DESIGN
DARLINGS
DEAD
10.02.19
DEAD DARLINGS AUCTION PROGRAM EVENT CATALOGUE
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ABOUT DEAD DARLINGS ANONYMOUS ART AUCTION
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Dead Darlings is an anonymous art auction founded in Amsterdam in 2005 as a platform to explore the complex love triangle between artist, artwork, and collector. Our events combine elements of performance and exhibition. Our focus is on artefacts whose value is ambiguous: dead darlings. This refers to a work that an artist has created, yet for any variety of reasons, has not brought to light. The name Dead Darlings was inspired by the phrase “kill your darlings�, something that we were so often advised to do in art school and later had to learn as artists to do for ourselves. We wondered what becomes of these ambivalent works, and what if we could help artists dig them up from the dusty corners of their studios and give them a chance to live and be seen? Doing this through an auction makes sense, as this is a format where often buried treasures come to the surface, but since we ask artists to give up their darlings at absurdly low starting prices, it’s also a bit of a cheeky wink to the art market establishment by adopting and mocking one of its most solemn
ABOUT DEAD DARLINGS ANONYMOUS ART AUCTION
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manifestations. To further our idea of subverting this commercial ritual, we auction each work anonymously. The contributors, both well-known or emerging in their field, are listed alphabetically and “who made what” is only revealed after the sale. By doing this, we remove the context that might drive value in a conventional auction and place focus on the direct relationship between artwork or object and potential buyer. When we were invited by Het Nieuwe Instituut to participate in the Speculative Design archive exhibition, we faced the interesting challenge of considering for the first time how our process might be applied to design artefacts as opposed to artworks. The one, of course, does not exclude the other, only making things more interesting! In the pages of this catalogue you will find those maverick works and their stories… Through the years of presenting these works at our auctions and our catalogues, we’ve had the chance to reflect on and expand the notion of what makes a Dead Darling dead, but more importantly, under what conditions it can be resurrected! Our collective has a core of four principle members: Tania Theodorou, Lina Ozerkina, Hanna Mattes and Jessie Yingying Gong, plus a large crew of dedicated rotating and recurring members.
PARTICIPANTS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER
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Alexander Marinus Alexandre Humbert Chris Rijk Erika Emerén Franziska Schulz Gabriel Maher Giorgos Gripeos Hans Gremmen Heleen Mineur Helen Scarlett O’Neill / Harry Ross Jessie Yingying Gong Jing He & Guglielmo Poletti Jon Ho Joseph Miceli Kai Reichert Khurtova / Bourlanges Kristine Hymøller Lina Ozerkina MacGuffin Maisa Imamović Mason Juday Mathijs Labadie Mayra Sérgio Marc Trotereau & Merel Karhof Michael Schoner Mirre Yayla Séur Moniker Myrto Vratsanou Noman Studio Our Polite Society Romy Yedidia Ruben van der Scheer Stefan Alber Studio Harris Blondman Toon Koehorst Vanessa van Dam & Carlo Wijnands
Title: Year: Materials: Size:
EYESHADOW-CATASTROPHE 2018 Concrete 95 × 165 mm
This eyeshadow belongs to a series of eyeshadows casted in concrete. The work stems from the source of design investigation, where I compare the geometric shape and division of eye shadows to the appearance of the facade and the layouts of apartment blocks. Likewise, I investigate the interaction between urban redevelopment and peoples need to be beautified. Ought to be the concept of perusing the ideal rather than conception. How architecture deliberately is used to represent and signal messages such as cultural values, sense of belonging and affiliation. At the same time, how makeup is used to create a persona and refine the skin structure with ingredients that give the skin a nice firming glow. In the process of casting the eyeshadow, the colours of the palette transfer onto the concrete. Throughout the mold making and casting process I was trying to find the most suitable silicone to receive the best result. The eyeshadow was made during this process and I did not choose it to be part of the final selection, that being so, it is a dead darling.
