Intergenerational

Written by Amalia Calderón, Gift Science Archive Artistic Researcher, on occasion of the for the Rijksakademie 150-year anniversary publication (December 2020).

Archiving tips sent to SMW by Adrian Piper via email in 2012 in response to photographs of SMW’s studio shared with Piper.

“Above: Carolee had a knot in her hair. We were in her hotel room in Frankfurt where we met for her retrospective in 2017. She asked me if I could help to comb her hair and untangle the knot, and she insisted that Robin photograph it as a performance. Below: In 2000 in the first house that Robin and I shared together in Amsterdam, which was 19 square meters, I was on the phone arranging a purchase from Ronald Feldman Gallery of ‘Handle with Care,’ a work by Hannah Wilke. As Robin often does, he documented the action as a work.” – SMW.

Lino-block produced (and signed on the back) by Senga Nengudi in 1991, which gifted to SMW around 2011 and printed at the Rijksakademie print lab during SMW’s guest residency in 2021.

Edition of 60 performalist self-portraits self-shot with a timer by the artist and archivally stored with floral silk textile.

First Heart Drawing, which was shown in the ‘Double Trouble’ exhibition with Schneemann at Cokkie Snoei Gallery in 2001 – “Cy Twombly wouldn’t show in a space like that.” (Schneemann)

SMW solo exhibition at mistral, Amsterdam (2021). The exhibition opens up the process of the ‘monumental’ 18-month collaborative performance Gift Science Archive (GSA) to the public for haptic engagements with the artist’s working and archiving processes. Visitors are invited to peruse the GSA archive database and to pull materials from the collection for a closer look and, over a cup, for a story. The ‘research experience’ is thus set into relational motion, by conversations – a central part of Murray-Wassink’s practice. Co-curated by Megan Hoetger (If I Can’t Dance) together with Radna Rumping and Huib Haye van der Werf (mistral).

The pages are yellowed and cracked with age. Dutch Curator Erik Hagoort gave SMW a few huge boxes of these French gay liberation magazines from the 80s, and SMW intuitively started painting on them. There are many more than those listed in the archive.

“An aspect of the meta-archive, which includes a series of longer recorded conversations initiated by RR (with Sands, with Sands and Amalia Calderón and with Sands and Robin Wassink-Murray), which aimed to capture ideas about value, structure, and care for an artistic practice, as well as providing plenty of space for sharing references, gossip, and ‘information’ – one of Sands’ main materials. These seven hours of interviews – some in Dutch and some in English – are all in their unedited richness part of the meta-archive, both as audio recordings and transcriptions (translations and transcriptions by Martha Jager).” – RR.

The pages are yellowed and cracked with age. Dutch Curator Erik Hagoort gave SMW a few huge boxes of these French gay liberation magazines from the 80s, and SMW intuitively started painting on them. There are many more than those listed in the archive.