If I Can’t Dance is thrilled to launch Sands Murray-Wassink’s giftsciencearchive.net: an online database that catalogues over 25 years and almost 2500 works from the artist’s oeuvre through a performative, polyphonic tracing of affective relations, conversations, objects, memories and stories.
A queer cult figure in the Amsterdam art scene for nearly two decades, Dutch-American artist Sands Murray-Wassink (b. 1974, Topeka, Kansas) is a painter, body artist, writer and perfume collector indebted to various forms and permutations of intersectional feminist and queer art, with Carolee Schneemann, Hannah Wilke and Adrian Piper serving as key coordinates. As Murray-Wassink has moved in and out of institutional visibility over the years, his oeuvre of art and non-art objects has continued to grow. For his commission with If I Can’t Dance, the artist has, in the last three years, taken stock of this massive collection of materials as a “monumental” collaborative performance project titled Gift Science Archive. The different chapters include archiving activities (December 2019–May 2021); three process events focused on “value” (March 2020), “relationships” (June 2020–February 2021) and “collaboration” (June 2021); and exhibitions in Amsterdam (March–May 2021) and London (until March 2022) that have rendered the gallery an active space of research and storytelling where themes such as sex, mental health and market desire are playfully dug into.
Giftsciencearchive.net intervenes in typical database organisation through its non-systematic approach attuned with Murray-Wassink’s relational art/life practice. The site provides non-linear reflection within its object entry fields and relates the small-scale, everyday shared rituals that structured its production. As a feminist demand to centre the messiness of feelings in knowledge transmission and history-making, giftsciencearchive.net is a culmination of an experiment in archiving and presenting otherwise. Its interwoven form emerges from practices developed with collaborators Amalia Calderón, Megan Hoetger and Radna Rumping during the artist’s guest residency at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam where the 18-month eponymous durational performance of archiving unfolded. Further, “elephant paths” through the website provide multiple access points to Murray-Wassink’s work and are guided by typology (e.g. Unbuilt Roads), name (e.g. Carolee Schneemann) or concept (e.g. discomfort), evoking the temporal spirals in the artist’s work, which visitors are now invited to discover.
Sands Murray-Wassink’s exhibition I Am Not American (I love Adrian, I miss Carolee, I follow Hannah) at Auto Italia in London, which forms the concluding chapter of the project, will be on show through March 6, 2022 and includes, among other activities, an online conversation between the artist and Rory Pilgrim on January 20, 2022, from 7–8:30pm.
Sands Murray-Wassink’s Gift Science Archive is part of If I Can’t Dance’s Edition VIII—Ritual and Display (2019–21) programme and is curated by Megan Hoetger. Edition VIII also includes new productions by Derrais Carter, Pauline Curnier Jardin, Giulia Damiani, Sara Giannini, MPA and Lisa Robertson. Gift Science Archive is co-produced with mistral, Amsterdam and Auto Italia, London. The project is supported by the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam. The architecture of giftsciencearchive.net is conceived by Amalia Calderón and Megan Hoetger in conversation with the artist and is realised in collaboration with Kommerz design studio. If I Can’t Dance receives structural support from the Mondriaan Fund and the AFK (Amsterdam Fund for the Arts) and project support from the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds.
