Marjolijn Dijkman
In her multidisciplinary work, Marjolijn Dijkman (1978, The Netherlands) investigates the relationship between people and their surroundings, as well as their inexhaustible determination to interfere and exert power and influence over the world around them.
Dijkman’s installation Cultivating Probability is formed from a collection of diverse objects, which are spread throughout a vast space where they are susceptible to change and movement. Dijkman is interested in representations of the future in different times and cultures. This work, which she made especially for Global Imaginations, is based on research into the way images and ideas of the future in different times and cultures influenced and continue to influence people and their view of the world. The objects in the installation are interpretations of ceremonial objects found in the collections of Museum Volkenkunde and the Afrika Museum in Berg en Dal that were made to predict – or ward off – the future.
A video piece, which was also created especially for the exhibition, takes various virtual hand gestures used to predict or ward off the future as its starting point. The video includes a range of gestures from diverse sources – from spiritual to military – that have become removed from their original context.
Marjolijn Dijkman lives and works in Brussels, Belgium.
website Marjolijn Dijkman
Activity in Museum Boerhaave
28 September 2015
The work LUNÄ (2011-2015), a reproduction of the dining and discussion table used by the Lunar Society, will be exhibited in Museum Boerhaave. This society of eminent scientists, philosophers and inventors was founded in 1785 in the English city of Birmingham. When the moon was full, its members would gather around the table to share new scientific developments.
Reviving the tradition, Marjolijn Dijkman and Museum Boerhave invited leading scientists to once again take a seat at the table. The table was laid out with objects from the museum’s collection that are related to visions of the future. The invited guests included scientists from the research project ‘The Future is Elsewhere’, led by anthropologist Prof. Peter Pels. The artistic-scientific discussion on the theme of future models and philosophies was held in Museum Boerhaave on 28 September 2015, when there was a full moon.