From the 6th till the 8th of February 2008, Showroom MAMA presented Project(OR) Art Fair which took place parallel to the Art Rotterdam international art fair.
For this occasion, MAMA brought together 28 progressive art spaces and collectives from Berlin, Los Angeles, Casablanca, London and Madrid, among others, on a floor area of 1,000 m2. MAMA organised short talks every evening during this five-day art fair, for which the organisations were asked to introduce themselves to each other and to the audience. In addition, Project(OR) offered a daily programme with a mix of local and international performances and a club night.
Among the participating organizations was Arts Collaboratory partner Doual’Art (Douala). For this occassion they installed an art fair-like booth, gave a talk about their practise, and presented their book "Douala in Translation".
According to the organizers the international and professional atmosphere of the event was perceived as excellent and “the talks were a great succes”. Project(OR) managed to draw a large and diverse audience of nearly 2.500 visitors including artists, art professionals, art students, gallerists, art collectors and general audience who were given the opportunity to see what is happening internationally in a broad spectrum of contemporary art.
One of the major assets of this event was that it offered the opportunity to non- commercial art spaces from all over the world to particiape in an art fair that ran parallel to the bigger Art Fair in Rotterdam. Since many of the participating organizations were realtively unknown to the Dutch public and the Art Fair public especially, participating in Project(OR) proved to be a great opportunity, not only for the initiatives to introduce themselves to wider audiences, but also for strenghtening their networks by meeting other like-minded organizations and art collectives.
As an outcome, the organizers indicated that several partnerships among spaces resulted from this event and, in some cases, future collaborations between some of the participating organizations have already taken place.