Immediate Spaces at Wongema

Graduation Studio for Immediate Spaces at Wongema

beelden Anne Holtrop & Sophie Krier

 

the thinking hand

Views of the exhibition of Enzo Mari's paperweight collection

"the intellectual work", exhibition curated by barbara casavecchia
kaleidoscope project space, april 13 - 30, 2010, Milan

"mari has always investigated the role of the intellectual, the cooperation of thinking

and doing, heads and hands. words and things.(...) but there is more.

granting the papers months and years to mature, to form geological
layers of meditation, also means escaping the oppressive mechanisms of the productive
system, the compulsive logic of efficiency at all costs. it means affording oneself
the subversive luxury of taking all the required time to develop a good project. it means
extending the range of research in order to get an overall picture, acting against
the increasing hyper-specialization that restrains creative expression nowadays.

(...) perhaps the paperweights and the notes are ultimately talismans, there to exorcise

the risk of being complacent and giving up the search."

'I could affirm that the intellectual work

lies in saying NO.
negation is addressed not only to others,

but also to your own goal, because the final
aim is getting to the essence.' - enzo mari

source images & text: designboom

The title of this post is taken from an expression which Erik

recently used to describe his ideas of art education, De Denkende Hand

good, better, other

Image by Bas Princen, who was in Burkina Faso and Mali last week for Icon magazine
(which is put together by an editorial team of four, incredible but true)

What's going on?
Is it a drive-by closet?
A roadside instant shop?
Someone's migrated balcony?
Probably all of them.

What came first, the clothes or the tree?

Tree, clothes hanging to dry, wind and road -
They look like they have always belonged together,
even though we learnt they are not supposed to.

Another example of how little we really know
how poor generic design is
and how immensely rich the world is,
if we are able to see it!

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 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.

Found

While archiving my images on these long 'offline' days I came across a lot of street views, morning lights, surface details and beautiful persons, whom I met throughout the years in all kinds of places. I wish I could be there again.

The instant nescafé was unthinkably sweet and synthetic, yet I still remember this as one of the nicest coffee breaks I ever had. The terrace was in a village somewhere 10 hours driving in a straight line from any other town in Lybia. Maybe it was the emptiness all around that made my small stop in this place so intense and surreal.

Early morning on the Bergweg. There was something incredibly (ongelofelijk) charming about that place, and I still can't tell what it was exactly.

On the beach in Zandvoort, with our Nepalese friends, on their first day here, September 9th 2008. This picture suddenly reminded me of how fragile and close friendships can be.

may 2010 be tentative rewarding and eery...

Tokyo - spirit, style, system, sign

Fishing fish through a paper seeve...
Somehow, this popular pass time at the yearly Matsuri festivals
(celebrating the change of seasons)
struck me as super Japanese: it's all about the attention for the detail,
about inventing a system to be smarter than the fish,
and there is one chance only to succeed.
At this particular stand in Azubu Juban,
a mother seemed even more engrossed in the game than her daughter,
who seemed happy enough to see the fish swim around...


Tuna sliced super thin is another delicacy
(non-vegetarians told me)
I like the idea that food can be about the suggestion
more than the stuff
Roland Barthes compiled beautiful ideas about Japanese culture,
among others
the chopsticks and how they split the food
instead of brutally cutting it, like our knifes and forks
in L'Empire des Signes

Lunch at Le Bain in Nishiazubu, near Keiko & Koen's house.
The way Japanese describe things is almost as delicious
as the way they prepare and present food:
" In adjacent tea room tea, sweets, and alcoholic beverages
can be enjoyed in most serene atmosphere.
Light lunch is also available."
~
And what to think of
"This is good for drink" (above the tap in my hotel room)
"Train will arrive soon" (on all subway platforms)
...
I just loved it. I felt looked after by some benevolent voice.
Someone invented comfort food,
but Japan had comfort words first.

And then there is Japan's spirituality.
The other day I read this beautiful thought

"man's spirituality is man's finer,
subtler way of paying attention"

And now I ask you, what is finer than a grain of salt
(or 3 small heaps on your doorstep,
to keep bad spirits away)

Japanese tradition masters the aesthetics
of abstention, in all its details
standing in front of the half lifted curtains
at one Tokyo's main temple just before closing time
I couldn't help comparing the sense of relief I felt
to the sense of oppression that some (catholic) churches give me
...
somehow by not showing everything, by keeping parts hidden,
so much more is conveyed;
it makes the mystery of spirituality physical, in a strange, subdued way.

below are some images of serene scenes I encountered
at temples, but also building sites, or in my little Ryokan in Chidohiro






"C'est un agencement, un agencement d'énonciation (...)
Un style, c'est arriver à bégayer dans sa propre langue. (...)
Etre comme un étranger dans sa propre langue.
Faire une ligne de fuite. (...)"
- Deleuze, Gille en conversation avec Claire Parnet
dans: Dialogues, 1996, Edition Champs Flammarion

What is style, and where does elegance come from?

