Dimitrivandenwittenboer@gmail.com
@dimitri_van_den_wittenboer
Dimitri van den Wittenboer’s professional artistic practice is focused on the concept of the Commons as a way of designing space on the level of social relations based on participation, collective ownership and care. In his work he initiates and facilitates temporary spaces in local neighbourhoods in which people can experience and train these values through participation and collective life.
In the last years Dimitri has initiated a number of community projects in the Netherlands (1000 Apple Trees, Open; The Pit;
City Market Otherwise; Nest) and abroad (Fireplace (FR); Neighbourhood of Commoning (CH); Boiling Room (DE).
He also has collaborated with various individuals, collectives and organisations within the field of arts, social work and activism (Bureau Postjesweg (NL), The Bookstore (NL), Performing Arts Forum (FR), City Space Architecture (IT), No Border Camp (NL), Reclaim The Seeds (NL), Rue Pare Community (NL)) and is partly involved in their work on an ongoing basis.
Through this scope of experiences Dimitri has a diverse expertise in working with people, building and facilitating communities, and organising/activating space in a participatory way. During his Research Master "Performing Public Space" at the Tilburg University Dimitri has also acquired theoretical knowledge about the global discourse on the issues of public space and learned various artistic methods of working with communities on creative solutions, and developed professional expertise in practice-led artistic research.
This year Dimitri did two 3 months artist residencies in the refugee squat in Cesana Italy (Care, 2023) and a self-organised homeless shelter The Catholic Workers in NYC (Open Day, 2023). Both projects enriched Dimitri's expertise on a practical level in the fields of organisation of alternative community spaces, work with migrants/refugees and homeless people as marginalised and politically oppressed communities.
It further gave Dimitri a better understanding of the socio-political issues of cities and public space and policies of these marginalised groups in a particular context and on a global scale.
Artist Statement
In my work I am interested in the question of how we live together in the contemporary society. Nowadays our world is mostly organized according the neoliberal values of growth, efficiency and profit. I see the field of art as a potential to explore an alternative way of living together, to imagine and practice social interactions and use of resources that are based on values of sharing, care and bottom-up self-organization. I am for an art that stands outside of the established structures and allows such explorations. My main focus is on long term projects that invite people to construct space together and to think about ways how it can be organized and performed beyond the values of capital. The concept of openness is for me the core of art. Being open for me is about ongoing negotiation among all participating parts and without defined and rigid hierarchies. Openness makes (socially engaged) art different from social work. In social work activities have a clear goal and aim towards an efficient outcome, failure and experiment must be avoided. This makes social work efficient and sustainable, but also leads to little possibilities to question and transform established structures. In an artistic project I can be open to all sorts of situations and inputs to playfully experiment and explore alternatives on the costs of efficiency. Working with communities and their living environment allows my artistic work to be a disruption of the established structure by inviting people to explore alternatives in a semi fictional space that at one hand offers more opportunities than our everyday life and at the same time is deeply interwoven with our "real" identities, responsibilities and consequences.
