ARCADE was a collective platform for art criticism that I co-founded with Elisabetta Cuccaro and Maartje Terpstra. Active in Groningen and closely linked to the Pitcairn Museum of Contemporary Art (PMCA), ARCADE set out to research the role of criticism and to experiment with its relationship to the artistic process. We believed that criticism carries creative power and responsibility, and we rejected the idea of the critic as a distant, detached observer. We worked as both organisers and creators, deeply involved in every stage.
I first joined the collective at the beginning of 2022. Our first official meeting as the still-unnamed group took place on 2 February 2022. Shortly after, we named ourselves ARCADE – Playground for Art Criticism, defined our objectives, and decided to collaborate with PMCA by producing multiple critical texts for their exhibition programme. Over the course of our existence, we wrote 19 contributions for six exhibitions by artists such as Sara Postolle, Heike Weber, Anne Jaap de Rapper, Liga Spunde, Dineke Oosting, Mire Lee, and Sander Alblas.
Within the collective, I developed my own experimental trajectory. My approach was close to the artist. I wrote open letters that focused on human connection in art – the relationship between the “I” of the critic and the “you” of the artist, rooted in care and openness. I also took part in our ongoing internal discussions, which happened through online meetings, dinners, shared documents, and public events. We served as a peer-review system for one another.
I was actively involved in the public event we organised to open ARCADE to a wider audience. ARCADE no longer exists, but for the time it was active, I worked as a co-founder, critic, writer, performer, and co-organiser – always trying to turn art criticism into a creative, collective, and caring act of play.