ci, often called the founding father of performance art.40 The Peoplemobile is a
purpose-made project which Acconci designed for town squares, consisting of
a truck, a cargo of large metal panels and sound equipment. The truck travelled
from town to town, from square to square. The truck produced sound, an impor
tant part in Acconci's work.
Forum's local memory-
Considering the fact that Forum's lectures, workshops and exhibitions were only
situated in Middelburg and that the city served as an important location and
component of the exhibited artworks by internationally well-known artists, it
is at least curious to observe that the memory of Forum seems to be quite lim
ited in the city itself. Indeed, during Forum 1980 Sculpture/Architecture, the in
vited artists were directly addressing the architecture of the old city by taking
the structure of the old city or its facets as starting point for the realization of
their project(s).41 Arguably the first time that Forum intervened in Middelburg
was during Forum Audiovisueel in 1979. Locations like the Vleeshal, the Dam
square and Podio del Mondo per l'Arte served as a stage on which presentations
and installations of Vito Acconci, Charlemagne Palestine, Connie Beckley and
Kreon took place. Maria-Rosa Boezem wrote in her introduction of the evalua
tion booklet that the spatial involvement of the city served as a means to engage
the local people.42
Another of those memorable examples is the work of Daniel Buren, who be
longs to a group of artists that identify themselves within the paradigm of the
intellectual climate of the sixties, a period that characterizes itself by the critical
ideas about common practices and values. Buren's workshop during Forum en
Scène, 1984, consisted of a collaborative installation in which he decorated 16 of
the 32 Abbey tower's shutters with a cloth that depicted alternated red and white
stripes, each with a width of 12 centimetres. In this work, there is a clear rec
onciliation of Buren's oeuvre (his use of stripes) and the specific and traditional
decorative composition of the old Abbey shutters. Ad van Aert, a participant of
this workshop, writes that Buren's work is situated on the best possible place in
Eva Langerak
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40 Rutger Pontzen, 'Vader van de performancekunst Vito Acconci overleden, De Volkskrant, April
30, 2017. https://www.volkskrant.nl/beeldende-kunst/-vader-van-de-performancekunst-
vito-acconci-overleden~a4490094/
41 Maria-Rosa Boezem, foreword of program booklet Forum Sculpture/Architecture, 1980.
42 Maria-Rosa Boezem, foreword of evaluation booklet Forum Audiovisual 1979.
