The Subject of The Email (draft)

THE SUBJECT OF THE EMAIL SANDBERG INSTITUUT GRADUATION 2020

MAIN DEPARTMENTS

• CRITICAL STUDIES • DESIGN • DIRTY ART DEPARTMENT • FINE ARTS • STUDIO FOR IMMEDIATE SPACES TEMPORARY PROGRAMMES

• CHALLENGING JEWELLERY • THE COMMONERS' SOCIETY

DRAFT WORKS

EXHIBITIONS & EVENTS

29 OCTOBER – 1 NOVEMBER

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SANDBERG.NL/GRADUATION2020

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SANDBERG INSTITUUT GRADUATION 2020

HEMBRUG TERREIN (HET HEM DE DOOD)

MAIN DEPARTMENTS

EXHIBITIONS & EVENTS

• CRITICAL STUDIES • DESIGN • DIRTY ART DEPARTMENT • FINE ARTS • STUDIO FOR IMMEDIATE SPACES TEMPORARY PROGRAMMES

• CHALLENGING JEWELLERY • THE COMMONERS' SOCIETY

29 OCTOBER – 1 NOVEMBER

SANDBERG.NL/GRADUATION2020

THE SUBJECT OF THE EMAIL

SANDBERG INSTITUUT GRADUATION 2020

WORKS 7

DRAFT THIS PUBLICATION IS A DRAFT AND WILL BE UPDATED WITH THE FINAL GRADUATION WORKS IN NOVEMBER 2020.

VISIT HTTPS://SANDBERG.NL/GRADUATION2020/DRAFT/PUBLICATION TO DOWNLOAD.

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DEAR SOCIAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL, https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/letters/dear-social-economic-council-delany-boutkan

LETTER BY

DELANY BOUTKAN RESEARCHER

EDITORIAL SERIES

SEVEN *CLICKING* INDEX FINGERS 9

GRADUATES MENTIONED

• YARA SAID • BEATRIZ CONEFREY • WILLEM SCHENK • TING GONG • OCTAVE RIMBERTRIVIÈRE • LEVI VAN GELDER • LUCIA FERNANDEZ SANTORO • ANNA MARIA BALINT • LIESELOT VERSTEEG • MICHAEL WEBER

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DEAR SOCIAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL,

DELANY BOUTKAN

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/letters/dear-social-economic-council-delany-boutkan

Dear Social Economic Council, Dear Graduate students of the Sandberg Instituut, Petitions are signed, labor unions initiated, digital panel discussions with politicians organised. However, when it comes to conversations around the Covid-19 pandemic’s financial impact on cultural work and the creative industries in The Netherlands I have not heard many voices of my own generation amplified; artists, designers and creatives recently graduated from their master studies in art and design academies and those under thirty years of age. Perhaps it is time for a seat at the table. Yet, a seat at the table where policy is debated and advised upon, does not necessarily allow for a voice to be heard.

I am sending you this letter as part of a group of writers, invited to contribute to the annual graduation publication of Sandberg Instituut Amsterdam (Masters of Art and Design of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie) with a letter to a public institution or employment sector.

As an alumni from an artistic academy in the Netherlands myself (Design Academy Eindhoven, 2018), and as a freelance cultural worker, I would like to discuss with you an idea for a youth shadow council and how to potentially propose a form of this together to the Sociaal Economische Raad SER (NL) / Social Economic Council (EN). The SER advises the Dutch Government and Parliament on social and economic policy. It also facilitates agreements. I imagined the shadow council to focus primarily on unsolicited advice to policies that might affect future cultural work conditions.

Even prior to formally completing their studies, the media has already deemed those graduating in 2020 ‘the lost generation.’ Referring to youth’s decreasing future chances on the labour market, increasing unemployment or employment as flex workers; through 0-hour contracts, forced freelance conditions, short-term contracts, or being the last employed with a company and therefore the first to be disregarded.

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DEAR SOCIAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL,

DELANY BOUTKAN

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/letters/dear-social-economic-council-delany-boutkan

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Often recent alumni from art and design academies start their artistic vocation while additionally working in hospitality, retail, cleaning, cultural or food services in order to maintain financial security in society. Industries currently hit hardest by the pandemic. Many articles released in both Europe and the US over the course of the pandemic, address how this ‘class of Covid-19’, as they become economically disenfranchised, lose confidence in public institutions and don’t feel listened to.¹ But how will institutions listen? Listening is often understood as a rather passive state as part of the receiving end of a conversation, dialogue or monologue.

In contrast, Sandberg graduate and artist Yara Said refers to listening as an active action. Yara’s statements about the way she works with audio in her graduation films reminds me that watching a film and listening to someone speaking, hold inherent similarities; often asking questions during a screening defies the purpose of watching the film, as it does not allow for the storyline to unfold in front of you in the way the director intended it to. Similarly the storyline and voice of a generation can get lost when predominantly discussed and not being listened to, as seen with the ‘class of Covid-19’.

Sandberg graduate and artist Beatriz Conefrey’s thesis on the voice as a muscle, an object, a tool, and an instrument describes how voices of power often take up much space and concentration in a conversation or monologue. In her thesis she also mentions that the voice of power, due to its authority or superiority, has the capacity to change a situation and can empower other voices. Consequently, this letter serves as an invitation for Sandberg alumni to join their voices and for the SER to actively listen and give those voices space to exist.

