about pets and what we call nature

This is a pet's cemetery, and the top picture the grave of a canary bird (!) in Het Groene Hart (the green hart of The Netherlands). Notice the cat following Ria, Henriëtte's mother, like a loyal guardian. Henriëtte & I have been visiting the area for the past weeks for a project we are working on - about how to frame (mentally, visually and in terms of recreation) the area of De Bovenlanden, an agricultural polder destined to become 'nature' in the near future.

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!

A Cheerful Seater

Big string-sofas, 2008, Bertjan Pot
For the café of the Textile Museum Bertjan placed four comfy cheerful seaters in each corner - frames of metal woven into hamock like alcoves. They are elegant, funny, well made and they work - they literally frame the space, in a hushed manner. Wonderful.

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.

la chèvre de monsieur michiel

Dit is Sprits (18), de geit van Michiel Hegener.

Sprits slaapt s'nachts in zijn keuken "ivm haar zeer hoge leeftijd".

Ook kijkt ze mee als hij televisie kijkt.

Pleidooi voor de liefdevolle, intelligente geit,

waarvan vele in Nederland helaas geen gelukkige 2010 zullen meemaken.

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.

Rue de la Gare

rue de la gare, emballages.

Rudy is holding a broche, which I asked Monique to make, for his 65 year wedding anniversary.

On January 1 I will drive down to Echternach, Luxemburg, to have a pie with my grandfather Parrain and my grandmother Granny. They used to live in a former hotel Rue de la Gare, with their retail Boutique Krier downstairs. I still sleep there, but the house grows more empty every time I come by. I'm trying to figure out how to make a small, personal documentary of my attempts to get close to them, and to understand what I inherited from their culture, norms, and skills.

Me you and everyone we know is a curator (after thought)

all images of the symposium by Jonas Lund and Anika Schwarzloze

Miranda July, whose work has inspired the title of the symposium,

presented here during Sarah Cook's talk

10.30 am: Welcome word by Mieke Gerritzen

The queue outside just before doors opened (sorry, mara)

I gave a 8 min eye-bird view of important references in my work (such as Francis Alÿs' Paradox of Praxis here) and important decisions in the process of putting together the symposium.

When people ask me how the symposium went, I can't help smiling and saying: it was quite a success. My perfectionist mind has to admit the fact that all speakers were generous in what they shared, their presentations were well thought-out, the visuals were dynamic (with the usual technical disclaimers), and the audience was alert and engaged all day. The Gerritzen-Krier duo (our first) proved fruitful, because Mieke [Gerritzen] can package content like no other - she zips it, labels it and condenses it, so that it remains readable and digestable to all, where I tend to differentiate more and more, at the risk of losing sight of the original stakes of the day. The day got a fresh reset with every Lucky TV interlude, which were selected to fit the day's rhythm.

What were we looking for, originally? We wanted to know how to become 'media savvy' (something both Henk Oosterling and Geert Lovink talk about in the accompanying journal). We also wanted to know if the online world can teach us new modes of critical (read: selective) thinking. Along the way, I hoped that we would be able to identify what a "qualitative online experience" would look and feel like. This question came up while preparing the day's debate (which, due to time issues, had to be greatly shortened, unfortunately) with Henk and Koert [van Mensvoort]. We reasoned over a glass of wine, that if you know how to identify quality online, and you can describe that experience, then you are probably looking at new criteria of quality in of the online-offline visual era. And if you have identified those you also know what kind of (non)infrastructure you need to nurture and foster that kind of quality. But of course it's not that easy.

So did we find what we were looking for? Not quite, as always. Three bloggers plus special reporter Robbert van Strien did track the day's numerous insights here, here, here, here and here. I think that the gathered energy of the day (over 250 people braving a Saturday snow storm, our keynote speaker included, is worth taking note of) has put our question on the cultural agenda (see the Volkskrant article published on the Monday after) - and I think the day simply asks for a second edition next year. My starting point would be "a possible semantics of the visual", a quest which Rick Poynor referred to in his talk, combined with "oxymoron aesthetics" - inspired by Bruce Sterling's invigorating, forward-looking plea entitled Revisions of the Digital.

To be continued...

Woolfiller by Heleen Klopper

the nicest way to give your old sweaters a new life... try it for yourself!

may 2010 be tentative rewarding and eery...