu'. I remembered similar stories form the contemporary press. I started to collect similar articles and, based on what I had learned from the registers, decided to find out what happens today with foundlings and abandoned children,.
"Foundlings" became the subtheme of my project as artist in residence "Moving Archives".
I don't think it is a coincidence or accident artists - many of them childless- have taken care of abandoned children. Every piece of art is in fact essentially a foundling.
Pirandello phrased this issue strikingly in "Six persons in search of an author".
Vivaldi worked from 1703 onwards for the Pio Ospedale della Pieta and created for the residing orphan girls the first real conservatory.
The painter Hogarth joined the Foundling Hospital erected in London in 1737 and organized the first public art gallery together with other artists. The proceeds of the works went to the house of foundlings. For the same reason Handel gave concerts there.
I became profoundly acquainted with the Foundling museum that keeps the heritage of the Foundling Hospital. Thanks to the staff members I heard about the "oral history project" they organize with people who as a child, stayed in the Foundling House. I was also able to admire the tokens of foundlings, the objects abandoning mothers left with their children.
The presentation of my exhibition is situated in the attics of the Memling museum, Sint-Janshospitaal in Brugge. This is guesthouse in which the poor, ill and foundlings were brought starting from the 12th till the middle of the 19th century. According to the rule of Benedict the religious had to host them "as Christ himself". This fact made the artistic project tempting for me. These 13th century attics with their specific structure and own symbolism inspired the content and prescribed the shape of the exhibition.
Rather than playing go-between, I allow the people I involved in my exhibition to speak for themselves in my presentation. Their testimonies will be seen on a flat screen built in a wall made from cardboard register boxes from the public assistance archives. In the middle of that same wall a 'drop-off hatch' ( hatch for foundlings to be anonymously left) will be created
The stories I've read or heard form the inspiration for the plastic statues (?) and video's. After advertising in the local press I found and photographed battered statues of Madonna-with-child as they adorn outer walls here and there in Bruges. I made a statue of a contemporary Madonna with child: "Whispering" and props and a litany for a procession of foundlings. Similar processions have never taken place but during the exhibition visitors can walk through it as if they are part of it.
The procession ends at the model of the tympanum of the porch of Mary, at the coffin of a foundling. It symbolizes a last resting-place for the abandoned children who were never found.
It is here that visitors can leave something. During the nine months of "Moving Archives" this place will hopefully be changed into a memorial.
Each time someone asks me about my project and each time I tell more about "Moving archives", it makes them speechless. Foundlings are willing to release many of their thoughts and feelings. They confront us with our incapacity; they give evidence to fundamental loss and a fathomless loneliness for which words fail.
Moving Archives. Vondelingen
Lieve Van Stappen
Memling in Sint -Jan-Hospitaalmuseum
(Mariastraat 38 Brugge)
28 November 28th '09 untill Augustus 29th, 2010
Open daily: 9.30 tot 17u (close don Monday)
Information: www.museabrugge.be
Our co-operation resulted in the project "Moving Archives".
In the title of my exhibition," Moving" means "to move" in the sense of changing places but also in the sense of touching. The Archives of Public assistance (OCMW), of which the oldest documents date from the 12th century, preserve centuries of care. "Moving" is also included in this sense of caring; it is a sign of the care of those who kept the archives during centuries.
I myself don't have full linguistic command of Middle Dutch, in which many of the texts were written.. For that reason I asked the staff members of the museum what struck them most in the texts. They told me about what was registered about foundlings and abandoned children. As a result of these vivid descriptions it seemed those foundlings and abandoned children could walk through the door any minute as I listened, here in the present
At the same time I got a sense of 'déjà-vu'. I remembered similar stories form the contemporary press. I started to collect similar articles and, based on what I had learned from the registers, decided to find out what happens today with foundlings and abandoned children,.
"Foundlings" became the subtheme of my project as artist in residence "Moving Archives".
I don't think it is a coincidence or accident artists - many of them childless- have taken care of abandoned children. Every piece of art is in fact essentially a foundling.
Pirandello phrased this issue strikingly in "Six persons in search of an author".
Vivaldi worked from 1703 onwards for the Pio Ospedale della Pieta and created for the residing orphan girls the first real conservatory.
The painter Hogarth joined the Foundling Hospital erected in London in 1737 and organized the first public art gallery together with other artists. The proceeds of the works went to the house of foundlings. For the same reason Handel gave concerts there.
I became profoundly acquainted with the Foundling museum that keeps the heritage of the Foundling Hospital. Thanks to the staff members I heard about the "oral history project" they organize with people who as a child, stayed in the Foundling House. I was also able to admire the tokens of foundlings, the objects abandoning mothers left with their children.
The presentation of my exhibition is situated in the attics of the Memling museum, Sint-Janshospitaal in Brugge. This is guesthouse in which the poor, ill and foundlings were brought starting from the 12th till the middle of the 19th century. According to the rule of Benedict the religious had to host them "as Christ himself". This fact made the artistic project tempting for me. These 13th century attics with their specific structure and own symbolism inspired the content and prescribed the shape of the exhibition.
Rather than playing go-between, I allow the people I involved in my exhibition to speak for themselves in my presentation. Their testimonies will be seen on a flat screen built in a wall made from cardboard register boxes from the public assistance archives. In the middle of that same wall a 'drop-off hatch' ( hatch for foundlings to be anonymously left) will be created
The stories I've read or heard form the inspiration for the plastic statues (?) and video's. After advertising in the local press I found and photographed battered statues of Madonna-with-child as they adorn outer walls here and there in Bruges. I made a statue of a contemporary Madonna with child: "Whispering" and props and a litany for a procession of foundlings. Similar processions have never taken place but during the exhibition visitors can walk through it as if they are part of it.
The procession ends at the model of the tympanum of the porch of Mary, at the coffin of a foundling. It symbolizes a last resting-place for the abandoned children who were never found.
It is here that visitors can leave something. During the nine months of "Moving Archives" this place will hopefully be changed into a memorial.
Each time someone asks me about my project and each time I tell more about "Moving archives", it makes them speechless. Foundlings are willing to release many of their thoughts and feelings. They confront us with our incapacity; they give evidence to fundamental loss and a fathomless loneliness for which words fail.
Moving Archives. Vondelingen
Lieve Van Stappen
Memling in Sint -Jan-Hospitaalmuseum
(Mariastraat 38 Brugge)
28 November 28th '09 untill Augustus 29th, 2010
Open daily: 9.30 tot 17u (close don Monday)
Information: www.museabrugge.be