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01
Title: Year: Materials: Size:
MAGPIE (serving platter) 2014 Wood (Douglas) and coloured resin 500 × 300 × 40 mm
This piece is an absolute darling because it is shiny, colourful and very tactile. It provokes the observer to look and touch carefully. The layers of wood are shown off quite dramatically. It is a dead darling because of the amount of resin used. This resin is not a very nature friendly product and therefore this is a path not to be followed.
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02
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CAKE VASE 2018 Ceramic 100 × 80 mm
Too small to become a valuable object, but big enough to not be thrown away. The glaze was added in a moment of lost control. I had forgotten about its existence until I found it in the bottom of a box, which I thought was empty. Today it reminds me of a path I didn’t take, but also of an opportunity that may not be lost forever.
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03
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DOORNROOSJE (sleeping beauty) 2012 Q-tip, bees wax, glass vessel 400× 300 mm
Doornroosje is a joyful play, a by-product from my experiments with textile and surface design. I was curious to play with daily-life objects — manipulate, deform and transform them into something else. Cotton buds are glued with beeswax onto a glass bottle in order to extend the shape, create a different surface and haptic. A transformation from a shiny smooth surface to a briery looking one with a soft stamped haptic. All together they create this sleeping beauty.
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04
Title: Year: Materials:
WWW.HAHHAHHHAHHHAH.COM 2018 Website
During all parts of our design process, we work directly in code to make hundreds of smaller and bigger sketches and models. We make these to design visual elements, try out movements and interactions, develop layouts and content structures, find technical solutions. In the studio, we refer to these tests as variations. We work on them in an iterative way, and pay close attention to coincidences and mistakes that occur, as those often lead to new forms and ideas. Many variations end up not being used because they don’t survive selection or are technically impossible, some find a place in another project, but most never leave the studio. This is one of these variations, executed as a stand-alone object.
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05
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ZIG-ZAG TABLE 2017 MDF 510 × 490 × 410 mm, ca. 10 kg
A side table developed without a sketch or measuring tape but that could have been a sculpture as well. 3 a.m. in the studio, actually high time to go to bed. I hadn’t managed to get much done that day, I was in preparation for an exhibition. Somewhat frustrated I sat there, contemplating if I still wanted to create something. Suddenly I had the idea to form a simple zigzag shape out of the leftover wood panels. The table saw was still at a 45° angle and so I cut several strips of arbitrary width. Without a plan I glued the strips together and created this extravagant shape. Now it was suddenly clear to me that it should not become a sculpture, but a piece of furniture. The height was suitable for a side table, but I still needed a lid. Only 2 months later I finally fabricated it, then sanded, glued, stained and varnished the wood. The zig-zag table was finished! The one existing opening still reveals the process: to close the form, I would have had to take exact measurements and to turn the table saw back on. But I was too tired and had to go to bed.
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06
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MASTURBATION CHAIR 2018 Full color print on fleece fabric 10000 × 700 mm
For a while, I had this idea of a sexy (virtual) chair including various materials to stimulate sensation and pleasure. Tools and toys for all genders, a ‘streaming’ and / or selfie aspect had to be a big part of it. Although I feel something for the image, it doesn’t fit into any of my studies and I never saw it as balanced and finished. I could edit it forever. A fitting medium for the chair would be something comfortable and something intimate; therefore ‘masturbation chair’ is now a fleece blanket.
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07
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BOTTLE CARRIER 2012 Film coated plywood 150 × 120 × 80 mm
This is a bottle carrier. It carries bottles of a particular size quite well. It is specifically a bottle carrier for a household on the second or third floor, that stores crates of mineral water, or possibly wine, in the cellar. In almost any other condition it will end up surrounded by a miasma of various bottles, cans, and jars. It is a really terrible recycling bin. I am fond of the design, and it seems that at first glance other people find it appealing, too. Assembly is a light challenge, and generally requires a satisfying amount of thought. I produce them from time to time for friends, as gifts — however I always hand it over with explicit permission to destroy and throw them away once their true nature emerges. I suppose that there is an outside chance that it will land in ideal circumstances, but I feel like those exact conditions are rare enough that the world does not need to see this put into production. Ethically, for myself — that is adequate ground to let the design languish.
