5 minute footage of our video installation on show

You can also view it on my channel: www.youtube.com/user/sonjavank

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

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.

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

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.

Artworks for the "go-ganesha-go" event in Cyprus

I'm in Cyprus for 2 weeks for 1 -14 May and the following is what I plan as my contribution to the go-ganesha-go project happening in and around the Ledra Street.


“Greetings From Leiden” is an art performance featuring origami elephants bearing local news of my city in the Netherlands, the city of Leiden. The performance involves laying these out along a street and responding to people's questions. In other performances I've found that this can lead to discussions, for example about what is a greeting, about communication in general, or the relevance of communication (or a greeting) in a situation of tension between local communities. As an outsider to the Ledra Street and to the country of Cyprus, it felt it would be most honest not to bring any sort of message but rather to bring a greeting, a potential for dialogue in equality.

See other performances i've done



On the other hand, the short animation: “And these realities of things, though in the utmost diversity, are yet intimately connected one with the other” by Sonja van Kerkhoff + Sen McGlinn is loaded with messages. Yet as a viewer, you have to work out your own message.

The title, a quotation from the Bahai writings, could refer to the changing elements in the animation or it could refer to a narrative that seems to spin off in several directions at once. In the end, elephants surface, fly and seem more human than the people in the animation, in the sense that they are more free from the constraints of the world around them. This freedom is as much a message about free will as about peace, because peace is chosen and created by society. The song, Son Maloso, is by Colombian David Dely + the band, Tumba y Quema, currently based in Budapest, Hungary.

Utopian practices : Art, Science & Design REunited

I attended this on March 19th 2009
It was a day of lectures and discussion organized by the Waag Society, the Virtual Knowledge Studio (KNAW) and the Centre for Arts & Genomics Leiden at the De Balie in Amsterdam.

Dutch trains are usually punctual but this time not, so Amalia and I arrived a half hour later than planned and so missed the beginning of Suzanne's talk.

>> Susan Kennard, Executive Director of the new media institute BANFF in Canada, presents Tracklines, a location-based storytelling experience designed to be delivered on wilderness trails in Banff National Park using GPS-enabled mobile phones.


I'd heard about the Art Mobile Lab from Angus who I met in NZ in February and did a residency at Banff in 1998, so wanted to meet the new director.


Next Beatriz da Costa spoke about PigeonBlog which equips urban homing pigeons with GPS enabled electronic air pollution sensing devices capable of sending real-time location based air pollution and image data to an online mapping/blogging environment. I'd heard her talk about this at Mediamatic about a year ago but what was new was her mention of her book Tactical Biopolitics: Art, Activism, and Technoscience.



>> Martin Kemp discussed some of his articles from his 2006 book, Seen and Unseen

15 - 17 november: Sonja is in London

This installation in the Tate Modern by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster was fantastic. I lay on the beds, looked at the books scattered on some, but most importantly watched the liveliness of the diverse people also walking around, trying out the beds and interacting with each other. The atmosphere was quite festive.

A large text in the turbine hall gave a context for the works:

Essay: October 2058 - Tate Modern - London
It rains incessantly in London – not a day, not an hour without rain, a deluge that has now lasted for years and changed the way people travel, their clothes, leisure activities, imagination and desires. They dream about infinitely dry deserts.
This continual watering has had a strange effect on urban sculptures. As well as erosion and rust, they have started to grow like giant, thirsty tropical plants, to become even more monumental. In order to hold this organic growth in check, it has been decided to store them in the Turbine Hall, surrounded by hundreds of bunks that shelter – day and night – refugees from the rain.
The list of sculptures (these were copies), books and films (shown on the back wall) is here and more info about the work is here.




Next was Martin Creed's work in the Duveen Galleries in the Tate Britain.

Every 30 seconds someone ran at top speed through the galleries.
Here you see a shadowy figure of a runner.
More info about this work.



BP Exhibition: Drawn from the Collection consisted of rooms of drawings.

More info about this work.




A highlight for me was a room of blackboard drawings by Tacita Dean. More info about this 1997 work: The Roaring Forties: Seven Boards in Seven Days is here

More info about the Drawn from the Collection exhibition.

