Saturday, January 23 2021, The Perpetual Citizen was distributed at the Justus van Effen complex in Rotterdam. This inaugural issue of The Perpetual Citizen is committed to reporting from the frontline on the events that have transpired at A Tale of A Tub over the past months, ones which might spell out what it’s all about a little bit more clearly and which might then contribute to shaping public opinion within the Justus van Effen complex regarding the gallery at the centre of its grounds.
The exhibition ‘UX, User Experience, U and X’ at A Tale of A Tub in Rotterdam, by The Practice of Brenda Tempelaar, was open from November 14th 2020 to January 24th 2021, and consisted of a coworking space, various screenings, a newsroom and the distribution of a newspaper.
Niekolaas J. Lekkerkerk’s essay on the primary function of art as a means of finding one’s inscription into contemporaneity, seeks to connect geopolitical turmoil, the Corona pandemic, ecological breakdown, the Black Lives Matter movement, uprising against dictatorships and the enduring migrant crises to the activistic inadequacy of the art workers brigade.
The Practice of assembles multiple first-person experiences taken from the Dutch art field. Based on true stories, these experiences expose various dilemmas and dogmas that exist in the production and presentation of art. Shaped around a collective first person ‘I’, this publication aims to offer insight in the interests at play in the predominantly hierarchical closed-circuit of the Dutch art field, and extends an invitation to third parties to become involved. Through the figure of the ‘I’, the question is raised of whether artists and art institutions have presumptuously assumed their position, and explores opportunities to vacate these positions in favour of new attitudes and models. The Practice of voices its stake in matters of fair pay and remuneration structures, exclusion and inclusion, homogeneity and heterogeneity, authorship and individuality versus the possibilities of democratized and collective practices.