The Leiden 2010 Arts Route - Kunstroute Leiden 2010

<< Left: For the annual open artist studios weekend (18 + 19 Sept) we shared our space with painter and musician, Anneke van Rijswijk who hung her drawings and paintings inside the framework of our "kainga".
Alet Kortenoeven, who was the previous occupant of our OPENMAKERS studio had drawings along the walls and a small room where from inside this you could look through funnel-like holes containing objects with the city as a backdrop. And across the window and on the television was the "there is beauty in the city" photo-magnet project. >> Info about the Leiden project

We had about 300 - 400 visitors over the 2 days!
A huge contrast to the 30 or so who visted our exhibition 5 minutes away in the Morstraat Kapsalon. However Sen liked it that he was able to read and be out of the crowds. More about our work in this show is here: www.sonjavank.com/09aderna.htm

About 150 artists showed work in around the city and one place that stood out for me was the COC exhibition. Downstairs was a poem in English and Dutch (see photo on the left) which made a strong visual and metaphysical statement against the mirror wall and upstairs were prints and cartoons by Suzanne van Rossenberg among others. All the work not only celebrated gay and lesbian identity but did it with such wit and magic.

Then on September 20th (see photo on left) Alet took the last of her work out and we had room to pull the "kainga" forward to finish the bow and to work on the curved contour. We worked most days from 2 till 7, while in the evenings and mornings I started or finished new edits for the videos. Premiere Pro is a wonderful programme and I've now discovered the open source Flick DVD is good for creating the dvd side of things.
It still takes a computer about 10 hours to render a video, which I then throw it onto a dvd and then view it the best tv we have to test the quality and then I tweak what is needed and start all over again. See some earlier results here: www.vimeo.com/sonjavank

More work on the "kāinga a roto" (boat-home)

This photo shows that we have now straightened the frames so that they are vertical and started adding permanent braces which curve around the outside.

On Friday (17 September) we put in two tv dvd monitors and had these running to decide on the size of the windows we will build for these on the inside. We've gone for making the two first windows 19 inches. We also had the marante plywood cut which will be 90 planks, each 13 x 240 cm long, placed over and along the outer structure.

At the Gamma it took a man and a machine about half an hour to do all this. This was much faster than the 6 we cut using our bench saw, where all 4 of us held the large sheets.

On September 16th about 6000 Leiden citizens registered at the Waag (medival weighing house, a few metres west of our building) for the annual, free herring and white bread (google "The relief of Leiden of 1574" to find out more about this. This article in Dutch is about this). Many of these spent a good 5-10 minutes standing in the queue outside our window. Typical comments were about how stupid we were building this, because it wouldn't fit through the door. One of the advantages in speaking English to each other while working is that, we don't need to respond as most assumed we couldn't understand them. The other common comment concerned expressions of surprise that a woman as small as I was was handling tools and seemed to know what I was doing :)

The people in the queue were of all ages, but going by their comments and the fact that they didn't seem to notice the numerous images and texts on the windows explaining in Dutch that this was an art project, obviously were people who don't visit art galleries. However we had a number of interesting and friendly conversations with some who did notice that the Leiden shoe-makers shop was now a studio + gallery for the "There is beauty in the city".



More about the there Beauty is in the city exhibition is here

Studio - Aalmarkt 17, Leiden

                    
Read about how you can participate in the "there is beauty in the city" project here. This exhibition in the window combines global views with Leiden views.

I have this studio thanks to
OPEN | Makers, a Leiden city culture project which gives artists a studio for 2 months in the middle of the city.

On September 12th the first frames for the installation Kāinga a roto (Home Within) were raised in place with Tama, Toroa (his teeshirt bears the text: Das Wort "Vegetarier" kommt aus dem Indianischen und heißt:"Zu Blöd zum Jagen") and Sen doing most of the work.

More photos will be added below documenting the progress.

Four of the five videos to go inside still need a some work but you can get an impression of these on my vimeo page. These are: The Heart of the Land, The Two Lands, The Dark Valley and The Moving Heart.

For the installation there will be no titles or credits and some will be made longer so they loop seamlessly and so the soundscape of the space works as an entity.
These plus the new one I'm still working on will be for sale as a DVD package from late October onwards.

