Manon de Boer
Installation view of the video installation In The Past at the solo exhibition at Etablissement d’en Face, Brussels (BE)
Installation view of the solo exhibition at Etablissement d’en Face, Brussels (BE)
With Manon de Boer, we developed two projects:
First solo exhibition of her work at Etablissement d’en face, Brussels (BE).
Public Art work Mindmapping, installed at the Public Library of Brussels (BE).
For each of the projects, we participated in the development, the funding, production and installation of the art works. We also contextualized and communicated the work.
Installation shot of the public art intervention mindmapping at the public library of Brussels (BE)
On Mindmapping
Central to the artistic work of Manon de Boer is the memory of how people record facts and relive them later. De Boer sees the spoken language as one of the,main means of shaping the memory. And it is that language that they are in all unravels its facets, both auditory and visual. How do sentences arise? How do you speak them from? How do you hear them and what does their memory absorb?
This thinking process is also the basis of Mind Mapping, the project that de Boer came up with for the Metropolitan Public Library in Brussels. Manon de Boer made contact with staff members and casual visitors that she found fascinating in some way. Manon de Boer checked which books they had borrowed from the library, asked about their favorite CDs and the videos they had brought home and also to give a description of themselves. Based on this information, a portrait that she hung on the coat rack of some titles of novels or a beloved composer. You get a portrait of, among other things, a "library casanova", an "elderly person anthropologist", a "transparent woman", ...
Those who visit the library can use a CD-ROM, accessible via any computer in the library, come across a portrait of such a character. So you imagine, looking for the correct reference of a book, confirm that the book in question has also been read by person X. Then you can check which other items the man or woman still borrowed. While searching you get a picture of those characters and let them, as in one novel, live a life.
As a permanent installation, Mind Mapping offers a refreshing alternative to the often very traditional integration projects in public buildings. [Kurt Van Belleghem]
Portrait of a men who fell on the earth, part of the installation Mindmapping.
Manon de Boer's Mind Mapping for the Capital Public Library was made possible through the campaign "Contemporary art at public request" - Brussels 2000 of the King Baudouin Foundation. The production was commissioned by the Flemish Community Commission and with the support of the vzw HOB.
Download here the newspaper article (in Dutch) in De Standaard on the installation Mindmapping.
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