Field Essays

Field Essays, the outcome of my research at the Professorship of Art and Public Space at the Rietveld Academie, and supported by the Amsterdam Foundation of Visual Arts Design and Architecture, is currently looking for its place in the world. It's talking to interested publishers but it's also exploring the adventure of self-publishing, which the NO ISBN Salon für Kunstbuch project celebrates.

Edited by | Sophie Krier
Authors | LucyandBart, Marek Pokropski, Sophie Krier
Graphic design | Andreas Tscholl
Print | Drukkerij Rob Stolk, Amsterdam
Copy Writing | Arden Rzewnicki
Cover image | “Pick of Sticks”, LucyandBart, 2009

Field Essays could not have been possible without the generous and critical voices of Jeroen Boomgaard, René Put, Ilse van Rijn, Willem van Weelden, Renée Kool, Raoul Teulings, Frank Mandersloot, Guus Beumer, Danièle Rivière, Bas Raaijmakers, Matthias Gmachl, Rachel Wingfield, Fatos Ustek, Bas Princen, François Roche, Antonio Scarponi, Bas van Beek, Gabriella Gomez-Mont, Alvin Ho, Julia Born and Marieke Stolk.

a car and a garage and their combination

Slimste parkeerder van België | Flabber

I got this link from Bertjan and it's just too nice to not share...

My world on air on "Werelds" @ TV Rijnmond, 26.01.2010

To know more about acroyoga and Dieke Bikker, the best teacher you can find, visit Salon Physique or Acroyoga! The images of the wrapping up of my exhibition were shot at TENT. Rotterdam, right after the BLURRRR exhibition.

Ivor Pogorelich or Chopin turned inside out

Since I have taken up piano lessons again, after a pauze of almost 15 years, I have been studying one of Chopin's Preludes, Opus 28 nr 4 - a super nice, super delicate, super sad piece. It was my teacher who suggested that I look for Youtube recordings of it, to study the different possible finger placements. Ainsi dit ainsi fait and I stumbled upon Pogorelich- a few hours later I stared in awe at this recording. Notice the way he walks away at the very end...

GOOD

Left: Stefan Sagmeister. “Good,” part of an installation at Art Grandeur Nature, St. Denis, France, 2004. Photo: Stefan Sagmeister
Right: Scott Stowell. GOOD magazine, 2006. Designed with Susan Barber, Robert A. Di Ieso, Jr., Gary Ozcan, Nicholas Rock, and Ryan Thacker. Courtesy of Open

Some words sometimes just feel so right
GOOD is one of them
I came across these two good's the other day and could only think:
of course!

zilu - celebrating the handmade

You know how sometimes things friends do just make you SO proud? Ghazaleh and me have been friends since, well, that embarassing teenage time when I had braces and she had a huge afro. Ghazaleh's career has taken her from Law to Creative Journalism to Zilu - an online shop for everything that's "handmade with love". That sounds simple but it's not that easy to find the makers that really make qualitative jewelry, accessories and other unresistable ornaments of everyday life. Thanks to her flair and that of her partner in business (&life) Bob, Ghazaleh has now gathered a select group of craftsmen & women. It's a relief compared with the usual overload of "nice stuff" everywhere else. If you don't believe me go have a look for yourself (it's nearly Valentine, after all).

my first sofa

My first sofa arrived this afternoon, straight from a nice family business dealing in vintage design in the polder. It's magical, sitting on it. It's a cute twoseater, 50ies Artifort sofa, still in wonderful shape, upholstered in flower weave, with beautifully shaped legs. The back side is as good, if not better, as the front. Never thought I'd go for flowers!! I love when I end up doing something completely different than I thought. It reminds me that identity is not who you think you are but the search for how many "you's" you can be, a phrase I read in the newspaper the other day - and of which I can't recall the author. Identity as a kind of démultiplication - that thought gives me wings.

side effects

Bas and Allan conversing during the dishwashing break in my kitchen.

Césare Pietrouisti once wrote really nice things about side effects of his work, in the book "Wat we want is free", on generosity and exchange in recent art. Pietrouisti: "With events in real time, there are always side effects that happen and I would try to recognize them and work with them. Usually, when we project something side effects are considered negative because they are diversions. (...) I like to think that an art practice is the only work with the freedom to consider side effects as a positive part of a project. At the same time, I think that we we cannot expect side effects, nor try to create conditions for having as many of them as we can. On the contrary, if we are not very precise and rigorous in our project definition, we won't be able to recognize the side effects, because we could be submerged by them and not see anything at all.(...) If everything is good nothing is good and you won't be giving meaning to anything whatsover." (p.79) A little earlier in the interview Césare Pietrouisti comments on the potential of documentation: "You can use the documentatin of a project as a mirror for what you have done, as a confirmation, or as a new source that, starting from your action, gives you the opportunity to go somewhere else, to move aside and explore side effects." (p.78)

The above snapshot was taken right after a well deserved lunch break today with five fellow colleagues, with whom I am working on a super exiting book proposal. My studio and home were instantly re-baptised in a kind of salon, with continuous discussions going on all the time. I don't remember sitting for such long stretches of time since a long time. Two days of talking and intensive cross questioning have exhausted me, and yet I still cannot help feeling the urge to sit down and write up all the meaningful things that have been said. On a Saturday evening!!! That's how good the energy is, which we generated together. For that I thank you, Marc, Froukje, Alan, Bas, and Jelle.

searching now

http://www.automatedbeacon.net is a super simple, super addictive net art project launched by Thomson & Craighead on 01/01/2005. Here's part of their press release at the time:

For immediate release 01/01/05 At 00.00hrs on January 1st 2005 an automated beacon began broadcasting on the web at http://www.automatedbeacon.net The beacon continuously relays selected live web searches as they are being made around the world, presenting them back in series and at regular intervals. The beacon has been instigated to act as a silent witness: a feedback loop providing a global snapshot of ourselves to ourselves in real-time. As resources become available, ‘Beacon’ will also begin broadcasting an audio version of this signal across the web and as a series of short wave radio broadcasts and FM local area broadcasts –time and places to be confirmed. Happy New Year! Thomson & Craighead. Jon Thomson & Alison Craighead are artists based in London who use video, sound, electronic networks and communications systems to create gallery and web-based artworks.