Het Nieuwe Instituut

Working Group member Hannah Dawn Henderson, artist in residence at the Rijksacademie, exhibited Blueprints, constructing the membrane of a temporary dwelling… an installation departing from working in Collecting Otherwise, in May. Henderson parallels architectural and archival practices that conceive and reinforce cultural propositions: value paradigms, social norms, and the narratives by which we codify our understanding of collective identity and social imagination. This is her artist's statement.

In January 2022, students of the University of Amsterdam MSc in Archival and Information Studies (led by Dr Annet Dekker), researched the Vrouwen Bouwen Wonen network archive as a case study at Het Nieuwe Instituut.

On Thursday 24 March, Collecting Otherwise gathered in the intimate and familiar setting of Zoom, to host the soft take-off of the second iteration, Post/De/Colonial.  This event set the stage for dialogues and perspectives that centre decolonisation within (heritage) institutions and archives as movements of redress and restitution, asking questions such as: What is the role of institutions today in rebuilding heritage? And how do we think about — and most importantly, enact — redress?

This project is particularly interested in how more ephemeral artefacts - often part of collections-in-progress that include users and community-based perspectives – can manage their inherent precarity and maintain equality as they move into institutional spaces.

Every year, the multi-year Collecting Otherwise project works within an ‘iteration’. In 2021, the focus was Seen/Unseen: Intersectional Feminism and Gender Queer in the National Collection of Het Nieuwe Instituut. For this iteration, Collecting Otherwise departs from both old, rediscovered archives and new acquisitions — emphasising the importance of tracing the genealogy of Othering, and viewing different roles designated for female, queer, Black bodies and bodies of colour in the National Collection.

On Thursday 9 December, the Collecting Otherwise team and Working Group gathered for the last time this year to [softly] close the project’s first iteration and look forward to what the new year will bring — despite the evening’s ever warm, caring and celebratory atmosphere, this is not a goodbye, but rather an introduction to the new and revived questions we will carry as the new iteration unfolds.

An evening highlighting the collaborative efforts and multi-layered dynamics that play into the existence of archives both inside and outside the institutions where they are located.

On 28 June, the Collecting Otherwise Working Group held the 7th Working Group meeting, an intimate, thought provoking Zoom discussion with a special lecture by Renan Laru-an from the Philippines.