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08
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SUNRISE LAMP 2010/2011 Aluminium, powder coated RAL 7032, Neon-light TL5 Circular 3300 lumen, blue cord H 400 × D 400 mm
Made in 2010/11 this was the first furniture project I did, after leaving my safe architecture job of 5 years. The lampshade was inspired by a potato cutter I had seen at a McDonalds in Rotterdam that looked like a Mayan Pyramid of knifes. I thought: what would happen if one would cross that system with a dome. After this prototype had been welded I dared to ad waves to the body for the later model and made it more funny. Here for sale, though, the first sunrise lamp as it is its own minimal statement. More sober, more robust and more industrial as sculpture.
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09
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OFF THE HOOK 2017 American maple wood, threaded rod 105 × 105 mm, varying diameter
These hardwood clothes hooks are part of a series I developed to experiment with turning small wooden pieces on a lathe. Each object was intentionally developed in an organic spontaneous way, based on the piece of material and how it responded to the lathe. The design of each piece took shape during the turning process itself, rather than being designed beforehand. The series was realised during the London Design Festival, in collaboration with Wieden+Kennedy as part of their ‘Hands On’ initiative, celebrating craft skills and techniques that have remained integral to design and creativity. In the end, these two didn’t make the cut for the final series. The suggestive form was overshadowing their function, but they were too playful for me to simply discard. I hope this cheeky pair will now find a suitable home!
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10
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BOX 04 (wedding corsages) 2010 Inkjet print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper, IKEA frame 500 × 700 mm
A picture of a box containing unused wedding corsages from the archive of artist Frank Bruggeman. As soon as I opened it, I was struck by the beauty of the leaves. Of all the boxes from the archive this was my favourite.
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11
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OBJECT #11 2017 Polystyrene foam, metal, stone, plastic, nylon 340 × 330 × 330 mm
In 2017 we researched the model archive of Giovanni Sacchi (1913—2005), who was the legendary model-maker for many Italian master designers and architects in the 20th century. Coming from China and Italy (both educated in Netherlands) we experimented with the form, materials, structure and techniques of these models, in order to mix the cultural differences between Italy, the Netherlands and China. By taking Using hands as a space of thought as the philosophy, we explored various rules of collaboration, re-organized the relationship between designer and craftsman, idea and prototype. Two designers played with the tension of control and losing control, bringing out unexpected and exceptional results.
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12
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EXOSKELETON 2015 Grey plaster Dimensions variable (± 150 mm each piece)
My dismembered dead darling is made out of grey plaster. It was created and eventually abandoned sometime in 2015. I spent a couple of months making moulds of pieces of lobsters’ skeletons and then casting them into grey building plaster. I had big plans for my lobster pieces. Plans of reassembling them and re-purposing them. Giving them a new life. It didn’t work out somehow. I found other ways to say what I wanted to say. So they felt redundant. Maybe they crawl their way into being again.
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13
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NEW SEMIOTICS – B161 2017 Neon light, metal base L 450 mm
What evolved into letters and characters often began as simple depictions of daily objects. In time they came to represent syllables or sounds. Linear B is a form of ancient Greek from the Mycenaean civilization. This pictographic/syllabic language surprisingly bears much similarity to the ancient Chinese oracle bone script. Looking at how images transform into symbols, “New Semiotics” explores how symbolism and meaning evolved through time, and how two very different cultures intertwine. The character B161 stands apart because it’s the one that got away. Michael Ventris was the English classicist who deciphered Linear B. Ventris fits the template for the romantic notion of genius. He was brilliant, unconventional, emotionally detached and at the age of 34, having achieved an intellectual breakthrough for which others had laboured in vain, he drove himself into a tree. In this project, meaning has been the driving force, so there should have been no place for the undeciphered B161, yet the form of this sign was so intriguing that I made it anyway. Thus a dead darling; A light containing only the ghost of eloquence. LOT #
14
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PTTRNS 2013 Laser print 610 × 915 mm
Our dead darling is a poster. It spells the letters PTTRNS and was a sketch of a folded poster & record sleeve for a band from Cologne with the same name (hence the format: it’s twice the width and three times the height of an LP sleeve). The letters are taken from an alphabet which we had made for a different project – a visual identity for a place called Open Lab in Stockholm – around the same time. We abandoned this sketch at some point during the process and continued with a different idea, probably because we thought we shouldn’t reuse material from another project. Looking back at it now it’s pretty much perfect: a tautological poster, the form is exactly what the content is, a bunch of patterns.
