Based in Rotterdam, Netherlands, the artists Liesbeth Bik (born 1959) and Jos van der Pol (born 1961) collaborate together under the name Bik Van der Pol since 1995. Their deeply optimistic practice explores the potentiality rooted in the local and the public. Utilizing aesthetics’ capacity to make things visible, their works reveal specific places or histories that have either disappeared, been abandoned or have been left unwritten. Through site-specific installations and participatory projects, they examine how knowledge is created and circulated within our shared public domain.

Their interventionist works re-frame particular places that have gone un-noticed by adding missing parts or shedding light on particular elements through programmatic actions. For instance, the video and installation project ‘Trinity (April 2, 2005)’ deals with the politics around the first nuclear bomb’s original test site. Bik Van der Pol’s practice also involves re-visiting other artists’ work, notably re-staging some of Lee Lozano’s pieces and imagining an alternative artist space called ‘Good’, after Gordon Matta-Clark’s cooperative cantine project ‘Food’. Recent solo exhibitions include PLUG-IN 28 at Van AbbeMuseum, Eindhoven (2007), “Issue Fighters: Thought made in the mouth at Insa Art Space, Seoul (2006), “Context 3” research grant and project in Dublin (2006) and “Fly Me to The Moon”, and a project for the New Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (2006). Their work was also shown as part of “Istanbul, 59 Locations, A Format for Nightcomers”, 10th Istanbul Biennial (2007), European Kunsthalle: Models for Tomorrow, Cologne (2007), “Temporary Measures” at Associates, London (2007) and the 2007 Moscow Biennale.