Press Release: New exhibition programme in response to the Olympic Games Press Release: New exhibition programme in response to the Olympic Games

The Olympic Games have come to symbolise stories of heroic individuals who strive to be the best and who succeed through physical discipline and mental perseverance. Held up to the world as worthy goals, their achievements are closely related to beauty and ethics. Pressure to perform and win means that limits are constantly pushed. Today the body can be designed and has become part of a product industry. What meaning has it acquired as a result? How is the body viewed today? These are the key questions addressed in the new exhibition programme, which is accompanied by presentations, lectures, debates (Thursday Night), workshops and an education programme for families, children, youths and schools.



More information about the exhibitions and online documentary:

A body that can be controlled and designed has become an ideal towards which everybody can strive, a fact cleverly exploited by the market. The exhibition The Life Fair takes the form of a consumer trade show where visitors (consumers) can learn about new products and services that constantly push the limits of ideals and standards, and their ethical consequences. How far are visitors prepared to go? The body has become a vessel in which market, government and technology mix. Organised around such themes as health, beauty, family planning, sex, work, identity, death and consumption, the fair leaves visitors to decide which products are genuine and which are speculative, and who exactly is trying to promote them. Is it a company, a government agency, or an artist/designer?

Safety is a major social issue. The safety of the collective body is paramount, while the individual body constitutes a threat. A state-of-the-art safety system has been devised for Rio 2016. Called the Centro de Operações Preifetura do Rio de Janeiro (COR), it forms the nerve centre of the Olympic Games. From here, the enormous metropolis is monitored with cameras, sensors, Bluetooth and other detection devices. Algorithms and data analyses reveal deviations in patterns so that unsafe individuals and situations can be located. During the Games Het Nieuwe Institute will house a life-size mock-up of a control room where data flows from Rio can be followed and analysed on the spot and translated into data visualisations.

Perception of the human body changed at the dawn of the twentieth century. The exhibition The New Body traces this development in the context of the Russian Revolution. Historical visual material from dozens of Russian museums and collections explains how artistic developments in dance and music challenged the depiction of the body. Film and photography, the new media of their time, played an important role in the design and depiction of this 'new' body.

During the 1972 Olympic Games, Germany presented itself as a modern, democratic and culturally conscious nation. It was an opportunity to dispel the memory of Hitler's 1936 'Nazi Games' in Berlin and replace it with a new image of hope. The Munich Games were to be an example of a perfect marriage between architecture and design in the service of man. The exhibition Munich 1972 illuminates the aesthetic ideals of the designers, and their passionate desire to paint a picture of a democratic, open society. But it also reveals the vulnerability of what was probably the last convincing demonstration of a nation at ease, conveying an unbridled faith in the power of visual representation. After all, Munich '72 was ultimately overshadowed by the hostage-taking and killing of eleven Israeli athletes.

The interactive online documentary_ 51 Sprints_ shows how Olympic athletes became symbols for very different audiences. The documentary includes a recording of every final of the 100-metre sprint in the history of the modern games. Taken together, all those recordings tell the story of our shared experience of watching the race. What started as a get-together for a white, male elite gradually opened up to include females, the working class, people of colour and, since London 2012, Paralympic athletes, who use technology to overcome physical handicap.

Faster, Higher, Stronger

12 June 2016 to 8 January 2017

Het Nieuwe Instituut

More information

For more information please contact Martine Willekens or Ester Martens, Marketing, Communications & Commerce, Het Nieuwe Instituut, at e.martens@hetnieuweinstituut.nl, phone: 06-53600431.