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15
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(NO TITLE) 2017 Myst 950 × 560 × 630 mm, seating H 390 mm
This Chair used to be part of the interior of the popup shop we designed in 2017. Its 3 dimensional shape derives from a flat rectangle, we cut out the pattern of stripes and squares in the same way an origami artist folds paper. The material Myst is unique because it absorbs light and diffuses it, resulting in a transformation of the light and the material itself. It puts a filter on reality, making it look cloudy even though it’s fully transparent. Unfortunately after the 8 day pop-up event it was stored and locked away from the light it transforms so beautifully. One thing, this darling is not fit for the outdoors…
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16
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PULL-DOWN MENU / MAC OS 8 2003 Paint on canvas 1000 × 1950 mm
We never really ‘killed’ this darling, it is just out of function. 15 years ago it was part of a performance in Paradiso. We superimposed ourselves as living icons together with all kinds of computer icons on top of a computer screen projected on the wall. We really liked this oversized digital asset and kept it for many years – moved it from one studio to the next. We couldn’t just throw it away as it symbolises a period in our work: a critical reflection on the upcoming digital realm – often melting it with our physical world. We are happy the pull-down menu might continue to lead a life somewhere else.
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17
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2MIN28SEC 2017—2018 Video, 2:28 min
As a designer focusing on filmmaking, the notion of dead darlings is omnipresent. In the process of making a film, you have to write a script, film it and finally edit it. During the editing process, a lot of sequences that have been thought to be part of the film are not fitting the final result, they became dead darlings automatically. Therefore I propose to auction off a USB stick containing 7 rushes (length: 2 min 28 sec in total) that were originally planned to be integrated into works I’ve made. But for different reasons, they were not integrated into the final film. All the 7 rushes are rough, not cut and not color graded.
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18
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HOPE/POEH 2018 Brushed Aluminium / Paper ± 4000× 2000 × 200 mm
Hope is an attempt at a sign we tried to realise last year. A mirror-surfaced statement of hope on the roof of an abandoned museum. It was meant to be there and not be there at the same time. Mirroring the sky, set against the sky, it would be more of an anti-sign. Now it’s an involuntary monument to the rules and regulations of provincial Netherlands. Its un-realisation, a token of the improbable possibility of a severe storm in summer. A model and a prototype. A sign of both hope and despair.
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19
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UNTITLED (Or an attempt to materialise masculinity) 2017 Machine knitted mohair, mercerised cotton, elastine 2040 × 570 mm
This piece was one of my first attempts to create a panel for a jumper using an industrial knitting machine. The imagery on the panel is an assemblage of visual research investigating male iconography in popular culture. Maleness. Machismo. Manhood. This dead darling is an attempt to codify the imagery that has come to represent masculinity in popular culture. Weapons, wild beasts and mythological creatures. Are these outdated images of the past? A reminder of a time when the idea of being a man was far simpler, more adventurous and naïve? This dead darling was an attempt to rationalise my position as an artist within all of the chaos that we have come to label as masculinity. The panel turned out to be too long for the final jumper, resulting in it becoming a dead darling.
