Foam follows function.

FOAM_FUSION

FOTOMUSEUM AMSTERDAM

AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS

APRIL 7-8, 2006

If a museum's function is to be both didactic and inspiring, then the FotoMuseum Amsterdam (FOAM) pulled off a very successful weekend during what would otherwise have been dead time between taking down their Henri Cartier-Bresson show and installing work by Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Anouk Kruithof, Jaap Scheeren, and Larry Towell. Foam_fusion, with international workshops, panel discussions, portfolio reviews, an auction, and presentations by artists including Joan Fonteuberta, Stephen Gill, Anthony Goicolea, Jacqueline Hassink, and Bertien van Manen, was extraordinarily well attended.

This virtual photography event, with its slide shows and lectures, brought the museum as simulacra to life. This was manifest not only in Fontcuberta's presentation of "Landscapes without Memory" (2005) and "Googlegrams" (2005), but also in the choice of having Roman Berka of Vienna's Museum in Progress (MIP), describe the MIP's art projects that take place in public spaces and in the paper-based and digital media. Fontcuberta's "Landscapes," now collected in an Aperture monograph, continue his exploration of the interfaces between art and technology. Based on map rendering software, the images are created by scanning images of actual, painted landscapes, by Paul Cezanne, Claude Monet, et al., into a computer that interprets the colors as elevations on a topographical map. It then proceeds to render a digital landscape such as one that might be found in a video game or military flight simulator. The results are remarkable. At times they resemble their source material, but generally these constructed landscapes serve to remind us that the very notion of a "landscape" itself is a human construct and exists outside of the real world. The "Googlegrams" take advantage of Google's image search applications and the composite image rendering software that produces photomosaics. For instance, Fontcuberta used keywords--for example, from the Final Report of the United States Congress on Abu Ghraib--to source images that were then composited to replicate the infamous image of U.S. Army Private Lynndie England holding an Iraqi prisoner on a leash.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The theme of the virtual museum was also carried over by the presentation of the MIP that takes its mandate as a museum without walls to present work that is "media-specific, context-dependent and temporary. This applies both to individual projects and to the whole structure." (1) By involving artists such as Nabuyoshi Araki, Tacita Dean, and Hans-Peter Feldmann, the MIP has infiltrated art projects into unconventional public spaces--including billboards and magazines--in order to provoke discussion and an awareness of art in general. Thousands of projects have taken place all over the world since the museum's formation in 1990, yet no physical museum exists besides the online digital archive.

The "Fusion" was completed by an unusual auction to benefit the Association Internationale de Defense des Artistes, an arts organization supporting artists persecuted for their work. Some seventy "anonymous" photographs from living Dutch artists, including the work of several very well-known photographers, were auctioned off. Bidding started low but escalated sharply. The auction ultimately raised the not insignificant sum of 28,140.00 euros ($35,523). In all, it was yet another take on the concept of a "Dutch auction" and a fitting finish to an unusual art weekend in a photography museum without photographs.

FOAM itself occupies a lovely building at Keizersgracht 609 in Amsterdam's Centrum, but as an institution, it also acts outside of these walls. Since its founding in 2001, FOAM has presented exhibitions in Vondelpark (one of Amsterdam's largest parks), at the Central Station, and an upcoming exhibitions in Amsterdam's harbor is being organized.

BILL KOUWENHOVEN is a writer and photographer. He lives and works in Berlin and New York City.

NOTE

1. From the Museum in Progress mission statement.

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For more information about FOAM's Fusion see www.foam.nl.