Abstract
Herengracht 401 (H401), until 2019 known as Castrum Peregrini, represents the complex and intriguing history of a hermetic community of artists and scholars in Amsterdam which was formed in the years of the Nazi occupation of The Netherlands, 1940–1945.This article attempts to take stock on what we have learned in these ten years about the history of the place, as an indicator of memory politics. It also reflects on the hermeneutic gap of what we cannot know of H401’s history as we lack experiential knowledge of eyewitnesses. As the author argues below, the site of H401 shows how the ‘hermeneutic gap’ can offer a chance to make an archive, such as in the case of ‘the house on Herengracht 401’, productive and meaningful through the artistic practice of research.
Highlights
Herengracht 401 (H401), until 2019 known as Castrum Peregrini, represents the complex and intriguing history of a hermetic community of artists and scholars in Amsterdam which was formed in the years of the Nazi occupation of The Netherlands, 1940–1945
It is exactly in this sense that H401 focuses on their historic fabric as a source to think about the societies we live in today and how these can become more inclusive
A hermeneutic gap prevents us from deriving meaning from it today in an unmediated way
Summary
Herengracht 401 (H401), until 2019 known as Castrum Peregrini, represents the complex and intriguing history of a hermetic community of artists and scholars in Amsterdam which was formed in the years of the Nazi occupation of The Netherlands, 1940–1945. It is exactly in this sense that H401 focuses on their historic fabric as a source to think about the societies we live in today and how these can become more inclusive It is with this ambition that H401 engages in (artistic-) research projects locally and internationally, as well as networks concerning actual debates around spaces of memory, traumatic heritage, conflict and the politics of the past in the present.. The thematic approach of the H401 activities in the last ten years was distinctly interdisciplinary with a central role for artistic work rooted in the house as an archive As this archive was staged and curated by its late inhabitants, to access the original meaning behind it, a certain knowledge of their lives and their times, a certain experience or a method of deconstruction was necessary. As an alternative concept to truth- and theory-based practices, artistic research that takes material, form and fiction seriously can offer truthfulness in creativity, if this creative research is truthful in the sense of being radical in its open-endedness and autonomy
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