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20
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PIECE NO. 150 from PRESERVE X 186 2017 Concrete 380 × 340 × 70 mm
Every day I stumble upon close-up images of ‘perfect’ female body parts; perky, smooth, sculpted objects. Each of these fragments looks like they were cast into a silky smooth mold. These floating body parts have neither context nor gravity. Here is my back preserved in concrete. It is the 150th body part of mine that I replicated in an attempt to preserve an elusive moment of beauty. It is a part of a performative sculpture series which was executed by long casting sessions of my body parts in front of my everyday public surroundings. By materialising the pain of remaining still in an unnatural position, I protested the constant objectification of women and the expectation of them to remain silent. This piece started as my favorite of all the others, in it one could see the tension and the struggle of the body; trying to depict it when it is stretched and graceful while a massive material is being poured on it and thus pulling it down. It was my darling, the most precious one in the series, but I had to kill it. In the process of making a silicone mold for this sculpture, I brushed the material too aggressively and accidently scratched its surface. LOT #
21
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HEY JUTE 2017 Raw jute fibre, cotton jarn 430 × 65 × 20 mm
This piece of raw jute was the start of a cushion, the first stitched connection between the bundles of plant fibre. After turning it inside out and cutting this piece off, in order to finish the cushion, I kept this piece. Apart from the odd materiality it looked like an object. The scale and the movement seemed made for human hands. I have kept it as decoration and inspiration.
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22
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CARAVAN CLUB CHAIR 2017 (after the 1936 original) Wood 1200 × 500 × 500 mm, ca. 7 kg
The Caravan Club (1934), self-styled as “London’s most bohemian nightspot”, was a working class queer-safe club under police surveillance. Based on contemporary testimony and photography, we recreated the club to mark the 50 year anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in the UK. The chair in question was probably a one-off piece of rough carpentry made to mimic an Epstein chair. The photo was taken post raid, by official police photographers. As the all decorations were made from salvaged and second-hand materials, in recreating the club on a tight budget, we felt close to its original creators who could not have guessed that many years later their unique furnishings would be lovingly remade based on the very evidence used to shut them down. Made from scraps of wood to the supposed specifications in this image, this chair was an odd labour of love in recreating a lost piece of LGBTQ+ history.
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23
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HEAT CONTRA DR WAGER 2003 Letterpress print 530 × 760 mm
My dead darling is a ‘lucha libre’ poster I picked up from a printer when visiting Mexico City in 2003. For me this is a dead darling because every time I see it, it shows me that every time you learn something about graphic design, you also unlearn something. This poster is made by the printer on the press using wood-type, and metal shapes to make it work, he mixes colors while printing. No designer is involved. No designer is needed. Therefore this is a genuine and authentic piece of printed matter. It is naÏve in a poetic way. If I would make the exact same poster here (Amsterdam) and now (2018) it would be a silly pastiche. The best and only thing I can do is enjoy it, and accept that I will never be able to make such a thing (anymore).
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24
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ENCYCLOPEDIA (expurgated) 2013—2018 Book, glue bound, MDXCVII pages 430 × 65 × 20 mm
On the street outside the building we were living in, one day I stumbled upon a neatly packed box containing a discarded 13 volume encyclopedia. Speaking very little of the local laguage at the time, I was glad to see the books were in English. Despite them being quite old and out of date, I decided to drag the 30 kilos back up to our 5th floor apartment. Then the day came when we had to move out and, despairing over the prospect of transporting the heavy volumes once again, I decided to salvage only the pages with images that facinated me. I ended up saving all pages containing photographs leaving us with only about 3 kg to lug around. As a designer and book binder, I’d always known binding this amount of pages into a single volume would be a challenge but I kept putting it off until the right occasion would arise. Hence comes this darling, finally bound with the selected pages. And now that its bound — it breaks my heart having to part with it.