Tokyo provided me with countless possibilities of elegance
I selected the most inspiring ones for this blog
~
- Elegance is doing something elegant
(gathering autunm leaves and wearing tabi socks)
- Elegance is crossing the busiest crossing
as if you are alone on the world
- Elegance is a river that flows silently (and thoughtlessly?)
through a city I can't describe
- Elegance is generosity
(leaving a coin in a pleat of Buddha's bronze casts)
- Elegance is the odd one out that doesn't think so
(a deity standing out-of-place, but without doubt,
between countless bamboo stems at the Bamboo Temple,
Kamakura)
- Elegance is he who dares to do what cannot be done
(Philipe Petit who spanned a wire, AND WALKED IT
- or should I say danced it - between the two Twin Towers
on August 7 ten years ago, see Man on Wire)






- Elegance is knowing who to pay respect to, and how.
Cemeteries in Tokyo literally transport you into a kind of
go-between world: not an end point, but a treshold.
The wooden panels
displaying the names and dates of the deceased
are so vulnerable
compared to 'our' stone engravings
that they make the passage of time
visible and thereby understandable
(in a bodily way)

-Elegance is at its best when it flirts with humor...
(These dog deities are very serious matter by the way)

My fortune (good)
How could I not start to believe
When things are said so precisely,
and nothing is left out???

My favorites:

"Missing Thing: It's hard to find it. Look for it below."
"Travel: No problem. Take your time."
"Love: Control your feeling.
"Illness: Be Faithful first."
....

Miwa's fortune (Best)

When the everyday becomes fashion (with a smile)







When Keiko took me to her birth place Kamakura
We visited many temples
And at the second one, upon leaving,
I found my shoes aligned alongside other
white, off white, and beige shoes
...
I made me want to just leave this arrangement here
like this. It was too perfect. For more beautiful work
on arrangements have a look at
HOKO Studio's recent exhibit in Singapore

The downside of all this beauty and sense of style
is the necessity to keep up appearances
to not lose 'face'
(see the traditional theater forms: Kabuki, Nó, Bunkaru)
which millions of girls of boys 'happily' do


how sweet can sweet be


95% of japanese books that are sold are manga
even politicians use manga to gain support for their policies

Everyone wants to be found,
says the homepage
of the Lost in Translation website...
When I looked up at Tommy Lee Jones
on a friday morning at Shibuya,
I felt a little confused.
The billboards with willfull Tommy "Boss"
decorate entire teen (!!) districts
Big Japanese firms such as SONY
use Western icons only in their promotional material
and ignore their own talent
it's a worrying thing

another downside of tokyo superlative city life
is when you don't fit in
when you're neither young nor employed nor married
...
Hiro, editor at Axis, sent me a link about
research
by Kyohei Sakaguchi on homeless people in Tokyo
&
Satoshi, researcher at Musashino Art University with Miwa,
is currently conducting interviews with homeless people
in Ueno Parc, in which he is finding about their peculiar status
(registered yet illegal) More on this soon.
~
Japanese systems to make city life smooth:
(or in SONY language: to make the hinge hingeless)
- subway arrows, down on the left and up on the left
(and sometimes the other way around,
which seemed to only confuse tourists,
perhaps because the Japanese simply follow the arrows
without worrying about the logic of the overall system?!)
- subway waiting lines
which make sure no one will ever force his or her way through
at the last moment: you simply line up behind the passenger who arrived
before you, right where the doors open (and then you neatly line up on the left
so you can let the commuters out before you rush in)
- tokyo parking elevator
which inspired John Körmeling to conceive his car wheel (see movie)
- the umbrella cloak room system for rainy days
- the sushi eat what you want system at Shinagawa Station (Zuid WTC like)
- a tradional wedding at Meji Temple on a Sunday morning







and how do you come lose of such a city?
this picture was taken at tokyo's in-city themepark,
just outside of suidobashi subway
- beautiful umbrella's lift visitors
up in the sky and open up before gliding back down
it's better than a 50ies movie


a question I asked myself on the first days
how can such a densely populated city

feel so quiet?

A transformer along the Yurikamone Monorail
in the Tokyo bay area, undoubtly a monument,
I thought at first sight...
Or should it be seen as an un-monument?

Tokyo: my last words
(for now)
for you are:
plug me in....

This song Plug Me In by Hotel Pelliroco somehow summarizes
all I felt when immersed in this city that is
system, style and spirit all in one.
~
If you ever go, try to find CODA,
the smallest bar I have even been to,
thanks to Hiro.
I spent long long hours there with Eleni,
enjoying being alive, joking with Satoshi the barman
and listening to the DJ's amazing choice of music:
Pure Mélancholie.
~
Go out of Naka Meguro to your left,
walk until the road goes up on the express way,
there take a left along the small river, and
CODA is the tiny bulb on the tiled grey wall
somewhere left of a huge 400m express junction wall....
~
matane!
(see you soon)