THE TITLE OF THE WORK
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
CRITICAL STUDIES DESIGN DIRTY ART FASHION MATTERS FINE ARTS MATERIALISATION IN ART AND DESIGN STUDIO FOR IMMEDIATE SPACES
GRADUATION 2017
FINAL COPY THIS PUBLICATION IS THE FINAL DRAFT. A PRINTED VERSION OF THIS DOCUMENT WILL BE PUBLISHED SOON. VISIT GRADUATIONSHOW2017.SANDBERG.NL TO DOWNLOAD.
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ABOUT THIS PUBLICATION
ABOUT THE PERMANENT DEPARTMENTS, ABOUT THE TEMPORARY, THE SANDBERG AND THE HOSTED INSTITUUT, PROGRAMMES. About this publication In the summer of 2017 eighty graduates from five departments and two temporary programmes presented their final works to the public at various locations across Amsterdam (The Netherlands). This generation of recently graduated artists, designers and architects of the Sandberg Instituut is concluded in the publication ‘Title of the Work’. Part draft content and part final content, this document is a merging of contributions by the graduates and by the press photographers and editors of the Sandberg Instituut. For more information visit graduationshow2017.sandberg.nl. About the Sandberg Instituut As the postgraduate programme of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie Amsterdam the Sandberg Instituut offers Master programmes in Fine Arts, Interior Architecture and Design. The Permanent Programmes aim to deepen the practices of artists, designers and critics; in addition, the Temporary Programmes reflect on situations with a sense of urgency. For more information visit sandberg.nl. About the Permanent Programmes at Sandberg Instituut Sandberg Instituut’s permanent programmes include Critical Studies, Design, The Dirty Art Department, Fine Arts and Studio for Immediate Spaces. An average of 20 students per programme allows each course to be flexible and open to initiatives from students and third parties. The course directors, who
are prominent artists, designers and curators with international practices, invite (guest) tutors who are able to challenge the students to critically reflect on their profession, their work and their progress. About the Temporary Programmes at Sandberg Instituut Jurgen Bey, the Sandberg Instituut director since 2010, has sought to find ways to align the institute with the dynamics of contemporary society. He introduced two year Temporary Programmes that are developed according to urgent world issues. Vacant NL – the first Temporary Master’s Programme – was launched in 2011 and explored the vast potential of the thousands of vacant buildings in the Netherlands. In 2013, two additional temporary programmes were introduced: School of Missing Studies dealt with art and the public space, whereas Material Utopias investigated the shifting boundaries between materials and techniques. Other Temporary Programmes include Cure Master, Designing Democracy, System D Academy, Fashion Matters, Materialisation in Art and Design, Reinventing Daily Life, and Master of Voice. About the Hosted Programmes at Sandberg Instituut Starting from September 2017 the Sandberg Instituut is hosting a new category of projects and educational programmes in collaboration with partner institutes and companies. First is the Master Design of Experiences by the University of the Underground.
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70 fingers and 14 eyes are invited to interpret the Sandberg Graduation Show through written and visual essays curated by Jules van den Langenberg. This year’s generation of graduated artists, designers and architects at the Sandberg Instituut is concluded in a series of writings by Klaske Oenema, Simon Becks, Maurits de Bruijn, Hanne Hagenaars, Anne, Grøtte Viken, Caroline Ruijgrok, Bernke Klein Zandvoort and visuals by Nick Terra & Julia Mullié, Tamar Shafrir, Antonia Marsh, Yuri Veerman, Lernert&Sander, Nadine Botha & Koos Breen. Curated by Jules van den Langenberg. Thanks to Anke Zedelius and Hanne Hagenaars.
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70 FINGERS
WRITTEN ESSAYS
KLASKE OENEMA (ARTIST & WRITER)
HANNE HAGENAARS (CURATOR) 37
DON’T ASK ME WHO I AM AND DON’T EXPECT ME TO REMAIN THE SAME
SIMON BECKS (RESEARCHER & WRITER)
CAROLINE RUIJGROK (WRITER & ARTIST)
MAURITS DE BRUIJN (WRITER & ARTIST)
BERNKE KLEIN ZANDVOORT (POET)
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IMAGINARY STACKS
JURGEN SPEARS / BRITNEY BEY
WHAT’S QUEER GOT TO DO WITH IT, GOT TO DO WITH IT?
ANNEE GRØTTE VIKEN (WRITER) 33
THE OCTOPUS SLAY IN 80 WAYS
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THE PERIOD IS THE HOLE THE SENTENCE FALLS INTO AFTER IT IS READ
THE CEREMONY AND ITS DOUBLE
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14 EYES
VISUAL ESSAYS
NICK TERRA & JULIA MULLIÉ (ART COLLECTORS)
LERNERT & SANDER (VIDEO ARTISTS) Visual essay '#closedonmonday' by Video Artists Lernert&Sander. They faced predominantly closed doors during their visit at the Sandberg Institute Graduation Show 2017. Seeing art on Monday is equally impossible as getting a haircut or having your bike tires repaired, it seems.
NADINE BOTHA TAMAR SHAFRIR (EDITOR (R&D AT AT LARGE) HET NIEUWE INSTITUUT) KOOS BREEN (GRAPHIC ANTONIA DESIGNER) MARSH (ART CURATOR) 'Heimat' means homeland, but it also has a more romantic meaning: one's own familiar surroundings. The artists in this Visual Essay by Nick Terra & Julia Mullié explore both notions.
Visual Essay '#RepeatMode' by editor-at-large @nadineb0tha is series of looping giphys capturing the temporal repetition inherent in media, exhibitions, and well, reality as we know it.
Visual Essay 'The Phantasmagoria of Gambling' by design researcher @tamarshafrir explores how designers engage with the tension between unrealised dreams and unknowable futures, referring to a footnote by Walter Benjamin: “Time is the material into which the phantasmagoria of gambling has been woven.”
Visual Essay ‘Morf From Form From Morf' by graphic designer @koosbreen is a collage of associations based on the visual appearance of the graduation work.
Visual Essay ‘Material_Space’ by art curator Antonia Marsh examines the ontology of the digital image in terms of how we read an image online, with a simultaneous agenda to elucidate our obsessive fascination with understanding how an artwork exists in a physical space.
YURI VEERMAN (DESIGNER & PERFORMER)
Visual Essay 'Visual Echo' by designer & performer Yuri Veerman is a collection of five visual echos: five times two images from two different works that reflect on each other.
View the Visual Essays on the instagram page @sandberginstituut and on graduationshow2017.sandberg.nl
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KLASKE OENEMA
Imagine having 79 theses on your desk and having to read them all. You leaf through the pile of printed papers and read their titles. What titles jump out to you and which theses do you immediately want to start reading? Which theses would you shove at the bottom of the pile, afraid you might not be up to the task? A title – some words you put above your written work or under your visual work – is supposed to bridge the gap between content and the passer by. This signalling function is especially important when it comes to longer texts, as they don’t convey their meaning or atmosphere as quickly and directly as image or sound can. Often it is only through the title that someone will enter the space made out of words. Some writers claim that finding the right title and opening line is 50% of the work and is crucial to finding an audience. And this might go for theses too. Going through the stack of theses of graduates of the Sandberg Institute of 2017, my first observation is that roughly 15% of the titles are comprehensible at first glance. This means that 15% scores well on being reader friendly, being both informative and compelling. Quite a few titles are found at both farthest ends of the line – those that provide the least possible information and lack any effort to persuade (Hyper Molecules, Ceremony, Dig), and those that use appealing language but withhold information about the subject altogether (Reverie into a 24/7 Maelstrom,
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IMAGINARY STACKS
Remind the remainder). They are cyan and purple, either very obscure or very long (bringing the average title length to 6 words) and often both. Some of them would go well above a volume of poems or as titles to songs on a psychedelic rock album. One might be drawn to these theses not because you want to learn more about a certain subject but hoping to find poetry between the pages. While the visual art works get all the attention through the exhibition, the thesis is often underappreciated. It lies in a corner of the exhibit space, it doesn’t get passed around and isn’t discussed. The sad fate of most theses is to remain unread. The thesis is and has been under pressure. It demands a lot of effort to be written but receives little effort to be read. Maybe that is why 40% of the writers experiment wildly with titles and another 40% don’t try at all. Most of the titles seem to haven given up communicating, or are communicating as works of art might, focussing on experience instead of information. However different in their approach to titles, the theses have at least one thing in common: they have been written in the English language by Master students from different backgrounds at the Sandberg Institute in 2017. Going through the pile on my desk I looked for more similarities and created different stacks.
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POETIC TITLES Soft happiness There was a fat child with a cyan-purple bathing suit with glitter on it who looked like a mermaid. Screaming Wings Strained to Sharp Points: (Cries Are Just) The Bones of Sound Deceived deceivers or stop and smell the daffodils Poems about nonlife The period is a hole that the sentence falls into after it is read The double as a triangle or a pink and slippery moon It’s not up to me anymore to find the squirrel dying in front of my house more important than people dying in Africa In the violence of the object. We should be dancing with the dead. Attempt of a limitation genealogy: from the origin of beginnings to the death of ends All the nothing that will remain Reverie into a 24/7 Maelstrom Radically Intimate laughing (dislocating) The ninth Schwurbel Tropes Of A Palm STORY/FILM TITLES The land You Shall Not Don't ask me who I am and don't expect me to remain the same “I had the time of my life.” Music is my pretext He will (not) be like his father Welcome to the apocalyptic luxury fair (Beauty will not safe the world) Stories of the Changing Room If you click ‘allow’ you may be recorded Host Stories (OVERLY) CONSTRUCTED TITLES Deceived deceivers or stop and smell the daffodils English gardens, a long-lasting methodology through bushy, crypted staging. Post-Observing: Fiction, Making and Self-Responsibility Queering Chronology and Lives Lived At Least Twice From the margins: A preliminary method of queering the document
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12:15 – 12:25 An Active Present and Navigational Future Welcome to the apocalyptic luxury fair (Beauty will not safe the world) It’s not up to me anymore to find the squirrel dying in front of my house more important than people dying in Africa Screaming Wings Strained to Sharp Points: (Cries Are Just) The Bones of Sound Attempt of a limitation genealogy: from the origin of beginnings to the death of ends The double as a triangle or a pink and slippery moon In the violence of the object. We should be dancing with the dead. Long live the news flash – Media as camouflage Remind the remainder Evidence of residence Laughing (dislocating) FORMICA TITLES SUN Cloud Acknowledge TWAT Dig Hyper molecules Fluid materials Assembly Lab Ecdysone * Parrhesia ** * A hormone in insects that triggers moulting and metamorphosis. ** In rhetoric parrhesia is a figure of speech described as: “to speak candidly or to ask forgiveness for so speaking”. Parrhesia is also a genus of moth.
DARK TITLES Vandalism: A Lexicon Writing malady Inhumanism, an erotica Our (not so) guilty pleasure It’s not up to me anymore to find the squirrel dying in front of my house more important than people dying in Africa In the violence of the object. We should be dancing with the dead. Screaming Wings Strained to Sharp Points: (Cries Are Just) The Bones of Sound Deceived deceivers or stop and smell the daffodils
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All the nothing that will remain If you click ‘allow’ you may be recorded Welcome to the apocalyptic luxury fair (Beauty will not safe the world) The more I get I’m stupid TWAT TITLES ON LOVE & INTIMACY Radically intimate Ceremony Garments as companions On the origins of virtual STD’s Soft happiness “I had the time of my life.” TITLES CONCERNED WITH LANGUAGE Writing malady Exercising the Body of Speech Quotation mark The period is a hole that the sentence falls into after it is read Poems about nonlife Host Stories Stories of the Changing Room Parrhesia You Shall Not Tropes of a palm TITELS CONCERNED WITH SOUND Parrhesia music is my pretext “I had the time of my life” Screaming Wings Strained to Sharp Points: (Cries Are Just) The Bones of Sound In the violence of the object. We should be dancing with the dead. The Applause Machine ~ an inquiry into Trojan Horseness Exercising the body of speech The ninth Schwurbel TITLES CONCERNED WITH ART Post-Observing: Fiction, Making and Self-Responsibility Dealing with Control, A Parallel Fiction The Momentum, Why design processes need to become social platforms The movement of fashion A STACK OF ITS OWN How does nature offer a space of queer potential?
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Queering Chronology and Lives Lived At Least Twice From the margins: A preliminary method of queering the document TITLES USING CONTRAST/DUALITY Yes, I can fly. No, I can't fly He will (not) be like his father Our (not so) guilty pleasure The double as a triangle or a pink and slippery moon Queering Chronology and Lives Lived At Least Twice On control, a parallel fiction Rubin’s Vace Double-edged spear TITLES CONCERNED WITH SPACE How does nature offer a space of queer potential? English gardens, a long-lasting methodology through bushy, crypted staging. Stories of the changing room Assembly Lab Experiencing space A potentiality of space The Hands That Feed You, Dynamics of dependency and design for the third space Welcome to the apocalyptic luxury fair (Beauty will not safe the world) The period is a hole that the sentence falls into after it is read From the margins: A preliminary method of queering the document Laughing (dislocating) Migratory file The land METHODOLOGIES English gardens, a long-lasting methodology through bushy, crypted staging. Post-Observing: Fiction, Making and Self-Responsibility A User’s Guide (from Cloud) to Knowledge Queering Chronology and Lives Lived At Least Twice From the margins: A preliminary method of queering the document Exercising the Body of Speech TELEMAGIC How does the way you dress, effect your self esteem?
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Double-edge Spear The Momentum, Why design processes need to become social platforms Salve – a comprehensive way of dressing Hacking Neo-Liberalism Parrhesia You Shall Not Dig NON-TITLES Yes, I can fly. No, I can't fly The more I get I’m stupid I really much rather not Something along the lines of NON-TOPIC WALLFLOWERS Making a living How to live together? Experience less via more Our (not so) guilty pleasure The movement of fashion A potentiality of space Experiencing space Exercising the body of speech Post-observing Double-edged spear MY FAVOURITES STACK Inhumanism, an erotica Vandalism, a lexicon Laughing (dislocating) Garments as companions Peter Szondi Stories of the changing room The Applause Machine ~ an inquiry into Trojan Horseness Parrhesia The ninth Schwurbel
The first essay interpreting the Sandberg Graduation Show 2017 by Artist & Writer Klaske Oenema is an inventory of all 79 graduates theses titles. KLASKE OENEMA (1975) is a multi media artist and writer. She studied Dutch Language and Literature in Groningen and graduated in 2006 at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, department of Writing. Her work mainly consists of performance and film made out of light, paper and sound. Singing and the voice in general play an important role in her work. She lives and works in Amsterdam.
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SIMON BECKS
THE TITLE OF THE WORK
JURGEN SPEARS / BRITNEY BEY
Jurgen Spears
Britney Bey
Dear graduates,
Dear, dear graduates.
Or should I say, almost graduates, seeing as none of the diplomas are signed yet.
Or should I say, almost graduates, seeing as none of the diplomae are signed yet.
He smiles. Jurgen wanted to throw one of his famous winks into the crowd, but eventually decided not to. “Don’t overdo it, Jurgen, don’t do it,” he said to himself, no need to underline things twice.
She winks. Britney wanted to start off with one of her famous remarks about the futility of these Übergangsobjekten often used in such ceremonies, but eventually decided not to.
