ETCAMA: The Solution to Nothing
9–23 July 2010
info [at] etcama.com
Singel 136, Amsterdam
www.extemporetemporarycontemporaryartmuseumamsterdam.com
Since the Fall, October ’08, an uncomfortable gap exists in Amsterdam, missing a, or actually, the Contemporary Art Museum. In these one and a half years passed, nothing has been done in its absence. Nothing real has been made. Nothing to address this problem. What lies waiting is only an ever more critical responsibility. Until the Stedelijk returns.
We jump into the abyss between the now and future. Not no longer, not not yet—
now now now now you missed it
there’s a new now now now now now.
If not us, who? With nobody left to make the selection, we’ve selected ourselves. We do it because we can—subjectivity as our only strategy.
You can disagree.
ETCAMA.
Problems for a problem.
Contemporary for the Contemporary.
Art for Art.
Museum for Museums.
History exists. The Contemporary exists. Museums are Contemporary Art history making machines.
Our Museum is a Contemporary Art making machine. The only history it writes is its own.
Museums collect linearity. Show linearly. Important artists, important movements, placed on a great timeline in the name of a complete, objective education. Our Museum does not confuse time and space.
Museums suffocate, cryogenically freeze works, techniques and ideologies, they preserve a type of value. They are non-profit, profit making, with democratic illusions of balance, of objectivity. The structure of Museums, the language they use, their goals and premise are not wrong. We do it different.
A Museum is a failed Art project because a Museum can’t fail as an Art project.
We are essentially dealing with an economy of means. We have limits, they are subjective.
This is the only way.
We will not, can not operate, in a typically Museum-like manner. We are concerned with presenting Art, the Contemporary and to give Amsterdam a Contemporary Art Museum project when there is none.
Supported by Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst / space in collaboration with What Is Happening Here
