Bert Hermens discussing the ‘Witte Dame’ (‘White Lady’, CB) project, the Arctic Foundation and the concept of cultural transmission:

“My material can be paint one moment and society itself the next”

Aside from Bert Hermens the visual artist, there is another Bert Hermens who is more difficult to categorize. This man originated the name and concept of the Witte Dame, when an enormous Philips complex in the center of Eindhoven was in danger of demolition. This man perceives ‘cultural transmission’ not only as a cultural-political concept, but as a manner of thinking and working that has been an integral thread throughout his life.

“Nowadays, many artists are interested in looking at art in ways that go beyond the mere object, and further than a performance or a statement in the public arena. But I believe that art and cultural politics are still far too divergent. They should be intertwined - not simply by having artists in an advisory role in ministerial committees - no, I mean intrinsically intertwined, at all levels of society: the provinces; the state government; and in cities, towns and villages. Not through the National Arts Council (Raad voor de Kunst, CB), but much more directly. That would be the ideal situation. And this should not only be applied to the arts, but to all other sectors of society as well. I believe that we are slowly heading in that direction, but it is taking such a long time. You would think that the cultural sector would be at the forefront of such development (creating fertile grounds for further experimentation as an example to others) but we are a long way from this.”

Cultural Politics: Hermens has become an expert on the subject almost against his own will. He has founded numerous cultural initiatives such as the art centre ‘De Fabriek’ (‘The Factory’, CB), the MU Art Foundation, ARCTIC and the Witte Dame. The Witte Dame is an enormous former Phillips factory in the heart of Eindhoven that was scheduled to be demolished in the early nineties. Hermens decided to take action. “The street scene of the Emmasingel (Emma Boulevard, KB) was very important to me - not just the Witte Dame, but also the building people now call the Admirant. The way in which the facades of these two buildings face each other in an old-fashioned industrial manner, with the street in between. This is also the image I used to see as a young boy: hundreds of people riding their bikes to work through there, with their lunch boxes secured to the back of their bicycles. Call it nostalgia, but it is a beautiful image and it is a part of Eindhoven. They wanted to destroy it.”

“That is when I developed a concept of integration and synergy between culture, recreation and commercialization – all on equal footing - with a balanced amount of resources being devoted to each sector. And in such a manner that the entire project could be placed in a cultural cadre. Hence, commercialization in a cultural cadre. And recreation in a cultural cadre – not just crude entertainment.” Hermens named his project ‘De Witte Dame’, in reference to both the colour of the complex and the name of the street, the Emmasingel (Emma Boulevard, KB). After all, the old regent (Emma, CB) always wore white. What followed were endless rounds of visits to institutions, sponsors and existing initiatives in the Eindhoven art world.

How do you cope with the tension between creating on the one hand and organization, if you can call it that?

“I do not see it that way. What you call organisation, I view as a creative process as well. It is an artistic and cultural/political game that carefully takes shape over time. It is not simply a matter of organisation – the two merge – it is organisation and creation at the same time. In my atelier, I create pure, individual pieces that I feel compelled to create. But I could just as easily keep them to myself.”

Are you not afraid that you will not be able to go back to that way of working now?

“I have already done so a few times. After a period of spending a lot of my energy on these kinds of matters, I would retreat back to my atelier. This meant that I needed at least a year in order to get back into it, but then the results would be in stark contrast to my previous work. Even though there is still an obvious common thread. After all, I am still the same man, with the same temperament. The essence has not changed.”

You rarely sign your work. Why?

“There are several reasons for that. They have to do with my background and the influence of my artistic ‘father’ (KB), Bram van Velde, who did not sign his work either. I also still hold the romantic notion that if you are fully immersed in art, and you create using your full concentration, then the end result is not entirely your own creation. It is like a ‘found object’ (‘objet trouvee’, CB) that you discover in the world and for which you have only an intermediary function. I know that sounds overly romantic and I find it hard to put into words, but I think it is too pretentious to say that a work of art I create has come solely from me. There is an entire history behind it as well. If I had not had this particular history (for example, if I had not had the Van Abbe Museum locally, with Permeke, De Smet, Beckmann, Beuys or Bram van Veld) then I would not be the person I am today. So who am I to sign my name boldly under them?”

Do you see parallels with your cultural-political vision: exposing people to art?

“That is difficult to say. Because it may then seem that I have missionary tendencies. It may appear that way, but that is not how I see it. On a societal level, I see my daily activities as being a creator. My material can be paint one moment and society itself the next.”

Could you tell us about Arctic and the concept of cultural transmission?

“Arctic began long before it actually came into being. As far as I am concerned anyway. I was raised by a number of surrogate fathers, all of them were Philips engineers and they were mostly eccentrics. There was an Albanian Muslim and an Austrian with a Nazi past. After a year, a Hungarian played the piano for us one day, and turned out to be a born-again Liszt of sorts. That is how I was raised. There was an Englishman, Roger Woodcock, who had an enormous Harley Davidson. I would ride on the back wearing shorts and we would go swimming in the river Maas. That is where my story of cultural transmission began, in fact. During summer holidays my mother would take in students from the Dutch Antilles, who were studying at the Jesuit College in Nijmegen - two Negroes and two Indians. And what did we do? We danced the meringue and the salsa. Nobody knew, back then, what that was!”

“After graduating from the Jan van Eyk Academy, my wife Lies and I took our daughter, Janske, who was one year old at the time, to Indonesia for the first time. I used my last year at the academy to prepare. I learned how to speak Bahasa and studied Wajang Koelit. There also happened to be an Indonesian student at the academy at the time, Raden Mas Cyprianus Poerwadi - a Javanese nobleman from Jogya who spoke Dutch very well.”

