Tjebbe van Tijen (born 1944, The Hague, Netherlands) is a sculptor, performance artist, curator, net artist, archivist, documentalist and media theorist who lives and works in Amsterdam.
He is best known for his 1960s collaborative public performances, and for his later artworks and projects done in collaboration with archives and libraries.
Life and education
Tjebbe van Tijen was born in 1944 in the Hague.
From 1961 to 1965 he studied sculpture at schools in Den Bosch, Haarlem, Milan and London.
In London he studied with
Jeffrey Shaw
Jeffrey Shaw (born 1944 in Melbourne) is a visual artist known for being a leading figure in new media art. In a prolific career of widely exhibited and critically acclaimed work, he has pioneered the creative use of digital media technologies ...
(then a street artist), with whom he would later collaborate with on several projects.
Art career
In the 1960s van Tijen was involved in numerous
happenings
A happening is a performance, event, or situation art, usually as performance art. The term was first used by Allan Kaprow in 1959 to describe a range of art-related events.
History
Origins
Allan Kaprow first coined the term "happening" in t ...
in European cities.
Sigma Projects
Returning to Holland in 1967, he developed a number of collaborative street art projects in Amsterdam under the rubric of ''Sigma Projects''.
One such project, with Jeffrey Shaw and Willem Breuker, was ''Continuous Film'', a film project of abstract imagery projected onto buildings with a live performed soundtrack.
Another similar project ''Continuous Sound and Image Moments'' by the same trio involved a projected black-and-white animated film loop.
Another Sigma Project was the work titled ''Continuous Drawings''. In it, and using various transportation including taxis and an airplane, van Tijen drew a line from the Institute for Contemporary Art in London to the
Stedelijk Museum
The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (; Municipal Museum Amsterdam), colloquially known as the Stedelijk, is a museum for modern art, contemporary art, and design located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. in Amsterdam, and from there to Rotterdam.
During the execution of the London side of the drawing, van Tijen and his friend
John Latham were arrested on 24 August 1966 by police for refusing to clean the pavement of their drawing.
Imaginary Museums
With Robert Hartzema, he founded the Research Center Art Technology and Society in Amsterdam, which operated from 1967 to 1969.
The center was based within the
Stedelijk Museum
The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (; Municipal Museum Amsterdam), colloquially known as the Stedelijk, is a museum for modern art, contemporary art, and design located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. , Amsterdam. It later became the Documentation Center for Social History at the University Library, Amsterdam that operated from 1973 to 1998 and covered subjects related to the history of social activism within cities.
Van Tijen operated both centres as curator under the rubric of his ''Imaginary Museums'' project.
In the 1980s van Tijen collaborated again with media artist
Jeffrey Shaw
Jeffrey Shaw (born 1944 in Melbourne) is a visual artist known for being a leading figure in new media art. In a prolific career of widely exhibited and critically acclaimed work, he has pioneered the creative use of digital media technologies ...
on a project called the ''Imaginary Museum of the Revolution.''
References
External links
Imaginary Museum official websiteBlog Limping Messenger
1944 births
Living people
20th-century Dutch artists
21st-century Dutch artists
Artists from The Hague
Date of birth missing (living people)
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