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25
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PRINT WITHOUT THE VALUE OF THE MAN 2017-18 Ink on fine japanese paper ± A0
It’s a print basically, and I specifically made it for occasions such as auctions. You can almost call it a design in disguise. In the beginning, there were two prints: the print with the value of a man, and this one — the print without the value of the man. The one with the value looked the same, but in black ink, and it had a title written above the drawing: THE VALUE OF THE MAN. The print with the value of the man was sold during Rietveld’s graduation show. Hopefully this one will (soon) be sold too. Otherwise it doesn’t serve its function. You can see on the label all its specifics, except the year it was produced which is 2017/18. I think it’s important to give it a second chance because of everything that I mentioned before, the fact that it is designed for such contexts, and especially because the drawing itself sends a secret anti-capitalist message for exclusive brains. And yes, exclusivity in this case is something to be questioned.
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26
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THIS ROCK DOESN’T BELONG HERE ANY MORE 2017 Blown Glass (flamingo pink) 400 × 200 × 200 mm
This rock doesn’t belong here anymore. It’s not only the title it’s what is happening to her. The quarry she was dug out of is far from here. The dust on her shiny skin dulls her shimmer. I don’t look at her anymore. Her pink flesh feels cold now. The odd one out, looking for a ground to settle. The new soil of eyes gazing over her.
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27
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COFFEE BRICKS 2016 Coffee 160 × 40 × 80 mm
The performance Sensorial Shelter started as an investigation into what brings a sense of belonging to people. Being a foreigner myself, I question how the spaces and objects around me interfere in that feeling. Food carries a highly evocative power that enables one to feel ‘at home’ through its look, smell and taste. It has the power to overcome an estranged space and transform it into a place of belonging. A mug of coffee can be stronger in making me feel at home than any built architecture. My personal story intertwined in my country’s colonial past led me to choose coffee as my material. During the days of the exhibition, I perform making bricks out of coffee and building up this sensorial shelter. Those bricks are a different type of dead darling. They are not something that had to be killed during the process but instead are the surplus of a performance. They now sit asleep in the studio waiting for a new life.
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28
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PLAYERS NUMBER 88 (Derbystar, International match standard) 2016 Deconstructed ball Dimensions variable
Our printer Perry plays centre forward for Roman Catholic Football Club DIC in the town of Teteringen (population 7,500). We borrowed a bunch of balls from the club’s kit room and sliced them up to get the inside story.
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29
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BADGE FOR KONINKLIJK PALEIS AMSTERDAM 2013 Plastic ± 140 × 125 mm
This badge / rosette for guides and hosts at The Royal Palace in Amsterdam is 3D printed which in 2013 was not as common as it is now. It was actually quite difficult to find the right manufacturer. ‘Koninklijk Paleis Amsterdam’ is engraved in the middle and every badge / rosette has a charm that says ‘guide’ or ‘host’ (in ‘Yves-Klein blue’ or red). The auctionable object is an uncoloured prototype; it’s the only one that has been preserved. The final badges / rosettes were coloured afterwards in a colour bath. It is a dead darling because this model is not yet the perfect end-result, it does not yet have the right colour and thickness, but it has that purely white, fragile beauty.
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30
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SHADEVOLUME 2017 Cotton, metal rings & plastic 500 × 500 × 500 mm
ShadeVolume is a lighting collection inspired by the classic lampshade. By combining and deforming this familiar object, it explores a new language of lighting. We developed a simple system that gives the possibility to link lampshades together: with few generic shapes, it allows for an endless combination of lamps. The principle gives the opportunity to develop single products and, as well, large scale bespoke installations. In order to make ShadeVolume we make use of a 3D program to draw the complex patterns of the shades. In this dead darling we re-used rings of a lampshade we found in the bin, but we were never able to buy the exact same ring sizes again. We had to re-draw the pattern according to the standard ring sizes of the industry. Therefore this light became a dead darling.