No need at all! I got this, I got this – they must have loved this joke about them being almost graduates! Just continue, he told himself. I personally don’t believe in a real world, Jurgen continued. I believe in Mars; yes, we are all from Mars, that’s why no one gets us, you see? They haven’t been to Mars yet. I think the real world problematizes reality. And just like the black stars in the sky – they are like us, the Sandberg stars, like mountains of sand in the dark. Just like dark matter, it’s just like dark matter. But as I said or was saying, you are all nearly known as “formerly known as students’ but for these last minutes, you are yet to be called that, for these last little moments, you’re still called ‘mine’. You’ll be mine until I stop, sign the diplomas and continue, but for now I’m still a little lucky. Jurgen rolls his shoulders ever so slightly,
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“Don’t underplay it, Britney, don’t do it” she said to herself. They know that already, everyone knows that already. I got this, I got this – they loved this joke about them being almost graduates! I will give you a piece of me today, Britney spoke. I don’t believe in the real world, but we will need to change our world till the world ends. So how to act and how to behave. I thought about two soccer players, they have a field, consisting of just a collection of lines. But there are ways and rules on how to behave, and you can hold it against me but I believe that if we know the playing field we are able to bend and break the rules – But as I said or was saying, you are all nearly known as ‘formerly known as students’ but for these last minutes, I’m still talking to you as students, this is now the in between, I want to scream and shout, sometimes and sometime I wanted you to gimme more, but every time I see all of you I feel so lucky.
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probably no one even saw – and then he cracks his neck, and even though he is a little nervous, he knew it was important for them to hear. I used to think, I had the answers to everything, but now I know Life doesn’t always go my way, yeah… It feels like I’m caught in the middle [Jurgen sighs deeply] That’s when I realise Jurgen sings: I’m not a girl Not yet a woman. All I need is time, A moment that is mine, While I’m in-between I’m not a girl There is no need to protect me It’s time that I Learn to face up to this on my own With teary intent and fire in his eyes he meets each and every one of his students’ gazes, urging them to take in the text of the song as if it was the last thing they’d ever hear. I’ve seen so much more than you know now. So don’t tell me to shut my eyes. I’m not a girl Not yet a woman. All I need is time, A moment that is mine, While I’m in between I’m not a girl, But if you look at me closely, You will see it in my eyes. This girl will always find Her way. Jurgen’s eyes had closed during the last couplet. When he opened them after the last words had left his lips, he could feel all his students’ bodies pressed against his in a tight hug. The chocolate whipped cream profiteroles he had wanted to use as objects of wild association during the graduation had been
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Britney rolled her shoulders ever so slightly, though she was sure some people saw – and then extended her jaw for a moment, and even though she was nervous, she knew it was important for them to hear. In a new home, the first thing people do Is build a fence around their home After the fence is built, oh yeah… They go back to the front of the house and knock on the neighbour’s door and say ‘Hi we’re the neighbours’ [Britney sighs deeply] That’s when I realise Britney lectures: Collaborative practices And sharing possibilities. All I need is friends And young minds close by While I’m in-between I’m just someone Who believes in sharing knowledge It’s time that I Exchange ideas and not do this on my own. Inspired by her own words of honest wisdom, she meets each and every one of her students’ gaze, urging them to listen, to take these words with them as if they were the last words they’d ever hear. I’ve owned so much, houses and hair, but it is now, that houses and hair, we will share. Collaborative practices And sharing possibilities. All I need is friends And young minds close by. While I’m in-between. I’m just someone, Driving 40 km an hour. You will see it in my eyes This girl has Prooff and we will find Our way. Britney’s eyes had closed during her last couple of words. When she opened them after the last words had left her lips, she could feel all
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squashed in his pocket, cream and chocolate alike spilling out of his pockets all over them. Fudge these analogies, and chocolates and bouquets and wines, he thought. So they signed their diplomas with spilt sauce. And so it was; they tumbled and cuddled and collaborated and laughed and talked and shared and cuddled some more, covered in chocolate brown melted milky chocolate and creamy white cream, the sun was already rising again and they were happy.
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her students’ bodies pressed against her in a tight hug. The chocolate whipped cream profiteroles she had saved as their graduation gift squished in her pocket, chocolate and cream alike spilling out of her pockets all over them. Fuck these analogies, and chocolates and bouquets and wines, she thought. So they signed their diplomas with spilt sauce. And so it was; they tumbled and cuddled and laughed and talked and shared and collaborated covered in dark chocolate brown melted chocolate and creamy white cream, the sun set and they were crazy.
The second essay interpreting the Sandberg Graduation Show 2017 by Artist, Writer & Researcher Simon Becks narrates about the opening momentum by Sandberg’s director Jurgen Bey. SIMON BECKS (1993) is an artist, researcher and writer. He studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie at the Fine Arts Department and graduated in 2016. His spatial installations and immersive rooms are places where fairy and very boring meet each other. Working with curated and narrated spaces, Becks’ functions as a director in his own work. His installations are works that encircle and engulf the vistor – inviting them on an exploration not unlike a prototypical detective would.
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MAURITS DE BRUIJN
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WHAT’S QUEER GOT TO DO WITH IT, GOT TO DO WITH IT?
A queer guide of the Sandberg graduation show
This spring, I schlepped through the blistering heat of Venice, visiting the endless amount of venues of the Art Biennale. It was my first time. First times usually disappoint. So did this one. I strolled past pavilion after pavilion, finding myself more enamoured by the architecture of these national embassies rather than enjoying the art they harboured. But then, somewhere between lunchtime and Aperol Spritz hour, I found myself in front of a projection of multiple, neatly framed and slightly dramatic sunsets. I looked behind me and discovered a bench in the darkened space. The woman sitting next to me, encouraged me to stay. ‘This is gonna be great,’ she said. ‘Believe me, this is it.’ And she was right. Firstly, the descending suns were accompanied by a voice of a black (white) woman (man?) who expressed worry about the planet we inhibit. The voice discussed the state of our climate, sexism, classism and racism. I was mesmerized. Right when I got comfortable, the screen turned dark. The suns had set, sunken into nothingness. The silence was followed by famous New York drag queen Lady Bunny performing a tight lip sync of a disco tune. Nothing is more natural than a sunset. Nothing is more artificial than a drag queen. Yet, Lady Bunny’s monologue is more heartfelt and insightful than any of today’s major politicians. I nodded towards the woman on my left, and before I stood up from the bench I peeked at the little white sign behind me. It read: Charles Atlas, The Tyranny of Consciousness.
It was clear to me that Charles had made a particular queer work of art. The subversive character of the video piece was palpable in every word expressed by Lady Bunny, by every turn of her wig while she lip synced for her life. Until that blisteringly hot day in Venice, I did not know who Charles Atlas was, but seeing his piece made me believe he was just as queer as his work. Google quickly confirmed my suspicion. I locked the screen of my phone and continued on strolling through yet another exhibition hall. Let me be clear, I don’t know what queer art is. I don’t know whether it means it’s creator sleeps with people of the same gender, or if an artwork can be queer just because. Hell, the term ‘queer’ is one of the most polarizing terms that are used within the LGBTQ community and the realms of identity politics these days. I honestly don’t care who sleep with whom. Also, I’m not here to out people. I am here for artworks that manage to offer a disruption that art doesn’t always provide. I am here for art that depicts people who don’t fit the mainstream. I am here for art that questions the norms that constitute society and art practice. I am here for the queerest of art works. Unfortunately, as I’m writing this article, none of the works of Sandberg’s 2017 graduates are on show just yet. So I have to make do with the online presence of these artworks and artists.
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‘Otherness’ seems to be abundant amongst this years’ graduation show. Some works wear it on their sleeves, like a badge of honour. Rosie Haward’s project is titled Queer Waters. Together with Matty she hosts the podcast Textual Feelings. The second episode revolves around Maggie Nelson’s masterful novel/memoir/genius work of art The Argonauts. The most important lesson this superqueer (yes, I said it) novel taught me was ‘Pride is not the opposite of shame. The opposite of shame is honesty.’ And that shame refers to the feeling so many queer people experience growing up. Shame for being different. Shame for not understanding what goes on within. Shame for how the world treats people like yourself. The word ‘Queer’ stands next to ‘Waters’, in Rosie’s title. Fittingly, because only water can be as fluid as people’s preferences and appearances. Ruben Baart is also concerned with this fluidity. The stills of his piece Hyperhidrosis show the body of a man, the screen is drenched in a yellow hue, the frame cuts the male corpus into almost unrecognizable chunks. The title of the piece refers to a medical condition, people who suffer from is sweat profusely. In Ruben’s own words, the piece is ‘a corporeal fiction placed within a medical facility to reconceptualize the existing conditions of pharmaceutical programming. Under such conditions, the sexual body is perceived as a malleable apparatus that can be adjusted to biocapitalist ends.’
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that sounds a little dramatic. I become very self-conscious writing about these topics. All the more reason to celebrate artworks that manage to enter the deep waters of queerness without falling into any of these traps. Not al of these bodies are naked, some of these queer bodies are well-protected and clothed. Rafael Kuoto gives new meaning to the dualities that fashion is concerned with, creating garments that are both trash and treasure, African and Western, traditional and modern. In other words: true hybrids. Mobile apps like Grindr and Her usually help to uncover the heteronormative world for queer people. Thanks to these applications, our phones manage to show us exactly how queer our surroundings are. There’s a gay man hungry for cock within 2 kilometres from you, it says. For art, there is no such app. But there is a gut feeling, for sure. There’s an everlasting desire to find likeminded people, just as that woman in the darkness of the Venice Biennale told me: ‘This is it.’ Gui Machiavelli’s work ‘deals with experiences that are alien to us. Experiences that lie at the limit or even beyond what humans can feel and understand.’ It reads a like a perfect definition of what queerness is. Full of anticipation, I click the link to his website and I find an interactive story titled Study 01 (2015). It reads ‘The world of heterosexual is a sick and boring life. Most ancient roots of a sentimentalism that has already ended, why do you persist in your moldy ideas?’ It’s the second sentence that sticks And it’s the corporal that takes centre stage with me. Queer art is not necessarily about in the work of Aurélien Lepetit. In the still of bodies, or about fluidity, it’s not about some ‘Stamina’ I see a beard, some armpit fur and queer aesthetic. It’s not about expecting a radiant pink spandex, I see a corset-like struc- queer painter to make work about the queer ture around a bulky waist. The bottom half of experience. In other words: it’s not about my the body is dressed in black tights, the upper expectations. It’s about a new perspective. half is naked and graced with a charming mole. One that is not wholesome, not comfortable This is a body that can be both male and female, and does not appeal to the parameters that or anything in between. A centaur of genders. frame today’s society. I conclude my search I feel like a dirty old man, trying to with the page of Biyi Zhu. Her work ‘Perfect detect these works as ‘queer’, it feels a little Tempation’ talks about food scarcity in a time backwards. Part of me sees the contradiction: where we produce more than enough food to I put these works that so clearly demand freefeed the hungry. Talk about the expiration dom into a box with a label on it. Ok, guilty. But date of ‘moldy ideas’ and the need for a fresh there’s a reason why I connect to these works. perspective. It seems to me there is a need I recognize the questions they pose, because for the queerest of artworks today. The revothey were or are my questions, too. And yes, lution can’t come soon enough.
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Ruben Baart – Design Rosie Haward – Critical Studies Rafael Kuoto – Fashion Matters Aurélien Lepetit – Dirty Art Gui Machiavelli – Design Biyi Zhu – Design
The third essay interpreting the Sandberg Graduation Show 2017 by Writer & Artist Maurits de Bruijn focusses on the issue of ‘Queerness’ and its presence throughout the different departments and graduation projects. MAURITS DE BRUIJN (1984) is a Dutch novelist and essayist. His main themes include identity politics, queer culture and emancipation. Broer (Brother), his first novel was met with praise from both critics and readers. It was a subtle and poetic telling of the dissapearance of his eldest brother. Maurits’ second novel was published in 2016. It was a departure from the more autobiographic Broer as it told the story of a Moroccan family who welcomed a Western orphan into their home. Maurits regularly writes essays and opinion pieces for Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant.
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ANNEE GRØTTE VIKEN
Walk till you are in waist deep. Look at me. I need you to let go. I need you to allow yourself to sink. Sink, into your gelatine self. Feel water envelop your body and sounds be replaced by the surging flow of your own breath. In – out. In – out. Down. Don’t panic, breath slowly, you’ll soon get used to it. The journey towards reality has begun. Meet the octopus, an alien in perfect symbiosis with its element. OCTOPUSES HAVE THREE HEARTS DIRTY ART Dive into the murky water. A Reverie into a 24/7 Maelström sucks you inside. We are together but my mind spins as it disappears into the hours only existing in the deep. The seabed reads Vandalism: A Lexicon. I wonder how it opens while I caress it like the oval yellow soap bar that was in your shower Sunday morning. Inhumanism, an erotica starts playing. It’s penetrating the murky water and rays of light shoot through hitting your glistening body. It’s on repeat. He will (not) be like his father, He will (not) be like his father. What does it really mean? How’s your circulatory system? Take out A User´s Guide (from Cloud) to Knowledge like it’s stored on a shelf. How would you drag your fingers down its spine? It’s there for you to use. This is the place to get Radically Intimate and let your hearts take you deeper into the murky waters. The Double-edge Spear penetrates a new surface, could be a sound, or maybe a saying. Your octopus blood is viscous and in
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THE OCTOPUS SLAY IN 80 WAYS
need of high pressure. Pump it into the The Applause Machine ~ an inquiry into Trojan Horseness! Your hearts applaud. Hover over the carcass of the big grey whale and bring it back to dirty life – Parrhesia struck us like an electric shock. If you can fill Rubin’s Vase with your blue blood, time is on your side. Music is my pretext and lovers are our life. There is hope in Post-Observing: Fiction, Making and Self-Responsibility. The underworld is like a transparent mud; soft and filled with creatures slipping away like freshly boiled spaghetti. Hacking Neo-Liberalism makes an impact and reaches out. Accumulate waste, taste it, touch it, love it and blow it out. MINERALISED MASS AND SENSITIVE HAIRS MATERIALISATION IN ART AND DESIGN Welcome to the Ceremony. Observe with your keen eye and spikey tongue. Taste what you touch; lose your senses in reproduction. Ask How does nature offer a space of queer potential? Ask again and change colour as you move gently across the surface deep inside your soul. Remind the remainder. Look back but never remain the reminded. You’re a visual cue. The double as a triangle or a pink and slippery moon between your arms and you know you are mass in a mass like everybody else and In the violence of the object. We should be dancing with the dead. Set yourself in motion, detect others and know it’s called Experiencing space.
