Yours in Solidarity
Video installation, 2013
The story of a global network of anarchists in the 1990’s that investigates the contemporary history of their movement and creates a complex and resounding portrait of anarchism’s supporters through analyses of the correspondence archive of the late Dutch anarchist Karl Max Kreuger, now housed in the International Institute for Social History (IISG) in Amsterdam. 1988 to 1999 Kreuger corresponded by post with hundreds of like-minded people worldwide. He inquired about how their experience of life – in a certain culture, economy or age – contributed to an understanding and practice of freedom which would ultimately lead to ideas of anarchism. He then reported many of these findings in anarchist publications. As one of the letter writers herself, van Harskamp studied the thousands of unsorted letters in the archive for more than one year. She copied letter extracts by hand, identified over 400 individual writers and mapped the networks between them. The resulting video installation suggests what might happen if the international correspondents were to meet today.
Artist's Bio:
Lives and works in Amsterdam, where she is a head lecturer at the Sandberg Fine Arts Institute. Addresses the function and power of the spoken word, and its ability to influence perception and to shape thought, both of which are instrumental to politics. Her works have been presented at the Kadist Foundation in Paris, Performa 11 in New York, the 4th Bucharest Biennial, the SMBA in Amsterdam and the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven. She has staged her live pieces in New York, Amsterdam, Bristol, Porto and the Brussels. In September 2013 she will present a new live work for BMW Tate Live Performance Room.