2011 | Intervention in public space
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2011 | Intervention in public space
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2010 | Intervention in public space
‘Farewell’ is the second intervention developed for the Houthavenveer, the ferry that connects the Tasmanstraat in Amsterdam West with the NDSM area in Amsterdam North. The project addresses the connection between a regular ferry trip with the broader history of boat travel.
On May 18, 2010, thirty-four people bade farewell to the ferry. Standing on the edge of the quay they waved goodbye to the people on board. This gesture was repeated every time the ferry departed during the morning rush hour. The people who arrived at the dock encountered the farewell committee unexpectedly. The project attempted to break the ferry passenger’s daily routine and transform a trivial activity into an unusual event.
This project has been realised with the generous support of Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst and Fonds BKVB.
28 till 30 May at the NDSM quay.
The film documents the intervention in public space ‘Farewell’ and it is screened in the container ‘Platform 9’ in front of the ferry quay.
Stichting Zet @ Kunstvlaai
Cultuurpark Westergasfabriek
15.05 - 23.05
2009 | Intervention in public space
The idea of a boat trip as a daily activity is, in some ways, peculiar. In the past, boats were the only means of transportation across long distances. These journeys would last months and are associated with extended farewells and waving goodbye, long-term expeditions and world discoveries. This particular ferry however, goes back and forth several times a day, each trip taking about 5 minutes. It repeats the same cycle systematically, constantly departing and arriving. The journey becomes mechanical, overlooked and trivial.
With this project I attempt to make a connection between this routine boat journey and its broader history. I asked the people that were about to step on the ferry to wave goodbye while the ferry departed. I gave them a text beforehand with a story taken from the Odyssey, which they could read during their trip and I wished them a ‘good journey’.
Vaarwel in Dutch is a word used to wish happiness or welfare at parting, especially at a permanent departure. Vaar comes from the verb varen: to sail. Sail-well.
]]>My work draws on the ordinary in order to underline the sometimes hidden or imperceptible ‘extraordinary’. In an attempt to do this I create situations within our habitual common space where one can discover unusual things and experience that specific moment or place in a broader dimension.
Through the exercises I perform I seek to connect the external public space with the personal, subjective often involving the public in active participation.
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at NDSM werf Amsterdam.
14 and 15 November.
more info: http://www.ndsm.nl
01.07.2009 - 01.07.2010
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Dag allemaal!
This website is finally online.
Built by Florian Schroiff - Fernstrg.
2009 | A walk through the Amstelpark
Rexcursie was part of the exhibition Groene Vingers (Green Fingers), which took place in Het Glazen Huis on March 2009 in Amsterdam.
With the collaboration of IVN Amsterdam and Zet Foundation I organised two excursions in the Amstelpark in Amsterdam, together with neighbours, nature guides and park visitors. I asked each participant to choose a place beforehand that for a certain reason caught his or her attention. It could be a place that brought back a memory, a sense of nostalgia or inspiration, an annoying or a pleasant place. Then they had to take the rest of the group there. In this way we would create a new route concentrating only on the shared experience itself, guiding one another.
Participants who were familiar with the park would take the lead more often. The nature guides from IVN had more scientific information about different plant and animal species. On the other hand, those who didn’t know the park would stop at places that caught their eye at that specific moment for a specific reason.
The intention of this project was to create a new context in time and space where people would meet and share an experience that could enhance their awareness of that specific (nature) environment. It was also an attempt to break our Sunday afternoon routine.
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2009 | Text installation. Vinyl letters attached to the window.
A Site-specific installation made for Het Glazen Huis, it also made part of the exhibition Groene Vingers (Green Fingers).
The text points to objects in the Amstelpark visible through the windows of Het Glazen Huis. It describes the things as they are but also emphasizes the unusual aspects of an apparently ordinary object. It invites the viewer to look more attentively and to discover the peculiarities attached to objects that normally go unnoticed.
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2008 | Performance / installation. Self-spun sheep wool, linen and wood.
Taking the story of Penelope –Odysseus’ wife– as a reference point, this work underlines the activities that take place in a factory: dull and repetitive labour. While waiting for her husband’s return, Penelope wove a burial shroud for Odysseus’ elderly father during the daytime and unravelled it at night, in order to delay having to marry again.
During the performance I wove stitch by stitch part of a shroud, which at the same time was being unravelled by my performance partner to add a futile dimension to the piece. For me the monotonous act of weaving was analogous to the repetitive assembly line production of the workers in the old factory.
In a rapidly changing world where much human labour is replaced by machines, beginning with early industrial machines to our present day symbiotic relationship with computers and digital systems; I wanted to raise the question of what is actually, tangibly being created out of all the endless activity in our lives.
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2008 | Intervention in public space / publication
This was my contribution to the collective public space art project ‘Onze Buurt als Woonkamer’ (Our Neighbourhood as a Livingroom) organised by Stichting Jonge Kunst, with nine other artists taking place in Schuilenburg, Amersfoort. The purpose was to make spontaneous and unexpected contact between the visiting artists and residents of the neighbourhood in order to discover new perspectives on daily, inhabited spaces.
Schuilenburg is full of identical apartment blocks. I chose to approach the inhabitants of two of these buildings along the Ariaweg by writing a letter introducing the project and myself and posting it in their mailboxes. My idea was to obtain a self-drawn ‘architectural’ floor plan of each flat. My father is an architect and growing up I was intrigued by how these 2-dimensional drawings could translate to an actual physical, inhabited space. I wanted a uniform mode of response that reflected the uniformity of the flats while revealing the contrasting character and identity of each apartment.
Every Saturday for five weeks I went to the Ariaweg. Of the approximately 150 apartments I talked to about 80 people and asked them to draw a foor plan of their flat. The 25 drawings I received are bounded in a book, and of each drawing I made a sticker and pasted it on their mailbox next to their name.
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2009 | One-day performance/intervention in public space. Tacna, Peru.
This intervention was part of Proyecto Desierto: a collaborative project between Deçierto Picante from Tacna, Theatre Embassy and Cascoland from Amsterdam and artists from Latin America. It took place between October to December 2008 in Tacna, south of Peru.
We asked four local tailors to sew the Peruvian flag putting together fabric remnants (of any kind, towel, lace, etc.) at the main square of Tacna, where the Peruvian flag is raised every Sunday in a patriotic ceremony. Likewise, our flag was also raised when completed and later used as a video projection screen, where images of other interventions taking place at the same time were shown.
Peru is a country where nothing is wasted. The act of patching in this context is symbolic testimony for the cultural tradition of patching holes in clothing. Sewing a “patched” flag as a public performance makes a deliberately strong statement; it presents a visual image of the country itself in repair, which is actually the case, constantly.
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