Design Sediments at Huidenclub, Rotterdam

Design Sediments at Huidenclub, Rotterdam
31.01.2024 – 24.03.2024

With works by Emma Charles, Caroline Corbasson, Marjolijn Dijkman, Marlène Huissoud, Agata Ingarden, Klarenbeek & Dros, Agnieszka Kurant, MBL architectes, Ori Orisun Merhav, Naïmé Perrette, Marcin Rusak, Basse Stittgen, ThusThat, Ittah Yoda

Curated by Leo Orta and Olivier Zeitoun

Inaugurated in parallel with the Art Rotterdam fair during Rotterdam Art Week, the ‘Design Sediments’ exhibition is taking place in a former tannery (Huidenclub) that has recently been transformed into an experimental space, alive with exhibitions, performances and conferences, and dedicated to bringing together within its walls an entire ecosystem of contemporary creation. This is a porous scene, open to the other contemporary scene that is the city of Rotterdam and, more broadly, the Netherlands – hence the extreme porosity of the works with design, and hence the choice to take an interest in this very porosity, in these borders that are so many points of contact between the processes of industrial production and the processes of artistic creation.
The chosen motif is that of sedimentation, which we see in two distinct parts, dictated by the scenography: one space is given over to plastic works and objects; another is devoted to the projection of three films, in other words to the deployment of a new temporality at the very heart of the visit.

The first part of the exhibition focuses on the interference of time on the surface of objects, made visible by Marjolijn Dijkman’s photographs; on the imprints it leaves on these objects and on the very ways in which they are created. It’s about thinking about the temporality of production on a different scale, one that goes beyond that of human life: modes of production borrowed from or entrusted to insects (Marlène Huissoud; Ori Orisun Merhav); objects given over to the phenomena of accretion (MBL architects), decomposition (Marcin Rusak), transfiguring the notion of decay of matter to reach a production process established under the sign of mutation, reuse (ThusThat), sedimentation (Klarenbeek & Dros).

When we enter the space devoted to video projections, the face of a miner appears on the screen (Naïmé Perrette, Bothe Ears to the Ground, 2020). His body is infinitesimally small compared to the depths of the mines, the layers of earth that encircle it and the geological thicknesses towards which the works and objects we have just encountered were tending. Here, the attention drawn by the exhibition shifts to an intimate level, to the sensitive sedimentation of a body that receives the vibrations of the machines every day. The miner tells us that he dreams of their movements at night, and we can guess, by seeing their harmony on the screen, how their vibrations are insensitively deposited in him, behind his eyes, under his skin. 

______________________________________________________________________________
Head image : Both Ears To The Ground, a short film by Naïmé Perrette.

• From the issue: 108
• Share:
  ,
• By the same author: Gina Folly at la synagogue de Delme, Petticoat Government,