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Curating

Cinema Olanda: Event Series

Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; EYE Film Museum; University of Amsterdam, The Black Archives, Amsterdam Public Library

7 February 2016 – 26 November 2017

Cinema Olanda, a project by artist Wendelien van Oldenborgh and curator Lucy Cotter represented The Netherlands at the 57th Venice Biennale 2017. 

The exhibition in the Dutch Pavilion, Venice was accompanied by a parallel exhibition and event program Cinema Olanda at the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, as well as the following program at other venues in The Netherlands.

EYE Film Museum, Amsterdam, 13 June, 2017

A conversation with artist Wendelien van Oldenborgh, who currently represents the Netherlands at the 57th Venice Biennial with ‘Cinema Olanda’, a presentation that explores the image of the Netherlands in the light of transformations taking place in Dutch society. 

Van Oldenborgh offers fresh perspectives by combining recent events with underexposed episodes from the past. Her work involves making public film shoots on ideologically charged locations, with the script becoming a collective endeavour on the basis of conversations taking place between the participants. She draws inspiration from the work of Glauber Rocha and Cinema Novo as well as the recent films of Pedro Costa.

This evening she will discuss her films and sources of inspiration with Patricia Pisters, Professor of Film and Media Studies (Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis). Lucy Cotter (curator Dutch Pavilion, Venice Biennial) will offer a brief introduction. During the talk, fragments from the work of Van Oldenborgh and Glauber Rocha will be presented, followed by Pedro Costa’s Colossal Youth (2006).

Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 30 June, 2017

Artist Wendelien Van Oldenborgh and curator Lucy Cotter will focus on their joint interest in the dynamic relationship between contemporary art, aesthetics, and social imaginaries, which informs Cinema Olanda, their presentation in the Dutch pavilion of the 2017 Venice Biennale. 

The program begins with a lecture by Lucy Cotter in the afternoon, followed by an evening program with the screening of Sound Track Stage (2006-2008), an early work by Van Oldenborgh featuring hiphop- and gabberculture. The program will be concluded with a conversation between Wendelien van Oldenborgh, photographer Ari Versluis, and writer and curator David Dibosa.

University of Amsterdam, March-April 2017

A series of screenings of works by Wendelien van Oldenborgh will be accompanied by dedicated seminars for academic faculty and students.

Rotterdam Art Fair, February 2017

At Rotterdam Art Fair, a public dialogue with Wendelien van Oldenborgh and Lucy Cotter took place, moderated by Steven ten Thije, curator, Van Abbe Museum.

Black Archives, Amsterdam, 26 November 2017

In conjunction with the opening of the exhibition Black and Revolutionary: The Story of Hermina and Otto Huiswoud, the Amsterdam premiere of Cinema Olanda (2017) took place at Vereniging Ons Suriname and The Black Archives. The film has been part of the installation Cinema Olanda, made by the artist Wendelien van Oldenborgh together with curator Lucy Cotter as the Dutch entry for the 2017 Venice Biennale. Van Oldenborgh used material from The Black Archives of the Suriname-born political activist Otto Huiswoud in Cinema Olanda.

Amsterdam Public Library, December 2017

At the Amsterdam Public Library, a panel discussion consisting of Lucy Cotter, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, and (director of the Tropical Museum) engaged with questions raised by Cinema Olanda.

Curating

Lucy Cotter holds a PhD in cultural analysis, engaging with the agency of curating in a post/colonial world. In her writing and curatorial projects, she approaches the exhibition space as a unique site for embodied-material-spatial knowledge-making, multi-sensory access, and cultural decolonization.

Her curatorial accolades include being the curator of the Dutch Pavilion, 57th Venice Biennale 2017, with Cinema Olanda: Wendelien Van Oldenborgh, a solo exhibition in Venice comprising of an architectonic installation with new film works, engaging with tensions between the national image and suppressed histories. Cinema Olanda: Platform, a major group exhibition and event program at Kunstinstitut Melly, the Stedelijk Museum, and EYE Film Museum which brought these questions home to the Netherlands.

Cotter was Curator in Residence at Oregon Contemporary, Portland, OR from 2021–22, curating the year-long program Turnstones (2022-3). Other recent presentations include Undoing Langauge: Early Performance by Brian O' Doherty at The Kitchen, New York (2021), and The Unknown Artist (2019) at the Center for Contemporary Art and Culture, Portland. She is currently curating the year-long program Artistic Research in a World on Fire (2024–5) as project resident at Stelo Arts and Culture Foundation, Portland, with additional events at venues across the US, including e-flux, New York; The Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, and Rivers Institute for Contemporary Art and Thought, New Orleans.

Her earlier projects include being co-curator of Here as the Centre of the World, 2006–2008, a transnational artistic research project in six cities worldwide that explored possibilities for a more culturally responsive art discourse. She organized numerous exhibitions engaging with artistic research as head of the MA Artistic Research, Royal Academy of Art, The Hague from 2010-2015. Cotter has worked in various capacities at museums and galleries in Germany (Ludwigs Forum for Contemporary Art) and Italy (Peggy Guggenheim Museum and Nuova Icona Institute) and from 2003-4 was co-director of Public Space With A Roof, Amsterdam.

Curatorial, Selected

SAMPLE CATALOGUES

How close is curatorial practice to the affinities and sensibilities of artists? Does curating seek to hold knowledge differently; does it work from art’s embodied material-conceptual processes? Does it swim in the direction of the unknown? Is it committed to fluidity, to play, and to serious reimagining? What are the continuities and discontinuities between artistic practice, academic inquiry, and curatorial practice? Does it embrace the exhibition’s potential to hold space for (neurodiverse, anti-ableist, anti-racist, gender-exploratory) forms of intelligence?