Undone

This publication presents three recent proposals by artist Hans van Houwelingen and, through their mediation, one of the most remarkable discourses on public art in the Netherlands. 'What's Done ... Can Be Undone' is the proposed exchange of place between the statues of Johan Rudolph Thorbecke and Baruch Spinoza, sitting in Amsterdam and The Hague, respectively. Correcting the historical inaccuracy in their placement could trigger a crucial reevaluation of the politician's and the philosopher's legacies, in relation to today's political and moral unrest. 'Sluipweg' relocates over 300 disinterred tombstones as a footpath circling the ramparts of Fort Vijfhuizen, a defense construction rendered obsolete, the very moment it was completed, by advancements in military technology. The work collapses two forms of death and two ways in which death absents the categories we employ to make sense of it.