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Indepth Arts News:
"Scripted Spaces"
2000-02-27 until 2000-04-16
Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art
Rotterdam, ,
NL Netherlands
Scripted Spaces explores the recognition, mapping and erasure of our
surroundings. Partaking of a long tradition in the visual arts, and yet far away from
its beautifying, sentimental, or even apocalyptic features, it charts the modern
landscape with nuclear testing sites, entertainment parks, mortal and envisioned
spaces, shaped by modern tools of inscription including billboards, bulldozers, and
special effects.
The title of the exhibition refers to the installation 'Scripted Spaces: The Chase and
the Labyrinth' presented by the critic and novelist Norman Klein, in collaboration
with the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart. This installation explores the phenomenon of
scripted spaces: carefully designed and controlled spaces that reconcile cultural
meaning with the thrill of the unknown. With their prolific use of special effects and
virtual topographies, scripted spaces constitute the mainspring of today's film
industry and computer games. Other examples of the genre are theme parks,
casinos, and labyrinths. With trompe l'oeil painting, animated cartoons, and web
navigators, Klein's installation presents a collage of images from scripted spaces.
See further: a href=http://www.impsresearch.com>www.impsresearch.com.
It is characteristic of the current pioneers of the landscape genre that they do not all
profile themselves primarily as artists. Among them are also academics, critics, and
research organizations. The last title applies to The Center for Land Use
Interpretation (CLUI), which is dedicated to the increase and diffusion of
information about how the world's lands are apportioned, utilized and perceived.
Blurring the boundaries between art, research, intelligence and planning, the
projects by CLUI render a whole series of politically charged cartographic and
landscape views that provide commentary on issues as diverse as modern defense
tactics and waste management. In this exhibition, the CLUI will focus on controlled
perspectives ('overlooks') in a range of places, including, for instance, security forces
training towns, state and federal borders, and industrial sites. See further:
www.clui.org.
The third part of the exhibition is devoted to the exploration of the Dutch cityscape.
Jan Kempenaers (Belgium, 1968) presents the cityscape as a collection of quiet,
everyday places. Geert Mul (Netherlands, 1965) shows the city as a series of
agitated, fragmented images. More focused on specific viewpoints and aspects of
the cityscape are the works by Lara Almarcegui (Spain, 1972), on the
phenomenon of the allotment garden, Nasrin Tabatabai (Iran, 1960) on the
Rotterdam cityscape viewed through the eyes of a local Turkish shop owner, and
Julika Rudelius (Germany, 1968) on the city's social traffic. Jan Rothuizen
(Netherlands, 1968) presents an ethereal urban landscape shaped by the murmur
of myriad simultaneously played radio broadcasts.
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