Reviews 2: Test_lab at V2_
This edition of Test_lab, a bi-monthly event by our friends at V2_ featured a selection of freshly graduated artists, architects, and designers from European art and design academies whose projects explore the invisible aspects of our contemporary urban environments. This sounded interesting enough to travel to Rotterdam, where I found out that the event had grabbed a lot of peoples attention: the room was packed.
Let me start of by saying that it was hot. So hot in fact that none of the participants got what they deserved: interaction with the audience. We were simply unable to think.
With that out of the way I let’s see what the event was like. The opening speaker, Theo Deutinger is known for his data-visualizations. He learned from the best: he was trained at Rem Koolhaas’ OMA, who besides architecture make wonderfully evoking visualizations. OMAs style was recognizable in Deutingers presentation, however only one part actually made sense to me. With a beautiful animation, Deutinger showed us that the world actually goes to sleep everyday at 24:00 GMT+1. I always figured that when we went to sleep, people were at work on the other side of the world, and this would balance out over the day, keeping a stable amount of people who were at work. However, in his Work around the world project Deutinger shows the opposite. Play around with it. It looks beautiful.
Besides the opening speech, 6 graduation projects and one performance were the main event. Not all the projects appealed to me on the same level and the selection criteria did not seem to be particularly narrow. Also, not every part of V2_’s space could host all of the audience and, as I said before, it was steaming hot. There were three projects stuck with me. Pleximo, a mechanical installation by Renee Hulshoff, referencing Constant Nieuwenhuijs’ New Babylon is a beautifully made and fascinating machine. The mechanical working of the machine is the artists protest against the invisibility of governance, the lack of feedback between cause and effect in urban planning. Okay, to me it just looked pretty good. As soon as I can find a video of it I’ll update this post. For now you’ll have to do with the image.
Joram Kroon aka Prace presented his musical work “First statement“. Endearingly honest he explained to us about his complete unawareness of the Israeli – Palestinian conflict and his wonder about how something that was so thoroughly communicated had failed to grab a hold of his attention. Joram blaimed written word: black lines and dots on gray newspapers would never be able to communicate the emotions that lay behind the story. His approach was to create hip-hop music out of crystallized ideas. I don’t understand how he failed to see the connection graffity – calligraphy or the link beats vs. rhymes, but his approach was nevertheless pretty impressive. He explained his use of samples in the following example: A lot of Palestinian families still treasure the keys to the house their family were forced to leave by the Israeli settlers in the 1940′s and 1950′s. It is a symbolical representation of their struggle. So Joram sampled their keys. Subsequently he kept on finding stories like these and distilling ideas from them, which he rendered in samples. While collecting these idea/sounds he studied Arabic music and learned how to combine them with hip-hop. The result is a CD called the “First Statement”. So, how would such a conceptual album sound like. Surprisingly, I would not mind hearing him perform in a nightclub, and I would not be surprised to see him play the festivals this year. Check the song below and head over to his site. You can download the entire CD for free, but for € 10,- you have a physical edition with a beautiful cover. Nice One!
Prace – Handela (from The first statement)
Download of koop de cd hier.
The final project, also revolving around the theme of a new kind of craftsmanship is the Fabulous Fabbers by David Benqué. His study focuses on new industrial production technologies that have grown smaller and smaller resulting into micro-industrial cells. This way, the industry itself might move back into the city. This time however. the industry would not have to consume large area’s of the city, but only small fragmented cells. Technologies like 3D printers who are actually capable of producing 3D printers are one of the ideas that led to the various concepts Benqué has come up with. Each socio-technological scenario was represented in 3D prints, lasercuts and photo-etched bronze. Once again, beautifully done.
Off course, as researcher in residence at the Waag Society this immediately reminded me of the FabLab that’s hosted at the Waag. I might just have to get to work.
