The installation In de Rarekiek (2011-2012) is a life-size peepshow box of nine meters long, four meters wide and two and a half meters high. One is invited to look into the box from the outside through various peepholes, or to physically enter it and thus become part of the microcosm inside, whilst being viewed by those outside the box.

The historical rarekiek or peepshow box was the inspiration behind the construction of In de Rarekiek, which I envisioned to be a travelling installation. Historically, a rarekiek (an old Dutch word, first mentioned in the 16th century) was known as a travelling peep-show or raree-show box carried on the back of a man (occasionally a woman), called Rarekiekman[1]or showman. Inside these wooden boxes one could view scenes lit up by candles or daylight. The Rarekiekman sang or narrated the story that could be viewed through peepholes. The boxes would depict strange and unknown worlds, as well as journalistic novelties. I got inspired by this (re)presentation of a (fictional) world in which the viewer can place themself via a multimedia and sensory 'spectacle' and performance.

I had never seen a real rarekiek – other than images and paintings of it, but I imagined I would create a somewhat advanced version of a kijkdoos (Dutch for peep-show), I would make as a child. With In de Rarekiek I wanted to create a world enclosed in a box, luring the observer into a universe of wonders. This world was not only accessible through a peephole; one could also become part of the depicted world through entrances on the sides.

The rarekiek and it’s coeval, the magic lantern had many successors, such as the stereo viewer, the slide and film projector and the television (which was called ‘kiekkast’[2] in its early days). I incorporated many of these analogue and digital techniques in the installation and used them to view and examine the world in different ways, through different lenses. All these techniques provide distinctive perspectives to observe and represent the phenomena we are surrounded by.

The spectator is invited to touch objects inside the box, take a seat in one of three niches and peek through different holes and apparatuses; a stereo viewer, looking glasses, lenses. Several built-in speakers and projectors together generated a soundscape. With In de Rarekiek I wanted to investigate the importance or the role of imperfection in relation to science and the experience of wonder and enchantment.

I thought it was necessary to give the installation also an English title, as my intention was to travel with the work, just like the historical rarekiek was a traveling spectacle. The English title In the Wonderbox gave away my other important source of inspiration, the Kunst- or Wunderkammer, the cabinet of curiosities. The peepshow was in competition with the Wunderkammer or curiosity box, which appeared around the same time as the rarekiek (the earliest image depicting a cabinet is from 1599). Instead of hidden views, these boxes presented clearly visible items.[3] Cabinets of curiosities are also intended to arouse wonder. They represent natural, scientific, artificial and ethnographical objects. The rarities and specifically the mirabilia (marvels) must have been (and still are) wondrous. This representation of a macrocosm in the shape of a microcosm intrigues me, but I am not necessarily interested in a scientific or encyclopaedic arrangement, which became inherent to the way a cabinet of curiosities operates. Once a phenomenon is named or labelled, once it has been given its place in the methodical order of things, it can rarely be perceived as something else after that. Even if something is presented as unknown, it will still instantly be subjected to a form of categorization. The rarekiek however offers a more dynamic, sensory and less apparent format, wherein fact and fiction not only meet, but may also intermingle. In de Rarekiek had to be a translation of the macrocosm in the shape of a microcosm, but not according to a systematic order. I worked on what I called an ambiguous database of categories, with the intention to blur the boundaries between those categories and abandon classifications. I aimed for an unprejudiced approach, an authentic and possibly wondrous encounter. The collection that came into being was a reflection of my view upon the complexity and chaos of the (material and natural) world. That world is dynamic and interpretive, wondrous and enchanting. In de Rarekiek was greatly inspired by science, but I did question the systematic approach inherent to scientific research, as I was longing for and eager to create an imperfect and indeterminate representation of the world around me.

[1] Johannes le Francq van Berkhey, Gedichten, deel II [Poems, Part II], (Amsterdam: F. de Kruyff, dec 31, 1779) Vaerzen 141.

[2] The word rarekiek is a combination of two Dutch words, raar meaning odd but also rare and kieken or kijken, which means to watch; kiek, or kiekje also means a photograph and in the early 20th Century, a photo camera could also be called a kiekkast. P.A.F. van Veen en N. van der Sijs (1997), Etymologisch woordenboek: de herkomst van onze woorden, 2e druk, Van Dale Lexicografie, Utrecht/Antwerpen:rarekiek [kiekkast] {1709} van raar + kieken [kijken] en (kiekje [amateurfoto] genoemd naar de Leidse fotograaf Israël Kiek (1811-1899). F.A. Stoett (1923-1925), Nederlandsche Spreekwoorden, Spreekwijzen, Uitdrukkingen en Gezegden, drie delen, 4e druk, Zutphen: “... doch de mogelijkheid, dat we in kiekje de volksuitspraak van kijkje moeten zien is niet uitgesloten; vgl. brillekiek en rarekiek.” Encyclo.nl: Kiekkast 1) Camera 2) Rarekiek

[3] Richard Balzer, Peepshows. A visual history, (Harry N. Abrams, Incorporated, New York 1998), 24.

