From Selling Products to the State and Back Again
Volume 44
From Selling Products Products to the State and Back Again — AMO/Stephan Petermann — The World Expo is over one hundred years old. The first, housed in Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace, presented the world under one roof. It was only after a few iterations and the turn of the 20th century that the world came to be presented as a series of different roofs, each finely crafted for the purpose of nation states. The Netherlands had its first independent pavilion at Brussels in 1910, yet since even before then has seen the national pavilion as a unique opportunity to present the country’s progressive political, technological and cultural position to the world. Sometimes this took the form of a Dutch commodity market or self-congratulatory celebrations, whereas in others it was more a site for self-reflection and radical forward thinking. The Netherlands’ position on the 2015 Milan Expo is unsettling in light of this rich history. AMO/Stephan Petermann narrates this history and prompts the question of what would a national representation representation of The Netherlands have looked liked today?
88
V44_FINAL.indd 88
19/06/15 11:31
Volume 44 89
The Dutch government currently has no interest in the World Expo, arguably the most important sequence of exhibitions of all time.1 Paradoxically, at practically the exact same time it expressed its indifference, the city of Rotterdam starts to lobby to host the 2025 World Expo. The exhibition What is Netherlands by AMO, in collaboration with Marieke van den Heuvel and Lu Liang at Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam, is a reflection on this impasse. Through a collection of fragments and reconstructed pavilions of 14 Dutch representations at the World’s Fair between 1910 and now, the exhibition creates a speculative base for reflection and a potential toolkit of the Netherlands’ most intimate soft spot: its national self-image. Each Expo entry is a glance into the mirror, showing where the Netherlands was at a particular point in history, where they wanted to be, and how this reality and this desire can be displayed through an exhibition. They present a dialogue between modernity and nationality, economy and image, corporate opportunism and collective ambitions. They are sometimes exotic, sometimes packed with enormous quantities of stuff, sometimes boring and empty. Collectively, they show a persistent balancing act between Dutch modesty and bigheadedness: either in criticism for selling out with the 1915 presentation with 6 flags on top of the pavilion is condemned as shameful boasting, or selling short when in 1937 Holland turned too modern to be recognizable as Holland – according to officials. A more fundamental history is concealed in its institutional development, which sees a clear acceleration in the wake of the first post-war Expo in 1958. Contrary to pre-war exhibitions in which participation is mostly seen as a formal political obligation, an eagerness to express a new post-war condition appears: where invitations to participate are normally answered by the government at the last possible moment, the invitation to be part of the 1958 Brussels Expo receives an almost immediate positive answer. Participation to the Expo is now a task taken on by the Prime Minister’s office, not purely trade or arts related ministries that were in charge before the war. The result is a tour-de-force of Holland’s best on all levels: leading culture with Karel Appel and Le Corbusier’s Poeme electronique, hard-core technology in immense advanced water engineering (just 5 years after the dramatic flooding of Zeeland) and explicit cartoons about the blessings of the welfare state by political cartoonist Opland. In the decades that follow the mood gradually turns from adventurous opportunism to be more cliché driven and again obligatory presentations. A sense of cynicism arguably enters the stage when the government and its subsidiaries asks not for an architect but a PR agency to take the lead in preparation for the 1992 Expo. The architects of 2000 and 2010 entries make the best of a client with increasingly contradictory demands and expectations. Critics have by then turned their backs on the expo as a whole – fed up with increasingly baroque attempts at the exhibitor’s self-flaunting. The current recession of the Expo is hidden in its political design. In an interview for the exhibition former Prime Minister Balkenende, formally in charge of the 2010 Shanghai entry, argues for a clear separation between design and state. His conviction echoes with the current small contribution to the current Expo in Milan. Plagued by a short preparation time (5 months) and very limited financial means, the Dutch sent a small parade of food trucks and a small carnival tent topped by a large cow to the expo grounds. Its most revolutionary aspect is not in its design but in its goal: the host, for the first time, explicitly made
V44_FINAL.indd 89
not trying to impress their main ambition. The look in the mirror seems clear: The hipsteresque coolness reflecting a government uncertain and nervous of its real goals and position and a cultural sector seeming either bored or too overwhelmed by the presence of the market to effectively respond or address; in effect leaving ambitions to become marketing lingo of a gigantic cow. In an age of increasingly powerful cities and the market economy, the state is proportionally overlooked as a vehicle for societal progress. While their political legitimacy is heavily weakened they remain a valuable scale of force integrated in deeper and larger networks that so clearly extend our identities and offer platforms for solidarity. The current neglect of exhibiting misses out its endless potential of forcing articulation of a future and therefore progress. It is this type of articulation that we clearly need. More than a design issue, it is an issue that is at the heart of political discussion that begs for a future voice.
1
On Augustus 30th 2013 the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs Frans Timmermans sent a letter to Parliament stating that the Netherlands has no general interest in the World exhibition and therefore will not participate in the next Expo in Milan in 2015.
