Everything is connected Part 18.

31 okt

Last week I went to Eindhoven to explore the Dutch Design Week. The last 12 years I saw the graduation show of the Design Academy Eindhoven grow into an internationally appreciated design and inspirational event. For me it’s the event of the year and this year I took the time to see and read ALL works at the DAE graduation show. It took me 3 days to read the book (460 pages) and see my selection of work and speak to the alumni. The coming days I will share some of my favorite works.

Yesterday I shared the emotional prototype of Yi-Fei Chen an how she, at her graduation, pointed her tear gun at department head Jan Boelen. The process took time to prepare, to load, to pump. Boelen became visibly uncomfortable with having a gun pointed at him. Chen maintained her rhythm. And fired. The tear hit him and melted.

Quite emotional. For both I imagine. But what if Jan Boelen was connected with Senza, the work of Stefan Bukkems;

How do you feel? An easy question right? Not really. Especially considering that there are 12 distinct human moods. Stefan Bukkems designed ‘Senza’ as a visual aid to help decipher them. A wristband measures vital signs, including heart rate, temperature, movement and skin conductivity.

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This data sets Senza in motion. It changes shape depending on your emotional state.

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The more angular the image, the more agitated you are, while rounded forms indicate a relaxed frame of mind. It can be used in behavioural therapy sessions provide real-time feedback on the patient’s feelings. The shape is based on the ancient Greek Pentagra symbolising inner balance and clear thinking.

Seeing what you (or the other) feels.

I see Jan Boelen with a melted tear rolling down from his cheek and behind him an edgy Senza showing his agitation. Or was he cool with a round Senza.

How do you feel

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Everything is connected Part 17

30 okt

Last week I went to Eindhoven to explore the Dutch Design Week. The last 12 years I saw the graduation show of the Design Academy Eindhoven grow into an internationally appreciated design and inspirational event. For me it’s the event of the year and this year I took the time to see and read ALL works at the DAE graduation show. It took me 3 days to read the book (460 pages) and see my selection of work and speak to the alumni. The coming days I will share some of my favorite works.

The last work I shared on this blog  was Notion Motion of Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson (1967, Copenhagen). Over the past fifteen years Eliasson has built up an impressive body of work consisting of rainbows, sunsets, waterfalls, aromatic walls, mist, beams of light and periscopes. At the exhibition this notion of motion was realized by Eliasson’s fascination for motion and the elements, in this case water.

From Notion, Motion and Water to Emotion and Frozen Water with Yi-Fei Chen’s ‘Tear Gun’;

“Her upbringing in Taiwan has instilled a deep respect for authority. Disagreeing with your teachers is considered rude, and must be suppressed. Coming to the Netherlands for a Master’s degree was a shock to her system. Within Western higher education, students are taught to question authority and expected to take a critical attitude. For many students like Chen it can be a confusing and emotional journey to adapt to such a new set of circumstances. The pressure they feel to step outside their own comfort zone may even cause drastic responses. Chen has visualised her personal struggle to toughen up and speak her mind with a striking metaphor: she has frozen the tears she shed during an incident where she had to speak up but couldn’t, and built a gun to fire them. Next time a teacher puts her on the spot, she will be ready to respond with equal force.”

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Mental authority leading to fierce inner conflict because of cultural difference and tears which are collected, frozen and shot. All resulting in physical authority.

At her graduation Chen pointed her tear gun at department head Jan Boelen. The process took time to prepare, to load, to pump. Boelen became visibly uncomfortable with having a gun pointed at him.

Chen maintained her rhythm.

And fired.

The tear hit him and melted.

 

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Everything is connected Part 16

28 okt

Via the subway in Oakland, THERE, I rose from the water in Rotterdam HIER.

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I connected artwork and artists via stairs and fire and the latest work  HIER DAAR connects two parts of Rotterdam. Crossing the water. I remember the first time I saw the work. I was on a Thursday night and I was standing on the South side of Rotterdam near the SS Rotterdam enjoying the great view over the water.

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That’s when I first saw the neon letters HIER (HERE) on the ventilation building of the Maastunnel.

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Seeing the neon word HIER made me think ‘What do you mean HIER? I’m not there I’m here.’ The word HIER on the ventilation building made me aware of where I was and made me look for the other ventilation building. Within seconds I found the other venitilation building with the word DAAR (THERE). I moved from one side of the river to the other in milliseconds and I mentally drew a line on the water where the bike tunnel would be.fietstunnel_maastunnel

Traveling with the speed of neon light I was on the other side of Rotterdam.

Want to join me going underwater?

