Major

Sat, Jan 24, 2009
3:00 PM

New Museum theater (directions)

Screening: Johan van der Keuken, I love $, 1986

Part of Exhibition Related, Museum as Hub
 
Film / Video

In 1984–85, Johan van der Keuken took his camera across the globe, from Amsterdam to New York to Hong Kong, ending in Geneva. The object of his investigation was money, in particular the maniacal drive to accumulate it in the era of Thatcherite/Reaganite neoliberalism. In the resulting film, I love $, van der Keuken shows us his view of the world of money in which the Netherlands is fully integrated, and the contrasts between excess and deprivation. In addition to a succession of bankers, traders, and executives, van der Keuken also interviews the victims of economic dispossession, such as the residents of dilapidated dwellings in New York and illegal Portuguese immigrants in Switzerland (who, ironically, have a son who dreams about the promised land of New York). Flashes of the developing world (which the financiers admit is of no interest to them) appear on flickering TV monitors, indicating its remoteness from the centers of capitalist power, as embodied in the sanitized streets of Geneva. Van der Keuken lets the camera explore its environment, with attention to aesthetic detail that sets this apart from more conventional reportage.

Van der Keuken’s I love $ references the Imagined Past in the exhibition Museum as Hub: Be(com)ing Dutch at a Distance, organized by Annie Fletcher, Exhibitions Curator, and Charles Esche, Director, of the Van Abbemuseum and on view on the fifth floor from January 15–March 29, 2009. Please see becomingdutch.com and museumashub.org for more information.

Johan van der Keuken, I love $, 1986. Film, 145 min. Installation view, “Be(com)ing Dutch,” the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, May 24–September 14, 2008 Courtesy the Van Abbemuseum Photo: Peter Cox

Sponsors TOP

Museum as Hub is made possible by the Third Millennium Foundation.

Seeds of Tolerance

With additional generous support from Metlife Foundation.

Additional support is provided by the Asian Cultural Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and the New York State Council on the Arts.

Endowment support is provided by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Skadden, Arps Education Programs Fund, and the William Randolph Hearst Endowed Fund for Education Programs at the New Museum.
The Mondriaan Foundation awarded its 2006 Development Prize for Cultural Diversity to the Van Abbemuseum for the Be(com)ing Dutch project. Within the project's framework, the museum has organized a diversity of gatherings and a large-scale exhibition over the last two years.

Be(com)ing Dutch has been made possible with the support of:

Profiles TOP

Johan van der Keuken

Johan van der Keuken (1938– 2001) was a Dutch documentary filmmaker, author, photographer, and teacher. He started experimenting with photography at the age of twelve, and five years later, in 1955, published his first book of photographs Wij zijn 17 (We are 17). After studying at the Institute of Cinematography in Paris (IDHEC), van der Keuken started making films. Around the same time, his first writings about photography and films began to appear in Dutch magazines. From 1977 onwards, he wrote a column in the Dutch film magazine Skrien called “Uit de wereld van een kleine zelfstandige” (“From the world of the self-employed”).