InLab
2015
Jan van Eyck Academie
By Van Eyck participants Matylda Krzykowski and Anna Bak with Christophe Clarijs
The Farm is an equal and temporary society that is focused on production. The Farm is devoted to the practice of making, discussing and organizing art & design through experiment. The Farm can be a holding of any size, and take place at any location. The Farm can be operated by designers, artists, theorists or writers. In fact by anyone. All knowledge harvested is to be used by everyone who joins The Farm.
The first edition of The Farm is taking place at the Van Eyck in the form of a 3-day workshop focussing on the topic of FAILURE.
I. Failure
27—30 October 2014
Jan van Eyck, The Netherlands
Any experiment or research project bears the risk of failure. The expectations for a successful outcome calculate the possibility of things that can go wrong. Every failure is a valuable fact and is a sure stimulus to continue seeking a satisfactory result.
Day 1 – Monday 27 October
‘Deconstructions’
Matylda Krzykowski & Anna Bak
Showcases about the things that can go wrong or that become serendipity, which will be conducted in an activity of construction and deconstruction.
‘The Promise of Failing’
Tal Erez
An optimistic exploration into how failure can set us free, and a ominous thought about the forces that stand between us and that promise.
Day 2 – Tuesday 28 October
‘Organised Game’
Ilke Gers
A game in which two teams move and negotiate their way through the length of a field of colours and twists.
‘From A to B & gave up B found C – It’s all about maybe, perhaps.’
Francois Dey, Anne Callahan & Egemen Demirci
Some destination will be proposed and people can choose red or blue, yellow or white, you know matter of taste, expectations. These runs can split themselves and reconnect some later moments. Later we meet again?
Day 3 – Wednesday 29 October
‘On the Gradual Construction of Thoughts During Speech’
Mariana Lanari
Self-designing the artist as a public intellectual. A model for an analogical dictionary.
‘The Reproduction of Age in the Work of Mechanical Art’
Timo Demollin & Christophe Clarijs
A working session on the practice of editing, aiming to explore the continuous alteration of meaning through the changing processes of reproduction.
‘Cedar’s drink and drawing class’
Cedar Lewisohn
This experimental drawing class will mix traditional life drawing with drinking games and perhaps some props.
Day 4 – Thursday 30 October
‘Open Farm’
Presentation and exhibition at the project space of different selected outcomes for each workshop. Followed by a final dinner with all participants of The Farm.
During I. Failure, The Farm was joined by Anna Bak, Anne Callahan, Christophe Clarijs, Martin La Roche Contreras, Egemen Demirci, Timo Demollin, Francois Dey, Ilke Gers, Matylda Krzykowski, Mariana Lanari, Cedar Lewisohn, Jack McGrath, An Onghena, Raya Stefanova, Nina Thibo, Sanne Vaassen, Charlotte Van de Velde, Huib Haye van de Werf and Katharina Zimmerhackl.
_________
II. Display
21—23 November 2014
Depot Basel, Switzerland
Where the purpose of the shopping window is to lure the consumer to wanting to purchase certain items, the designer or artist display has a different agenda that doesn’t necessarily want to connect to the viewers own personal desires and needs, but rather create a tension that will demand the viewer to reflect on what he or she is looking at.
Day 1 – Friday 21 November
‘Voom is … Voom’
Rodrigo Hernandez
It happens this way: the Cat in the Hat, suddenly hieratic, lifts his pointer finger in a dramatically Socratic gesture. He invokes the Little Cat, perched there in silence. We see nothing, and Little Cat never speaks. What he secrets in the hatband blackness above his crown is simply “Voom,” we are told. And Voom is… Voom: Now, don’t ask me what Voom is. I will never know. Voom vooms. Of it nothing more can be said. Painting on the window display.
‘Ways of (Not) Displaying’
Workshop for Potential Design
About how the way things are presented affect our ideas about them. When we see things we are unwittingly affected by how they are presented, and the context in which they seem to exist. The workshop will explore ways to present objects without projecting any subjective notions onto them. Is there a way to show an object without context? Taking a set of small arbitrarily selected objects as starting point, we will create a (non-) window display that holds the objects as they are and nothing else.
‘A plate full of opportunities’
Food & Lectures
“Perspectives through screens and frames” by Josh Bitelli, “Art, Design & Advertisement” by
Anna Bak & “Die Diele in Zürich” by Livio Baumgartner
Together with a plate full of edible opportunities.
Day 2 – Saturday 22 November
‘Window, window of the city, who is the fairest one of all?’
Expedition
We are going on a expedition through the city of Basel in order to investigate different types of window displays and analyze the methods of exhibiting through a window.
‘Displaying the display’
Collective presentation
Everyone is invited to bring images of different forms of ‘displays’ and to present them on the beamer in order to discuss different strategies and methods of displaying. Any image goes!
‘Screens that are not Screens’
Andres Wanner
We have not left the era of the screen – a rectangular window opening onto an alternative reality, offering a link between a human subject and an audio-visual stream (Manovich). This hands-on workshop with Andres Wanner aims at expanding current uses of digital screen displays, and asks how screens can be used to even more directly interconnect physical with imaginary spaces.
‘The Internet display’
Screening
We will watch “They Live” a 1988 American science fiction satirical film written and directed by John Carpenter. Aliens are concealing their appearance and manipulating people to spend money, breed and accept the status quo with subliminal messages in mass media.
Day 3 – Sunday 23 November
‘Ein Ort ist das Ende einer Strecke, an der gearbeitet wird’
Performance by Ronja Römmelt and Alessandro Schiattarella
The dancer and choreographer examine the window display of Depot Basel.
‘Facts to know and facts to ignore’
Isabelle Born
A lecture about the fundamental principles of the promotional shop window. The approach is as follows: to know, to apply, to question and than to break the rules.
‘The Peep-show’
The Farm
With inspiration from Marcel Duchamp’s Étant donnés, his last major art work, (a tableau, visible only through a pair of peep holes), we will build a diorama on the inside of Depot Basel, only visible from the street at night.
During II. Display, The Farm was joined by Anna Bak, Livio Baumgartner, Isabelle Born, Stefanie Bräuer, Brigitte Clements, Ted Davis, Bernadette Deddens, Julian Denzler, Nathalie Geiser, Veronika Gombert, David Gregori, Rodrigo Hernandez, Patricia Huijnen, Rebekka Kiesewetter, Matylda Krzykowski, Giulia Mela, Tetsuo Mukai, Carina Ow, Stefan Pabst, Juan Palencia, Laura Pregger, Ronja Römmelt, Vera Sacchetti, Alessandro Schiattarella, Richard Trory and Andres Wanner.