Tesselescence (Stichting Ruimtevaart)

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Tesselescence (Stichting Ruimtevaart) *

Tesselescence (Stichting Ruimtevaart) was a durational performance for HOOGTIJ #81. Over the course of the evening, artist Keeley Haftner activated the foundation’s film archive storage room, transforming it through performative labor that merged caretaking, maintenance, and artistic production.

May 23, 2025 (18.30–23.00)

HOOGTIJ #81

More than 100 visitors explored the results of Haftner’s extended engagement with Ruimtevaart’s archive, housed in De Helena since 2018. The collection—ranging from an early hand-crank mechanical projector with carbide light to rare films and slides documenting now-defunct states, alongside cartoons and pornography—contains materials of significant cultural value. Although Ruimtevaart has carefully gathered this remarkable archive, the many unpaid responsibilities of running an artist-led organization left limited time and resources to maintain it.

HOOGTIJ #81

Waste materials and stored objects became the building blocks for new, site-specific sculpture, while a pre-recorded and edited video compilation—documenting the months-long restoration process—screened in the Super B Cinema. Haftner worked with with Ruimtevaart co-founder Henk Hubenet and studio assistants Luisa Badino and Francesco Zanatta to develop an installation that unfolded live as visitors engaged with the collection and witnessed the archive’s transformation.

The work foregrounded the often-invisible labor that sustains artist-run spaces, prompting visitors to reflect on sustainability, care, and the transformative potential of the everyday.

  • Verwacht. [Coming Soon]

  • Tesselescence (Stichting Ruimtevaart).

  • Super B Cinema.

  • Grid.

  • Research.

  • Wall.

  • Sfeer (Atmosphere).

  • Lekker Sfeer (Nice Atmosphere).

  • Place.

  • Material Biases.

  • Maintenance.

  • Archive.

  • Viewers.

  • Film.

  • Projectors.

  • Use.

  • Working.

  • Viewing.

  • Projecting.

  • Pruskite.

Drawing from Ruimtevaart’s long history of exhibitions, screenings, and spatial experimentation—and from the layered palette of its rooms, from institutional blues and yellows to theatre reds and blacks and an array of found paints—Haftner created a tessellated wall painting that enlivens the archive and celebrates the organization’s organic evolution within The Hague’s artist-run culture.

Using the cinema wall as a chalkboard for planning and a taped floor grid echoing the building’s architecture to organize materials, Haftner guided a collective reordering of the space. The renovation was completed during the event, bringing the archive into a refreshed, usable state—ready for future care from the next invested steward.

Founded in 1991, Ruimtevaart Foundation is an artist-run initiative focused on securing affordable workspace and initiating visual arts projects.

Since early 2018, Ruimtevaart has been located at Helena van Doeverenplantsoen 3, a spacious facility that supports its role as an interdisciplinary platform for visual arts, design, music, and cinematography. Current projects include SuperB, Ruimtevaart Music, an exhibition space, and artist studios.