Forum exhibition in Middelburg in 2015. According to her, Forum was a forerun
ner in the field of confrontation, exchange, participation and experimentation.
She confirmed this thought in the interview that I carried out with her.
Confrontation
'Confrontation' indicates the fact that Forum wanted to break with traditional
boundaries that separate different art disciplines from each other, but also makes
clear how a certain form or branching of art is related to visual art. An example
of this is the manifestation about Design in 1981. Design, which is a pre-eminent
ly social subject, was compared with art to determine both the differences and
the similarities with visual art. In the information booklet of 1981, Maria-Rosa
Boezem writes that design is a discipline with which we are confronted on daily
basis in the forms of products and marketing (like graphic design). After all, the
material world in which we live forms for a large part the décor of our lives. In
its program, Forum opted for an elaborate and broad selection of designers that
showed diversity in which design is occurring, especially in the Netherlands.29
As well as a confrontation and discussion between different fields of art, Fo
rum also extended the debate into the social sphere. An example which perfectly
illustrates this is the theme chosen in 1982: Ornamentation. The theme was cho
sen for its general recognition in the artistic value of forms of clothing, jewellery,
masks, et cetera. It was also chosen since ornamentation serves as a means to ex
press emotions and intentions, such as power, criticism, group commitment, po
litical standpoints or a rejection of a prevailing morality.30 The program provided
a kaleidoscopic overview to find connections between historical, anthropological
and contemporary meanings related to the theme. A key artist during this man
ifestation was Ulrike Rosenbach, who founded the famous 'Schule für Kreativen
Feminismus' in 1976. She has been involved in research into the confirmation
of role patterns and power, coupled with external appearances originating from
women's clichés, women's cultural history and identification processes. Next to
addressing the participants through a workshop and lecture, she also exhibited
her installation Schmelzprozesse in the Vleeshal. Another indicator of the con
frontation between artistic and socio-political contexts is the lecture which was
originally meant to be given by Rosetta Brooks, but eventually got replaced by the
228
The Art of Remembering Forum: the Local Memory
29 Antje Von Graevenitz, interviewed by Eva Langerak, April 13, 2018.
30 Maria-Rosa Boezem, foreword, Information booklet Forum Ornamentation,1982.
