Stanley Brown's Pavilion. Part of Beyond. Image: Paul O'Neill

Case Study Two - Beyond, 1999-2009, Leidsche Rijn

This Case Study will focus on commissioner-curator Tom van Gestel, who has maintained a curatorial practice in Leidcshe Rijn as part of Beyond’s ten-year programme of temporary public art commissions between 1999-2009. Based on two site visits, archival research, primary interviews and a focus group session held in Amsterdam in May 2008, this report will focus on how Van Gestel and the artistic advisory team perceive and portray Beyond as a durational curatorial project that reflects upon the development of Leidsche Rijn as a place and as a community under construction.

Project: Beyond

Location: Leidsche Rijn, Utrecht, Netherlands

Website: http://www.beyondutrecht.nl

Duration: 1999-2009

Commissioner under investigation: Tom van Gestel

Current Artistic Advisory Board: Curator Tom van Gestel (chair), Curator Nathalie Zonnenberg, and Curator Theo Teggelar

Previous artistic advisors: Artists Liesbeth Bik, Govert Grosfelt and Curator Yvonne Wesselink

Current Project Coordination: Bureau Beyond, Utrecht: Monique Dirven, Carlijn Diesfeldt , Felix Janssens (Beyond design)

Administration: Beyond is an initiative of the Municipality of Utrecht, with the participation of: SKOR (Foundation of Art and Public Space), the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning, and the Environment – IPSV Programme, K.F. Hein Foundation, Elise Mathilde Fund.

Duration: 1999-2009

Description: During the planning stage of Leidsche Rijn, the Visual Arts Advisory board for the city of Utrecht recommended the need for a special arts plan that would develop alongside this expansion of the city of Utrecht, where 40,000 houses, schools and a public infrastructure for about 70,000 would be built over a ten year period. A study group was devised and led by Peter Kuenzli, former director of Property Development Leidsche Rijn, who set out a strategic plan for the area. In 1999, the City of Utrecht’s Department of Cultural Affairs accepted and commissioned this proposition and, at the time, they approached Tom van Gestel, Curator at SKOR (foundation for Art and Public Space) to collaborate on the project’s development and its future implementation.

The Beyond Scenario was written by artist Jan van Grunsven; architecture critic Bernard Colenbrander; artistic consultants Tom van Gestel and Govert Grosveld and a former representative from the department of Cultural Affairs Mariette Dölle. In it they set out the Scenario ‘Beyond Leidsche Rijn, the Vinex assignment for art’ as an alternative long-term approach to temporary public art commissioing that would evolve during the development of Leidsche Rijn. Beyond is a series of temporary public art interventions in Leidsche Rijn that will end in 2009.

The six strands of the programme are:

1. Looping - The public relations department of Beyond, aims to involve and to communicate with LR residents about Beyond’s activities and to stimulate a debate on its art programmes as through their website, news and publications.

2. Parasites - Parasites is a collective term for light, mobile and experimental forms of architecture. During the urban development of Leidsche Rijn, these are commissioned or selected to be sited in Leidsche Rijn as flexible and mobile buildings with a social or participatory function.

3. Artist’s Houses - Artists are invited to respond to the urbanization process with view to thinking about living and dwelling in Leidsche Rijn, some have resulted in built houses incorporated into the existing plans for Leidsche Rijn.

4. White Spots – Where sites/ spaces bought and given to artists, with Beyond acting as land and property developers within Leidsche Rijn. These spaces would be taken out of the masterplan during the construction period and used for parallel and future temporary art projects in Leidsche Rijn.

5. Action Research - Action Research is a programme made up of temporary projects and artistic interventions created by artists during the development of LR with view to research based interaction with Leidsche Rijn inducing participation, relexive practice and observational responses to the evolution of Leidsche Rijn as an inhabited place.

6. Directing Artists - Artists would actively contribute their ideas with regard to the infrastructural design of Leidsche Rijn as part of the design team for the extension and contribute to a number of large-scale infrastructural projects with view to partaking in the overall planning and construction process.