Arriving on the other side of the river Maas I was just 5 minutes away from Museum Boijmans van Beuningen where I saw an exhibition of Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson (1967, Copenhagen). Notion motion was developed specially for Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen and was donated to the museum in 2005 by H+F Patronage, founded by the writer and collector, Han Nefkens. Over the past fifteen years Eliasson has built up an impressive body of work consisting of rainbows, sunsets, waterfalls, aromatic walls, mist, beams of light and periscopes. At the exhibition this notion of motion was realized by Eliasson’s fascination for motion and the elements, in this case water.

Here I was sitting on the floor watching a sponge sucking up water and being pulled up and fall down creating a spectacular ripple water landscape.

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Everything is connected Part 15

25 okt

 

herethereThe sculpture called HERETHERE  consists of eight-foot-tall letters spelling “HERE” and “THERE” in front of the BART tracks as they descend from their elevated section in Oakland to the subway.

Imagine going down  Here and coming up in Rotterdam Daar.

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The neon artwork on the identical  art deco ventilation buildings by Vesta Kroese mentally  connects the North and South of Rotterdam.

Everything is connected Part 14

24 okt

Last weekend I connected David Bowie with Andy Warhol and Warhol with John Wilcock. And the nice thing about this connection  game is that I now really don’t have a clou how to connect John Wilcock. I can not connect via the tips I got from reader Volkert:

or Daniel:

Sorry guys but I have to connect via John Wilcock. Here it goes.

You can find the original interview here. Here my William Boroughs cut up version.

In January 2011 Tyler Malone interviewed Wilcock on the occasion of the release of his 1971  The Autobiography and Sex Life of Andy Warhol.  John Wilcock is not what you would call a household name, and yet, he has had a measurable impact on art, journalism and culture-at-large over the last century. Like I mentioned yesterday he co-founded Interview with Andy Warhol and he has written for countless print and online publications: Frommer’s, The Daily Mirror, The Daily Mail, The East Village Other, The Huffington Post, The New York Times, The Ojai Orange, etc. So why, one feels inclined to ask, is he relatively unknown?  The answer seems simple: Wilcock has called himself “the world’s worst businessman.” This self-description makes sense because listening to him one hears the voice of a writer and a traveler and an enthusiast, not at all the voice of a businessman. In an age when it seems like everyone is all about business—art as a business, fashion as a business, everything as a business—it is refreshing to hear someone self-identify as “the world’s worst businessman.” It seems less like he has failed as a businessman and more like he has refused to become one.

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Later in the interview Tyler Malone compares the title The Autobiography and Sex Life of Andy Warhol with Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. How it plays with the concept of autobiography. This comparison can take me back to the beginning of the 20th century. You could call Gertrude Stein ‘The world’s best business woman of the art world.’ She and her brother Leo accumulated the works of art that formed a collection that became renowned for its prescience and historical importance.

Or Gertrude can take me to Oakland. She wrote about Oakland in her 1937 book Everybody’s Autobiography: “There is no there there,” Stein wrote on learning that the neighborhood where she lived as a child had been torn down to make way for an industrial park. The quote is sometimes misconstrued to refer to Oakland as a whole.[115][116]

Modern-day Oakland has turned the quote on its head, with a statue downtown titled “There.” The “There” sculpture is a colorful sculpture in City Center plaza. Created by sculptor Roselyn Mazzilli, it’s a tribute to Gertrude Stein and a reference to the oft-misinterpreted “There is no there there.” It was installed in 1988, and now it can be said there is definitely a “There” there.

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In 2005 a sculpture called HERETHERE was installed by the City of Berkeley on the Berkeley-Oakland border at Martin Luther King Jr. Way. The sculpture consists of eight-foot-tall letters spelling “HERE” and “THERE” in front of the BARTtracks as they descend from their elevated section in Oakland to the subway through Berkeley.[117]herethere

 

 

 

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Everything is connected Part 13

23 okt

interview_warhol

Andy Warhol and British journalist John Wilcock founded magazine Interview  late 1969. The magazine, nicknamed “The Crystal Ball of Pop,” features intimate conversations between some of the world’s biggest celebrities, artists, musicians, and creative thinkers. Interviews were usually unedited or edited in the eccentric fashion of Warhol’s books and The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again. The book is an assemblage of self-consciously ironic “quotable quotes” about love, beauty, fame, work, sex, time, death, economics, success, and art, among other topics. Warhol promoted the book in September 1975 on a nine-city U.S. book tour, followed by stops in France, England and Italy where the Prince of Pop met the Pope.

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In the early days, complimentary copies of Interview were often given away to the “in-crowd”; this was the start of the magazine’s circulation. Toward the end of his life, as Warhol withdrew from everyday oversight of his magazine. Warhol continued to act as ambassador for the magazine, distributing issues in the street to passersby and creating ad hoc signing events on the streets of Manhattan.

