Immediate Spaces at Wongema

Graduation Studio for Immediate Spaces at Wongema

beelden Anne Holtrop & Sophie Krier

 

Subject to change or the space love needs

"Subject to Change" performed by NDT, Choreography bij Lightfoot & Léon

there is a point when the carpet she dances on,
the space in which she manifests all the love she holds within her,
that carpet shifts under her feet and turns her world around.
Sil and I were sitting on the tip of our chairs by then, moved to tears.

PS Noticed something strange in the format, right click the trailer and zoom out
or view full screen to not miss the margins of the carpet
(that's where it's all happening, in the fringes... of course)

Subject to Change is part of True to II, a compilation including also the virtuoso, super precise Shutters Shut and the magnanimous Cacti by young (24 year old yet author of 23 choreographies?!) Aleksander Ekman. Last chance to see and feel it all: tonight in Utrecht and tomorrow in Alkmaar.

Why Man Creates by Saul Bass

Just started a research for the Graphic Design Museum Breda, for a pocket size publication of the ever expanding territory of graphic design. One thing led to the next and here I am watching all kinds of histories of the universe on a sunday evening: invented, dreamed, drawn, pieced together. The animation is by Paul Bass and I found it on spacecollective.org, and the next one by Maria Kalman in Principles of Uncertainty. See and read more of her generous mind on her NY Times Blog.

houses of desire and nostalgia

Michel de Lucchi
- SO HAPPY TO COME ACROSS THIS, THE TACTILITY, THE SENSITIVITY, THE URGENCY ALSO -

Michele De Lucchi @ Ingo Maurer
Ingo Maurer Showroom, Kaiserstrasse 47, Munich, 5 February - 20 March
The quiet pleasures of whittling versus the frenzied sounds of the chainsaw might be at opposite ends of the sound spectrum, yet for Italian architect and designer Michele De Lucchi the move from sharpening pencils with a penknife to picking up a power tool was driven by the same joy: shaping ...


Erik Sep, details of his scale model city. Mediamatic wrote a review about Sep's methodology.

Frank Halsmans, 'Motel Insomnia', 1996-.... - INSIDE ARE THE ROOMS HE ONCE SLEPT IN, BUILT FROM MEMORY AND CONTINUOUSLY REFINED, DETAIL BY DETAIL - (I wonder if Halsmans will ever reach the point where these 'place-memories' will 'fall into place' and 'feel right')

Ron van der Ende: 727 woodrelief UNDER CONSTRUCTION size: approx. 3m10 wide 16cm deep
- OUF -

Ron van der Ende: Flagmans House / Baanwachtershuis 2009 (detail) bas-relief in reclaimed timbers, 90×80x10cm - LOOK AT THOSE DETAILS!!! THOSE COLORS!-
(If the world was shaped with such care and detail it would be a whole different place and we would all act more elegantly, I' sure of it)
Ron van der Ende: Flagmans House / Baanwachtershuis 2009 (detail) bas-relief in reclaimed timbers, 90×80x10cm - I WANT TO HAVE THIS ONE IN MY HOUSE A.S.A.P. (just need to save up a little....) -

Ron van der Ende: Signal Box 2 / Blokpost 2 2008 bas-relief in reclaimed timbers, 65×85x10cm (left: the flip side image) -THIS ONE TOO-
Tracey Snelling @ Cokkie Snoei Gallery
Market (New Orleans), 2008, mixed media,136 cm x 85 cm x 61 cm
- I DREAMT ABOUT THIS ONE ONCE (I THINK) -

art & object rotterdam

Object Rotterdam was like last year, the boring one of the two shows, with hard neon light, static presentations and important looking (wannabe) designers - in contrast to the tipsy, out of line, talkative artists on the other side of the road (which I feel a lot closer too, to be honnest). There was ONE thing that gave me shivers, Scholten & Baaijings's Total Table Design, a cooperation with Royal Leerdam Crystal (glassware), Koninklijke Van Kempen & Begeer (cutlery/table accessories) and the Audax Textile Museum. Scholten and Baijings are real shapers (vormgevers), in the crafty sense of the word, with a sense of aesthetics, details and texture that left meunder their spell for a while. Thank you Stefan and Carol for taking things this far. It proves that good design can renew our sensitivity to the world.

Tracey Snelling @ Gallery Cokkie Snoei # Bad Motel, # 2008, # mixed media, # 106 cm x 58 cm x 36
Either I'm addicted to dream-like houses and scale models, or the art world is. The 2010 opening of Art Rotterdam was busy as always, and my hurried visit amidst the bubble wine frenzy left me with a homesick feeling and four names in my notebook: Snelling, Sep, Halsmans, and Van der Ende. They make bad motels, uncanny markets, flagmans houses, insomnia motels, a slow city. I decided to start a collection of beautiful alternative homes, also because these days I'm fevereshly sketching on a weather house (a house with the weather inside) for a project, whatever that may become..

mina perhönen

forest gate, 2005 a/w
Over a hundred 30x30 cm textile print studies by mina perhönen fill the tiny exhibition room of the Textile Museum in Tilburg, which I am visiting with Mara and Monique on a icy sunny saturday. Pictures are not allowed so I draw some of the patterns I like most. The one above is shown in original format in an adjacent room. It's a beautiful, breathing charcoal drawing. I want to touch it. I want to be the little orange tiger at the edge of that endless forest. Now I understand why Perhonen's work feels so rich. It's literally layered, condensed attention, hours spent with sheets of paper, later scaled down and transferred to textile, and ultimately shaped around the body.
~
Monique is as much more fervent blogger than me (I only come round to processing what I've lived, seen and aprreciated every few weeks or so, also because INSTANT messaging just doesn't feel right) - so she managed to get hold of the 2010 collection book via a special japanese website, uguisu. I found a super funny paper bird which I will fly over here to brighten up my studio!

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!

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.

The Tribunal

This film somehow on one hand confused me
and on the other didn't confuse me enough
Hans-Christian Schmidt, the maker, had the courage
to make a film about an issue that is very actual and complex:
The Hague's International Court of Justice and the ways of the law,
and its side effects on the ones that risk their lives to testify about the horrors they went through
I think the problem with the film is precisely
that it tries too much to be a -romantic- film
the end just isn't right - it leaves you feeling OK
when the topic asks for an end that would make me feel
guilty, ashamed, or at least at loss what to think or do
(Sinecdoche New York's end or Grace's Revenge in Dogville)
...
I don't know.
Maybe Schmidt is actually right to have chosen to make a film,
a fiction, which will appeal to a larger audience than a documentary would.
But despite its ambitions and qualities as a film (Fox is real pleasure to watch),
something just bothers me. I can't get my finger on it.

ROOSBEEF zet de woorden achter elkaar en zingt daar dwars doorheen
het is geen taal het is geen muziek het is puur volwassen (proberen te) worden
ik ontdekte haar dankzij Jurgen, dankje Jurgen ik heb me zelden zo jarig gevoeld

La Mélancholie des dragons

In all its apparent lightheartedness, La Mélancholie des Dragons is super important as an interrogation of today's design self-indulgence... The dry humor is unbearable especially for all those of us who are involved in design and art. It should be a compulsory element of every art education curriculum. Philipe has a background in scenography (exhibition design) so he knows what he's talking about when he lets one his 7 actors say, in a supèr charming French accent:

"Ah non non zziss is not a piece it izzz an installation (...) the visitor can go in and (....) like this, up and down (....) we also do big letters (...) Isabelle, do you want to see?"

Enjoy, and go to VIVARIUM STUDIO for more...