In 1978, Hermens traveled to Mali with a group of students from the Technical University in Eindhoven to study the culture of the Dogon tribe. A few years later he, together with a Dutch and a Japanese artist, started the Trans-cultural Perspectives Foundation. This resulted in the project Deshima: twelve artists from Brabant (a province in the south of the Netherlands, KB) were able to exhibit their work in Japan. A few of them ended up working there for a while. “Those initiatives were all precursors to ACRTIC. I then founded ARCTIC in the cadre of the MU and the Witte Dame.” In 1996, ARCTIC asked one hundred artists from all over the world to submit slides for the project called ‘The Skin of the White Lady’. During the renovation of the Philips complex, these slides, containing portraits, trees and newspaper pages from all over the world, were intermittently projected, unannounced, onto the windows of the building’s façade at night.

At about the same time, an inflatable five-meter tall statue of an Indian appeared on the roof of the building. Like a nomad, this statue later traveled to Denmark, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and China, where it appeared on roof tops, unannounced. In the same way as he does not sign his own work, Hermens did not reveal the fact that he was the creator and maker of the Indian statue. “I was telling the fairy tale of ‘The love of the Indian for the White Lady’, which was about our vision of the Witte Dame and of cultural politics in general.”

You now, of course, have quite a few projects to exhibit….

“Yes, I think we have accomplished quite a lot, and that is something we can be proud of. I really think so. I don’t want to exaggerate, because it could all have been much more and much better, but we did manage to pull it off - with very few people and very little money. We were able to salvage the MU and the Witte Dame. That in itself is not bad at all. If you compare this result to the original dream, though, it is almost nothing. But sometimes you just have to forget about that. I also believe that the ideas concerning ‘Strijp S’ (another large former Philips complex in the city, DB) that are now starting to develop, are definitely influenced by the original concept of the Witte Dame and the way this concept was later annihilated. That they now think: ‘Hey, this needs to be done differently – with different perspectives and mentalities; less focus on commercialism. So I am not entirely bitter or melancholy about the whole experience.”

“Maybe it is due to my generation, but I still have the feeling that there is a lot more to accomplish.” (laughing) “That there is still some hope for the future. This also relates to the way in which I view development outside of the arts - especially in the relationship between the Western and non-Western world. I contemplate this a great deal: non-Western cultures and the interrelations with Western cultures. I derive a part of my dream from this.”

Is that dream still alive?

“Yes. Naturally, it has been reassessed. It would be Don Quichottic (‘unrealistic’, KB) to still be walking around with my ideas from the sixties. People truly believed in revolutionary and significant change. I do not believe in that anymore. But I do trust in the possibility of art to affect the way people experience life - the intensity of life.”

Does that also determine your attitude towards your audience? Do you want to get a message across?

“I need to stress that I primarily work for myself - in order to create clarity for myself, and something to hold on to. I am aware that there are more people like this. They do not need to share my clarity, but if I can draught an image that offers a certain clarity and gives something to hold on to, then through individual interpretation, you can, in turn, help someone else.”

Does this have anything to do with why you seldom give a title to your work? Because doing so would influence the viewer?

“The practice of naming art….Yes, I think that all art, in essence, is about the same theme. By using a title you can indicate the extent to which the work relates to this, or the specific ways in which you approach it. I feel that art is really always about a sense of nostalgia. Nostalgia for things to be self-evident. A way to live your life without doubt – to do the right thing automatically almost. I guess we all lost sight of this once Eve took a bite of that apple.”

Do you try to distance yourself from your own individuality while you paint, in order to work in a universal manner?

“Not my individuality. I must say that thinking and talking about the way in which I work is an analysis of the process as it has developed over the years. I always try to look back and reassess: what is actually happening here; which processes are at work here? At the same time, I try to suppress the inclination that Westerners, in general, have to want to understand things first before allowing them to evolve. To allow the processes of understanding and evolvement, in fact, to flow together – together with the input of motor-skills and also a large dose of intuition, I think. You need to be able to switch off individual will to a large extent. Assuming that clarity is thus created, it will have as much integrity as possible. That it arises completely from totality - the fusion of the various facets of your being.”

Do you work with different materials and techniques in order to limit yourself, and also to control the chaos?

“Yes, naturally. Look, I believe that art is also about taking risks, about adventure, about going beyond your limits, about entering no-mans-land. But, just as in waging war, you always have to ensure that supply lines remain open and retreat remains possible. If all you do is attack, you will end up dead. To me, there are many similarities between creating art and waging war. Thankfully, no blood is lost during painting.”

“You cannot live a life of constant risk and painting – otherwise you would burn out before you are forty. Every now and then you’ll have to take a step backward in order to gain momentum for your next leap forward. Whether you like it or not, you will have to make choices. In the end, I try to stay as close as I can to chaos, which is the mother of everything – the origin. The cohesion and yet the apparent lack of structure in things. We are unable to grasp this. This is where art borders religion – in secrets and in mystery. I try to encircle the chaos - to feel my way closer to it. You cannot force it. Otherwise you will get scorched by the chaos. Then the work becomes contrived - it becomes too intellectual; based too much on refinement, esthetics and appearances.”

The position of an outsider?

“Yes. It is the same for writers, for composers, for choreographers. This is due to the overall attitude of the artist, the creator, descending from God the Father. People who want to be able to create have to be able to be alone. That sounds very romantic, but it is true nonetheless. Because if you do not want to be alone, then you constantly have to make concessions. When I am sitting here with you, I behave in a manner that is acceptable to you, whether I want to or not. Otherwise you would hit me on the head or I would do that to you. But if I were on my own, the most I could do is hit myself on the head. And I have not reached that point yet, I suppose.”