Deep in the old harbor of Rotterdam, the Netherlands, a machine is standing at the ready to turn bits and pieces of used plastic into diesel oil that will run the world’s only clock operating on that fuel, churn a laundry that will clean the clothes of the workers tending to the refinery process, and heat a hot tub so those refiners can relax after their work is done. Presiding over this " Disco Inferno," as the installation is called, sits the artist Joep van Lieshout, enthroned on a rough replica of Charlemagne’s throne, which can still be seen in the town of Aachen several hundred kilometers to the southeast. The whole contraption, which sprouts other equipment, pipes, and containers of uncertain function, does not work, may never do so, or may toil away in secret after all visitors have left for the day. Van Lieshout is not telling. What he is saying is that the contraption, under construction for years and changing continually, is art. It is the centerpiece of "Brutus," a sprawling art center he has carved out of former harbor warehouses between what used to be the city’s legalized prostitution zone and the three towers that once housed much of Rotterdam’s bureaucracy, two of which have now been renovated into housing.
Lieshout has a long history both on the Kelleweg, the street the complex faces, and in making strange and sometimes useful machines. He has created racing cars (and competed in them) and gin distilleries, sculptures of figures appearing to fornicate that have appeared in prominent places such as the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the interior of an boat that provided abortions off the coast of Ireland when that procedure was still illegal there. At the beginning of the century, he declared the Kelleweg area a "Free State" and built up a commune that supported itself both with government arts grants and sales of the art, and by farming on site. When the City decided this just broke a few too many regulations, Lieshout’s art response was to slaughter the animals and reap the vegetables, throw a party, and then disperse the crowd. For all that, my favorite of his pieces has always been the sculptures that are also benches which arose from his realization that if he drank enough beer and sandwiched the then-empty plastic crates between four standard Dutch street paving tiles he would have a Pop Art version of a Donald Judd sculpture.
That "Disco Inferno" is a piece of social commentary is clear; what the message exactly is remains, as always with this artist, less so. Producing dirty diesel from plastic remains, though apparently feasible, might not be the most optimal way to reduce pollution, and the purposes to which the engine are put are purposely if not trivial, certainly self-referential. The "Inferno" aims to be a machine feeding off waste to produce nothing but useless activities. What it really produces is a visual commentary on the world of production in which it is situated, not just in general, but particularly in the heart of the harbor of Rotterdam, the largest in Europe and, until recently, the world. That giant operation’s heroic, but also dystopian landscape of oil refineries, robotic shipping containers, seen and unseen infrastructure feeding all of this, and the seas of warehouses supporting this transshipment and transformation of raw materials stretches from the Kelleweg west over 40 kilometers to artificial land in the North Sea. The dirt, complexity, and mysterious operation of all that is boiled down here visually as much as the plastic is meant to be condensed into fuel if the "Inferno" were ever to work. If there is a message, it is the absurdity and beauty of all of this; van Lieshout says that he wants the final (ironic?) notion you leave with after touring the disco (perhaps including the psychiatrist’s office hidden away on a metal mesh loft) is “the happy end of everything.”
By contrast, the installation the artist Marjan Teeuwens has created in one of the adjacent warehouses – one of several currently on rotating display at "Brutus" (“art as oxygen,” is its motto), along with van Lieshout’s working atelier—is calm and almost conventionally beautiful. Teeuwens’ standard working method is to go to buildings that are about to be torn down, either for redevelopment or because of war and violence, convince those in charge to let them have the site long enough to reorganize what remains of the building into sculptural compositions, photograph the results, and then let the bulldozers or dynamite have their way.
In this case, she took a part of the warehouse complex that had been bricked up for decades, opened it up enough to let you enter, and cut enough holes in the concrete and steel fabric to both allow a little (but not too much) light in and to create open spaces within the dense warren of rooms. She then stacked the rubble she had found or created into planes whose textures have the beauty of both a well-worn, historic building and of an artwork in which the maker has concentrated on the rhythm and development of colors, textures, and patterns across the surface.
Wandering through the spaces, you find yourself looking at compositions that integrate themselves with what remains, are made of detritus, and then become something worth considering. Like van Lieshout’s work, they consist of recycled elements formed into a spatial and material texture with no purpose but to provide endless fascination. I found myself tracing the almost musical lines of color or seams of discordant bricks through planes that created a landscape as gray as both the Dutch sky and the streetscape around the Kelleweg. The corkscrewing openings revealed what had remained hidden within the industrial blocks, turning it into a moment of frozen urban archaeology.
Unlike most of Teeuwens’ other works, the "Brutus" installation will remain, at least for now. Van Lieshout and his team have plans to at some point redevelop the site, most of which they own, both as a more permanent place of artistic production and display and for much-needed housing. For now, the site remains open to the public to explore, even though every display comes with extensive warnings that “You can hurt yourself if you don’t pay close attention… When you enter the space, you accept these and other risks. You can’t blame anyone else when you hurt yourself.” You are also at fault if you are outraged, amused, or even left in a state of bewildered wonder. This is untamed, useless, and, to my mind, stunningly beautiful art.
The views and conclusions from this author are not necessarily those of ARCHITECT magazine.
Read more: The latest from columnist Aaron Betsky includes reviews of: Louis Kahn's National Parliament House | Dhaka | Marlon Blackwell's new mixed-use development | Eric Höweler’s social media posts,| Peter Braithwaite's architecture in Nova Scotia,| Powerhouse Arts, | the Mercer Museum, | and MoMA's Ed Ruscha exhibition.
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