The meaning of the archive isn’t neutral or objective but becomes uncertain [1] and ambiguous as a result of the interaction with the person accessing it. No wonder that the concept of the archive is a well-appreciated source of inspiration for many contemporary artists. They create new archives, for instance, use archives as sources of material and ideas. Others employ archival methods to record their oeuvre. Artists also work with the idea of the archive: the physical form is used as a theme, as well as the act of archiving by categorising or structuring objects. The popular image of the archive is a place with rows and rows of unique and historical documents and objects kept in a quiet and dim lit basement. Within this notion the act of archiving exists of preserving, categorizing and labelling. The actual archive and the act of archiving, however, are faced towards the future. Scholar Hugh Taylor explains that archival material is a record of an action that produces a response when seen or read. As a result the archive is an extension of ourselves. The archive is an instru- ment for the conduct of affairs or relationships, as are artefacts. [2]

In several previous works Kraal uses the archive and collections of her grandparents as a source and a starting point for new creations such as Survival of the faintest (2009) and Tussen door stop (2009). In Survival of the faintest Kraal made use of the extensive collection of old objects that was hidden away in the cupboards of her grandmother’s house. Browsing through the objects, photographs and letters, Kraal searches for new stories that can enrich the objects with multiple interpretations. The objects were used and reused for different purposes and labelled with ideas for new ways to deploy them after some particular alterations. The last traces of the original utility eroded when Kraal attached strings to a selection of the objects in order to hang the collection free in space.

This way of presenting or arranging objects is related to an old form of archiving, the ‘lias’. This manner of binding together was used by city administrations in Europe. The word ‘file’ is related to the French ‘fil’, which means thread. Filing meant in its original meaning stringing up objects and documents. [3] Kraal arranged the collection in a three-dimensional order. Art scholar Sven Spieker has written on the subject of using archival methods by artists as part of their work. He calls the use of this method of stringing up objects in order to arrange them ‘to tame the archive’. The archival structure imposes meaning on the individual objects. For Survival of the faintest Kraal uses the collection as a source of material and chooses the faintest and most unusable objects to rearrange the objects by the manner in which the individual objects are placed within the group. With this archival method the meaning of the individual object devaluates while the object within the group obtains an eternal status. [4]

For Tussen door stop Kraal made use of the family photo collection of her grandparents. The photographs show family outings and vacations of long ago. Kraal again opts for the objects that were less successful, photographs in which passers-by are accidently caught on camera for example. By focusing on unintended details Kraal uses the archive to discover and re-discover events that have been forgotten or were never noticed.

Collections and the web as a representation of the world

The more recent installation In the Wonderbox (In de Rarekiek) developed by Doina Kraal in 2011–2012, shows similarities with historical private collections such as cabinets of curiosities (‘rariteiten- kabinet’ in Dutch). These collections were formed by private collectors and existed of objects that were meant for study or wonder. While thematic collections are popular in our time, encyclopaedic collections were much favoured during the sixteenth and seventeenth century. The ambition of the private collectors was to gather items of all sorts of specimens to stimulate the curiosity of the spectators. By studying the objects one could acquire a broad range of knowledge. In the eighteenth century, specialised collections of art, literature or science were in fashion, and the cabinet of curiosities became less relevant. By the nineteenth century, the collections were accommodated in national museums and categorised according to the then current scientific insights. [5] As classifications and categorisation methods advanced, a universal language for categorising library collections was developed at the beginning of the twentieth century, by Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine. By publishing the book Traité de Documentation in 1934, Paul Otlet presented new and exciting technologies of gathering and  sharing knowledge. Otlet's big ambition was to create a universal book by gathering all the knowledge present in the world. This knowledge should be transferred combined with keywords onto small index cards that could be browsed by a specially designed machinery. Otlet envisioned that the machine, combined with a telescope and a telephone line, should be able to project the desired information onto a projection screen. His ideas bear a striking resemblance with the current information technologies and Internet. The objects in the sixteenth century cabinets of curiosity were labelled according to the categories of naturalia, artificialia, antiquities or exotica. The curiosities are an agglomeration of different objects without a predominant hierarchy. The sixteenth-century collector expected that it was possible to create a comprehensive and complete collection. If In the Wonderbox was a sixteenth- century cabinet, the number of objects would grow up to a point of completion. Instead Kraal refuses to categorise the objects and changes the selection of objects over time. In Kraal’s latest work Touche-à-Tout the selection of objects on display will be altered during her travels.

