How did you come up with Lost And Found?
I didn’t. It was initiated in 1997 by Graphic designer Armand Mevis and the visual artist Jan Rothuizen. Cheap video cameras came out on the market and a lot of artists started shooting films. They wanted to be a platform for these films. Also there was the urge to show material that doesn’t fit in gallery situation, simply because it needs more concentration than the usual walk by, or because this material seemed always out of place or never found a stage. The formula of Lost and Found is unique and simple at the same time; Contemporary artists show their work and introduce themselves. The editors compile the program from selected and received contributions. We spur on artists, writers, actors, poets and musicians to unearth the tapes, cd- roms, films, videos, slides, music, monologues or performances, that are close to their heart but always out of placeand never found a stage.
What is your best find since you started curating Lost and Found?
That’s a difficult one, as the context in which we show the works is very important. Every Lost and Found is a unique composition. Amongst the high lights was Arthur Woods,
an American artist who made a sculpture, The Cosmic Dancer, which was on board of the Mir Spaceship. He showed a film of Russian Astronauts playing with it. He also brought the prototype and told us how he managed to get his artwork on board. He was in our ‘Abstract evening’ where we also showed original prints of abstract film of the twenties. One film consisted in 20 minutes of water surfaces. Beautiful! There was also Carlo Pellati who invented a French fries bag with a separate mayonnaise section. He made a film for the Eureka moment to the factory where they are produced. He also explained why the McDonald’s headquarters in the Benelux claimed their staff was not educated enough to handle the bag... And Laurent Moriceau who made a chocolate doll of himself and served that to the people at the vernissage at the Palais de Tokyo. He showed the registration and
explained why he wanted to be eaten. Or Falke Pisano’s lecture on ‘An Evil kinetic Sculpture’ . Or Arnoud Hollemans’ carve up of French porn master in ‘Museum’,
in which he left out the sex scenes so that only the hilarious languid conversations full of double entendres remained.
What is the worse thing you lost?
Well, for today’s edition, we had scheduled a presentation on ‘Mapping Conspiratorial Spaces’ but the artist cancelled a few hours before the beginning of the evening, because she had a terrible experience with a lecture she gave that morning. We had organized everything around that lecture.
And to me, personally, I think the weirdest lost and found was when I left my cell phone in a bus in China. I was persistent to get it back. All the buses looked exactly the same and they all had the same number. As all the Chinese looked the same to us, we were unable to recognize our driver. But the chair I sat on had a head cushion missing. Every minute a bus stopped. After two hours I found my phone. Out of all the Beijing buses we had recognized the right one! It had felt behind a seat but it was ringing. There were three
people sitting right in front of it but they pretended they couldn’t hear it!