ook_ [reinaart vanhoe, Neue Brüderkirche, Espora, me_sobat, Colorlabor, graanschuur Tarwewijk, Elaine W. Ho, Bartira, Wok The Rock, COLLECTive, k. format, Take-A-Way, Plan B, Dynamitas unlimited, ...]

Once he touched ground at Rotterdam he played for a Turkish club. He could bring his new Indonesian friends from ruangrupa (2000) to the club to greet the Dutch-Indonesian coach. Meanwhile he studied audio-visual design in Gent and Tilburg, and joined the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam, in 1999.

Making space and meeting people are central to vanhoe’s art. Everyday activities connect vision and plans for how a space is inhabited and activated in practice. In his study of independent cultural spaces and art collectives in Indonesia and China, called Also-Space: From Hot to Something Else (2016), he refers to his vision of a space as “also space.” The meaning of space is flexible, depending on the needs of the context where it is situated. In Rotterdam, the Netherlands, reinaart and his partner, mariëlle verdijk, opened up their house and turned it into ook_huis — a free space for neighbors and friends. To refer to himself, reinaart goes by ook_. It is also a way to acknowledge collaborations with other people.

For documenta fifteen, ook_ has collaboratively developed ook_visitorZentrum on Weserstraße 26. ook_ consists of various groups of friends, which are also part of the collective’s growing name. To activate the space, the “shrine” concept is appropriated in its literal and metaphorical meanings. In this context, a shrine is divorced from its ascribed meaning as a holy place to host memorabilia and religious relics. The familiarity of the concept is used as a tool and reason to be together with others. The idea of a shrine materializes a space for collectivism and horizontality. It opens up possibilities to problematize the relational positions of the shrine groups, the continuously changing roles of guest and host, in local contexts.

vanhoe has been working with ruangrupa for more than 20 years in different projects, such as ruru huis Sonsbeek in Arnhem (2016). His involvement relates to the method of scoring and documenting in order to render collaborative processes into tools replicable for others to take away. He has been teaching at the Willem de Kooning Academie, Rotterdam, since 2002.