Singspiel

Categorical Imperative & Morgue by Mike Kelley has been part of the Van Abbemuseum collection since 2000. It was first shown at Villa Empain (now Boghossian Foundation) in Brussels, in a duo exhibition by Kelley and Franz West in 1999.

Artist duo Nabuurs&VanDoorn researched Kelley, West, Morgue and their exhibition in Villa Empain and discovered a fascinating history about art, the relationship between America and Europe, modernity and much more. It resulted in the third part in their series Zwischenlandschaften (Transitional Landscapes).

The Van Abbemuseum was very interested in this research and was negotiating with the artists to purchase the film Zwischenlandschaften III for the collection, when the artist duo organized a one-day exhibition in the same Villa Empain in 2018 in which they presented their further research into Kelley and West. Part of that presentation was a roundtable discussion between the two curators of the original 1999 Kelley/West exhibition and two members of the Van Abbemuseum staff. The sometimes stimulating conversation was recorded by the artists in order to turn it into an independent work of art. They write on their site: 'Ideally the text is sung by a choir. By converting this panel discussion into a 'singspiel' we create space for an existential experience. The transformation from spoken word to sung melody [...] brings new information to life.'

You understand: the Van Abbemuseum Choir came into the picture. Conductor Willy de Rooij was immediately enthusiastic. She and Fleur Brom, art historian, museum tour guide and member of the choir, turned the recorded conversation together into a songtext. Composer Arjan van Beek set the text to music. The choir started rehearsing under Willy de Rooij and director Stefan Jung.

The intention was to perform the singspiel at the opening of an exhibition by Nabuurs&VanDoorn at the Pennings Foundation in Eindhoven in 2020. But due to the lack of clear agreements, the artists banned the performance of the singspiel a few days before the opening of their exhibition.

This long story would of course be redundant here if we had not carried out the work anyway. During the book presentation of Nabuurs&VanDoorn's Greyzone in the Van Abbemuseum in 2023, we were able to perform excerpts from the singspiel.