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31
Photo: Michiel Meewis
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BUTT PLUG 2016 Glazed earthenware 250 × 110 mm
A Christmas tree. A mushroom. An abstract shape. An exotic urn. No. It’s a butt plug. A sex toy that is designed to be inserted into the rectum for sexual pleasure. In some ways, they are similar to dildos, but they tend to be shorter, and have a flanged end to prevent the device from being lost inside the rectum. Butt plugs are made of a variety of materials, the most common being latex. Other materials used include silicone, neoprene, wood, metal, glass, stone and ceramics. Silicone is a particularly good material, as it can be disinfected in boiling water. When using a butt plug, one should be gentle: as with other activities involving anal penetration, large amounts of lubricant and a slow gentle approach are needed to insert or remove a butt plug. While medical data is sparse, some recommend not leaving a butt plug inserted for longer than two to three hours.
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32
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GARMENT 4A + DRAWING 2014 Linen and block screen print 1000 × 500 mm
Garment 4a was meant to be an addition to a series of 4 instruction garments that were part of a performance installation. It was in an awkward position from the start — an unnecessary compliment to a work that was already enough. Symbolic of my desire to overproduce or overcompensate — it never made it into the performance, it was never folded into the installation, but I couldn’t let it go... just in case.
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33
Photo: Alwin Poiana (2014)
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COMEXTERN 2019 Enamel and PRC faux-gold leaf on glass 350 × 350 × 5 mm
In my practice, I often have to try out diffrent versions of products and materials; in part to find out which works best, in part to find the most affordable product. I once ordered a book of Chinese imitationgold leaf, intrigued by the incredibly affordable price. I decided to see how the product would work on a glass piece but, tragically, the gold broke apart in the final stages of gilding. The left over faux-gold sat in the studio for a while until I pulled it out again for a test I wanted to make. An old Mao-era emblem promoting communication was delicately painted on to glass and required a gold background. It seemed fitting to use the Chinese faux-gold on the piece so I risked it. Everything was going smoothly until the polishing stage: the gold started cracking and bubbling up from the glass. I managed to stabilize a disastrous situation by painting over the back to lock the remaining gold in place. In the end it wasn’t so much a successful test as much as a reminder about knowing one’s materials and how to best use them.
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34
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DUST TO *DUST 2018 Clay 270 H × 350 W × 450 L mm
For this edition of Dead Darling #11 we propose to auction unfired clay replica of specific french Archives Nationale boxes. Each box is a unique remnant of a three part performance letting go of the archive, entitled Dust to *dust and held in October 2018 at Arti & Amicitiae. Dust to *dust is the final chapter of a long-term project entitled The Sky is on the Earth, engaging with the inherited archive of Jacques B., author of an esoteric theory describing the correlation between star constellations and French geography. After working with this rich material for four years, we created a final transformation of the archive: The original purpose of the boxes within the performance and installation now completed, they can be considered dead darlings. Each box bears individual earth tone, cracks and/or break point.
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35
DEAD DARLINGS WOULD LIKE TO THANK
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Special thanks goes out to Het Nieuwe Instituut for the invitation, oportunity and financial support to bring Dead Darlings — Anonymous Art Auction to Rotterdam and breathe life into the 35 dead darlings showcased here. Thank you to the amazing team at Het Nieuwe Instituut, especially Floor van Ast, Niek van der Meer, Luc Daamen, Loes Hoogkamer, Elza van den Berg, Aimy Eyzenbach and Jessica Dohmen-Verboom. Dead Darlings #11 would not be possible without our incredible team of helping hands, brains and mussle: Gabriel Maher, Roberto Pérez Gayo, Franziska Schulz, Kristina Mirova, Joseph Miceli and most of all — all the designers who entrusted us with their work and made this possible.
COLOPHON
Dead Darlings — Design is organized in collaboration with Het Nieuwe Instituut as part of the exhibition Speculatief Design Archief and takes place at Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam on 10 February 2019. DD#11 Team: Tania Theodorou Lina Ozerkina Hanna Mattes Jessie Yingying Gong Concept / Editing Dead Darlings team Design: Lina Ozerkina Printing / Binding: Friends Make Books, Torino Edition: 200
www.deaddarlings.nl www.hetnieuweinstituut.nl
2019 Š Dead Darlings