FRANCIEN VAN WESTRENEN (NL)

TheGreatCut

Wednesday 9 April, 5 – 6 PM at Konstfack (Mandelgrensalen)

The fifth Organising Discourse lecture continues to explore approaches to institutional and curatorial practice, this time with a focus on art, architecture and urban practice.

Francien van Westrenen, architecture curator at Stroom den Haag, will talk about the practice of Stroom and show examples of recent projects in relation to ‘organising discourse’, from Dunepark and Pig City to Timebank and Expanded Performance.

CITY AS DISCURSIVE PLATFORM

Stroom Den Haag (an independent foundation founded in 1989) is a centre for art and architecture with a wide range of activities. Starting from the visual arts, architecture, urban planning and design the program focuses on the urban environment. It aims at being a hospitable and stimulating platform. Starting from this mentality Stroom, in collaboration with other institutions, wants to contribute to the permanent development of the reflection on the city and the part that can be played by the visual arts in this context. A lot of the art projects initiated by Stroom are functioning as discursive spaces as well. They stimulate discussion and thinking on topics related to the city like monuments, gentrification, informal urbanism, value creation and food production.

FRANCIEN VAN WESTRENEN

works at the art and architecture centre Stroom Den Haag as an architecture curator of exhibitions, projects, publications and lectures based on a interdisciplinary and cultural approach to the urban environment. She has several publications to her name, among which Game Urbanism (together with Hans Venhuizen) and three city guides for The Hague. At the moment she is working together with her colleague Maaike Lauwaert on a book about Upcycling. In 2002, she completed her degree in Art and Culture Studies at the Erasmus University Rotterdam with research on the future of the art museum.

http://www.stroom.nl/