The act of archiving and ambiguous categories

The sixteenth-century cabinets, the nineteenth-century museum and the twentieth-century libraries are ways of sharing knowledge about the world. Collections of physical objects and books enabled people to gather information about the world around them. In recent times, we are able to travel the world physically, but more important, we have access to vast amounts of information created all over the world through Internet. Physical objects devaluate and are replaced by digital copies. The web is an expanding virtual world of information in which categorising and imposing structures are personal acts of the user. Kraal states that her latest work resembles the Internet as a combination of fact and fiction, information and entertainment. But the major resemblance with the Internet is that Kraal in her latest works refuses to conform to the existing categories of collection or archive. The installations as a whole are invariably adaptable works in progress. Kraal researches the very notions of archiving and categorising. Existing categories fade and meaning becomes interchangeable. This way, the fluidity of the objects’ meaning becomes apparent.

NOTES

1.  Ketelaar, Eric, Tacit Narratives: The Meanings of Archives [https://fketelaa.home.xs4all.nl/TacitNarratives.pdf]

2.  Taylor, Hugh, “Heritage” revisited: Documents as Artifacts in the Context of Museums and Material Culture, in: Archivaria, nummer 40, 1995. p.9

3.  Spieker, Sven, The Big Archive: Art from Bureaucracy, MIT Press, 2008

4.  Website www.doinakraal.com: ‘Things are one another’s sisters, brothers or distant cousins; they improve each other or weaken the other. They look alike in shape or function or they need each other and are complementary. Thus my de-evolution of things came into being. The winners, the survivors, were the weakest, the most useless, the faintest. They obtained the absolute eternal status.’ Visited november 2014.

5.  Rijnders, Mieke. Kabinetten, galerijen en musea, red. Bergvelt, Leonoor e.a., 2005

On 6 August 2012 the Curiosity landed on Mars. After a ten-month journey through space, this vehicle the size of a small car, arrived at the red planet for its two-year mission; our eyes in an unknown world. The first images show us, the layman, a seemingly boring, dusty planet, but the mountains looming on the horizon make us curious to find out what lies beyond.

Just as today’s high-tech space exploration allows us to behold unknown worlds, a few centuries ago the so-called Wunderkammers or Cabinets of Curiosities gave us a glimpse into the distant worlds of their day. Where a Wunderkammer was reserved for the elite, the rarekiek or travelling raree show, gave ordinary people the opportunity to come into contact with other worlds and their curiosities.

The Wunderkammer is undoubtedly the predecessor of the museum. The rarekiek and the magic lantern are the predecessors of the stereo viewer and what would later become the slide and film projector, followed by the television. In the early 20th century a photo camera would also sometimes be called a rarekiek. Maybe the rarekiek even served as the inspiration for other lens carrying devices. At least it was a way to observe something closely and precisely, bringing something nearer to the eye just like the microscope and telescope would do later. In the installation In de Rarekiek many of the above mentioned devices appear in an extensive pastiche of the analogue and the digital. They are all means to make us look in a different way at the things around us.

In the installation In de Rarekiek Kraal gives us a peek into her world: “In de Rarekiek is a carefully picked and personal snapshot, a time capsule that represents the last two years of my own personal journey.” The life-size rarekiek Kraal designed is 9 metres long, 4 metres wide and 2,5 metres high. It has peepholes and passages through which one can access this artificial world and become part of it. Inside it is dark. Most objects, videos, film and slide projections are light sources. Other works are lit up with small spotlights.

The installation takes its inspiration in part from the question of whether there is a so-called Theory of Everything; a theory of physics that exactly and fully explains all foundations of physical phenomena. Kraal is uncomfortable with the idea that everything can be explained: “That a Theory of Everything does not exist is to me a very pleasant, consoling and welcoming thought.” The aversion to the concept of a Theory of Everything is understandable; the idea that everything is complete, that there are no more uncertainties and that everything can be predicted is quite terrifying, not in the least because it leaves no more room for curiosity.