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Words are caught inside air bubbles that ascend to the surface and shout out into the sky. Perhaps Exercising the Body of Speech can turn them into clouds. We are made up of Fluid Materials as we walk arm in arm, your and our nerve chords meeting. acknowledge with a lower case a. Do you see and accept, or do you touch and affirm? If you click ’allow’ you may be recorded. See? Remember. Safe havens are a thing of the past. Look into, open and close; like a Quotation mark. You are mineralised mass and sensitive hairs. You have materialized. ABSORPTION THROUGH THE SKIN FINE ARTS Also known as a Migratory file. Respiration involves intake of water. Trust me, you won’t choke; oxygen is absorbed through your skin. Embodying a highly complex system of nerves, growing into all arms. Writing Malady strikes you, unsettling sensations spurt out from your ink filled pen. Take away the known, tap on the The Ninth Schwurbel; it’s an alien language. The complex reflex to decipher everything persists long after the brain has stopped its input. So work by delegation of control, Soft Happiness is taking over. Can it be soft and happy at the same time? I really much rather not. Despite the fact. Despite delegation. Despite me, you won’t get tangled. Animus Carne breathes through your skin. Bulging under the surface, ready for dissection, liposuction, reincarnation, Something Along The Lines Of strong muscular circles and thinking droplets. They come to you. It’s about absorbing thoughts. Deceived Deceivers or Stop and Smell the Daffodils. Absorb. The period is a hole that the sentence falls into after it is read. Longing, desperation, fulfilment through the complex reflex actions of your arm; Yes, I can fly. No, I can’t fly. Self-attachment is a thing of the past. Absorb through the skin; the system is not nervous. INHABIT SHALLOW TIDE POOLS STUDIO FOR IMMEDIATE SPACES Hyper Molecules on a deep-sea grass bed. The tide pool is family. An omnipresent soli-
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tude brings me inside and I hear you repeat: You Shall Not. Adapt your pace to capital letters, the? SUN passes so you can enter the void. Making a Living is hard in the depths where no one has gone before. There is no one to learn from in the rocky outcrops. Encounter the Attempt of a limitation genealogy: from the origin of beginnings to the death of ends; beginnings always originate and ends always die. Do you attempt to surpass or succumb? Or can you stay in limbo? Dealing with Control, A Parallel Fiction where the outside aligns to inside, prey is forgotten and borders are fuzzy. The More I get I’m stupid. Tell me again. Your absence of territorial thoughts is wired high, behaviour accumulate. I discover the Cloud. Vapour ecology tells me to swim headfirst and Dig into my sense of self. Shout, insult or touch a TWAT, crawl with your arm, extend it forward, recovery is slow. Loco (space) motion. Stay NONTOPIC as long as you can and breathe life into your longing for A potentiality of space with a capital A. inhabit shallow tide pools. THEY HAVE BEEN REPORTED TO PRACTICE CRITICAL STUDIES Observe, feed, float past laughing (dislocating). Don’t laugh. Laugh. Don’t laugh. Laugh. Don’t. From the margins: A preliminary method of queering the document is? measured in maze experiments. Shapes and patterns can be distinguished in the margin. You can see them. Each one. As it gets colder you start to play, throw a bottle in the pool and watch as I catch it. You can inject paralyzing saliva. Screaming Wings Strained to Sharp Points: (Cries Are Just) The Bones of Sound. Dismember. Use your tools. Queering Chronology and Lives Lived At Least Twice reaches out from the cave. Take the arm of Peter Szondi and feel the importance of exploring the crevice. Can you keep Tropes Of A Palm in your palm? Open it, there is suction, then close it and feel the tension rush to Host Stories like you’ve never hosted anyone before. I see you get fed through your tentacles. It’s true. You have been reported to practice.
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TAKE ON THE SPIKEY APPEARANCE OF ALGAE FASHION MATTERS Specialized skin cells are your weapon; Don’t ask me who I am and don’t expect me to remain the same. Avoid predators; collide, simplify, merge, break, flow, change. How does the way you dress, affect your matter of self-esteem? Hunt; Collide, simplify, merge, break, flow, change. Long Live the News Flash – Media as Camouflage. Long live your multi-coloured opaque reflective self. Curl into a ball, sink into the ground. How to ask – How to live together? Change colour to communicate, I’ll change mine to keep you warm, but it’s a warning. Patterns rave like a rash across my body, a “passing cloud” is on your way. Distraction is real. Take on the spikey appearance of algae, a complex skin is Evidence of residence in shallow waters. Contract your muscles, textures pass, like The movement of fashion. Waves of dark coloration could turn you to Salve – a comprehensive way of dressing. Like watching All the nothing that will remain over and over. Move aside, make waves, tell me Stories of the Changing Room. Pieces of Garments as companions linger on your back. Make a case, contract your muscles in the Assembly Lab and wave. It’s never been more important; the spikey appearance of algae.
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You send me into being and behaviour opens The Hands That Feed You, Dynamics of dependency and design for the third space. Set to inflict change, flora and fauna steam into a coral sauna. Perhaps it’s Our (not so)guilty pleasure. You are swimming in a distant dream as present turns to past. “I had the time of my life” and as I faced the surface, There was a fat child with a cyan-purple bathing suit with glitter on it who looked like a mermaid. Sensitive to stimuli you erase borders. The Land is yours too. Shy, but certain. On the origins of virtual STDs you can rip my head apart like a cauliflower and make bouquets of tiny white brains. It’s like Poems about nonlife, perform an arm autotomy, detach your limb and run. It’s TELEMAGIC. You explode into a furore of identities. Welcome to the apocalyptic luxury fair (Beauty will not save the world) It’s hidden in muscular skin folds.
HIDDEN IN MUSCULAR SKIN FOLDS DESIGN Defence is coloured and blurs my vision. You are a mortal translator of patterns. Codes of conduct let you Experience Less Via More so withdraw to observe. Motion is brought to me by the flash of blue reading; 12:15 – 12:25 An Active Present and Navigational Future. Hide to reach out but watch your arm. The ‘network of real news’ forces transformation. Edcysone tastes like distraction. I put it on my tongue and think of ink ejections. It’s not up to me anymore to find the squirrel dying in front of my house more important than people dying in Africa. The black cloud deforms in slow motion. I reach into The Momentum, Why design processes need to become social platforms.
The fourth essay interpreting the Sandberg Graduation Show 2017 by Writer Annee Grøtte Viken delves into the soul of the institute and its different departments through the body and characteristics of an octopus. ANNEE GRØTTE VIKEN (NO) is a writer, artist, and architect holding an MA from the Studio for Immediate Spaces at the Sandberg Instituut. Grøtte Viken is interested in the creation and understanding of space at large and uses fiction as a tool for making these spaces visible. Grøtte Viken has published a book on the subject of ‘spaces in fiction’ and recently finished a residency combining fiction and material research at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht as a founding member of the collaborative practice, Alberg Rosa. Her work has been presented by, among others, Suns & Stars Exhibitions (Amsterdam), Garage (Rotterdam), Triangle (Marseille), Stroom (Den Haag), Onomatopee (Eindhoven) and ZZ3 (Hasselt).
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HANNE HAGENAARS
Don’t ask me who I am and don’t expect me to remain the same. (Thesis by Duran Lantink) My Jan Jansen sandals fall through the loft hatch onto the floor. A thick blue sole with rounded ridges, a pink metallic wrapover strap with Velcro and a green metallic strap over the foot, close to the leg. Yes, I like sturdy shoes and these sandals made me about 5 cm taller and that’s why I wore them. For a while. Afterwards, they languished in a dark loft. Forgotten. Now, in the clear light of day, they look better than ever, with that extra dust and those bygone times. I give them to fashion designer Duran Lantink who loves to recycle fashion items. In the hands of Duran, they underwent a transformation that I had not expected: he stuck them into the soles of two cut-off Nike Air Max sneakers, using three small tubes of superglue. The back became higher. Walking pleasantly – no, that was no longer possible, but you got something in return: the Jan Jansen flavour, fused together with the contemporary Nike. This is how I came to see Duran on Facebook, sitting in the front row, wearing ‘my’ sandals, they walked by on the catwalk on long, slim, bright red glossy legs and with an extra piece of string around them as if the superglue might give way, on a screen-print on which the shoes were recorded by the sun itself into a radiant universe.
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DON’T ASK ME WHO I AM AND DON’T EXPECT ME TO REMAIN THE SAME My shoes. Everyone’s shoes. The agreement was that I could borrow them, but the new height seemed extremely unsafe to me. Whenever I saw them an uneasy feeling came over me because I had forgotten to clean the sandals and the blackish mark made on the inner sole by my sweat and grubby feet had not yet been washed off. Duran’s trainee managed to do it in the meantime, thank God. being yourself = leaving yourself Duran Lantink is studying at the Sandberg Instituut: Fashion Matters But why does fashion matter? For Giambattista Valli, like most other designers it is a quest for beauty. ‘Real beauty is the one that touches the senses, yes, you can almost say it strokes you – it caresses you.’ (1) But in the one-off Fashion Magazine by photographer Alec Soth I read that he interprets beauty as a tool to engage the viewer, and that he hopes that in fashion ‘they are trying to inspire change’ too. ‘But instead of causing you to quit your job, those pretty girls with handbags have you working overtime. The problem with fashion magazines, and with the industry as a whole, is that the understanding of beauty can be so flat.’ He did find it difficult to find his own voice in this fashion project but he discovers it in recognising the gap between Paris, the city where he photographed fashion, and Minnesota, where he lives. ‘I am trying to explore the distance between Paris and Minnesota. If photography documents
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anything, it is the space between the subject and myself.’ (2) And maybe this is the value of fashion: exploring the space between the clothing and yourself.
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me more closely,’ says Duran. ‘People are sometimes so transparent, they say what they think you want them to say, or in a work situation it becomes apparent that there’s a hierarchy, which means that there are certain things ‘Fiction and poetry are doses, medicines. you may not say or do. But we are free and What they heal is the rupture reality makes on each others’ equals. I am not more important the imagination. Opposite the facts of reality: than someone else and vice versa. Mark The facts of who you can be.’ (3) Rutter is not more important (but perhaps more normal). Why does fashion matter, I ask Duran. ‘Fash My father passed this colour on to me ion is my way of communicating. Fashion is but he died soon after I was born. I don’t simply my material, my voice. In the same way understand white as a norm, I want to disreas someone else paints, I make clothing, fashion. gard it, skip it. I grew up with my white Dutch In the past, fashion showed which group mother and her family. So if someone asks you belonged to, a means of identification, ‘what are your roots?’ I give them a strange whereas today, fortunately, it is approached look. As a child I was simply self-willed. When much more openly. My work is dis-identifying I was nine, I showed up at school in my mothand instead of sticking to general themes er’s ‘Puck and Hans’ dress. But don’t imagine I approach each item individually, and this is that I was bullied; I was just very cheeky. what makes the overall effect eclectic.’ I used to cycle to school in a different outfit A collective identity, an ‘us’, is always limiting. each day. I still cherish the ‘I do what I want’ Fashion can be an ideal way of bringing people attitude of those days. ‘ together without allowing their individuality to be lost. As luxury chains the big fashion labels are comparable with H&M. At a party, I recogI have a lemon that lookes like an octopus, nise a dress as the dress that was recently in long fingers growing on or out of it. An the Van Ravenstein window display, I see the outlandish lemon. But yet: it is not everyday, Dries van Noten tops, the Marni look. It is but it is just a lemon – these grow too. A rare, beautiful, attractive but nevertheless a mass strange and beautiful specimen that I keep product. A ‘normal’ but on a luxury scale. with me until it shrivels. As you don’t come Duran adds: ‘In the fashion world they across an octopus lemon like this every day, always present a unified whole: a big ego lurks you might find it gruesome, weird, scary, in the big brands, not only that of the person but its being is a yellow lemon. People come who buys it but also the ego of the brands in all colours, heights, with and without themselves. A Prada jacket in a Prada shop arms and legs, with and without hair, rare prefers not to be combined with something or more average. else. There is the Chanel look and there is The fixed data are more or less: a head, the Dior look. The reality of the world does a torso, arms, legs, gender, a person can not correspond to this, nothing has just one speak, hear, feel, but everyone reading this look any more. list already knows that it is not correct. It is My interest flows to the possibilities a statistical average of a person. One person in the future, people who would like to be blue can hear better than another. or a merman. Feeling that they are a dog. The average skin colour according to My generation lives with gender fluidity and artist Tom Lorenz de Jong in Group portrait all other differences in a flexible way; I want (Ink jet print, 107 x 182 cm in acrylic frame to move forward from there. Unravelling history 200 x 120 x 7 cm. 7.049.836.368 pixels (world is fishing after the net, whereas I want to population) on paper. 2013) shows a curious focus on those blue people and bird creatures, pink with a dark glow. the juicy possibilities of the future. ’Since I’ve been studying at the Sandberg, ‘Don’t ask me who I am and don’t expect me I’ve started to observe the behaviour around to remain the same.’ We can’t get away from
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the fact, it is, perhaps by accident, a quote by Michel Foucault. He states that we people have become work machines and he places The creative unexpected self versus the functioned disciplined self. He goes on to present a flexible self, because your self is not a fixed entity. A Syrian who comes to the Netherlands does not remain the same man as in his country of birth. An adolescent who leaves the parental home changes. I have become a different person since I stored away my seventies Jan Jansen sandals. According to Foucault, power regulates human behaviour. He is not (only) speaking about police officers and schoolmasters, but is referring to everything that disciplines us towards ‘normal’. A Lactacyd advert, (dis) approving glances in the street, a Facebook post. But while everything is power, Foucault does succeed in his later philosophy in factoring in space for self-care. A loving relationship with a fluctuating self, such as an attempt to keep at bay domination as well as powerlessness, narcissism and resentment, allowing us to function as a dear friend, a good neighbour or citizen. Life as a living form that you need to keep on creating, intercepting, and re-creating. The normal, about which so much is said: the finger that points to a tiny little circle, that’s the way we do that here, that’s how we are. This way, then. Not differently. Normal, what is normal? In my favourite book, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, Jeanette Winterson tells of her adoption by a Pentecostal couple. She writes about her mother: ‘She adopted me because she wanted a friend. A girl is supposed to grow up and be a missionary. Instead she falls in love with a woman. Disaster.’ Winterson then explains to her mother: ‘When I am with her I am happy. Just happy.’ Her mother’s reply: ‘Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?’ But there is a way out: in her parents’ house there were six books. After having read them all Winterson understood there was something else she could do. ‘Fuck it’, she thought, ‘I can write my own.’ Duran: ‘For me, fashion means that everything is possible, that you can look the way
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you want. That it makes you bigger, strong and powerful, just as I went to school in a dress. That’s it. Disidentifying.’ Blessed are the sissies Blessed are the bodices boy-dykes Blessed are the high femme Archeology If, then, we have to clothe ourselves, Against the cold. for instance, or in the name of something, in the shreds of this or that time past, stories and memory-props that tell us nothing. except that we were already there in the today that existed before today – If we can only preserve ourselves in the now By continually re-inventing ourselves in the now, then preferably simple by means of clothing. you are sitting at a table. Suddenly you see how someone was crossing ice, how the cold got its grip on him Or some other fate and you say: look here you have his shoes, leather jacket, gloves. ‘Where is time? Time is here.’ Esther Jansma ‘The Sandberg allowed me to think more freely, not immediately cutting and making things with needle and thread, but space to think and fantasize. Using the sale-pieces from farfetch.com, the sale Walhalla of the expensive brands, I presented a lookbook in which I combined the clothing from the sale to form new imaginary creations. I see myself as a virtual design studio that makes new unique items from the purchases on far-fetch. com. The pdf file goes to the client in New York or Rio de Janeiro and a local atelier unpicks them and remodels them into a unique piece of clothing, following my design. In this way, I bring the high fashion cast-offs back to the highest regions again but now as a really unique one-off piece.’ ‘Don’t ask me who I am and don’t expect me to remain the same’.
