Liesbeth Bik and Jos van der Pol have worked collectively since 1995 as Bik van der Pol. Their work concerns the development of appropriate media with which to realise works collectively through continuously broadening notions of interaction and collaboration. Their work engages with the revitalisation of memory in the present and with questions of knowledge and history, thus creating the necessary potential for a dialogue and an ever reforming discourse through which they develop an understanding of situations that surround us.
Their projects engage with functionality, usability and site sensitivity, concerned with interaction at an institutional and intimate, local level. They aim to improve situations, add what is missing, highlight what is in the dark and to open rather than close. Their working method is based on co-operation and they use this as a platform for various kinds of communicative activities.
Exploring and activating such platforms is one of the main threads in their work. With, for example, The Bookshop Piece (1996, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, and 1998, Gallery Greene Naftali, New York) and Proposition for Reclaiming a Space (EAST, Norwich, 1997) they re-introduced the discourse on and the practice of art into the very same arena where art is shown. With the group Nomads & Residents, of which Bik Van der Pol are one of the initiators, they create a platform for presentations by artists, critics, curators, architects, and others. (www.nomadsresidents.org). Since 2003 they have been involved in the School of Missing Studies (SMS), a collaborative project they developed with an international network of artists, architects, curators and theoreticians.
Recent projects and exhibitions include Plug-In (Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven), Models for Tomorrow (European Kunsthal, Cologne), Moscow Biennale and Istanbul Biennale (2007), and the research project Past imperfect (with publications in collaboration with CascoProjects, Utrecht in 2005 and INSA Art Space, Seoul, Korea, in 2007), Fly Me To The Moon, with the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (2006), Nomads in Residence (a mobile studio for artists, located, and in function, in Leidse Rijn, Utrecht (2003).
Other participants
Liesbeth Bik, Bryony Bond, Mary Bouquet, David Chapman, Anna Grimshaw, Ade Hunter, Rosalind Nashashibi, Daniel Peltz, Amanda Ravetz, Paul Rooney, Erika Tan, Lucien Taylor, Soumhya Venkatesan, Chris Wright and Lesley Young
