Building the Visual MindBuilding the Visual Mind

Thursday 24 February 19:00 - 21:00
Language: English
Location: Het Nieuwe Instituut, Museumpark 25, 3015CB Rotterdam

Which future scenarios are possible for the creative reuse of digital heritage collections? What challenges do creators face when working with digital heritage? And what are the future possibilities of making digital heritage accessible? During the Building a Dynamic Archive event at Het Nieuwe Instituut, Donna Verheijden previews the exhibition Building the Visual Mind. Following a panel discussion with various experts in the heritage field, archiving, and copyright. The main focus of this event during the Thursday Night Live! will be on visual creative reinterpretations of digital heritage collections.

Creating a virtual parallel reality, Verheijden takes visitors through the evolution of the digital collection. The 3D models and digitised glass negatives, sketches, blueprints and collection images she uses in the exhibition are a concrete representation of the relationship between archives, architecture and developing technology. Dive into this world and experience the ongoing shift from an analogue collection to an increasingly digitised archive!

The dreams flow
Along with the screen of the mind.
What is life&Seeing?

Haiku by Nicolaï-Chaillet, C. (Cora), Collection het Nieuwe Instituut

In Building the Visual Mind, Donna Verheijden embarks on an artistic research project by actively remixing and creatively re-using digital heritage. She works with glass negatives (from the studio of Pierre Cuypers and others), drawings and blueprints by a wide variety of architects, plus 3D models from offices like MVRDV - recombining them from her own perspective.

The pop-up exhibition Building the Visual Mind is on view in Gallery 3 from 11 December 2021 to 28 February 2022.

Parallel to the exhibition, a programme features various activities such as knowledge sessions, workshops and guided tours. The aim of the programme is to add more depth to the exhibition and highlight the digital collection of Het Nieuwe Instituut. In this parallel programme, the exhibited works act as starting points for discussing various themes related to the creative re-use of archival material.

Building the Visual Mind is made possible in part by the Digital Heritage x Public grant scheme of the Creative Industries Fund NL and started in 2019. Building the Visual Mind was also made possible by Katsu.Pro and Boer & Van Wijk. Exhibition design: Van Leeuwenstein, Donna Verheijden.

Donna Verheijden is a filmmaker and video artist. She sees it as her task to analyse and criticise current visual culture. Her work focuses on mass media and social media, its temptations and underlying power structures. Verheijden is represented by LI-MA international platform for media. She teaches at the ArtEZ University of the Arts in Arnhem. In 2019, she also took part in the Open Archive programme in which she created an autonomous media work from the open, digital collections of Het Nieuwe Instituut and the Netherlands Institute for Image and Sound.