INTRODUCTION

As part of a larger project on visual knowing around databases of images on the web, this essay discusses results from fieldwork at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, the post-graduate academy for visual arts in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The Rijksakademie runs an esteemed two-year residency for 50 artists from all over the world. The following addresses the transformation of these artists’ studios into exhibition spaces during the “RijksakademieOPEN,” an annual event in November when the academy opens its doors to a larger audience. What do these transformations from studio to “white cube” entail? What do the artists put on display, and what do they hide from view? My contribution subsequently focuses on the photographic documentation of the Open Studios by artists and academy employees. What role does documentation play in the constitution of knowledge about artworks for the academy and the artists themselves? How does photography mediate this documentation process? Lastly, I will address the role of artists’ websites as “spaces of display.” What role do photographic representations of studios and artworks play for resident artists? Should the photographs they present online be seen as part of a web-based portfolio, as a PR-tool, or as an (perhaps incomplete) archive of finished work?

The fieldwork at the Rijksakademie was undertaken in 2009–10 and consisted of systematic participant observation; open-ended interviews with employees and artists; a detailed scrutiny of new initiatives around the artists’ visual documentation practices and that of the academy; and an examination of official policy documents, archival material and funding applications relating to documentation and information management.

Conceptually, I draw on three bodies of work: new media studies, science and technology studies (STS), and empirical ontology. I use new media studies to analyze the co-existence of different frameworks of mediated interactions with images. New media studies also offer an awareness of how “ways of knowing” are intertwined with media storage and retrieval technologies. STS enables an understanding of images as situated, embodied practice, emphasizes the importance of treating a variety of actors symmetrically, and highlights material and institutional aspects in the embedding of new forms of knowledge. Finally, I draw on empirical ontological analyses to problematize the epistemological dominance of representation in capturing the complex empirical world.