Multi-year program: Upcycling

Period: 31 January 2010 - 14 July 2013
Location: Stroom Den Haag, Hogewal 1-9, The Hague

"We know what things cost, but we have no idea what they are worth."
This is how British historian Tony Judt characterizes our current era in his book Ill Fares the Land (2011). What is extraordinary, we have come to take for granted. As a result, we fail to see that we have reached a state of impasse. It is precisely here that visual art can offer a way out and provide new perspectives; artists are uniquely capable of revealing the extraordinary within the ordinary. They help us to look differently, to glimpse into alternative realities, and to give new meaning and value to what is familiar, banal, or mundane. Whether it concerns fluorescent lights, a urinal, a horse blanket, tiled floor, triangle, cutlery, the number 5, or a bottle of dish soap.

It is this quality of art that inspired Stroom Den Haag to initiate the program Upcycling. While working on the exhibition Ombouwen/Restructure (2007), which presented intelligent forms of building based on concepts such as superuse, cradle to cradle, and building lightness, Stroom became increasingly intrigued by the term upcycling — a principle derived from the cradle-to-cradle philosophy.

The term upcycling was first used in 1994 by Reiner Pilz and was the title of a book written in 1999 by Gunter Pauli and Johannes F. Hartkemeyer. In 2002, the concept was further developed by William McDonough and Michael Braungart in their book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. In their view, upcycling is the counterpart to downcycling, the other half of the recycling process. Downcycling converts materials and products into new matter of lesser quality. Upcycling, on the other hand, increases the meaning and value of a product as it is transformed into a resource for future use.

Program
Upcycling has so far been mainly applied to consumer products that can be reused, such as high-quality packaging materials. Stroom Den Haag aims to deepen the concept of upcycling by using the disciplines of visual art, design, and architecture to explore the increase of meaning and value from an artistic, social, and philosophical perspective.

The overarching Upcycling program consists of three exhibitions: Up to You (2010), focused on activating the audience; There, I Fixed It (2011), which presented unconventional solutions to more or less urgent problems; and United We (2013), which brought together various disciplines around the themes of upcycling and collectivity. In 2017, a publication was released in co-production with Valiz, books and projects: Facing Value (Radical perspectives from the arts) (2017).