BIK VAN DER POL

print
Bik Van der Pol

Uitgenodigd op voordracht van Lectoraat Kunst en Publieke Ruimte/Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam.

Plan: zij onderzoeken of en waar precies de publieke sfeer van de Zuidas is te lokaliseren, om vervolgens de geur The Smell of Success te ontwikkelen.

‘The Smell of Success
What is the public sphere? What are the ambitions of the Zuidas? And is it possible to trace some aspects of these ambitions in and around the Zuidas? During a research-period in the Zuidas, Bik van der Pol questioned the existence of the public realm in the Zuidas, and concluded there is none. They searched for a public realm as a diversity of spaces where people meet, freely discuss and articulate societal issues and conflicts, and through that discussion influence political action. They searched for a discursive space, where the public sphere can be seen as ’a theatre in which political participation is enacted’, a realm in which public opinion can be formed.  This kind of public pace (as discursice space, where a community can be formed), does not exist outside the bars and restaurants where people meet after working hours to take a few drinks before they travel home. What is supposed to be public space is space for transportation: of goods, people, cars, trains. The ambitions underlying the Zuidas are ruled merely by the hegemonic ideology – the desire for the miraculous, perhaps – of becoming a major financial centre, with La Défense and La Rive Gauche in Paris, Potsdamer Platz in Berlin and Docklands in London as its premium examples.

Can ambitions and desires then maybe somehow traced in the public sphere? Is it possible to articulate and imagine the success, the luck - the public sphere of the Zuidas wants to breath? In other words, can the smell of success of the Zuidas – including its architectural and physical structures, its function, its daily uses – be located and defined through the public sphere?

These questions form the guiding principle to the possibility and impossibility of defining
the public space, the influence of the imagination in that public space, mapping the Zuidas through a months long search for the ultimate and miraculous symbol of luck, premonition of success: the four-leaf clover (of which 41 were found around the Zuidas), and a study into the nature and smell of success, in collaboration with a perfume specialist, - to be continued.
 

 

FREE SPACES ARTISTS (AIR)

Edition 4

Edition 3

Edition 2

Edition 1