Catalogue Garden State

Liesbeth Bik and Jos Van der Pol live and work in Rotterdam. Working collectively since 1995 as Bik Van der Pol they aim to articulate and understand how art can produce a public sphere and space for imagination, and how publics are formed and come together.

Their mode of working consists of setting up the conditions for encounter to develop a process that allows for continuous reconfigurations of places, histories and publics. Their practice is site-specific and collaborative with dialogue as a mode of transfer; a “passing through”, understood in its etymological meaning of “a speech across or between two or more people, out of which may emerge new understandings”. In fact, they consider “passing through” as vital. It is temporal, and implies action and the development of new forms of discourse. Their practice is both instigator and result of this method.