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Duran: ‘I chose the title of the thesis because I find the ‘who are you’ irrelevant. That changes by the day and if you look towards the future, everything is completely open. You change with it, with every second that ticks by. The so-called classics also change. Even a white T-shirt becomes tighter or looser and the sleeves change again. A trenchcoat now is not what it was. A white shirt. ‘The Sandberg pushed me to being less lazy and more daring. What I undertake has a firmer basis, before that it was purely intuition. Now I take the time and leisure to produce quality. The message is concealed in the seams and inside the clothes. Allah, Buddha, Zeus – the world is for everyone. The message is clearer and more invisible. Individuality. Strong and powerful.’ (‘OK, later on I discovered that a Masters also has a theoretical side, and in my enthusiasm I overlooked it, my research takes place more in images than in words. But there are restrictions, a certain number of words, reflecting textually on your own work.’) My wedding dress is/was a dress with a print of a green coloured cosmos by Peter Pilotto. The marriage lasted half a year, and it was time to link a symbol to it. I asked Duran to alter it. The dress was too tight, so I hoped for a big pair of scissors that would make everything a bit looser, a new dress that would waft around me. But it turned out that the dress remained untouched, a long scarf was added like a wide tie at the front, sleeves from a Chanel jacket sewn onto it, an extra skirt under it. So when Duran started working on his Sandberg collection (the idea of the virtual lookbook made real by combining high fashion cast-offs) I gave him my dress again. When I interviewed him in his studio I suddenly recognised a strip of fabric of my former wedding dress in a new black dress: the green, my beautiful favourite cosmos green has been dipped in black dye. ‘Oh, I still have the front,’ says Duran to reassure me. But I accept: don’t expect the dress to remain the same.
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Footnote 1. A magazine curated by Giambattista Valli 2. Paris Minnesota, Fashion magazine by Alec Soth 3. N0 B Featuring Bernhard Wilhelm February 2002
The fifth essay interpreting the Sandberg Graduation Show 2017 by curator Hanne Hagenaars is based on an interview with one of the Fashion Matters graduates. HANNE HAGENAARS (1955) is a curator, writer and teacher. She initiated the magazine Mister Motley of which she was editor in chief for nine years. Mister Motley’s intention was to connect art and (daily) life and this is still at the core of her practice. She worked as a curator for the Kunstvereniging Diepenheim, De Garage in Rotterdam and het Valkhof in Nijmegen (in collaboration with Gijs Assmann and later on with Heske ten Cate). She curated the exhibition Half sugar, half sand in the Pavilions in Almere (2012), Be Calm for the CBK in Amsterdam (2014) and the Gelderland Biennale Living Giving in Arnhem in 2016. She made the artist’s book Arcadia about the identity of Diepenheim, she launched her own book No cloud, how art saved my life at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 2016 and is now working on a book about Maastricht as a city of the senses. In addition, she is head of the Studium Generale program at the Royal Academy of Fine Art in The Hague and a teacher at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy. Every week she writes about how people live with art in the newspaper Het Parool.
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CAROLINE RUIJGROK
Dear Smári Rúnar Róbertsson, It seems unlikely to me you considered the possibility of someone taking the title of your thesis as an entity on its own, that someone would think about this sentence cut loose from its context, but I did. You don’t know me, I don’t know you – I haven’t read your thesis, nor have I seen your work. Thinking about the title of your thesis, The period is the hole the sentence falls into after it is read, brought me into a somewhat uncomfortable state of mind – maybe things just become holes if you look at them too long. First, I tried to imagine what your graduation work looks like or what your thesis is about. I reasoned you must’ve written about language, about meaning. About the way words give meaning to the world around us, the way language structures our experience of the world. Self-conscious and reflective thoughts for sure, delicate reasoning, well versed writing. Then, I assumed that if language is your field of interest, you probably don’t like to boil things down to singular statements. No massive concrete sculptures on your graduation show. No flashy neon lights. No, something way more elegant, a thoroughly thoughtthrough installation of some sort; several objects, some found, some constructed, possibly a thing dissected into its parts, highlighting the lay-out of the space in a tasteful manner. Natural colours? Objects no bigger than the size of my hand? Some tickling
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THE PERIOD IS THE HOLE THE SENTENCE FALLS INTO AFTER IT IS READ words, deliberately assigned a somewhat unconventional location, as part of the work? Three hours and several imaginary installations later, I realized that my wild guesses and loose assumptions were an attempt to circumvent the implications of my own game (don’t we all prefer to run away rather than to grab the bull by it’s horns?). My attempt to reconstruct a plausible context for your title was born out of a desire to find something or someone that could exonerate me from the assignment I had given myself – to explore how your title affects me. So instead of beating around the bush, I decided to dive head first into the hole your title laid out for me. And oh! a hole it was… It led me to think about everything – things, time, life – in terms of ends. The little dot that marks the end of a sentence becomes a big black hole if you look at it too long. Period, never-ending night, a tiny point, a monster. Place the little dot at the end of a sentence at the centre of my thoughts and hoopla! number two in the bathroom: the end of the meal; a footstep in the sand: the end of a distance travelled; summer: the end of spring; graduation: the end of your studies; an orgasm: the end of making love. The tiny round trace of ink my pen leaves on a paper outlines the sentence as a sentence. Ends define what precedes them as a whole, a unity, something to look back on; ends transform an endless stream of events into
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structured points in time. Like breadcrumbs, a trace to follow, a logic to pursue. Things ordered neatly, clear and – I’ll admit – quite necessary: imagine reading a book written as an uninterrupted stream of words (how tiring), imagine work that’s never finished (how frustrating), or days without night (please, give me a break). Of course I understand structure is required to prevent chaos from reigning, but understanding life in terms of consecutive ends doesn’t seem very gratifying to me. One end at the end seems quite enough. What do we loose when we cut things up into pieces? I love the silence between the last tones of a concert and the first pair of hands applauding – it’s the space wherein the sound is sounding down, the experience finds its rest. The in-between that has room for resonance, for echo and fading. So in the end, I wouldn’t like to look at the period as a hole to fall into – it becomes a rock that blocks our way forward. The period to me is a portion in time, it has length, it’s a break, a moment to catch breath. For me it is an interval, a hinge point or a gentle transition. It’s the top of a mountain that provides a new view. The period to me is a comma, and I hope it is that for you too. Best, Caroline
The sixth essay interpreting the Sandberg Graduation Show 2017 by Writer & Artist Caroline Ruijgrok is an open letter to one of the Sandberg graduates. CAROLINE RUIJGROK studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and at the University of Amsterdam. Next to her own practice as an artist, she founded Trebelsee, in collaboration with Bernke Klein Zandvoort. With makers and thinkers from different fields of work, they realize projects in a variety of appearances. In their first project, Object Observer, they examined how everyday objects affect us – with an exhibition, a symposium, a performance program and the book Hoe De Dingen Ons Bewegen.
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BERNKE KLEIN ZANDVOORT
Several clay objects meticulously rolled in bubble wrap, packed in a guitar case, brought to the house of her father 1 Three pieces of 3D mesh 200 x 60 centimeters, wrapped like a croissant, brought to a studio in Italy or the garage of her parents 2 A little lobster carried in a SPA bottle, a large range of plastics wrapped in one sheet of big plastic, a pile of El Delphino pizza boxes stacked in one big box – all stored in a working space (which also serves as a living room) 3
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shadows cast by the columns bring an architectural model to mind. Security already makes their rounds on this construction site, workers move in and out, while Sandberg graduates carry around fragments of their works, clearing away the exhibition space.
Pile of elastic bands and ribbons – held by two hands – transported to a trash can outside 4
People are walking through the space wearing white construction site helmets and fluorescent yellow vests. Although a sticker on their helmet reads ‘VISITOR’, none of their movements are hesitant; all are adequate, contain a goal. Someone is kneeling in front of a giant volume of concrete, someone sweeps sand on a piece of fabric. Three people stand together rolling cables, other hands are pairing to carry a tall volume wrapped in blankets. It’s cool in here, almost chilly, and the absence of windows in this concrete passage pushes the world outside even further away. It is not a bad place to stay when it’s 32 degrees outside. Not a bad place to witness the dismantling of an exhibition. New Town, the graduation exhibition of Studio for Immediate Spaces, ran for five days in a passageway of Station Noord, the last stop in a line of dots connecting Amsterdam’s north and south. In 2018 this overground station will host 42,500 travelers a day, but today it is a clean collection of grey columns and glass planes – a skeleton embracing a vast amount of empty space, where the sharp
Four plates of aluminium atop a structure of MDF, shoved on a tray, driven to a rented storage space 5 Bits of plaster swept on a large piece of plastic, plastic folded by its four corners, emptied in a container outside 6
“One of the first requisites of a tea master is the knowledge of how to sweep, clean and wash, for there is an art in cleaning and dusting,” I read in Anne Büscher’s thesis titled Ceremony. She had a conversation with a tea master about the importance of formalism and repetition in traditional tea ceremonies, as well as imagination and intuition. Inspired by this conversation, I’ve been thinking about how the life of materials in ceremonies and in exhibitions echo each other. A ceremony marks an important moment. Most of this marking happens invisibly. The only grips are the rituals performed, sequences of acts involving different kinds of materials – such as gestures, words and objects. Performed in a scripted order, in a sequestered place, that which is usually profane changes into something sacred. I thought about how
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a handshake can colour a whole conversation. Also brought to mind was a text on how boy scouts in any country get taught the official ways of folding and raising a flag, thus emphasizing that the flag should never be treated as a piece of cloth. And I thought about how the ending of a term of study – a quest full of discoveries, epic U-turns, fails and growth – is a moment that asks for marking. The materials used for this marking transform meaning more than once. Objects, words, and gestures, gathered over time, are transported from studio to exhibition floor, where they are moved until their precise spot is found. Inaugurated by an opening speech, with wine glasses inappropriately placed on top of sculptures, the works stay for five days in the same place before being disassembled again, moved into a van, and driven towards some sort of storage space. “If I accept objects have a life, I also must accept that they die,” says graduate Nadjim Bigou while folding a plastic sheet where plaster powder is gathered. He will be throwing most of his materials away. We look at the plastic together. Some air got in, and it inflates the plastic while the weight of the plaster holds it to the ground like some kind of transparent mushroom. “Look, I like this,” he says, “it’s almost a new work.” And to stress this he throws a small object in the plastic bubble, giving the thing a new shape.
A bunch of clothes gathered in a messy heap “as if I were in a rush”, put in a JUMBO bag, brought to his studio 7 Ten concrete objects approximately 100 × 50 × 50 centimeters, innumerably heavy and containing bits of cable, plastic forks, shells and tins – put on a forklift truck, transported to “a nice spot where I saw bunnies grazing” 8
It’s not only the actions of the insider – the artist – that transform the material and its meaning, it is the outsider – the onlooker – who creates the actual ceremonial gathering. Having put on their spectator clothes, spectator pace, and spectator gaze, the audience knows their part of the score. The main substance of their encounter with the materials is intangible, goes beyond words, as both
THE TITLE OF THE WORK
the work itself and the experience of it are highly fragmented, illogical, and unarticulated. “The guest needs intuition and imagination,” Anne’s tea master says, “true beauty can be discovered by one who mentally completes the incomplete.” I stay with Nadjim a bit while he sweeps the floor. Not being aware of the mandatory workers uniform, not carrying a broom or a set of tools, I am a bit of an island watching graduates doing their chores, and I have to admit: I enjoy it. Mesmerizing I would call the effect of watching fragments of actions, fragments of works carried around – while the memory of the exhibition as a whole lingers in the space. Two persons in the back of the space try to reposition a giant ladder. A girl sitting on her knees makes a picture of each of her objects before she packs them up. When Nadjim arrives to a pile of ribbons on the floor, I ask him what he will do. He picks one up that is baby blue and has a repetitive LET’S GO printed on it. He holds it up with one hand, while the other slides fifteen centimeters down to make a scissor gesture. Fifteen centimeters is two times LET’S GO. “That will be enough for documentation,” he replies.
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1. Materials used in the work of Lily Lanfermeijer 2. Materials used in the work of Zsófia Szöke 3. Materials used in the work of Kristoffer Zeiner 4. Materials used in the work of Nadjim Bigou 5. Materials used in the work of Arie de Fijter 6. Materials used in the work of Nadjim Bigou 7. Materials used in the work of Nadjim Bigou 8. Materials used in the work of Kim Wawer
The seventh and last essay interpreting the Sandberg Graduation Show 2017 by poet Bernke Klein Zandvoort is a closing ceremony. BERNKE KLEIN ZANDVOORT studeerde Beeld & Taal aan de GRA en debuteerde in 2013 met de bundel ‘Uitzicht is een afstand die zich omkeert’ bij uitgeverij Querido. Behalve met tekst werkt ze met video, fotografie en performance. Samen met Caroline Ruijgrok vormt ze sinds 2015 Trebelsee, wat ze ziet als haar lange arm, waarmee ze projecten initieert met makers en denkers uit verschillende werkvelden. 2017-2018 is Klein Zandvoort resident aan de Van Eyck Academie.
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THE TITLE OF THE WORK
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THE TITLE OF THE WORK
THE TITLE OF THE WORK
PROJECTS A—Z
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& the Decooked #001 Human life is a process that involves the passage of time. Cyril de Menouillard (France, 1991) points out this passage is also present in the process of formation of the landscapes in which people have lived.
DIRTY ART VENUE: KRUX
& the Decooked #001 focuses on three distinct elements – earthenware, concrete and garbage – to uncover this anthropocentric sedimentation of the landscape. They represent three strata: earth as the common ground we live on, covered by concrete as a product of modernity and garbage as the ultimate element of our material accumulation.
CYRIL DE FRANCE MENOUILLARD 1991 cyrilmenouillard@gmail.com
cyrilmenouillard.com
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(underconstruction) Through the making process, Mio Fujimaki (Japan, 1987) understands and connects to the world she finds herself in, navigating by way of discovery, awareness, learning and physical experience. How much does ‘in-visual’ and ‘in-visible’ matter to the visual works? Motivated by a quest for deeper or alternative understanding, she researches the
MIO FUJIMAKI mio7o5im@hotmail.co.jp
miofujimaki.berta.me
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manufacturing processes of ubiquitous products, locating the unknown, the elusive, and the magical qualities hidden in the everyday. Studying and replicating the spontaneous and temporary material manifestations of invisible powers such as stress fractures in glass, pigment separation in ink and dye discharge in textiles, Fujimaki uncovers unsuspected and time-based patterns. Her audience is invited to share in her process of discovery and unyielding enthusiasm for the unknown.
