Category: Art

Art worth to travel for or to travel to

All The World’s Futures – Out of Bounds 2014-2015

All The World's Futures - Out of Bounds 2014-2015

June 2015 I visited Venice to see the city’s Art Biennial (or Biennale Arte). When leaving the Arsenale there is a narrow alley between two old buildings. There I found these rags:

Okwui Enwezo curated the 56th Art Biennale of Venice. (See Labiennale at Google) which had the subtitle All The World’s Futures.

All The World’s Futures is also the inspiration of an intruiging Art installation by Ibrahim Mahama at the Arsenale’s Exit road. It was named Out of Bounds 2014-2015. The road between two parts of the Arsenale was draped with primarily Jute coal sacks and jute sacks used to transport other goods from all over the world like cocoa that Ibrahim had been collecting over several years. One could say the sacks that are used to transport goods that also serve as futures in various trade systems.

Ibrahim Mahama was born in 1987 in Ghana, Africa. He lives and works in Tamale.

See for an interview:

Obelisk de Caja by Calatrava in Madrid

The Needle by Calatrava, or as he says: “The Obelisk” is located at Plaza de Castilla, in the north of Madrid, next to the “Puerta de Europa” towers and the new CT Business Area. It is a present by the Caja bank to the city of Madrid at the occasion of its 300th anniversary.

A large movable sculpture formed by a central tube of steel covered by a skin of 462 bronze bars that can be moved by means of a hydraulic system. The central tube rests on an auxiliary steel structure that spans over the different tunnels and galleries located beneath the square. The foundation elements are three concrete piles with a diameter of 1m.

On both side of the obelisk you can see the twin leaning towers of Puerta de Europa (114 m, designed by Philip Johnson), behind it the Torre Caja Madrid (250 m, designed by Lord Norman Foster) and partly two other skyscrapers (Torre Sacyr Vallehermoso and Torre Espacio, both 236 m)

De Stijl Centennial – Dutch Design 68

De Stijl Centennial colors The Hague all white city hall

The Hague celebrates the 100st Anniversary of De Stijl. Therefore the city counsel decided to color the all white Richard Meier designed city hall and central library in the Stijl manner with 3 primary colors Red Blue and yellow which De Stijl members like Piet Mondrian and Gerrit Rietveld used to combine with Black and White…..

Update: Am proud to be featured on A Daily Dose of Archidose

Update: and a comparable photo of Meier’s site in white only:

From Richard Meier’s site, Photography by Richard Bryant/ARCAID

Nemesis Machine

Nemesis Machine I56A6627

Nemesis Machine

An installation with input of several data from the London Megalopolis that visualizes how several aspects of city life are monitored already. Think camera’s. think air pollution, think temperature and think traffic and transport moves.

The Nemesis Machine is a miniature city, made up of wires, chips, computer parts, switches and specially designed electronics. The installation shows the current data flow of Smart City London, complete with environmental sensors and surveillance cameras, as well as data from traffic information and environmental monitoring systems. The work responds to the temperature, light, pressure and sound of the simulated city. If something changes in London, it’s registered directly in motion, sound and light in the miniature city of Utrecht. The Nemesis Machine is like the avatar of London and is not only driven by the real city, it is entirely dependent on it.

The Nemesis Machine – From Metropolis to Megalopolis to Ecumenopolis from Stanza on Vimeo.

See Hacking Habitat, a must see event in a former prison in Utrecht.

Curated by Ine Gevers, Hacking Habitat witnesses “the rise of a ‘remote control society’ colonizing and infiltrating increasing realms of daily life for the sake of safety and risk- management. Monitoring cameras and smart gateways are installed everywhere, while we are classified and atomized by automatic face recognition. Software and algorithms define who deviates or contributes too little to our economy.

The installation is by Stanza

Living Unit

Living Unit I56A6630

Living Unit

In a prison not in use anymore in Utrecht currently there is an exhibition named “Hacking Habitat“. Various artists give their vision on the trend to curtail all of our privacy nowadays.
Living Unit is the unit where Dutch artist Maarten Schuurman has put all his belongings. He lives “off the Grid” with these six suitcases where he succeeded to put all his belongings in. The less possessions you have and the more you move around like a squatter, the less control “they” can exercise over you.

Consequently Maarten took back a lot of control. Actually that’s also the theme of the exhibition: Taking back control (or Hacking) of your habitat.