Kunsthuis SYB

As guest curator of Nieuwe Vide (Haarlem) in 2010, artist Emily Williams developed The Object Lag, a multifaceted project that spanned a year. In the peaceful setting of Beetsterzwaag and a year on, Williams takes the time to reflect on The Object Lag under the title of Post Object Lag. Setting her role as a guest curator to one side, she looks back at the project as an artist, through her personal experience and memory of it.

Williams is firstly an artist and regards her curatorship as a form of performance. Her project in Nieuwe Vide placed the emphasis on the tension between the artistic practice as a process and the object as a fixed form. With this The Object Lag offered a conceptual framework for a variety of performances, workshops, conversations, lectures and other contributions made by over 50 participants. In The Object Lag Williams deviates from the object as material production by transforming the common curatorial practice of organizing and arranging into the very material itself, giving way to an unfolding programme of events. The presentations, the conversations with artists and designers, the discussions during the developments, the experiences and the memories of the audience, the influence of the project on Williams personal life, the smallest detail of the process: All interlace in what Williams considers, one big performance. An extensively documented performance.

During her stay at Kunsthuis SYB Williams will sift through the vast amount of documentation in search of a method and a form for a lasting memory of The Object Lag. A memory made up of lost moments, miniscule details, moments of transformation and personal experiences. A memory that lives on in individuals and that is subject to change. Williams invited Suzie Hermán and Roland Vos to spend a few days in the Kunsthuis to share their experiences of working on the project. Suzie Hermán was Williams’s assistant during The Object Lag and Roland Vos was the technician. Both functioned to Williams as an indispensable ‘internal audience’. While visitors experienced only the separated public events, Williams shares with Hermán and Vos the experience of the year as a consistent whole that continued on ‘behind the scenes.’

Emily Williams (1980, UK) lives and works in Haarlem, the Netherlands. In 2010 she was the guest curator of Nieuwe Vide (Haarlem) where she developed The Object Lag. There she collaborated with Teylers Museum, The Dutch Art Institute /ArtEZ , Archive Kabinett (Berlin) and Kunsthuis SYB. In the same year she taught at the part time course of the Gerrit Rietveld Academy (DOGtime). As a member of the programming committee of Kunsthuis SYB (2005-2008) she has initiated various projects, amongst which; a Methods – Remotley (2008), The Expanding Pie (2007) Dogtime in SYB (2006). She studied at the Fine Arts Department of The Gerrit Rietveld Academy and obtained her master’s degree at The Dutch Art Institute in 2008. As an artist her curatorial projects merge with and inform her artistic practice. Considering curating as a form of performance, she is interested in finding ways to accentuate the brief reality of the moment favoring the making process and the viewer’s experience over an end product. She approaches this practice from a personal experience using performances, collaboration and writing.

Suzie Hermán (1986, NL) was Williams’s assistant during The Object Lag. Hermán is currently doing a research master in art studies at the University of Amsterdam. In this study she researched, amongst other things, curatorship as a form of performance. She also currently works as an assistant curator in Museum Hilversum.

Roland Vos (1979, NL) was the technician during The Object Lag. Vos studied Aviation Technology in Haarlem and his main interest was in the theoretical aspects of stability and steering, system theory and mathematics. After his graduation he started working at the Nieuwe Vide as a technician and video documentalist.

Residency:
21 september t/m 25 oktober 2011

Opening hours:
every Saturday and Sunday from 1 to 5 pm

Presentation:
saturday 22 october, 2 pm