JAPAN 1987
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
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Can’t tell if I’m grieving or laughing / Ancestral Joy “One of the queerest thoughts we can have is that we are nature. It problematizes the concept of the human and animal separation, then further of animal and object, then further again into the slippery domain of object and feeling. This perspective gives the affective potential of a rock as much currency as the body and vice-versa. If we remove the hierarchy of what is considered an animate or inanimate subject it messes deeply with the binary way of thinking about inside/outside, healthy/unhealthy, wrong/right. If everything is an agent, everything is vital. It opens the ability to affect and
CARLY ROSE BEDFORD kalibones@gmail.com
carlyrose.live
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be affected without an understanding of what or who possess more value. I am interested in opening spaces that question that worth. Each work is a collage of intention and intuition. Just as with how our perception of nature is pieced together through an enmeshment of culture and experience so are these works pieced together with impressions, facts, associations, technical labour and affective moments. Material processes help to lean into the edges as they bridge the threshold by being ‘natural’ and at the same time manufactured, they mirror and meet the dichotomy of our processes of perception. They break, for a moment, continuity and lure us into the tacit language that utters directly to the body.”
AUSTRALIA 1983
A FESTIVAL OF CHOICES SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
The graduates of the Fine Arts Department were presented at various galleries across Amsterdam from the 21st to the 25th of June 2017. The Fine Arts department retains a focus on autonomy and making, while addressing the social and economic roles of art production. The programme structurally redefines conventional notions of artistic labour in three open modules: Language, Image and Play/Object. A main tutor develops the curriculum of each of these modules over the course of two years. Throughout this period, the Sandberg Instituut functions as a base, while encouraging each programme to modify and manifest itself both internally and externally.
FINE ARTS
FINE ARTS
Participants: Nora Barón, Bing Bin, César Brun, Amelia Clark Productions, Lara Alexandra Konrad, Ieva Kraule, Vicente Mollestad, Will Peck, Smári Rúnar Róbertsson, Luc Windaus. Team: Maxine Kopsa, Jeroen Boomgaard, Gintaras Didziapetris, Gabriel Lester, Lucy Skaer, Mark Turner, Yolande van der Heide. Venue: various galleries across Amsterdam.
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About a Gait By dislocation linear perspective, César Brun (France, 1990) sustains indecisiveness. In About a Gait, a fantasy world is generated from mundane tools that examine a porosity between intuition and intention.
CÉSAR BRUN
cesarbrunn@gmail.com
FRANCE 1990
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Alex the Kid goes Ghosting “Someone walks on the pavement, lips pursed, compressing air and tongue and listening to the sound produced. It’s creating a healthily naive inverted spiral – several elements pushing against each other until they are lifted. Let’s follow it down alleys and dead ends. Some dead ends are other people’s alleys, some people’s realism is another person’s fantasy. Refusing an attempt to master energy and force it into certain rationally profound
LUC WINDAUS
luwin@mail.de
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directions, let’s call for decentralisation by creating a space where energy can just happen or into which it can just fall. By way of an approachable and entertaining idiosyncratic thoroughness along with the oddity of a baboon’s tail as a comparative measurement for an Elf’s motion on a table. There will be baguette-like clay items, Mr. Malcolm McLaren paying a visit, and Pyjamas throughout; we don’t want to run the risk of obscurity.” In collaboration with: Nora Baron
GERMANY 1983
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
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Alien Exoticism Alien Exoticism consists of the workout video Free Muscle Memory that culminates into a functional sculpture, disclosing Alban Karsten Bras’ (Netherlands, 1983) research into the notions of work, labor
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and action within an infiltrative artistic practice. This is based upon the biological concept of mutualism: the way two parties exist in a relationship in which each individual benefits from the activity of the other. In other words, to see how much you need to give in order to get what you want.
ALBAN NETHERLANDS KARSTEN BRAS 1983 albankarsten@gmail.com
albanbras.nl
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All The Nothing That Will Remain Pushing for an ethical fashion movement that goes beyond t-shirt slogans, Rafael Kouto (Switzerland, 1990) was inspired by a quote from Romuald Hazoume: “I send back the West that which belongs to them, that is to say, the refuse of a consumer society that invades us everyday�. Kouto started his personal discovery into African culture. The resulting fashion collection proposes a de-Westernization of mass produced discarded garments
RAFAEL KOUTO rafaelkouto@rafaelkouto.com
rafaelkouto.com
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and textiles, transforming them into a hybrid aesthetic between Africa and the West. In collaboration with recycling centres in The Netherlands and Switzerland, waste garments, textiles and unusual materials were collected to be transformed into high luxury items. Focussing on sustainable and environmental design systems, mixing upcycling with couture techniques and crafts on three different main layers: prints, embroidery and weaving. The garments made of waste and upcycled materials become a statement of new values and meanings for a more sustainable production system.
SWITZERLAND 1990
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
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All We Do Is Live Lara Konrad (Germany, 1987) looks for the coexistence(s) of other selves within the total self. “Somewhere between the process of experience and its immediate impact upon the unconscious. How the past
LARA KONRAD
heythere@larakonrad.com
larakonrad.com
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moves forward within a body, continuously, rematerializing almost every time. We access memory with similar purpose. Whatever fails within the projection of human agency. The way we’ve never lived for reality. As if consumption and anticipation weren’t somehow the same. And how we’re all leaving, all the time.”
GERMANY 1987
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
And, Notes of Blush-Pepper Using 3D animation software, Aaro Murphy (Finland, 1991) has designed a series of fictional environments. Filmed from multiple virtual camera angles, the spaces start to blur in and out of focus generating illegible revolving images. The videos are accompanied by a looping
AARO MURPHY
aaro@aaromurphy.com
aaromurphy.com
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soundscape projected by series of rotary speakers, as well as a custom fragrance diffusing system. The work is part of an ongoing investigation into immersive digital culture and apparatuses of virtual architecture. By deploying high-gloss digital imagery, audio and smell, Murphy questions the tools of commercial atmospheric production and ways in which they assimilate themselves in our daily environments.
FINLAND 1991
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
Assembly Lab The Assembly Lab is a micro-manufacturing store designed by Vera de Pont (Netherlands, 1991), where an array of wearables is produced locally and on demand. It makes use of modern digital techniques and machines which incorporate the user as a co-creator. In the Lab, the visitor can operate the machinery and witness their product being made on the spot. Instead of traditional sewing machines and hand
VERA DE PONT
contact@veradepont.com
veradepont.com
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tools, all machines in this Assembly Lab are digitally operated by the user, introducing a sense of intimacy within the production process. De Pont imagines a new distribution model that spawns from the principles of the Lab: producing fully finished garments and parts that can be assembled, opening the door for customised manufacturing of wearables, cutting the costs in logistics. The role of global companies will shift from being primary producers or distributors to coordinators of networks.
NETHERLANDS 1991
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
Babe in the Abyss Babe in the Abyss consists of a video installation and a cacophonous orchestra from the underworld. Kolbrún Löve (Iceland, 1989) directed the
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orchestra to cause objects to emerge through recurring transformation, translation, and circulation – embodying a penetrating and invasive sublime, while the video seduces the viewer into a state of disorientation.
KOLBRÚN PÓRA ICELAND LÖVE 1989 kolbrunkolbrun@gmail.com
kolbrunkolbrun.net
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Bam Bam Tchick! Bam Bam Tchick! Hasdkef gseir druogeuhr duf rubor blusch, as tempral ekxtassis of bobody; A`fhdogosd nedfgifuh hoguieghr; Swelling reut flesh futrutrology; Gikfs budiwehrug men nihfohs; Prhre-coittal urgency shamm ens particcle acceleratror; Bambbling blender jihlo grinding hermennfhneuts; Jhifioe boor; Rubber glovbes pour erotic affectivitiems.
NORA BARÓN norabaron.mail@gmail.com
norabaron.net
In collaboration with: Luc Windaus, Kristoffer Zeiner Christiansen, Alice Dos Reis and Monica Mays.
SPAIN
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
CRITICAL STUDIES VENUE: BUTCHER’S TEARS
BESIDE OURSELVES
Beside Ourselves Engaging in stories of erotics, queerness and water, the work of Rosie Haward (United Kingdom, 1991) is centered around a combination of fictional and theoretical writing, using both to think through ideas of queer temporalities and the potential of erotic writing to mess with linear
ROSIE HOWARD
rosiehaward@gmail.com
textual-feelings.tumblr.com
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time and normative sexuality. Beside Ourselves contains three texts that consider forms of queerness, giddiness, erotics and the sea and their coming together. A conversation has been recorded as well, titled Queer Waters: Giddy Texts and Ardent Readings as part of the podcast Textual Feelings, in collaboration with Matilda Hemming.
U.K. 1991
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
Boy An idiosyncratic, multilayered universe was created by Kristoffer Zeiner Christiansen (Norway, 1987) and situated inside the new Amsterdam Noord metro station. Experimenting with layers of virtual and fictional worlds, he created a dolphin-avatar as a representation of himself.
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A character that is conceptually greater than him: more beautiful and more intelligent. Site-specific but simultaneously disconnected from its context, the work explores the possibilities of manipulation and the narrative potential of a space and objects. Inspired by his youth, he believes growing up with playing video games has changed his perception on being a young boy and being a human.
KRISTOFFER ZEINER NORWAY CHRISTIANSEN 1987
kristoffer.christiansen@gmail.com
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cargocollective.com/kristofferzchristiansen
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
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C/UICW/AO-H.E.O`2T Alliteration Trail The practice of Ivan Cheng (Australia, 1991) focusses on the damage in interpreting notation, which spawns out of interest for ‘bad reading’ and
IVAN CHENG ivancheng91@gmail.com
ivancheng.com
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non-negative ontology. With foundations in contemporary music performance, a conceptual practice takes shape in the space between the ideal and the actual, formed by that what is not notated, stylistic expectations and different types of virtuosity.
AUSTRALIA 1991
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
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Cache
it is hard to predict exactly how it will change. One never really knows what to expect when coming back to the studio, which is part of the excitement. Something has dried up, spilled its contents, or started moulding. This manifestation or sensation is brought into the gallery space. Van Hoek wants to create a window into this alteration, this life stream, and give the viewer a certain agency in deciding when to perceive the work; defining it according to its current state of deterioration. To witness it as a slice of time, a film still. To see that you are a part of what you see.
Visualizing the disintegration that usually slips through our immediate perception, Thom van Hoek (Netherlands, 1990) employs one material in particular: agar-agar. Agar is made of a type of algae, and it has been used as an ingredient in desserts and as a solid substrate to host growth media for microbiological work. Van Hoek’s interest in working with agar and organic material in general has to do with the pace by which it alters itself: as opposed to other synthetic and stable materials
THOM VAN HOEK thvhoek@gmail.com
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NETHERLANDS 1990
cargocollective.com/thomdejager
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
Call to an Unknown Ship Through a visual essay shot as a video in the format of a book, Oliver Barstow (South Africa, 1979) investigates Peter Hoffman’s film ?O, Zoo!,
OLIVER BARSTOW oliver@fourthwallbooks.com
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shot in the Netherlands in 1985, about the making of Peter Greenaway’s film A Zed and Two Noughts, also shot in the Netherlands in 1985. In its sequence of pages Call to an Unknown Ship uses reflection, symmetry and association in an unresolved search for what, if anything, is lost.
SOUTH AFRICA 1979
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
Ceromancy or a Fibonacci Brunch Bing Bin (China, 1991) is interested in poetry, speculative realism, accelerationism and fortunetelling. Her work – mostly presented in video and sound, text and objects – swings between the lyrical and refined sarcasm.
BING BIN
binsoibing@gmail.com
bingbin.org
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“She got insomnia since she had studied astrology, perhaps the delusion of the future devoured time. The present and the past were gone, only the future left in her world. But the insights into future wouldn’t make her prophecies accurate. Now she lay on the bed and sleep visited her unexpectedly; a thought came to her mind when she almost fell asleep – the secrets of gold hid in candles.”
CHINA 1991
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
Dealing with Control, A Parallel Fiction #01 During her observational research in Calais, at the time of the dismantlement of the refugee camp, Neeltje Ten Westenend (Netherlands, 1975) attempted to place herself in the shoes of military policemen. Thereby she sometimes entered the role of detective, while probing into the appearances, workings and behaviour of the uniformed officers. Back
STUDIO FOR IMMEDIATE SPACES VENUE: STATION NOORD
in Amsterdam she interviewed an ex-military policeman turned actor, to get a better understanding of this double perspective. One part of the research resulted in a video work set in a military training village. A couple driving a car along the countryside is based on a script that in turn is based on personal experience and memory. In this experiment, which she calls a parallel fiction, Ten Westenend asked the actors to improvise on the script, emphasising the role of text and voice.
NEELTJE NETHERLANDS TEN WESTENEND 1975 neeltjetenwestenend@gmail.com
neeltjetenwestenend.nl
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Did Not Take Place It is the year 2021, and the Dutch have to flee their homeland. Rebekka Fries (Netherlands, 1998), conceptualises a near future in which Dutch citizens turn into refugees: we witness feelings of insecurity and bewilderment while the story of the protagonist unfolds through a video feed from
REBEKKA FRIES
rebekkafries@gmail.com
rebekkafries.nl
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a smartphone screen and a recording made by the smartphone’s camera. Fries reflects on the current crisis of migration, whether triggered by war of motivated by economic or climate concerns. In the reversal of standard hierarchies between Western European citizens and the incoming ‘others’, she challenges our view towards minorities through the lens of the smartphone, the most intimate and immersive medium at our disposal today.
NETHERLANDS 1988
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
Dig: Positive Bodies The premise for Kim Wawer’s (Netherlands, 1988) work is the experience of embodied space. For Dig, she dug a series of holes, which were the size and scale of her body. They evoke a material intimacy and function as a breeding ground for ideas. Dig has resulted in sculptural earth
KIM WAWER kim.wawer@gmail.com
kimwawer.com
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works, in writing, and a series of concrete and latex casts. Wawer works with soil which is, like our own bodies, in an ever-changing state of flux. She approaches embodied space as an organic substance, as so called ‘positive bodies’. The work takes the human scale as a basis for a series of sculpted positives, in which material gestures evoke a sense of earthly intimacy and form replaces the absent body.
NETHERLANDS 1988
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
Dark Matter Management Dark Matter Management is a modular installation and performance that consists of a collection of abstract models whose appearance lean towards domestic furniture. Arie de Fijter (Netherlands, 1986) defined several elements such as Slab, Stack, Crust and Plateau, which refer to notional landscapes that are situated beyond the furniture itself. They embody two working methods that correlate with dualistic dispositions.
ARIE DE FIJTER arie.defijter@gmail.com
ariedefijter.be
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The first is corporeal; a cast taken from the traced trepidation of a body defines an imaginary topography. The second is computerized; controlled duplication of archetypal shapes introduces overarching aqueducts and skyward spiral stairs. The combination of both are read as an architectural allegory of vulnerability and persistence, wherein each object claims specific scale and position. Performance in collaboration with Ksenia Perek.
NETHERLANDS 1986
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
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DOES THIS COUNT AS PROTEIN? Two years of artistic research has given rise to a number of immersive questions. What potential does materiality hold for addressing the present? What can be drawn from the relationship between object and maker? How do we give form to the immaterial? It is in response to this line of questioning that our individual work comes together into this final collective exhibition, presented at Looiersgracht 60 from the 14th to the 21st of June 2017. Materialisation in Art + Design (MAD) is a temporary collective of artists and designers who interrogate the process of materialization, moving beyond the actions of the practitioner towards the serendipity of chance, accident, discovery and the material’s own physical and psychic properties. We locate materials through the processes by which they are transformed, tangible or otherwise, setting in motion a conversation and a deep engagement with the performative nature of what is at hand. We are a diverse group, with a range of backgrounds, interests and training, brought together under the rubric of MAD.