19/06/15 11:31
From Selling Products Products to the State and Back Again — AMO/Stephan Petermann — The World Expo is over one hundred years old. The first, housed in Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace, presented the world under one roof. It was only after a few iterations and the turn of the 20th century that the world came to be presented as a series of different roofs, each finely crafted for the purpose of nation states. The Netherlands had its first independent pavilion at Brussels in 1910, yet since even before then has seen the national pavilion as a unique opportunity to present the country’s progressive political, technological and cultural position to the world. Sometimes this took the form of a Dutch commodity market or self-congratulatory celebrations, whereas in others it was more a site for self-reflection and radical forward thinking. The Netherlands’ position on the 2015 Milan Expo is unsettling in light of this rich history. AMO/Stephan Petermann narrates this history and prompts the question of what would a national representation representation of The Netherlands have looked liked today?
88
V44_FINAL.indd 88
19/06/15 11:31
Volume 44 89
The Dutch government currently has no interest in the World Expo, arguably the most important sequence of exhibitions of all time.1 Paradoxically, at practically the exact same time it expressed its indifference, the city of Rotterdam starts to lobby to host the 2025 World Expo. The exhibition What is Netherlands by AMO, in collaboration with Marieke van den Heuvel and Lu Liang at Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam, is a reflection on this impasse. Through a collection of fragments and reconstructed pavilions of 14 Dutch representations at the World’s Fair between 1910 and now, the exhibition creates a speculative base for reflection and a potential toolkit of the Netherlands’ most intimate soft spot: its national self-image. Each Expo entry is a glance into the mirror, showing where the Netherlands was at a particular point in history, where they wanted to be, and how this reality and this desire can be displayed through an exhibition. They present a dialogue between modernity and nationality, economy and image, corporate opportunism and collective ambitions. They are sometimes exotic, sometimes packed with enormous quantities of stuff, sometimes boring and empty. Collectively, they show a persistent balancing act between Dutch modesty and bigheadedness: either in criticism for selling out with the 1915 presentation with 6 flags on top of the pavilion is condemned as shameful boasting, or selling short when in 1937 Holland turned too modern to be recognizable as Holland – according to officials. A more fundamental history is concealed in its institutional development, which sees a clear acceleration in the wake of the first post-war Expo in 1958. Contrary to pre-war exhibitions in which participation is mostly seen as a formal political obligation, an eagerness to express a new post-war condition appears: where invitations to participate are normally answered by the government at the last possible moment, the invitation to be part of the 1958 Brussels Expo receives an almost immediate positive answer. Participation to the Expo is now a task taken on by the Prime Minister’s office, not purely trade or arts related ministries that were in charge before the war. The result is a tour-de-force of Holland’s best on all levels: leading culture with Karel Appel and Le Corbusier’s Poeme electronique, hard-core technology in immense advanced water engineering (just 5 years after the dramatic flooding of Zeeland) and explicit cartoons about the blessings of the welfare state by political cartoonist Opland. In the decades that follow the mood gradually turns from adventurous opportunism to be more cliché driven and again obligatory presentations. A sense of cynicism arguably enters the stage when the government and its subsidiaries asks not for an architect but a PR agency to take the lead in preparation for the 1992 Expo. The architects of 2000 and 2010 entries make the best of a client with increasingly contradictory demands and expectations. Critics have by then turned their backs on the expo as a whole – fed up with increasingly baroque attempts at the exhibitor’s self-flaunting. The current recession of the Expo is hidden in its political design. In an interview for the exhibition former Prime Minister Balkenende, formally in charge of the 2010 Shanghai entry, argues for a clear separation between design and state. His conviction echoes with the current small contribution to the current Expo in Milan. Plagued by a short preparation time (5 months) and very limited financial means, the Dutch sent a small parade of food trucks and a small carnival tent topped by a large cow to the expo grounds. Its most revolutionary aspect is not in its design but in its goal: the host, for the first time, explicitly made
V44_FINAL.indd 89
not trying to impress their main ambition. The look in the mirror seems clear: The hipsteresque coolness reflecting a government uncertain and nervous of its real goals and position and a cultural sector seeming either bored or too overwhelmed by the presence of the market to effectively respond or address; in effect leaving ambitions to become marketing lingo of a gigantic cow. In an age of increasingly powerful cities and the market economy, the state is proportionally overlooked as a vehicle for societal progress. While their political legitimacy is heavily weakened they remain a valuable scale of force integrated in deeper and larger networks that so clearly extend our identities and offer platforms for solidarity. The current neglect of exhibiting misses out its endless potential of forcing articulation of a future and therefore progress. It is this type of articulation that we clearly need. More than a design issue, it is an issue that is at the heart of political discussion that begs for a future voice.
1
On Augustus 30th 2013 the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs Frans Timmermans sent a letter to Parliament stating that the Netherlands has no general interest in the World exhibition and therefore will not participate in the next Expo in Milan in 2015.
19/06/15 11:31
