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.
This is what digging for cultural heritage means in reality: the regional museum (Streekmuseum) of Hoeksche Waard, which is currently being renovated, will be re-furnished and re-opened to the public in the course of next year, with the content of about six of these containers, which stock over 175 m3 of the museum's collection, which counts about 35,000 objects of daily use. Imagine 4 degrees Celcius, a loud playing radio echoing all around on the metal surfaces, and the feeling of a region's identity floating up in the air, waiting to gain shape again in your scale model. How do you feel? Exactly. That's why afterwards we had a big hot chocolate in Heijplaat's local café, which by the way is a living museum of local history.
Daphne, my intern on the Bovenlanden Proiect, and below, Henriëtte with her mother Ria. For some reason these snapshots, taken almost without noticing, hit me as very 'true' when I imported them and looked at them for a while. Silhouettes have an intense effect on me, more than faces. It's as if I could feel them walk away from me. And I like how they stick out from the surrounding flatness.And the space between mother and daughter fascinates me - so close and yet so distinct in their features.
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.
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) -
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..
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!
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.
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.
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.
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...
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!
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 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.
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.
For immediate release 01/01/05At 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.
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.
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.