However, what physicists call the Theory of Everything is not as uncomfortable as it sounds, and maybe it is only that the name was an unfortunate choice. The term itself refers to a theory of physics that attempts to unite the two theories which are used to describe the world – the theory of quantum mechanics and the theory of general relativity – in one single theory. The consequences of quantum mechanics are only noticeable on small length scales and those of general relativity on very large length scales. Processes in which both theories are important are only to be found at extreme locations in the universe, such as black holes. It would be wonderful if it turned out to be possible to formulate a single theory that exactly describes both extremes. This would certainly have enormous implications for our understanding of the underlying principles of the universe and also lead to technological applications which would indirectly influence our daily lives. But one thing that will not happen is that the complex world on our human scale will suddenly be explained and made predictable by one single theory. Our understanding of subjects such as organic life, emotions, consciousness, social cohesion etc. will not be helped by the formulation of a Theory of Everything. And even within the realm of physics such a theory will by no means solve all the open questions, as these are far too complex to describe at the most basic level. Kraal alludes to this in In de Rarekiek:

“The collection that comes into being is a reflection of my view upon the complexity of the material world. That world is not apparent but dynamic. Distinctions between the categories fade. In de Rarekiek is not an accusation against science, but it does question her, from a deep longing for imperfection. I classify, and then break through this order in my search for imperfection and asymmetry.”

Kraal took her inspiration from an article by the theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, Gödel and the end of Physics, in which he discusses whether a theory of everything could in principle be possible. In this article Hawking uses arguments originally formulated by mathematician Gödel, postulating that it is not always possible to describe a system exactly if the description itself is part of the system. For example, the statement ‘this statement is false’ leads to a paradox: if the statement is true, it is false, and vice versa. Hawking reasons that as we are ourselves part of the universe, this same philosophical argument Gödel used should mean that in principle it is impossible to formulate a comprehensive theory of the universe. This is an almost explicit aspect of Kraal’s work as the observer becomes a part of the raree show by walking around inside it and taking place in the niches. And while the observer observes, he is in turn observed through the peepholes on the outside of the structure.

Big questions, such as “Is there such a thing as a Theory of Everything?”, “Will the universe continue to expand indefinitely?” and “Why is the universe asymmetrical?” are problems that trigger the imagination and are comparable to questions that can be asked in the world of art. In science it may be possible to provide an exact answer to these questions, but in art it is about asking the question itself and thereby broadening our perspective. Our curiosity, and the associated fascination for the world around us is of essential importance for the development of art as well as science. The world of contemporary science tends to be interested in far smaller or larger length scales than those dealt with in the art world.

The differences between the length scales of different perceptions was wonderfully visualised by Charles and Ray Eames in their Powers of Ten commissioned by IBM. This film depicts the relative scale of the universe in powers of ten. We see a photograph of the hand of a man whereby the viewpoint zooms in and out to the limits of our knowledge: from the size of the universe to the structure of an atomic nucleus. Each new type of microscope or telescope developed by scientists that enabled us to examine nature on a new dimension of length drastically changed our understanding of the world. For example, the optical microscope that taught us about the composition of cells, or the Hubble space telescope that taught us about the age of the universe and the birth of stars (a photograph of which formed the inspiration for Cumulus Castellanus, the cloud which Kraal created for In de Rarekiek). The most recent example of a new microscope is the new particle accelerator (LHC) in Geneva, which is in fact the best microscope in existence: by colliding particles with each other at extreme energies, the tiniest possible fragments can be studied. It was announced only recently that the long-awaited Higgs boson had probably been detected, bringing us one small step closer to a conclusive theory of the world.

However, a concern in all research of this kind is that nothing new will be found, that is to say, nothing unexpected, nothing that gives rise to new questions. It is as if the explorers of the Dutch East India Company only encountered sea and no new land, or the Mars explorer will not find anything other than that dusty barren landscape, and that apart from the Higgs boson no other unanticipated particles will be found. Besides the terrifying idea of understanding everything, it would also be a terrible thing for us to not understand everything but to lose hope of ever discovering anything new and so lose our curiosity. Both of these would result in total stagnation and no new development.

TOBIAS TIECKE

Tobias Tiecke wrote this article in 2012 for the Foam cahier which was published for the exhibition In de Rarekiek. At the time he was working as a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University, Department of Physics and Research Laboratory of Electronics, MIT. From 2014 until 2024 he worked at the Connectivity Lab at Facebook where he has been involved in several projects amongst which is the defiant challenge to bring internet access to all the people on Earth who don’t already have it. In the beginning of 2016 he worked on an artificial intelligence project to find out where people without internet connection are. And in the summer of 2016 he published a paper which outlines a new type of light detector that can be used for free- space optical communication, a communication technique that uses light to send data wirelessly.