Rewinding Internationalism

Rewinding Internationalism is an exhibition and research project that engages with the construct of internationalism through multiple scenes. It includes four new commissions and a number of collaborative research projects, alongside loans and archival material form public and private lenders. The departure point for the project is the 1990s–a period when the construct of internationalism was in deep flux across both political and cultural contexts.

Rather than represent a series of histories, however, works in the exhibition bring moments, places and people into dialogue. The dialogue across research and artworks allow evocations and implications to speak across the 1990s to the present moment, defined as it is by deepening and ongoing ecological and biopolitical crises and when the idea of internationalism is again in flux. Finally, 'Rewinding Internationalism' can be understood as an experiment in bringing histories, knowledges and subjectivities into dialogue through the form of exhibition making.

The exhibition’s title draws on writer and theorist Ariella Aisha Azoulay’s call to ‘learn to rewind’, understanding that any engagement with a specific moment in time, necessitates addressing the relationship and inter-connections with different historical moments as part of an ongoing present as well as ‘unlearning’ concepts that may have become sedimented over time, as is the case with the construct of internationalism.

It uses Azoulay’s writing as a prompt and an evocation: To address events in the past, not as over but as part of an ongoing present, a troubling of concepts such as the archive as neutral, and as means through which to question how we understand terms that we take to be descriptions of the world–such as internationalism.

Press rewind and you go back to a part of a song or a scene in a film. Something happens in the act of rewinding though. The magnetic tape of a cassette or VHS gets scrambled. The section of the song, now replayed out of sequence, becomes abstracted. If you continuously rewind and replay–to borrow the title of Susan Pui San Lok’s new work in the exhibition–the recorded fragment takes on completely new meanings. Within the context of an exhibition that is in dialogue with the 1990s, the term ‘rewinding’ is an invitation to revisit and rethink histories and concepts once they have already been ‘played’ out–to scramble them and open them up to new interpretations.

‘Rewinding Internationalism’ unfolds across the galleries of the Van Abbemusuem’s Old Building through a series of scenes. These scenes invite visitors to visit the 1990s – a period when the construct of internationalism was in deep flux across both political and cultural contexts. Rather than represent a series of histories, however, works in the exhibition bring moments, places and people into dialogue. Visual and sonic associations allow evocations and implications to speak across the 1990s to the present moment, defined as it is by deepening and ongoing ecological and biopolitical crises.

The exhibition has been conceived and developed during a global time of pandemic when the idea of internationalism is again in deep flux–the closure of national borders, prolonged isolation and screen time have had profound effects on people’s sense of relating to one another, as well on how artists and cultural practitioners’ work. Works in the exhibition have been produced or adapted within these constraints. More than that, however, the exhibition’s fragmented rehearsals across space and time speak to the current sense of uncertainty, foreboding and repetition.