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During his five-year association with Andy Warhol, Wilcock audiotaped the enigmatic artist’s closest associates, asking them to “explain” him, publishing the results in 1971 as The Autobiography and Sex Life of Andy Warhol.

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This $5 biography became a rare book offered for sale on Amazon at prices up to $2,101,99. 

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A revised edition of the book was released in 2010. Now for sale on Amazon for just $ 18,61.

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A cheap copy of the original.

Andy loves cheap copies of originals.

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Everything is connected Part 12

22 okt

The artist Paul Robertson curated the periodic table of David Bowie and Andy Warhol is one of the table’s noble gasses.Schermafbeelding 2016-10-22 om 09.43.06.png

And did you know that David played Andy Warhol in Basquiat?

“Basquiat is a 1996 American biographical drama film directed by Julian Schnabel and written by Lech J. Majewski and John Bowe based on the life of American postmodernist/neo expressionist artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. Basquiat, born in Brooklyn, used his graffiti roots as a foundation to create collage-style paintings on canvas.

Comparing Bowie’s portrayal of Warhol to others who’ve portrayed Warhol prior, Paul Morrissey (who directed many films that Warhol produced) said “Bowie was the best by far. You come away from Basquiat thinking Andy was comical and amusing, not a pretentious, phony piece of shit, which is how others show him.” He also noted that “Bowie at least knew Andy. They went to the same parties.” Bowie was able to borrow Warhol’s actual wig, glasses and jacket from the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh for the film. Writer Bob Colacello, who edited Warhol’s Interview magazine in the 70’s and early 80’s, said “[Crispin] Glover walked the most like [the real] Andy, [Jared] Harris talked the most like Andy, and Bowie looked the most like Andy. When I first saw Bowie on the set, it was like Andy had been resurrected.”[14]“

Here are the real Warhol and Basquiat.

In the above clip at 3.27 minute the voice over says:

“A rebel looking for the security of an understanding surrogate father.”

Rebel rebel. Bowie is all of us.

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Everything is connected Part 11

22 okt

Why rebel David Bowie will never “sink into oblivion”?

Because David Bowie is ‘inside’ many contemporary artists. Like he himself was influenced and inspired by many others. On David Bowie’s exhibition this was shown in the Periodic Table of David Bowie:


<p><a href=”https://vimeo.com/108833256″>The Periodic Table of David Bowie, a clip from &quot;David Bowie is&quot;</a> from <a href=”https://vimeo.com/thevillagevoice”>Village Voice</a> on <a href=”https://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a&gt;.</p>

The artist Paul Robertson curated the periodic table of what David Bowie is, listing great influences to him and who was influenced by him which is intended to be added to as new influences emerge, just like the original periodic table.

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Everything is connected Part 10

22 okt

fate_of_the_rebel_flag

I noticed that I connected most artwork and artists by Object, on what I see. Maybe that is obvious for a layman in the art field to connect on the Object because you do not know much about the Subject and the Context. Starting point for most of my connection were based on what I see, a stair, fire or what I hear/read, like Frank Underwoods quote about the above ‘Fate of the rebel flag’ by Wm. Bauly;  “the rebel flag sinking into oblivion”.

Rebel reminds me of Rebel Rebel by David Bowie. Why? Because I sometimes feel like a rebel? Because I like the song? Because I saw David Bowie’s exhibition in Groningen which felt like walking around in his creative process and paying him respect.  The world we live in, and the things we surround ourselves with, will frame the way we see things. Our country or region of origin, family, homes and environments affect our interpretation.

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What are your associations with rebel? I bet that if I ask 10 different people to write down 10 associations on Rebel in one minute that there will be not one association we all share.

From Wm. Bailey’s ‘Fate of the rebel flag’ to David Bowie’s ‘Rebel Rebel’. Bowie will never sink into oblivion.

 

 

Everything is connected Part 9

19 okt

Yesterday fire connected New York based artists Cai Guo-Qiang and Stefan Sagmeister.

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Today fire spreads to the White House with a painting that used to hang here:

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The subtitle is in Dutch and says “This is not the American flag”.

I have cut out the painting and uploaded it in Google Images. The artwork is called ‘Fate of the rebel flag’ by Wm. Bauly and as President Frank Underwood from House of Cards says it’s “the rebel flag sinking into oblivion”.

fate_of_the_rebel_flagSoon the fire will be distinguished. This fire will not spread.

Curious about the work the president put back?

It’s the Hand of Fate.

 

 

 

 

 

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