Wanted: Beauty in the city

>> Lees het in het nederlands

"There is beauty in the city" is an exhibition of images by artists around the world in "OPEN | Makers aan de Markt" (www.openmakers.nl) at Aalmarkt 17, Leiden, 3 September - 13 October. Participants are invited to provide images of Leiden that will become part of this exhibition.

<< Photo: There is beauty in Sydney, Australia, photo by Siobhan Tarr. More images on the blog


"There is beauty in the city" is a global art project initiated by British artist, Anna Francis in 2008 and now managed by Glen Stoker. The Leiden part of this project is coordinated by Sonja van Kerkhoff.

This show will combine global views with Leiden views. Participants receive a magnetic sticker with the text "There is BEAUTY in the city" which they place in their city and photograph. For the Leiden exhibition, we invite you to come to Aalmarkt 17 to collect a magnet for 4 euros from September 3rd onwards, 3 - 5 pm while stocks last, or make an appointment via: sonjavank AT gmail.com

Choose your favourite corner of the city and leave the magnet there for others to see. Be creative.

The first 25 individuals to send or deliver their image will have this shown in a second row in the shop window, as well as having their images become part of the blog and future exhibitions around the world. At the end of the exhibition, participants can come and collect their images to keep.

Gezocht: Schoonheid in de stad

"Er is schoonheid in de stad" is een tentoonstelling van beelden van kunstenaars van over de hele wereld in "OPEN | Makers aan de Markt" (www.openmakers.nl) op Aalmarkt 17, Leiden, 3september t/m 13 oktober Deelnemers worden uitgenodigd om foto's van Leiden in te sturen, die vervolgens deel uitmaken van de tentoonstelling.

"Er is schoonheid in de stad" is een wereldwijd kunstproject, begonnen in 2008 op initiatief van de Britse kunstenaar Anna Francis, en wordt nu beheerd door Glen Stoker. Het Leidse deel van dit project wordt gecoördineerd door Sonja van Kerkhoff.

Deze tentoonstelling zal wereldwijde perspectieven combineren met Leidse perspectieven. De deelnemers krijgen een magnetische sticker met de tekst "There is beauty in the city", die zij in hun stad plaatsen en fotograferen. Voor deze expositie in Leiden nodigen wij u uit om bij Aalmarkt 17 een magneet op te halen voor 4 euro vanaf vrijdag 3 September. Open van 15 tot 17 uur, of maak een afspraak per mail: sonjavank AT gmail.com

Kies uw favoriete hoek van de stad en stel daar de magneet tentoon voor anderen. Wees creatief.

De eerste 25 afbeeldingen die worden in- gestuurd of geleverd worden weergegeven in de tweede rij in de etalage, evenals in de blog en in toekomstige tentoonstellingen over de hele wereld. Aan het einde van de tentoonstelling kunnen de deelnemers hun afbeelding ophalen.

OPEN | Makers aan de markt zet kunstproductie in de etalage. Makers krijgen voor 2 maanden een ruimte, Leiden krijgt zicht op de Leidse kunstproductie.
OPEN | Makers is geïnitieerd door Cultuurfonds Leiden.

A functional beauty

Beauty is a human virtue or quality. It is about what we choose to see as much as how we see. So I placed the "there is BEAUTY in the CITY" magnet on my back, stood on the balcony in my apartment and faced my city, Leiden. This is my view of my city most days. Some who see our balcony wouldn't consider it very beautiful, with the tools and ladder and so on, while others wouldn't consider all the flats around us as very beautiful and neither do I, if I am seeing beauty only as form. What I find beautiful about where I live is that I can easily walk or cycle to where I need to be and that we can use our small balcony for working on new art projects. And this isn't the first time I've used our balcony as inspiration for an artwork, the 3 minute video begins from where you see me standing here

There is BEAUTY in the CITY

The “There is BEAUTY in the CITY” art project is a collaborative project with the people of the world. It encourages a reframing and rethinking of the urban spaces that we inhabit - using a magnet as a tool to renegotiate familiar territories.
The project was started in March 2008 by UK artist Anna Francis
(Her blog -http://annafrancis.blogspot.com- also has links to other art projects too)
in Stoke-on-Trent for the Axis Festival, and has had over 200 images submitted from over 40 photographers/artists which are shown in exhibitions and festivals as well as on the blog managed by Glen Stoker.