Under Scan
by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
Trafalgar Square
15 - 23 November 2008

The bright projection light means that the projections are only visible in your shadows.
This work was first developed in 2005 and for this installation hundreds of video-portraits came from video portraits contributed by the public between the 19th + 21st of September at Tate Modern. The portraits were shot from above, as members of the public lie beneath a suspended camera. Each individual was free to represent themselves any way they wished.
See this page for more about this and other projects by Rafael


Then Molly and I went to the Royal Academy to the GSK Contemporary Spartacus Chetwynd's Helmut Newton Ladies Night‏.

There I encountered the multi-channel digital film installation Triangle of Need by Catherine Sullivan made in collaboration with Los Angeles-based composer Sean Griffin, Minneapolis-based choreographer Dylan Skybrook, and Lagos, Nigeria-based actor and director Kunle Afolayan.
It was breath-taking. More info about this is here.
The images accompanied by a music score and sounds are an unfolding of a complex set of ideas where three participants weave stories that touch on 'normalilty', class, wealth and poverty, and inequalities and injustices.

SEIZURE by Roger Hiorns is an Artangel commission in a housing estate in south London. The large crystals you see on all surfaces were made by filling the appartment to the brim with detergent and then draining the fluid out after it had catalyzed.

Art installations in Leiden in September 2008

Installations by Leiden based artists, Rudi Struik (www.rudi-struik.com) + Piet Franzen (he runs the Sidac Studio and organizes various exhibitions and mail art projects) in the prison cells and the torture chamber of Gravensteen, The city prison of Leiden between 1463 and 1955. Info about this on Rudi's website in Dutch

Above Left: Installation by Piet Franzen. Above Right: video projection by Rudi Struik.

>> Two views of an installation in a prison cell by Rudi Struik



The incision-like lines on the hung sheets relate to and are reminiscent of the incisions along the cell walls made by prisoners from the past.

Augmented Reality workshop at Mediamatic in Amsterdam

I participated in the: Augmented Reality Games: Rapid game design workshop hosted by Mediamatic and given by Jonas Hielscher (Cologne), Julian Oliver (NZ/Spain) + Klaas Kuitenbrouwer (NL).

After some lessons in the opensource 3D modelling programme Blender and Julian's demo of Levelhead, we were introduced to the open source C and C++ language software library for building Augmented Reality (AR) applications: ARToolkit.
The ARToolKit was originally developed by Dr. Hirokazu Kato, and its ongoing development is being supported by the Human Interface Technology Laboratory (HIT Lab) at the University of Washington, HIT Lab NZ at the University of Canterbury, Aotearoa /New Zealand, and ARToolworks, Inc, Seattle. More info: artoolkit.sourceforge.net

<< Julian demonstrating his AR game, Levelhead. You hold it in front of a webcam and when it reads the markers on the sides of the cube, an image of a room and a animation of a white silhouette of a male figure appears. You navigate the figure in the rooms by moving the cube at different angles until it reaches different levels.


<< Jonas + Julian show the how the simple type of marker works with an earlier version of ARToolkit than Julian used for Levelhead.

The ARToolkit Pro doesn't work on Apple computers which were supplied by Mediamatic. However I ended up - largely due to Julian doing 99% of the work, developing our game idea on my 2 week old Linux system on my laptop.

<< Floris Schreuder (on the right) my partner for our AR game (left) Follow the Rainbow
The workshop also involved working in groups to develop a game, that hopefully utilized AR. The 9 of us worked on 3 games and there were two c ++ programmers in the group. I was absolutely delighted that in our group of two, I ended up being the "pretend" programmer for our game. I say "pretend" because Julian did the programming and all I did was play with variables.

