Phyllida Barlow (GB)

Diego Bianchi (AR) Burkard Blümlein (DE)

Broersen & Lukács (NL) Peter Buggenhout (BE) Žilvinas Kempinas (LT)

Robert Kusmirowski (PL)

Thomas Léon (FR)

Jorge Macchi (AR) Josiah McElheny (US)

Saskia Olde Wolbers (NL)

Tsang Kin-Wah (CN) Tarek Zaki (EG)

06.04 – 23.06.2013

Spoorzone 013

Tilburg

NL

Phyllida Barlow GB

Diego Bianchi AR

Burkard Blümlein DE

Broersen & Lukács NL

Peter Buggenhout BE

Žilvinas Kempinas LT

Robert Kusmirowski PL

Thomas Léon FR

Jorge Macchi AR

Josiah McElheny US

Saskia Olde Wolbers NL

Tsang Kin-Wah CN

Tarek Zaki EG

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

In 2013 Fundament Foundation, which has received international

acclaim for its recurrent editions of Lustwarande at De Oude Warande,

a park in Tilburg (NL), will focus on the redevelopment of Tilburg’s

railway zone. From April 6 until June 23, the international exhibition

Slow Burn – an index of possibilities will take place in the former

locomotive depot, one hundred and fifty years after the start of the

construction of the railway depots in Tilburg.

Slow Burn will centre around two themes that can be considered

characteristic of both developments in contemporary art and the

redevelopment of the railway zone: time and entropy. It will feature

works by thirteen artists, most of which have been specially created

for this exhibition.

As in many other Dutch towns, Tilburg’s railway zone (spoorzone) is currently

being redeveloped. The railway zone in Tilburg is a large, elongated area of

55 hectares running through the city centre. It is not uniform but has three

distinct subsections, of which the NS (Dutch Railways) workshop section to

the immediate north of Central Station is the most interesting, since this

subsection will eventually become a dynamic extension of the current city

centre.

Exactly one hundred and fifty years after construction of this workshop area

began, Dutch Railways have moved out and returned the site to the city.

Redevelopment of the NS workshop section, with its monumental buildings,

will reinvigorate Tilburg’s cultural heritage. These historic structures – along

with other railway elements such as rails and signals – imbue the area with a

unique quality and energy, making the railway zone a fascinating combination

of urban renewal and industrial heritage.

As the first international cultural project in Tilburg’s railway zone, Slow Burn

will play a pioneering role.

The question is whether the meaning and function of art in the public space,

including art in areas that are new or under development, is always controlled

and exploited as an instrument of political strategy. However, the totally

independent status of Fundament Foundation ensures that Slow Burn will not

in any way serve as an instrument of ideology or city branding. The exhibition

will in fact be both a vehicle for developments in contemporary art and a

site-responsive reflection on the distinctive features of the railway zone as it

undergoes redevelopment.

If there is one term that captures the essence of the railway zone, then it

is undeniably “time”. The railway zone has a history, a past in the form of

vacant buildings from different periods that represent a considerable range

of late-nineteenth and twentieth-century industrial architecture, and the area

is also profoundly marked by remnants that evoke the theme of passage.

These vestiges of the past include not only the workshops once used for train

maintenance, but also the extant infrastructural elements, such as rails, switches

Concept

and signals, which relate directly to transport and travel, concepts that are

inseparable from the notion of time. The past can clearly be felt in this place,

and yet the entire redevelopment zone is oriented towards the future.

Time is hardly a new theme in visual art, but over the past decade it has risen

to new prominence within the oeuvres of many artists. All manner of imaginative

variations on this theme – reflections on passage, transformation, the cycle of

life and death, the collective or personal past (whether factual or invented), the

deceleration or compression of time, progress, visions of the future (sometimes

based on technological advances, occasionally apocalyptic, featuring both new

orders and new disorders) – have resulted in fascinating works that have greatly

enhanced our ever-expanding insight into the slow burn that is known as time.

The intention is for the railway zone to remain an area where the concept of time

is an almost literal and continual lived experience. Between that historic past

and the future, all that exists is a vacuum, a ghost town where every option is

open. That brings us to another role played by time in a redevelopment area like

the railway zone. Michel de Certeau has argued that the definition or redefinition

of a place can be regarded as a victory of space over time. When a space that

was part of the ineluctable passage of history, with the potential to assume

many forms, becomes the subject of a land-use plan, it is cut off from change

indefinitely, if not permanently. From that moment onwards, strict codes and

rules apply (Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, 1984).

The redevelopment of Tilburg’s railway zone is still in the planning stages.

What is actually going on remains hazy (a slow burn...) because of the obstacles

posed by the present economic crisis and political quagmire. The current

vacuum offers, at least in theory, the potential for forms of action that undermine

the supposed consensus and the dominant ideology and take dissensus as

their fundamental principle. In the above-mentioned book, De Certeau contends

that the natural tendency of the individual or small community is either to

appropriate ideology, social structures and codes for self-serving purposes,

or to evade them, and thus to tend towards an orderly chaos that he refers to

as “entropy”, a term with its origins in thermodynamics, which describes the

most fundamental form of unpredictable chaos or derailment within a system.

The melting process of ice cubes in a glass of water is a good example of

this unpredictability.

Slow Burn will present a collection of works that investigate and express the

concept of time in various ways, along with works that focus on the concept

of entropy. The combination of these two themes will provide insight into the

possibilities or impossibilities encapsulated within an area that is in the process

of redefinition, like Tilburg’s railway zone: an index of possibilities.

Slow Burn will take place in the industrial, monumental locomotive depot

(constructed in 1933) located in the railway workshop section, directly north

of Central Station. It will be the first time that these interiors, with more than

15,000 m2 of floor space, are open to the public.

Location

Participating artists will present new works, which they have specially created

for the exhibition. These new works will be presented alongside a number of

recent works that have never or rarely been exhibited in the Netherlands.

Phyllida Barlow (GB)

Diego Bianchi (AR) Burkard Blümlein (DE) Broersen & Lukács (NL) Peter Buggenhout (BE) Žilvinas Kempinas (LT) Robert Kusmirowski (PL)

Thomas Léon (FR)

Jorge Macchi (AR) Josiah McElheny (US)

Saskia Olde Wolbers (NL)

Tsang Kin-Wah (CN) Tarek Zaki (EG)

Curator: Chris Driessen

Slow Burn – an index of possibilitiesSpoorzone 013 – Tilburg – NL April 6 – June 23 2013Entrance via NS-Plein 3 – 5014 DA Tilburg

Press preview: April 5, 2–5 pmOpening: April 6, 3 pm

Open: Wed – Sun, Ascension Day and White Monday from 11 am – 5 pm

www.slowburn.nl

For photographic materials and other information:info@fundamentfoundation.nl

Slow Burn is financially supported by: Mondriaan Fonds, gemeente Tilburg,

Provincie Noord-Brabant, Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, SNS Reaalfonds,

VolkerWessels, Rabobank Tilburg e.o., Vlaamse Gemeenschap, Institut Français

Participatingartists