Metropool Internationale Kunstprojecten

Redactie Kunst & Cultuur Author

Metropool Internationale Kunstprojecten stages artistic and cultural activities around core issues currently affecting Europe's societies, and helps to foster independent thinking, networking and co-production in Europe and abroad.
One of the major, multi-year projects of Metropool International Art Projects is On Friendship / (Collateral Damage).
Since 2015 Joseph Sassoon Semah and curator Linda Bouws are closely involved in this large-multi-year project in which Sassoon Semah supplements Western art-history with the missing information, the ‘empty page'. The Nieuwe Kerk, Joods Historisch Museum, Stedelijk Museum, Duitsland Instituut, Gerhard Marcks Haus Bremen and Goethe-Institut are all partners in this project.

By exchanging research, cultural heritage, art, exhibitions, performances, round-table discussions, interviews and video reports, articles on internet and 5 publications ‘On Friendship / (Collateral Damage)’, knowledge, opinions and experiences have been shared, generating attention for a different outlook than the dominant Christian Western one. By returning to the source of the rich Middle East and Western traditions, the history of art and culture has been freed of one-sided information and interpretation. Exile and the meaning of tangible and intangible cultural heritage, identity crises, the urgency for diversity and the necessity of refocusing on cultural heritage in museums and cultural institutions are put on the agenda. It is important that the underexposed histories and perspectives become part of Western history and its future. Artists, writers, poets, thinkers and researchers are invited to reflect on the underexposed histories and perspectives that would suit this research.