MATERIALISATION
Participants: Oliver Barstow, Carly Rose Bedford, Iris Box, Anne Büscher, Dominique Festa, Mio Fujimaki, Thom van Hoek, Caroline Jacob, Julien Manaira, Johan Buskov Romme, Ellen Vårtun. Team: Herman Verkerk, Maurizio Montalti, Jens Pfeifer. Venue: Looiersgracht 60.
IN ART AND DESIGN
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
Drive-in Landscape Drive-in Landscape is a dĂŠcor for a photoshoot, set in a canyon landscape. Hein van Duppen (Netherlands, 1988) invites visitors to drive their car into the artificial setting and have their photograph taken. The installation depicts the car frozen in action with the driver behind the
HEIN VAN DUPPEN hein.vanduppen@gmail.com
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steering wheel. The work embodies and comments on the constructed commercial dream of the car as object of freedom and mobility. Drive-in Landscape evokes the car’s promise of spectacular journeys into mountains, metropolitan centres, deserts, forests and seasides. The landscape props, camera, flashlight, the photographer, the hosts, the driver and the car together stage a situation that forms a performative act.
NETHERLANDS 1988
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
Eggsample of Case Study #3 Monica Mays (Spain, 1990) developed MARA: a performative wellness center, reality show, and office for personal and collective development. In MARA, leisure and labor have blended, there is no need to work for the accumulation of wealth, comfort or prestige thanks to automatization. Leisure is not mere entertainment, but an exploration of libidinal drivers.
MONICA MAYS monicaleemays@gmail.com
monicamays.com
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Time is spent on developing expertise by focussing on presentness and technologies of the self in order to combat boredom and uncertainty. Performers: Alice Dos Reis, Andrea Lopez Bernal, Mathijs Walhout, Claes Storm, Sara Milio, Carl Johan Jacobsen. Sound compostion: Sun Shy Boy. Choreography: Alexey Shkolnik. Wardrobe: Paige Fruchtnicht. Graphics: Tom Kemp.
SPAIN 1990
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
Else Here (Process as Station) Interested in our being together in space – a place that is made by action – Carolin Gießner (Germany, 1989) has created a site-specific installation that is displaced throughout the exhibition and beyond. The diachronistic plots unfold to the beholder like scenes of a play. The character of the metro station as a hub for people in transit leads the way for the meandering of her works throughout the architecture. A station is a
CAROLIN GIESSNER
cg89@gmx.net
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place you go to to go somewhere else. Exploring the ‘madeness’ of our reality Gießner skews familiar objects into materialized fictions. Within her work she employs tactile tactics to move through (non)-physical matters that allow the work to be developed in close relation to the specific context in which they are experienced. She is interested in devising sites of togetherness that allows for third spaces to emerge: an approach that requires a continuous balancing of all elements at play.
GERMANY 1989
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
Embarking on the Impossible In an ongoing project sparked by a quest for the third lost column of San Marco in Venezia, Nicola Baratto (Italy, 1989) and Ioannis Mouravas (Greece, 1986) follow a team of archeologists and researchers who aim to localize a sunken Byzantine artefact that, since its arrival from the Orient in 1172, has been lost and unrecovered. Blending future and past relics, Baratto and Mouravas reflect on the probe for the impossible.
NICOLA BARRATO
nicolabaratto00@gmail.com
nicolabaratto.com
DIRTY ART VENUE: KRUX
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They poeticize upon the act of dwelling in Venezia in Byzantine Venetian terms: as a visitor confirming the ritual of touristic presence, as an archeologist searching for memory and its matter, as a visionary waiting for an European mouth to be flooded in acqua alta. “In order to describe an impossible act or an absurd enterprise”, they say, “it’s like trying to see at night as in broad daylight”, or “it’s like trying to turn on the sun to see more clearly”, or even, “it’s like trying to catch the bitter-rose” (R. Duamal).
ITALY 1989
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
CRITICAL STUDIES
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END OF YEAR PROGRAMME
The Critical Studies programme offers an open, interdisciplinary environment for the development of an independent research practice, while providing a rigorous grounding in critical theory, research methods and writing techniques. We are especially interested in forms of inquiry and study that are at odds with traditional academic frameworks, including practice-led research and other intersections of research, practice and theoretical inquiry. The End of Year Programme of the Critical Studies department brings together the research, writing, discourse and experimentation that our participants have engaged in over the last year. The two-day programme of readings, talks, workshops and conversations includes contributions from the first and second years as well as invited guests, at Butcher’s Tears from the 16th to the 17th of June 2017.
CRITICAL STUDIES
Participants: Lucie Berjoan, Ivan Cheng, Callum Copley, Rogier Delfos, Ioanna Gerakidi, François Girard-Meunier, Rosie Haward, Özgür Kar, Ad van der Koog, Asja Novak, Stefanie Rau, Pieter Verbeke, Aidan Wall. Guests: Flavia Dzodan, Matilda Hemming, Sam Keogh, Will Kherbek, Alina Lupu, Radna Rumping, Wail Qasim, Belit Sağ, Lisa Sudhibhasilp, Hypatia Vourloumis. Team: Tom Vandeputte, Will Pollard, Jesse Darling, Joost de Bloois, Rick Dolphijn, Amelia Groom, Fatima Hellberg, Huw Lemmey, Mihnea Mircan, Merijn Oudenampsen, Naomi Pearce, Wail Qasim, Jules Sturm, Marina Vishmidt. Venue: Butcher’s Tears.
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
FASHION MATTERS
ETERNAL ERASURE – PERSPECTIVES ON FASHION MATTERS The one-off, two-year Master’s Program Fashion Matters (2015–2017), led by Christophe Coppens, was a research based course challenging the position of (fashion) designers in an ever-changing world and the ways, fashion is designed, produced, promoted, financed, sold and consumed. A big part of the fashion industry works just fine, but what if you love fashion but don’t feel like you want to be part of this current system? What if you cannot find a place for your understanding of fashion within this industry? It’s important to start, from the very beginning, with an understanding of what your possibilities and responsibilities are. Basically, you cannot produce anything anymore without full awareness of the environmental, social and economical conditions that shape the fashion industry. It’s all part of the contemporary process of creating. Anything less would be plain ignorant. The graduates of Fashion Matters were presented at Nieuw Dakota from the 15th to the 18th of June 2017.
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Participants: Maaike Fransen, Sanne Karssenberg, Rafael Kouto, Duran Lantink, Fien Ploeger, Vera de Pont, Gerda Postma, Karime Salame Sainz, Mona Maria Steinhäußer, Timna Weber, Margret Wibmer. Curator: Lukas Feireiss. Team: Christophe Coppens, Martine Zoeteman, Pieter Van Bogaert, Anne Marie Commandeur, Liesbeth in ’t Hout, Aliki van der Kruijs, Mikki Engelsbel. Venue: Nieuw Dakota.
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
Exhausted Derk Over (Netherlands, 1994) created a series of video portraits that show the stories of some of his closest friends, unveiling the immense struggle that you can experience while trying to have ‘just a
DERK OVER derkover@gmail.com
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normal day’. The videos try to stimulate a network where destructive thoughts travel through an assemblage of bodies and characters. Over observes how more and more people close to him find the concept of ‘just functioning’ challenging, as they can’t keep up with their own standards.
NETHERLANDS 1994
cargocollective.com/derkovercollections
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
Girls Night Out Girls Night Out is a sculptural environment which toys with the ideas of the massage and the manicure. Ellen VĂĽrtun (Norway, 1981) appropriates this imagery for a feministic discourse, believing that the freedom of women is not something to be taken for granted. Especially not in
ELLEN VĂ…RTUN ellentxu@gmail.com
ellenvartun.com
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times like these, when we consider the agenda, not only of the political elite in Western countries, but also of some groupings within society today fueled by the rise of right-wing nationalist movements across the world. She therefore believes certain messages, like the fact that women alone should decide over their own bodies in all matters, have to be repeated over and over again.
NORWAY 1981
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
Gorgoneion’s GazeW Gorgoneion’s Gaze is part of Ieva Kraule’s (Latvia, 1987) research into sculptures and fictional stories. “Should fix me, stiffen’d at the monstrous sight, A stony image, in eternal night.” – Homer’s Odyssey. “The search for beauty has created the hideous; the pursuit of harmony – only chaos surrounding it. Pushed to the margins of perfection now all who are flawed gather in its shadows. You stand here in the middle of this confined land of exclusory perfection. Don’t be bored by uniform beauty.
IEVA KRAULE
ieva.kraule@gmail.com
ievakraule.com
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Don’t be like others. Poke out one of your eyes and become a cyclops – sail with us to the other side. To the Eden of flawed, to the land of diversity. We will use a cripple as our compass, a cannibal will be our cook and our slightly overweight friend’s pants will be our sail. Our figurehead will be the Gorgoneion. Gorgoneion can be whatever we want it to be – an amulet for protection or a macabre reminder of a violent act. Its words hiss as snakes, bite as snakes, but are here to protect you from your own self, from your ignorance and idiocy. Look into its divine eyes, listen and let it petrify you if only for a moment.”
LATVIA 1987
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
Green Infernos The practice of Vicente Mollestad (Bolivia, 1987) negotiates an intuitive expressiveness and an analytical reflection as part of the same process of research. His background and identity informs a search for a position outside
VICENTE MOLLESTAD vicente.mollestad@gmail.com
vicente-mollestad.com
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of the status quo, relating to forms of obscurity and disconnection. Green Infernos departs from the concept of unconquerable wilderness extracted from the trope of Italian cannibal films from the 70s and 80s, looking at topography and the representation of landscape in relation to painting as well as the clutter and complexity surrounding its continuous transformation.
BOLIVIA/NORWAY 1987
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
HEX English mathematician Ada Lovelace made some well known contributions to computer science. However, Rachel-Rose O’Leary (Ireland, 1991) wants to emphasize her particular innovation – the invention, not
RACHEL-ROSE O’LEARY olearyrachelrose@gmail.com
rachelroseoleary.eu
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only of the first algorithm, but of the recursive statement. HEX is an attempt to implement a recursion into temporality, following the chaotic principle of ‘whatever works’. HEX is an audiovisual installation comprised of two sound channels, an erotic transcript, a Decentralized Autonomous Organization, pseudocode, floor drawings and a monitor.
IRELAND 1991
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
Host Stories Host Stories is a reading from a collection of writings by Pieter Verbeke (Belgium, 1982) which deal with the complexities of the cultural etiquette
PIETER VERBEKE
verbeke.pieter@gmail.com
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we encounter in our daily lives as art workers. The often satirical texts reflect on his own practice as a librarian and bookstore keeper, exploring the grey area between hospitality and hostility and proposing the latter as a mechanism to obtain a form of genuine hospitality.
BELGIUM 1982
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
How to Live Together? The project How to Live Together? consists of a collection of coats that offer a double functionality: they provide a space for shelter and trigger interactions. Besides being worn, they can be joined together
FASHION MATTERS VENUE: NIEUW DAKOTA
to create a communal sitting space to gather round and share experiences with others. Karime Salame Sainz (Mexico, 1984) believes that fashion can be a powerful tool, not only for creating your own identity, but also to establish social spaces that generate a new sense of belonging.
KARIME MEXICO SALAME SAINZ 1984
karime45@hotmail.com
karimesalame.com
130
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
Hyperhidrosis Reconceptualizing the existing conditions of pharmaceutical programming through a corporeal fiction taking place within a medical facility, Ruben Baart (Netherlands) perceives the sexual body as a malleable apparatus, which can be adjusted to bio-capitalist ends. The salon seeks to undermine these current strategies by arousing
RUBEN BAART rubenbaart@gmail.com
rubenbaart.com
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bodily secretions, generated by a closed, controlled atmosphere. Airborne compounds transmit signals addressing the subjects’ sexual orientation and genetic makeup, while simultaneously disrupting heterosexist discourses and institutional articulations of sexuality and nature. The installation functions as a mystic database to which the subject commits their perspiration, to harmonize with previous and following visitors.
NETHERLANDS
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
I Am Therefore Technological advancements increasingly dilute the limit between human and machine: Nadjim Bigou (France, 1990) believes the notion of the
NADJIM BIGOU
nadjim.bigou@gmail.com
nadjimbigou.wix.com/portfolio
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Makina Sociabilis seems highly conceivable. The annihilation of subject and object would be then an unavoidable question that mankind will have to deal with. Would objects become subjects? Or could it be humans that would become objects?
FRANCE 1990
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
A Static Load Test of Seat and Backrest Stress tests are required to meet and comply with European quality, safety and resistance standards. With an audiovisual installation, Kitty Maria van Ekeren (Netherlands, 1992) investigates how these
KITTY MARIA VAN EKEREN kittymariavanekeren@gmail.com
kittymaria.com
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tests are performed with anthropomorphic machines, in which objects repeatedly undergo predetermined pressures on their individual elements. The static load test, which is created in the image of the human body, compresses ten years of sitting down and standing up again into a two-week trial.
NETHERLANDS 1992
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
Inserting Presence, Inserting a Moment – Infinite Play Infinite Play reflects on the intimate act of dressing. For Margret Wibmer’s (Austria, 1959), garment and wearer are involved in a fluid conversation
MARGRET WIBMER
wibmer@xs4all.nl
margretwibmer.eu
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through the folding and unfolding of the garment. Each movement is a proposal, there is nothing fixed, nothing right or wrong. Rather than aiming at a final form, the performance of the garment stimulates the imagination of both performer and spectator.
AUSTRIA 1988
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
Long Live the News Flesh Interested in the collision and possible fusion of the digital and the physical, Gerda Postma (Netherlands, 1981) produced an army of green-screen uniforms that function as a window to the current states of fear and
GERDA POSTMA info@gerdapostma.nl
studioikkai.com
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violence in the world today. This interdisciplinary project blends digital media and chromakey suits to bring violent messages as close to the human body as possible. Like a second skin. In collaboration with: Tereza Ruller from The Rodina, Meester Coupeur Opleiding, The Rodina, Iztok Klancar and Maxwell Rawlins.
NETHERLANDS 1981
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
Making A Living Making A Living is a sculptural situation that offers a reflection on the constructed nature of a private space, a home, and the narrative imposed by mass production. Eva Hoonhout (Netherlands, 1990) uses the character of the commercial window display and different points of
EVA HOONHOUT
eva_hoonhout@hotmail.com
evahoonhout.com
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view from the ‘inside- and-outside’, setting up a narration that deals with the depicted new object and the active used object. Focussing on furniture as a frame to engage with systems of production, the work deals with the value of the physical, the material and the image on different levels. It questions authenticity and physical connection to our own living spaces.
NETHERLANDS 1990
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
Moon Viewing The work of Anne Büscher (Germany, 1991) revolves around the tactile aspects of photography in which the outcome is not determined by the camera, but by experiments with material, forms and a light sensitive
ANNE BÜSCHER info@annebuscher.com
annebuscher.com
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medium. In total darkness, Büscher made configurations of found glass objects on photographic paper by leaning and balancing them on each other depending on the sense of touch. The photograms show marks of the glass pieces and capture different colours through the refraction of light.
