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Beauty and the Right to the Ugly is a cinematic experiment set in the multifunctional community center, Het Karregat, in Eindhoven. Het Karregat, designed by architect Frank van Klingeren and completed in 1974, is situated in the center of a neighborhood of new housing and sought to propitiate communal forms of habitation. The design was an open-plan space wherein different activities and functions – a library, a school, a café, a health centre, a supermarket, and a communal area – would be connected under the same superstructure. Wendelien van Oldenborgh examines the devenir – and partial failure – of this utopian architecture, while conceiving and implementing a filming methodology that translates architectural premises such as ‘open’, ‘user-led’, and ‘participative’ into cinematic devices. Van Oldenborgh’s piece is a continuation of the artist’s interest in filmmaking as a perfomative device and of her ongoing engagement in discussions on collectivity, its intersection with the private, and the role cultural production plays in this.
Wendelien van Oldenborgh, born in 1962 in Rotterdam, is an artist based in Rotterdam. Her practice explores social relations through an investigation of gesture in the public sphere. She received her art education at Goldsmiths, University of London, during the eighties and has been living in the Netherlands again since 2004. Recent works include: La Javanaise (2012, Forum Expanded 2013), Bete & Deise (2012), Supposing I love you. And you also love me. (2011) and Pertinho de Alphaville (2010, Forum Expanded 2011) Van Oldenborgh has exhibited widely and participated in the Venice Biennial 2011, the 4th Moscow Biennial 2011, the 29th Bienal de São Paulo 2010, and at the 11th Istanbul Biennial 2009. At the moment she is a guest of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin-Programme.
Contact: www.wilfriedlentz.com
Courtesy: the artist and Wilfried Lentz Rotterdam
Format: DCP, 3-channel video installation, Sound, Colour
Running time: 55 min
Languages: Dutch, English
With the kind support of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program
Wendelien van Oldenborgh
Beauty and the Right to the Ugly
Netherlands 2014
