I will start with two series of photographs that I have put up in the Hallway, here at the Jan van Eyck. In the course of this talk I will point out the offices depicted in these series. For the moment I will briefly go into the research preliminary to this presentation.
At the beginning of the year 2007 I studied the panorama, leading to a material gathering titled: ‘The Unobstructed View’, organized together with Jacqueline Schoemaker. The panorama in its origins is closely related to the rise of industry and a regime known as ‘the disciplinary society’. In this era, it became instrumental for the organisation of visual experience. The visitor immersed in a surrounding is as much submitting as submitted to a principle of all-seeing. On this level a comparison can be made with the offices I have photographed, even though it embodies a different economy of control. The client (the social security recipient) is allowed to have a visual insight in what is to be considered bureaucracy; administration behind closed doors. Our gaze, mine (the photographer’s) and the client’s has been given clearance in the transparent layout of the office. But in effect the active, inquisitive role of the client, his/her tactical space, is lost. In the series of consecutive images I put on display in the hallway I used the reference to the specific temporal perception inherent to the panorama, by suggesting a wide angle view, which at the same time is cancelled through the fragmentary character of each photograph.
8 prints have been glued to the wall to establish an immediate relationship with the hallway of the Jan van Eyck, which connects the administrative offices, the archives/library and the researcher's studios. There is nothing that leads the eye into the un-framed images; they are holes in the wall rather than a window on the world. By lowering some of the existing fluorescent lights, an active space is created, where the viewer can place himself in; a space that is questioning/ or for questioning, but left unresolved.
Last year I came to gain interest in the Dutch Social Service, ensuing from an attempt to position myself in the new community of the Jan van Eyck. This encouraged me to identify with an environment that had ceased to be part of my daily life. The previous year I depended on social security. Besides that, I sensed that the physical Social Service, the specific architecture reserved for it, was disappearing from the cityscape and with them certain memories.
I will present a selection of images from the Nijmegen City Archives, focussing more specifically on a category dedicated to the Social Service.
This archive is a regional/city archive, open for public. It intends to provide its citizens knowledge about their historical context and the means to verify and control governmental actions (according to the information on the website). Unlike many other city archives in the Netherlands, the R.A.N. (acronym for Regional Archives Nijmegen) has an elaborate section of photographs dedicated to the contemporary history -from 1970 until 2000- of the environment constructed around the control and administration of social welfare services. Most of the archive's image bank has been digitized, thus can be viewed on the website. Until 2007 the R.A.N. didn’t have or formulate a policy dealing with the passive (or active) acquisition of documents. The seemingly random selection, due to a great variety of private contributions and the failing of an official acquisition policy to occur, generates a self-evidence, which at the same time is specific and exemplary for any other Dutch local social service in that time period. The Dutch welfare system developed from the 60's onward culminating in the 70's and 80's with an explosive growth of client data bases. Welfare buildings with a similar topology were constructed all-over the Netherlands to meet this requirement. Just as the proportional rise in the aging population has resulted in the construction of homes and ward-assisted flats in the Netherlands during the last decade.
This is the most recent image in the ‘social service’ category. It dates from 2000 and offers a view on a construction site. Part of this estate will accommodate the future social service. The relocation of the social service is the manifestation of an integral government policy. This governmental project integrates welfare and recruitment agencies and offers guidance to create opportunities in the job market.
These images should give you an impression of the outlook of this new format. In contrast with the previous accommodation of the 70's and 80's, the architecture and layout of these new establisments is quite diverse. Only some of the pre-fabricated design, such as an announcement board, appears in almost every case. The design is largely derived from corporate business culture, as in the drive to gear transparency and publicity towards client or public orientation. This new format is mostly known as ‘job square’.
It doesn’t seem appropriate to assign such a transition solely to the social services. The corporation, the educational system and armed services are as well in the process of de-formation. They all in varying degrees appropriate the phenomenon of empowerment itself, whereby deregulation -- creativity, autonomy, self-initiative, responsibility, flexibility and participation -- are transformed into useful tools to increase productivity and cut labour costs. My focus though, issues from the local government that recognizes the importance of developing an identity for their city and region. I'm concentrating on the more remote provinces of The Netherlands where -I speculate- this strategy has a more prominent impact on the public services. The decision to work in a more discursive terrain by taking up a theme was made in reaction to my individual, abstract approach as a pose to the oblique, flexible approach of some colleagues. The ethical distance restrained me from tackling the subject, in fact I withdrew, into the position of a passive outsider of my own work and of the subject at hand. In doing so I did find a way to relate (theoretically?) to the social security recipient. While empowerment is implied by the policy that makes him the pivot of the organisation, he submits to an intervening counselling, which implicates a withdrawal from his active role in society, thus social invisibility.
Here I have documented an exhibition of the city’s art collection in the former Welfare building.
And my own exhibition in that same building.
The City of Enschede had renovated the ground floor, with the purpose to turn it into a proper exhibition space with all the classic props for art-display. For two years, until the demolition, this space has been used for group exhibitions. Welfare buildings in other cities destined for demolition are or have been temporarily rented out to non profit, local art initiatives, once they’d ran out of other plans.
Three more samples taken from the Nijmegen Archives that document an exhibition in the basement of the Social Service building shortly after it was inhabited in 1969.
And photographs taken by other people, passers-by, in other cities with the same topic.
My present interest in the archives should be seen in relation to the institution. The institution that produces, gathers and conserves the documentary stock that constitute the archives; in short an ‘authorized deposit’. Here I would like to anticipate a possible entanglement of my practice with certain artist-image-archives that might be described as ‘commemorating the alienations of social life’. That’s why, at this moment, I will only speak of this specific case: where a 'sloppy' acquisition of a state supported archive leads to very interesting results through contributions of amateurs, such as: administrators and social workers or any other persons concerned. The bureaucratic apparatus that is the subject, especially of the category I have presented, has become, from the perspective of the present policy, an alienation of social life itself.