The goal of the game was to find the pattern (the rainbow sequence in order to change into an "angel", "superhuman" or "alien". So in wearing the marker (a feather) a 3D blender-made head would appear (here Floris used the default monkey head with some textures and for this prototype we just had one head) and this would change randomly when you moved into another space (such as taking a step).
<< Jelle van der Ster is the individual behind the mask

While the square of colour (over your soul/heart) changed meaningfully and was the real clue to follow. So part of our idea was the illusion or trickery (also fun) of following sensation or the face or what is most visually impressive rather than the more subtle indications of one's heart/soul. The head was not supposed to change colour, but, all this was programmed by Julian in between helping all of our groups, so it definately was a rush job.
<< Hein Eberson is the individual behind the mask


I was really pleased that Julian was patient with my questions and that I was able to follow most of what he did. Of course doing it myself is quite another story, but I'm inspired to pick this up again once pressing deadlines in my life are out of the way and then to see how far I can develop this game idea into something interesting and who knows, engaging :)

Bio art course in the Gorlaeus Lab, Leiden University

Photos: Kaisu Koski, 11 April 2008


Canadian artist, Jennifer Willet runs this 7 session course and it consists of lectures related to Bio art issues as well as practical workshops on: mammalian tissue culture, microscopy, DNA extraction and imaging, and genetic modification in the lab.
Last week (18 April) Dr. Alice Alia (Assistant Professor, Biophysical Organic Chemistry) gave a talk on her research utilizing MRImaging for the diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease. The week before this (11 April) we all worked with calf livers using an adaption of a tissue culture technique developed by researcher and scientist, Anne Kienhuis.

• Some links related to this course:
  The Arts & Genomics Centre, based at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Leiden Institute of Chemistry, Gorlaeus Laboratories, University of Leiden, The Netherlands hosted this course.


• The blog for this course


• Oron Catts + Jennifer Willet YouTube interview at ISEA2006 / ZeroOne, San Jose, August 2006 where they engineered Teratological Prototypes (cancer cells) in collaboration with the Tissue Culture & Art Project Initiated in 1996 by Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, Tissue Culture and Art (TC&A) is an ongoing research and development project into the use of tissue culture and tissue engineering as a medium for artistic expression.


• SymbioticA (Perth, Australia) :since its foundation in 2000, SymbioticA has enabled dozens of artists to engage in and comment on "wet technologies" while complying strictly with scientific requirements. See the 2007 article on some projects at we-make-money-not-art.com


• Interview with Oron Catts + Ionat Zurr, 1999
  
  

I will keep adding links as I come across them here until the end of May.

Bahai and all that...

I made this image in early April for an exhibition Miyuki Kasahara is organizing here: Shed and a half in London (Shoreditch) gallery in May.

Her project For Whom Do You Speak called for contributions in non-European languages. My Maori is very rusty and so I sent her a couple of Bahai prayers I still remember. This is a children's Prayer:
O God Guide me, Protect me, illumine the lamp of my heart and make of my heart a brilliant star. Thou art the Mighty and powerful.


And while on the subject of the Bahai Faith, I'll mention a few blogs by Bahais I look at occasionally.
www.bahairants.com is run by baquia who writes engaged journalist-like stuff where there's usually a lively debate.
The topic at the moment, which I wish I had more time for, is on homosexuality. Some Bahais think homosexuality is a big no, no, and are clear about announcing this. Most think homosexuality is a big no, no, but try to sweep this embarrassment into the closet (pun intended) and others, myself included, think that while there are a lot of homophobic attitudes expressed as if these are Bahai attitudes, there's nothing in Bahai Scripture to support this and if we dig away, discuss away, we create a healthier community based on Baha'u'llah's teachings of equality for all. Anyway read the debate for yourself. Most who post on this take the position that the Bahai Faith cannot offer equality towards homosexuals.
For contrast here's the blog of dear friend, Daniel Orey,
a gay married, out-the-closest Bahai!
Bahai related blog I enjoy is Bahaitheway: witty + sharp observations.
And of course Sen McGlinn's blogs on Bahai theological aspects related to the Bahai Writings.
A lot of Bahais post blogs, but these are the ones I keep returning to because they are engaging or make me think about things.
Alison's blog is a beautiful and clear tribute to Baha'u'llah's Teachings and Writings.

3D modelling and a game engine called "Unity"

The Virtual Communities research group that I'm participating in from Feb 4th onwards for about 8 weeks.

A major part of this is learning Cinema 4D. Wim is a fantastic teacher. This image is the marriage of a freeform spine + a sweep nurb.