Rewinding Internationalism at the Van Abbemuseum

You may rewind a music or a movie sequence by using the rewind button. However, something happens throughout the rewinding process. The magnetic tape of a cassette or VHS recorder becomes jumbled. The song’s part, now played out of order, gets abstracted. To borrow the title of susan pui san lok / lok pui san’s new work in this exhibition, rewinding and replaying the recorded snippet creates whole new connotations. The term’rewinding’ in the context of a dialogue with the 1990s is an invitation to revisit and reassess events and notions that have been ‘played’ out—to view them not as over, but as part of an ongoing present.

‘Rewinding Internationalism’ is an exhibition-research project that explores the concept of internationalism through several settings. It features five new commissions as well as several joint research projects, as well as loans and archival material from public and private collections. The project begins in the 1990s, when internationalism was in a state of change in both political and cultural contexts. Rather than representing a decade’s history, the show brings multiple ‘ecologies,’ as Félix Guattari would call them, into dialogue with one another. Visual, archival, and audio correlations allow evocations and implications to communicate across the 1990s and now, defined by increasing and ongoing ecological, bio, and geopolitical problems – and at a time when the concept of internationalism is once again—and still is—in flux. Finally, Rewinding Internationalism is an experiment in mobilizing histories, knowledges, and subjectivities through the medium of exhibition production.

Rewinding Internationalism is part of Our Many Europes, a four-year program co-funded by the European Union’s Creative Europe programme and organized by the museum confederation L’Internationale and its partners.

Featuring works by: 
Christine Baeumler, Act Up-Barcelona, Belkis Ayón Manso, Nadiah Bamadhaj, Cecilia Barriga*, Miguel Benlloch, CADA, Tony Cokes, Betsy Damon, Eugenio Dittborn, Les Diables Bleus, Diamela Eltit, Gorgona Group, Beth Grossman, Dai Guangyu, Félix Guattari, Lubaina Himid and Magda Stawarska*, Julije Knifer, Ivan Kožarić, Li Jixiang, Chengying Liu, susan pui san lok / lok pui san*, Miguel D. Norambuena, Miguel Parra Urrutia, Olu Oguibe, Didem Pekün*, Pejvak*, Wang Peng, Nelly Richard, Christian Rodriguez / CEPSS, Sandra Rylvin Rinaudo, Lotty Rosenfeld, Allan Sekula, Semsar Siahaan, Lamnu Suri, Norbert van Onna, Yin Xiuzhen, Zeng Xun. 
*New work

Research projects
AIDS Anarchive developed with Equipo re (Aimar Arriola, Nancy Garin and Linda Valdés), Revista de Crítica Cultural, The Three Ecologies and Internationalist Feminisms developed with Paulina E. Varas; Keepers of the Waters (Chengdu and Lhasa, China, 1995–1996) developed with Sebastian Cichocki; Contemporary Art of the Non-Aligned Countries. Unity in Diversity in International Art (Jakarta, 1995), developed with Bojana Piškur, Grace Samboh and Rachel Surijata; ADN (Association pour la Démocratie à Nice), with Carnavals Independents and Les Diables Bleus (1991–2004).

Curator: Nick Aikens