GERMANY 1991
NEW TOWN SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
The graduates of Studio for Immediate Spaces were presented in the exhibition New Town, at Station Noord in Nieuwe Leeuwarderweg Amsterdam from the 14th to the 18th of June 2017. Taking place in a completed yet vacant metro station in Amsterdam’s Noord/Zuidlijn, the space hosts the projects of 13 artists, architects and designers. Whether physical or virtual, New Town is a site for prospects with regard to space. Exploring such topics as identity and space, the works in this exhibition depart from cultural, personal and historical accounts, oftentimes bordering between fact, fiction and constructed realities. The Studio for Immediate Spaces investigates spaces in all their forms and implications. Using the tools of the geographer, the urban planner, the architect or the designer, they create new grounds for research, blurring the boundaries between science and politics, art and architecture. By questioning preconceived notions and searching for new strategies, they aim to dismantle the syntax of contemporary urban spaces and expand the definition of architecture.
STUDIO FOR
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Participants: Nadjim Bigou, Hein van Duppen, Arie de Fijter, Carolin Gießner, Eva Hoonhout, Shih-Hui Hung, Lily Lanfermeijer, Monica Mays, Aaro Murphy, Zsófia Szőke, Kim Wawer, Neeltje ten Westenend, Kristoffer Zeiner. Curated by Bas Hendriks. Team: Leopold Banchini, Hélène Webers, Marie-Avril Berthet, Tomáš Celizna, Laure Jaffuel, Elise van Mourik, Joseph Noonan-Ganley, Remco Siebring, Tom Vandeputte. Venue: Station Noord.
IMMEDIATE SPACES
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
Observations, Expectations We don’t question the quotidian. It is what it wants to be. But Lien Van Leemput (Belgium, 1992) believes that questioning the nature of the ordinary and the day-to-day is an essential aspect of engaging with reality. Observing reality, we come to realize that it has an absurd, surreal
LIEN VAN LEEMPUT lienvanleemput@hotmail.com
lienvanleemput.com
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and dramatic side. In Observations, Expectations these notions are translated into writing, which form the basis of a series of eight short movies that all contemplate on similar states of our everyday being. States of being stuck, of doing nothing, of wanting but not being able to, of trying but failing, of waiting for something that we do not know will ever come.
BELGIUM 1992
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
On the Seduction of Aesthetics
ROGIER DELFOS info@rogierdelfos.net
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Rogier Delfos (Netherlands, 1981) presents a diluted dialectical materialism through lust-driven ambiguity.
rogierdelfos.net
NETHERLANDS 1981
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
On Your Back By exploring the material qualities of confusion and the psychological and social forces through which they are mediated, Dominique Festa (United States, 1987) researches the ways in which the ‘will to comprehension’ shapes our experience of reality. Drawing on the inexplicable,
DOMINIQUE FESTA dominique.festa@gmail.com
MATERIALISATION IN ART AND DESIGN VENUE: LOOIERSGRACHT 60
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the slip-of-the-tongue and the numinous, she developed works that allows traces of the making process to steer the narrative and leave room for the accidental emergence of relationships between physical and symbolic content. In this a multi-channel video installation, she meticulously recreates scenarios of ‘sitting and watching’ to participate in the same repetitive search that motivates the subjects of her work.
U.S.A. 1987
cargocollective.com/dreamkingdom
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
Organica – Garments as Companions Rather than just lifeless objects, Timna Weber (Austria, 1988) looks at garments as something animate and transformable. Investigating a possible deeper connection between wearer and garment, Weber suggests a new system in which the wearer, garment and designer form a symbiosis that enable endless transformations. In an attempt to create
TIMNA WEBER
timna.weber@sandberg.nl
t-i-m-n-a.co.com
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a never ending loop of use and reuse, she trialled her system with five individuals. The journey of each garment has been documented in an audioplay with the personal diaries of the wearers, addressing the topic of emotional bonding. Working together with architectural artist MĂĄrk Redele, Weber created a utopian shop where potential customers are introduced to their new garments not as objects, but rather as future living companions.
AUSTRIA 1988
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
Perfect Temptation Based on personal experiences from travels to Palestine and Cuba, Biyi Zhu (China, 1988) started off a visual investigation into the complexity of food scarcity in a world where there, in principle, is enough for everyone. She aims to inspire a discussion about the world of excess. The resulting
BIYI ZHU zhubiyi0821@gmail.com
vimeo.com/raybiyizhu
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video work is projected on a floor covered with flour, an immersive space with limited seating on flour bags, connecting viewers to a story of desire and inaccessibility. Mahatma Gandhi said: “To those who have to go without two meals a day, God can only appear as bread.� When we lack the necessary resources for our subsistence, hunger confronts us with scarcity purely and simply.
CHINA 1988
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
Plastic Objects The main focus of Julien Manaira’s (France, 1992) work is expression through gesture. The objects that he creates employ basic physical characteristics such as gravity, flexibility and tension which, triggered by the randomness of the gestures they provoke, lead to unpredictable encounters. The Plastic Objects series offers an unexpected approach to plastic: the structure and thickness of the objects are formed by the succession of epoxy resin casts combined with the particular positions of the
JULIEN MANAIRA
ulien.manaira@gmail.com
MATERIALISATION IN ART AND DESIGN VENUE: LOOIERSGRACHT 60
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moulds in space. The empowerment imparted to the operator is based on the fluidity of the material combined with the fact that the positioning and pivoting of the mould remains undetermined. The mould acts as a frame, a shifting possibility rather than a defined border. This method also conceives time, not only as a practical parameter, but as central in the relationship between operator and matter and the construction of objects. By redefining the relation between operator and matter, this series aims to demonstrate how the process of making can establish a relation between the experience of the operator and the experience of the user.
FRANCE 1992
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
print print pinr pritn point Investigating apparatuses and materials as spaces of potentiality, Will Peck (United Kingdom, 1991) came across two possible origins for the term glitch: one comes from the German word Glitschen, which means to slip,
WILL PECK willpeck22@hotmail.co.uk
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while the other comes from slang used by astronauts referring to the sound made by a surge in voltage on spacecrafts. Today the term is referred to as ‘a temporary malfunction normally within technology’. Peck believes that it doesn’t seem that a glitch has to be an action that an object isn’t supposed to do, but one, which causes the object to appear disorderly.
U.K. 1991
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
Pub This interdisciplinary project, initiated by Daniel Seemayer (Germany, 1990), aims to establish and structure a publishing practice at the Sandberg Institute. While investigating the possibilities within the
DANIEL SEEMAYER
daniel.seemayer@gmx.de
danielseemayer.tumblr.com
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context of an artistic master programme, it functions as a hub and platform to identify interdisciplinary connections and accelerate collaborations amongst the students and/or with third parties. Pub is a temporary social space for producing and spreading cultural discourse over a couple of glasses.
GERMANY 1990
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
Radical Youth Andrea Karch (Germany, 1990) is in search of Generation-Y’s mythicised zeitgeist. The fictional stories of Radical Youth are based on various subcultures: the study of the right wing ‘Nipster’ scene, the wave of European Jihadi youth and the phenomenon of rampage
ANDREA KARCH a.f.karch@gmx.de
andreakarch.com
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shooters. Being performed in the video, these narratives create an intimate space between the viewer as hostage and the confronting character carrying out the script. A black box, “illuminating the violent depths that we inhabit strangely polished surfaces that intersect with blood, sand, clutter, YouTube and Melatonin.” – Rachel-Rose O’Leary.
GERMANY 1990
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
Re-CrĂŠation Non-Mesurable During eight days, Valentin Noiret (France, 1993) invited himself to the morning break of a French primary school, fostering a reflection on the institutional context of education through unusual situations he orchestrated in the playground. Giving the kids cameras and recorders,
VALENTIN NOIRET
noiret.valentin@gmail.com
fffugue.com
DIRTY ART VENUE: KRUX
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he mostly let them document these experiences on their own to collect spontaneous reports of this isolated microcosm of rich yet underestimated communal teaching. This experimental pedagogical attempt raises the form of a music jamming session to an ideal method, opposed to the always quantified and measured values instilled by schools, exploring imagination itself instead.
FRANCE 1993
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
Res Materia In search of an alternative perspective on fashion, Sanne Karssenberg (Netherlands, 1983) preserves the identity of the wearer in these highly branded times. The project Res Materia offers us new systems of production which are much more direct and personalized in terms of fashion
SANNE KARSSENBERG sannekarssenberg@gmail.com
sannekarssenberg.com
FASHION MATTERS VENUE: NIEUW DAKOTA
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industry standards. The process is a ritual of both destruction and creation, directly involving the wearer, turning the garments into agents of change instead of representations of the new. In collaboration with: Lotje van Lieshout and Firat Yucel. Thanks to: Filamaker, Maag-flock and Kiwo.
NETHERLANDS 1983
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
Rubin’s Vase Through series of lectures, Gamze Baray (Turkey, 1980) proposes the idea that it might be possible to overcome, at least in terms of psychological barriers, the need for clarity, security and the sense of meaning, and allow for and accept the co-presence of mutually exclusive realities.
GAMZE BARAY
gamze.baray@gmail.com
DIRTY ART VENUE: KRUX
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Optical illusions, such as Rubin’s Face/Vase, make it clear that the essence of what is perceived is malleable and the alternatives seem to be mutually exclusive. It is impossible to perceive the figure and the background simultaneously, cognitive faculties are forced to perceive it one way or another. Throughout the lecture series, Baray elaborates on the underexplored, yet potentially profound relationships among psychological phenomena.
TURKEY 1980
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
Sicilia! Sicilia! A close reading by Ad van der Koog (Netherlands, 1962) of Sicilia!, a film by Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub. “Sicilia, Sicilia, canta la pasturedda / Sicilia, Sicilia, ioca la funtanedda / L’aria e lu suli inchinu, l’arma di puisia / Sicilia, Sicilia tu si la terra mia. Suddenly this song popped into my head. It appeared on the moment I landed at Catania Airport. I had
CRITICAL STUDIES VENUE: BUTCHER’S TEARS
come to Sicily to find traces of Empedocles, the Greek philosopher who lived here 2,500 years ago. It is said that he jumped into the crater of Mount Etna at the end of his life. Empedocles, the philosopher of the four elements, jumping into the fire. The song is sung by a woman in the opening credits from the film Sicilia!, made by filmmakers Straub and Huillet in 1998. Roaming around Mount Etna I’m accompanied by memories of this film I haven’t seen for more than six years.”
AD NETHERLANDS VAN DER KOOG 1962 amkoog@neomailbox.net
ljuxx.com
173
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
small memory: (an) ode to juno “Amelia Clark Productions is an attempt at cheating the fates. Of fooling them, or distracting them with a shiny object, like you would a raven that will most certainly steal your lunch if you don’t sacrifice the plastic bauble hanging from your Primark purse, the one you didn’t like but bought anyway because it was a euro and you needed a purse and you thought you’d replace it but now it’s missing a zipper and you still haven’t found the perfect one and the garish pink has faded to a greasy salmon and it could almost pass off as tasteful. If it’s between your carefully customised
FINE ARTS VENUE: VRIEND VAN BAVINK
sandwich du jour and a trinket, the trinket is a small sacrifice. Amelia Clark Productions. Amelia, the perfect ruse, or should we say Ex Cuse? She is my salmon, avocado, rocket on pumpernickel bread with lemon mayo, and a dash of black pepper. Amelia can do things Shristie cannot because Amelia wasn’t born under the Aries moon and her Saturn in the First house. Amelia can do anything she likes because she resides beyond the realm of the stars and planets and squares and trines. Amelia is exempt and so Amelia must be devoured, one bite at a time and then ferociously, all at once.” Thanks to: Mozaïekjes, Rotterdam.
AMELIA CLARK INDIA PRODUCTIONS
info@ameliaclark.productions
ameliaclark.productions
174
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
Sometimes Things Are Not True Yet In an attempt to address her obsession for the passing of time, Carole Cicciu (France, 1989) progressively shapes the identity of an enigmatic phantom. Conspicuously or not, it haunts the space-time of the work. Sometimes things are not true yet is a video installation that
CAROLE CICCIU carole.cicciu@icloud.com
carolecicciu.com
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distorts the gap between reality and fiction; it shakes her obsession for the absurdity of the passing of time and its representation. By using a multitude of cinema-related production processes to display this notion, Cicciu’s work finds its source in-between these different spaces, therefore proposing situations to ‘post-observe’ the work and its surroundings.
FRANCE 1989
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
STAMINA “Fight fat & win” ↑ “Strength + Power” → “Reshape your Body, reclaim your life!” ← “ABS+ARMS” ↓ “Summer muscle foods” ↑ “Build a beach body” ← “Get back in shape” → “Explosion, 27 signs she secretly wants you”.
AURÉLIEN LEPETIT
aurelien.lepetit@hotmail.fr
DIRTY ART VENUE: KRUX
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Fitness is a societal obsession. Aurélien Lepetit (France, 1992) investigates this obsession with STAMINA, a site specific performance and installation seeking to question the boundaries and limits of the standardization of the body beyond gender, sexuality, political, patriarchal and sociological pressures.
FRANCE 1992
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
The Oracle by Telemagic Introducing new possible connections between technology, aesthetics and youth culture, Cyanne van den Houten (Netherlands, 1994) delivers us prophecies that help to make sense of the things that elude us. Using its mystic powers, The Oracle senses our presence and gives us advice on how to enhance our human capacities in a virtual
CYANNE V/D HOUTEN cyannevdh@gmail.com
cyannevdh.nl
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world. The Oracle is part of Telemagic, an open medialab that concerns the future of media. Adopting the memes of magic, (techno) paganism, occultism and new or repurposed symbolisms of the virtual, Telemagic wants to offer new insights to prepare ourselves for evolutions to come. In collaboration with: Ymer Marinus.
NETHERLANDS 1994
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
Tensor Exploring the possible implementation and future implications of new prosthetics, Eurico Sรก Fernandes (Portugal, 1991) touches upon the politics of Big Data, and considers a decentralized planetary database
EURICO Sร FERNANDES
hieurico@gmail.com
eurico.ws
DIRTY ART VENUE: KRUX
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as a step to further unlock Artificial Intelligence (AI) and a new prosthetics potential. At its core, a Tensor is a data container which can contain multiple dimensions. Through the installation Fernandes examines the possible impact that blockchain database characteristics can have on AI.
PORTUGAL 1991
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
The Black Box Bellagio In today’s imposed state of insecurity, all our options seem to be untrustworthy. Roos Groothuizen (Netherlands, 1992) draws a parallel to gambling games: one of the driving forces behind a the game of poker for instance is the uncertain state of ‘simultaneously knowing and not-knowing’. Players risk their bet by judging the value of their cards over their opponents’. They try to deduct clues from the opponent’s behavior and facial expressions, then assess whether they are bluffing
DESIGN VENUE: SHELTER
or not. Truth is ‘found’ in subjective predictions – a mathematical game made human. This subjectivity is surprisingly similar to profiling risks and identities through online algorithms: think of someone who googles ‘nail polish’ and is automatically classified as female. Such elements of uncertainty, insecurity and overgeneralization are indispensable for the Black Box Bellagio. Come and play with the (un)fairness of expected values and chances, predicted risks, and the struggle of giving up your identity. This casino won’t take your money, but it’s after your freedom, integrity and private data. The house always seems to win.