“Anna says the project allows people to see the place in which they live in a new way, and differently.

But she is emphatic that it is not just about creating a photo-album: "The project could easily be (mis)interpreted as an effort to simply collect and label images of urban spaces and indeed if the project was to be undertaken by just one person or one individual, this idea of 'beauty' could become very problematic."

"But the fact that many people's views on 'beauty' are included in the project makes for a very interesting end result. The fact that many different people are working with this phrase on their own terms means that the idea of there being beauty in the city is open to a wide variety of interpretations."

BBC website, 9 April 2010

Participate!

If there is a corner of your city that you want to draw attention to, or label as beautiful, you too can join in. Details are on the blog (thereisbeautyinthecity.blogspot.com) which also has photos of places where “there is beauty in the city” sent in by others across the globe.

There's also a facebook group for this project here

The wonders of technology - a response to the Eyjafjallajökull smoke screen

Around 1906 `Abdu'l-Bahá wrote: "...all the members of the human family, whether peoples or governments, cities or villages, have become increasingly interdependent. For none is self-sufficiency any longer possible..."
(Selections from the Writings of `Abdu'l-Bahá
(Haifa: Bahá'í World Centre, 1978), pp. 31-32))

And in 1936, Shoghi Effendi discussed this theme in reference to "A mechanism of world inter-communication..."
(Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Baha'u'llah, p. 203)

Screenshot taken this morning >>
on the website: www.flightradar24.com which shows real-time flights in Europe. The yellow dots are planes flying or landing.
The pink R + E indicate, Reykavik + Eyjafjallajökull

Last Friday morning, messages via my Facebook friends indicated that planes were not running and then I saw the pictures of the cloud and smoke!
Now a few U.K. papers are wondering if the 6 day no-flight ban was over-cautious, but I think, thanks to the wonders of technology a disaster was avoided. Sure people had to stay longer or find trains or buses, or be creative or flexible. It was clear from some of the messages I read, that some travellers had never slept in an airport before. Welcome to my world!
And others complained of having to make train changes, which meant carrying their luggage themselves. Welcome to my world again.
Others complained that information in their non-English speaking country was not in English and I smiled, they could send messages to facebook but didn't know how to use babblefish or communicate by adlibing. We English-speakers are the laziest people :)
Then I thought of these facebook messages that were coming in and how people were using this technology to share their stories. A lot of it seemed to be about uncertainty and frustration and I thought, hang on, a catastrophe has been averted.

Yes, I wasn't travelling and my experiences have taught me to travel light, but still I found it kinda of nice to have a sky free of planes for a few days. To be looking at the sky more often for signs of volcanic ash and glad that the red sunsets were a reminder of the wonder of nature, rather than pollution.

new 2 minute video by Sen and myself

This is our submission for a call for videos to celebrate Europe where at least 50% of the video utilizes EU archival material.

We decided to contrast stills from our own travels with that of their footage, on theme of Europe as a place for exploration into new territorities - a Europe as a compass or clock, a place without borders or with changing borders.



You can also view this on their website in a larger size




A compass tells us that every direction has its possibilites.
We have taken the theme of a 'compass-clock' as a way of showing our personal experiences with diverse European cultures. The video starts at zero for us, the Netherlands our home for the past 20 years and then turning clockwise, snapshots of us and our children flash by against various modes of documentation to create a dance between the personal and the public record.

The music is a remix of music by friends of ours: Sandy Hoover (U.S./U.K, with credit to Los de Abjo (Mexico), and Kath Tait, U.K. www.kathtait.com) who like us were born outside of Europe but have spent decades enjoying the opportunities of living and working in Europe.

"Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends."
wrote Maya Angelou.

The footage we have selected from the European Commission audiovisual archive contrasts fleeting moving images of Europe in various ways to show aspects of European life-worlds, such as shots of cities, institutions, some projects supported by the European Social Fund (ESF), as well as historical events, with still images of our family in locations such as the Hague Peace Palace, Legoland in Denmark, Oulu + Helsinki in winter, Estonian, Latvian + Lithuanian towns, Polish + Czech mountain tops, German streets, Italian waterways, the Spanish sea, Luxemburg, Belgian, French + Irish churches and views, and ancient Scottish stones.

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes."
Marcel Proust.