2006 Homemade Urban Architecture
Blind & Transparent Doors & Windows - Amsterdam and China
Homemade Urban Architecture is a project in which I create doors and windows made out of Duct tape in the public space. These doors and windows that are blind or transparent reflect by their nature on the environment they are placed in. Often these situations are socially and/or economically problematic. In other cases the doors and windows reference to disturbed relationships in all facets of (contemporary) society.
With these installations I try to create a direct relationship between the passerby and the local environment intending to accentuate a friction, a kind of energy that exist in these specific places. The tension that is created on either side of these doors and windows are thus put opposite of each other through the placement of these membranes and therefore are easier to recognize and reflect upon.
Once again I use Duct tape, for me symbolizing the power to repair what has been broken, to correct what is wrong. In this way these installations intend to create signs of hope and support for change.
For this exhibition I traveled through China and made different installations of the blind and transparent windows and doors like the one in Hong Kong where this transparent window reflects on the interweaving of the richest shopping area of downtown Hong Kong where a large community of Philippine maids come together on every sunday. I blog these images straight to http://www.viewshifter.blogspot.com which is then displayed on a large screen in the gallery.
Group exhibition Grind at Studio Apart Curated by Allard van Hoorn. December 8 2006 - January 12 2007.
Participating artists Ultralab, David Cotterrell, Daan Noppen, Allard van Hoorn
Grind is an exhibition that researches underlying layers of our contemporary society. Four different artists / groups abstract our common perception and preconceived notions of contemporary life and bend, reconstruct and dismantle them into a palette of new experiences that ultimately formulate positive solutions for the future of the human race.
Ultralab (Paris, 2000 - live and work in Paris) consists of three artists, Frederic Bortolotti(TM), P. Nicolas Ledoux and Pascal Bejean, united in Paris in August 2000. The group is a multi-facetted entity that chooses to work in the most turbid borders of art, science and communication. In the recent years, the group has developed primarily prospective proposals often related to new technologies and net art (in particular virtual universes), by the means of fictitious projects whose expression seeks to explore fully the potentials of an hybrid and multiform plastic language.
Ultralab have designed their Diorama III(TM) as a parallel dimension in existing worlds of animation, videogames and contemporary life. Partly presented as a newly programmed computer game level, partly installation, print, collage and sketch, this ongoing work is a reflection on society showing an alternative emptiness and abstraction from war and war scenes.
Daan Noppen (Arhem NL, 1977 - lives and works in Amsterdam) studied at the Design Academy in Eindhoven where he graduated with the short movie FUBAR. After getting professional experience as graphic designer and director, winning several awards and nominations, he now concentrates on creating moving images and stills researching divine femininity. It is this underlying current of the subliminal driven by inspiration ranging from Aristotle to Hermetic theory that drives him to keep on searching for the purest force of life.
In Clouds We Are Daan Noppen presents a number of scenes portraying the divine woman in a (post-) apocalyptic setting. The woman appears to be sad for what is to come; she reflects the sadness of mother earth. The look in her eyes reminds us of the ancient world, our roots. Themes of mythology are common in the work of Daan Noppen and also play a strong role in this series.
David Cotterrell (London, 1974 - lives and works in London) received an MA in Fine Art: Combined Media from Chelsea College of Art and Design in 1997. David is an installation artist working across varied media Digital Video, Audio, Interactive Media, Artificial Intelligence, Device Control and Hybrid technology. Cotterrell's work exhibits political, social and behavioural analysis of the environments and context within which, he and his work exhibit. Recent work has involved research into computational models of conversational speech, an artificially intelligent pedestrian urban population and a self-sustaining gridlock generator. Over the last ten years, Cotterrell's work has been extensively commissioned and exhibited in North America, Europe and the Far East, in gallery spaces, museums and within the public realm. David has been a consultant to strategic MasterPlans, cultural and public art policy for urban regeneration, healthcare and growth areas. Besides this work he researches and teaches at Sheffield Hallam University. Cotterrell was selected for the Becks Futures Awards at the ICA, London, 2002. He is represented by Danielle Arnaud contemporary art.
David Cotterrell's God's Eye View is a projection which explores themes of approximation and translation in the process of representing behavior through data. The work investigates areas of human experience for which the visual language of representation must, to allow comprehension, involve symbolism and acceptance of arbitrary convention. Red dots, each representing a human life, dash to and fro: bunching together in 'desirable' spaces, leaving others abandoned. This work has an eerie quality reminiscent of science programs in which we witness the acceleration of the spread of HIV or Ebola through a healthy host. We see human choice and naturally occurring patterns reduced to game-like conditions.
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