De Geuzen: a foundation for multi-visual research

Saturday, Dec. 10, 2011: Aesthetic strategies as critical interventions. Works presented by JR Carpenter, Renée Turner, Andreas Jacobs and Simon Biggs. Panel hosted by Rita Raley. Location: Perdu Theater, Kloveniersburgwal 86, Amsterdam. I talked briefly about De Geuzen’s work the Global Anxiety Monitor, which ran from 2007 until October 2011. Operating through the browser, the…

View By Thread took place at STUK, Leuven, Belgium. The solo exhibition showcased De Geuzen’s work from 1996 to 2010. Mixing printed matter, textiles, and digital pieces, the exhibition wove together different thematic threads running throughout their practice.

In On Gaps and Silent Documents international artists question the absence of documents and data in archives, data banks and memory. What is missing? Has it never been there or has it been removed? Does available information exist that is not looked at, read or used? Archives and data banks are primarily determined by these gaps and silent documents. As Sven Spieker notes, “Archives are less concerned with memory than with the necessity to discard, erase, eliminate.”

For this installation at the Tongerlohuys in Roosendaal, De Geuzen gathered thirteen portraits of unknown women. Important enough to be painted but not significant enough to be remembered, the installation aimed at giving these women a sense of solidarity in their loss of name. Beginning with two portraits from the Tongerlohuys collection, other portraits were…

Taking place at the Impact Festival in Utrecht (2003), the idea for this De Geuzen project started when a well-known president declared an infamous divide: “YOU ARE EITHER WITH US OR AGAINST US” This made us wonder about how such polemics could be cracked apart and possibly subverted to create more flexible alliances. We were…

Made in 2001, Frivolity and Folly was the second De Geuzen Uniform and was originally exhibited at the Bienal de Valencia (Spain.) Tailored to the idiosyncrasies of our very different body shapes, the De Geuzen uniforms are a collection of handmade garments playing with female identity. Frivolity and Folly is the most elaborate of the…

De Geuzen made this work in 1999 within the context of “Midnight Walkers and City Sleepers “, an exhibition in the Redlight district of Amsterdam. Most of the time the area is defined by the sex industry, which is of course the most visible. While we didn’t want to reiterate certain clichés, we also didn’t…