ROOS NETHERLANDS GROOTHUIZEN 1992
hello@roos.gr
roos.gr
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SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
DIRTY ART
THE BUBBLE IN EPISTEMIC TERMS; WET UNTIL
The graduates of the Dirty Art Department were presented at Krux Amsterdam from the 16th to the 21st of June 2017. The title of the exhibition The bubble in epistemic terms; wet until damp was algorithmically generated, following the input of sentences extracted from the theses. The Dirty Art Department presents itself as an open space for all possible thought, creation and action. It sees itself as a dynamic paradox, flowing between the pure and the applied, the existential and the deterministic, the holy and the profane. It is concerned with individuality, collectivity and our navigation of the complex relationship between the built world and the natural world and between other people and ourselves. It is a place to build objects or totems, religions or websites, revolutions or business models, paintings or galaxies.
DIRTY ART DEPARTMENT
Participants: Nicola Baratto, Gamze Baray, Carole Cicciu, Constance Hinfray, Alban Karsten, Kitty Maria, Aurélien Lepetit, Kolbrún Löve, Cyril Menouillard, Ioannis Mouravas, Valentin Noiret, Rachel-Rose O’Leary, Eurico Sá Fernandes, Thijs van de Loo. Team: Jerszy Seymour, Tamara van der Laarse, Saâdane Afif, Daniel Dewar, Florence Parot, Catherine Somzé, Noam Toram. Venue: Krux.
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The Kombucha Bar The Kombucha Bar is a symptom of the The Buch Brothers VOF, a company started within the walls of the Sandberg Instituut. As part of The Buch Brothers, Thijs van de Loo (Netherlands, 1986) brew Kombucha, a fermented tea drink made from a symbiotic culture
THIJS VAN DE LOO thijsvandeloo@hotmail.com
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of bacteria and yeast. When drinking Kombucha these bacteria will become part of your body. In the last six months the Buch Brothers have infiltrated many different structures, selling and distributing the product in over twenty venues in Amsterdam. The Kombucha Bar is a collective work, questioning creative ownership and the rules of our economy.
NETHERLANDS 1986
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
The Hands That Feed You: Global Dependency and Design for the Third Space Through 7 fabric posters, 1 essay poster and 50 Promotional Shirts, João Roxo (Portugal, 1985) reflects on the dynamics of a global dependency system. The project maps the North-South divide, it points to flows of waste and surplus and accounts for humanitarian ‘charity porn’. Within this
JOÃO ROXO
work@joaoroxo.com
joaoroxo.com
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system, aid becomes trade, visual hierarchies are imposed and prejudice crystallizes into graphic codes, enhancing the gap between the hemispheres. Roxo tells stories of subsistence within the informal economies, echoing present day situations constructing hypothetical scenarios of emancipation. An escape from the system: a world in which intuition and resourcefulness are core values, in a revolutionary strive to reinvent mankind where informality is acknowledged and self-reliance is pursued.
MOZAMBIQUE 1985
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
The Hero’s Banquet This event The Hero’s Banquet was inspired by the scenes and settings encountered along the journey undertaken by Shih-Hui Hung (Taiwan, 1984) whilst creating the comic TWAT. Each piece depicts the effect of entropy over time in three and two dimensions, respectively. This process
SHIH-HUI HUNG cyannevdh@gmail.com
cyannevdh.nl
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of energy dissipation and transformation provide the driving force of the Wheel of Life, the structural symbol upon which the archetypal hero’s journey is mapped. In collaboration with: Malissa Canez-Sabus, Ting Gong, Ivan Cheng, Rixta van der Molen & Jonathan Mehrez.
TAIWAN 1984
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
The Way of Salve We are invited to join on a ritualistic journey, as Mona Steinhäußer (Germany, 1991) opens up alternative environments and encourages us to dress ourselves from a more holistic perspective. The Way of Salve
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is an almost subversive attempt to dive into a short-lived alternate reality that will slightly shift your perspective. In this concealed world, Steinhäußer proposes a way to address the human as a trinomial entity, offering different ways to dress the physical, emotional and the spiritual body.
MONA GERMANY STEINHÄUßER 1991
mona.maria.st@googlemail.com
monasteinhaeusser.com
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The Woman who Became a Building Combining familiar, domestic materials with architectural structures whose mechanics are otherwise concealed, Iris Box’s (Netherlands,
IRIS BOX box.iris@gmail.com
irisbox.org
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1987) material research investigates the intersection of the known and unknown. Her project is an installation where objects and architectural elements, found and hand crafted, are rearranged towards an imagined space where systems are revealed to be unstable, fluid and malleable.
NETHERLANDS 1987
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
The Bliss of Knowledge Aiming to develop cognitive filters of the environment, bringing us to question our sense of reality, Johan Buskov Romme (Denmark, 1984) uses 3D rendering software that exploits the glitches which occur in the translation from digital coding to material in the manufacturing process. Systematizing these ‘glitches’ reincorporates imperfection into our understanding of the natural. Existing on the threshold
JOHAN ROMME
assulaart@gmail.com
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between perfection and imperfection and moving between digital and analogue languages, this work positions itself into the unending transaction between the natural and the man-made. Romme defines perfection is a construct informed by the patterns and mathematics of the natural world. Technology strives towards that perfection, emulating its symmetry and impossible beauty. He claims that we use technology to manicure and refashion our environments. When technology falters, imperfections become reabsorbed into our concept of perfection.
DENMARK 1984
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
Landscape on Hold Nazanin Karimi (Iran, 1987) invites us on a journey through a hypothetical mind that suffers from a perennial state of transition, agonizing over violent prompts of past and present, in the absence of a
NAZANIN KARIMI nzn.karimi@gmail.com
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future. The project lets us witness the visual poetry of a transfigurative brain that elevates indifference to an act of survival. Exhausted of the impenetrable misalignments of an unstable state, the transfigurative mind composes images that are erratic in pattern and ambiguous in significance.
IRAN 1987
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
The Apocalyptic Luxury Fair With an immersive VR-installation and video, Mary Ponomareva (Russia, 1991) invites us into a hyperreal future scenario: the promise of an impending catastrophe that has to be survived with spectacular taste. Welcome to the Apocalyptic Luxury Fair: the end of the world is forecasted to be fabulously glamorous! Get ready for the new millennium with
MARY PONOMAREVA info@mary-universe.com
mary-universe.com
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high-end private security systems, state-of-the-art predator drones, luxurious survival condos and encrusted gas masks from ‘Raphael Universal’, the world’s number-one provider of future-proof lifestyle must-haves. With brands such as Haute Mort, Seeing is Striking, and The New Infinity, visitors of the Apocalyptic Luxury Fair enter the exclusive realm of arms and survival marketing; a happy merger of luxury and innovation. For those who prefer to survive in style.
RUSSIA 1991
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
The period is a hole that the sentence falls into after it is read. Smári Rúnar Róbertsson (Iceland, 1992) is interested in the immediacy of the logic of his project title, the moment our brain gives up on analyzing gibberish and generates a pattern, a recognizable figure or
SMÁRI RÚNAR ROBERTSSON smari.runar@gmail.com
smarirunarrobertsson.com
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concept. “If we look long enough at a large rock we see the body of a troll. Every car that passes on the road has a face. A string of random words will eventually produce a coherent sentences. We are predisposed to a certain kind of logic wherein anything has the potential to make sense.”
ICELAND 1992
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
The Particles, They Rise, Shake and Crash The Particles, They Rise, Shake and Crash is constituted of an archipelago of projects within which Constance Hinfray (France, 1989) presents islands of work that host both fiction and reality. The project follows the narrative of a contemplative ballad through the chambers, informed by
CONSTANCE HINFRAY
constance.hinfray@gmail.com
DIRTY ART VENUE: KRUX
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the notion of the English garden and its sustainable and grounded methodology of wild ecosystems, highlighting the principle of inter-relations and cycles. In collaboration with: Lucie Pinier, Noah Cohen, Lotte Hardeman and Cyril Menouillard.
FRANCE 1989
youtube.com/channel/UC3tIDCYUgJk
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
MAAIKE FRANSEN
maaike@maaikefransen.com
GRADUATION 2017
maaikefransen.com
FASHION MATTERS VENUE: NIEUW DAKOTA
NETHERLANDS 1987
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SANDBERG INSTITUUT
DURAN LANTINK duranlantink@icloud.com
GRADUATION 2017
duranlantink.com
FASHION MATTERS VENUE: NIEUW DAKOTA
NETHERLANDS 1986
210
THIS IS WATER SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
This is Water Through a spatial experience Zsófia Szőke (Netherlands, 1986) interprets the transient and barren objectivity of the exhibition New Town in a material and symbolic way. Composed of elemental shapes of fog harvesting meshes, This is Water creates a space of ambiguous
ZSÓFIA SZŐKE zsofia.szoke@gmail.com
seugeot.com
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transitions in terms of light, hue, humidity and motion as the wind blows through the hanging lattices, turning the air into water. Literally generating its own reflection – embodying the narcissistic aesthetics we now refuse in art but demand from design – it encourages a debate around the utopian expectations of its own material and the limits of art, design and architecture.
NETHERLANDS 1986
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
Three-Sixty Floris van Driel (Netherlands, 1990) released a mixtape as an emotional self-portrait of a precarious worker. The collection of beats and interludes is an attempt to break free from quantifiable expectations of productivity. Resisting the contemporary mindset of ‘there is no alternative’,
FLORIS VAN DRIEL cyannevdh@gmail.com
cyannevdh.nl
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van Driel proposes a break towards a future that is no longer predefined, but rather navigational. The installation consists of an immersive video projection accompanying the mixtape, which faces an equally sized mirror. Like two players mimicking each other, the work invites you to become part of a play-through of fast moving images, erotic sounds, loud synchronic and a-synchronic basses. The future is a team sport.
NETHERLANDS 1990
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
To Kiss the World Through a Veil of Lead Gui Machiavelli (Italy, 1986) attempts to imagine experiences that are alien to us, experiences that lie at the limit or even beyond what humans can feel or understand. Paraphrasing Thomas Nagel, it attempts to know “what it is like to be a bat�, or an octopus, an infection, a planet, an
GUI MACHIAVELLI hey@guimachiavelli.com
guimachiavelli.com
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erupting volcano. Inside a dark and silent room, a different composition of words and synthesised sounds plays every fifteen minutes, focussing on the experiences and sensations of a non-human being. To Kiss the World Through a Veil of Lead attempts to put viewers in a void where their senses are numbed and, ideally and impossibly, briefly overridden with those of alien others.
ITALY 1986
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
Tropes of a Palm Thinking with and through objects. situations or places, Stefanie Rau (Germany, 1989) explores the manifold image of two artificial palm trees
STEFANIE RAU info@stefanie-rau.com
stefanie-rau.com
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in order to unravel its histories and cultural, political and technological implications in the form of a performative lecture and an essay film. Parts of this work were presented as a lecture performance on May 20th, 2017 in the Hortus Botanicus Zuidas in Amsterdam.
GERMANY 1989
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
UNDER CONSTRUCTION To create a higher self esteem for the wearer, Fien Ploeger (Netherlands, 1988) applies surgical interventions to denim. Through an emotionally involved research, Ploeger realized she could put her fascination with
FIEN PLOEGER fienploeger@gmail.com
fienploeger.com
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physical transformation and extreme body types to use in her work. She produced a collection of pieces with the intent to improve the self-image. In collaboration with: DENIM CITY and Meesteropleiding Coupeur Master in Craft.
NETHERLANDS 1988
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
Underneath My Tongue I Cultivate Moray Eels Underneath My Tongue I Cultivate Moray Eels is a reading by Ionna Gerakidi (Greece, 1992), accompanied by a counter-gestural intervention: a lullaby meant to be sung. The work reflects on the spaces
IOANNA GERAKIDI
ioanna.gerakidi@gmail.com
cosyrsoobviously.tumblr.com
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in between the hapticalities of the body, the semantics engraved in language systems and the extra-linguistic dynamics of the voice. The text focuses on the enactment of the politics of grief while tracing broken temporalities, fragmented narratives and auto-ethnographic practices.
GREECE 1992
WAIT FOR CUE SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
The Design Department presented its graduation class of 2017 in Amsterdam night club Shelter. During the day and night program of screenings, performances and readings, the club became a place for direct encounters, intimate conversations and shared fantasies. With a selfless, committed, curious, serious, humorous and above all hazardous mentality – plus a wide diversity of tools – the Design Department finds out what matters through design. Moving between reality and fantasy, chaos and systems, data and dreams, the course addresses the contradictions of our time. It responds to world issues and questions the relationship between practice and politics.
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Participants: Ruben Baart, Floris van Driel, Rebekka Fries, Roos Groothuizen, Cyanne van den Houten, Andrea Karch, Nazanin Karimi, Lien Van Leemput, Gui Machiavelli, Derk Over, Mary Ponomareva, João Roxo, Daniel Seemayer, and BiYi Zhu. Team: Annelys de Vet, Charlotte Corstanje, Nikki Brörmann, Anja Groten, Agata Jaworska, Dimitri Nieuwenhuizen, Rob Schröder, Daniel van der Velden. Venue: Shelter.
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
Wash Your Dirty Linen in Public In an attempt to minimize society’s production of waste, Caroline Jacob (France, 1993) begins by reconceptualising waste as a remainder: the material leftovers from everyday processes. By finding new applications for these ubiquitous materials, she highlights the potentiality and richness of what would otherwise be discarded. wASH is an example of an entirely natural and environmentally safe washing detergent made from
CAROLINE JACOB
caroline.jacob04@gmail.com
caroline-jacob.com
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the extraction of lye from ash. With the installation Wash Your Dirty Linen in Public, Jacob questions the status of ordinary washing places. Preserving the social aspect of the laundrette, it is an opportunity to gather, to try out wASH as well as telling the stories emerging from its creation. As an homage to the heirloom custom and the recipe embodied in the laundry soap, visitors were invited to laundry their linen in the gallery space. They became performers, clothes gesticulated, machines resonated, and gestures pictured.
FRANCE 1993
SANDBERG INSTITUUT
GRADUATION 2017
We stare at the finely chiseled latin letters, drying, on a Telugu paper In December 2016, Lily Lanfermeijer (Netherlands, 1990) travelled to Andhra Pradesh, India to create new work. Lanfermeijer focuses on the fabric trade between India and The Netherlands during the VOC period. In The Netherlands, these fabrics were seen as exotic and subsequently used and reproduced in different techniques like embroidery in Dutch traditional attire. For this installation, original patterns found in the printers’ workshops were adjusted and remixed with western architectural and modernist influences. Lanfermeijer
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questions the role of authorship within the context of cultural heritage, and how we define autonomy in relation to craftsmanship and artistic exchange. The hand printed fabrics were then used to create parasols, a reference to the domain of tourism, oftentimes used as an outlet for commercial messages and symbols. To this day works and products from the Dutch Golden Age are still some of the most important tourist attractions in the Netherlands and form an integral part of the country’s national identity. In collaboration with: Niranjan Jonnalagadda and Pitchuka Srinivas.
LILY NETHERLANDS LANFERMEIJER 1990 l.lanfermeijer@gmail.com
lilylanfermeijer.tumblr.com
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