We could perhaps change the media narrative accordingly; this class of 2020 is less a generation of lost futures but essentially a generation of lost

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DEAR SOCIAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL,

DELANY BOUTKAN

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/letters/dear-social-economic-council-delany-boutkan

voices, unheard by those determining the policies that shape their future. “Yet, where do voices go when they are dismissed?” is what a friend, Tiiu Meiner, asked me when I discussed this letter with her.

These voices often initiate different conversations about potential futures for cultural work. Sandberg graduate and cultural strategist Willem Schenk in his collaborations, for example, examines alternative scenarios for how the creative industries could operate. In these scenarios social art and design practices converse within corporate locations and conservative communities in a series of events, imagining creative work in unlikely locations and arenas. Some alumni imagine creative work as events in alternative places, others also reimagine their time scale. Ting Gong, for example, proposes to see an artistsʼ graduation project not as one confined to the one year of graduation, but instead extends the duration of it twenty years into the future. Making the cultural work end in 2040, and not in 2020 as current governmental announcements and news items want us to believe about this generation.

I have written this letter not with the aim to become ‘the voice of this generation’ but much rather as ‘a singular voice in a generation’ instead. With this letter I would like to welcome this year’s Sandberg Instituut graduates and the Dutch Social Economic Council (SER) to a conversation about what shape a potential shadow council could constitute according to the graduates.

I would be delighted if some of the graduates and a representative of the SER (Social Economic Council) would consider accepting this invitation and join me in visiting the final graduation exhibition at the end of October to, next to the aforementioned alumni, potentially visit art practices that: Combine the artisanal and the commercial in a chaos of unlikely gatherings (Octave Rimbert-Rivière); Bring forward the role of fiction and roleplay in creating spaces

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DEAR SOCIAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL,

DELANY BOUTKAN

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/letters/dear-social-economic-council-delany-boutkan

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for conversation (Levi van Gelder); Study spaces for individual storytelling and the potential of fictionalising everyday life (Lucia Fernandez Santoro); Reflect on personal ways of working as an artist, through the individual act of perception (Anna Maria Balint); Find an interest in tools and power symbols, learning techniques and working with younger generations (Lieselot Versteeg); Bring forward the immaterial workers current condition and the move from labour as a state of accomplishment and utility to joy as the labour production-tool (Michael Weber).

I look forward to hearing from you.

Warmly, Delany Boutkan

Footnote: 1. Alter, Charlotte. “COVID Will Shape the Class of 2020 for Their Entire Lives� Time Magazine. May 21, 2020. https://time.com/5839765/college-graduation-2020/ Graduates mentioned: sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/yara-said sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/beatriz-conefrey sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/willem-schenk sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/ting-gong sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/octave-rimbert-riviere sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/levi-van-gelder sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/lucia-fernandez-santoro sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/anna-maria-balint sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/lieselot-versteeg sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/michael-weber

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VISUAL POEMS

• YARA SAID • DAMASCUS (SYRIA) • FINE ARTS

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/yara-said

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Visual poems is a collection of short films that investigates love, loss, trauma and everyday objects in relation to sound and memory. It attempts to create an environment where all these elements can exist organically without the disturbance of the outside world. The sound of the image, the language and the active act of listening that is encouraged through the slow layout of the video will allow the spectator to construct their own narrative of the dreamy sequences they are looking at.

Hello, I am your Host.

Like me or not, no turning back.

THE HOST

As you can hear, I am the Voice you listen first.

I am the Voice that runs this space.

Call it power or just obligations.

I am the Voice of the space that you are about to enter.

My Voice is a muscle that I shaped to fit this specific location, I have others…

But here, in this space, my Voice is assertive! generous, clear. my words are distinctive, And since you are here, I will actually not decide if you enter, but here you have your own will.

• BEATRIZ CONEFREY • LISBOA (PORTUGAL) • STUDIO FOR IMMEDIATE SPACES

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/beatriz-conefrey

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CULTURE À LA CARTE

• WILLEM SCHENK • HENGELO (NL) • THE COMMONERS' SOCIETY

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/willem-schenk

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Culture à la carte is a series of interventions designed to mitigate today’s cut-throat capitalist society. The events arise from collaborations with autonomous artists and designers who are working around socially engaged topics such as trust, labor and minorities. For one of the collaborations I was inspired by a rural tradition from the Dutch hinterlands. The work of designer and activist Rowena Buur is laid into a mosaic of flowers – discussing the lack of queer spaces amongst conservative communities.

A WAY OF WEARING

• TING GONG • CHONGQING (CHINA) • CHALLENGING JEWELLERY

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/ting-gong

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“A Way of Wearing” consists of 1 piece of garment (a design), 1 letter (a statement) and 20 envelopes (a reach for commitment). The work will unfold in time, starting from 2020, and ending in 2040.

DIABLE

• OCTAVE RIMBERTRIVIÈRE • LA SEYNE SUR MER (FRANCE) • DIRTY ART DEPARTMENT

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/octave-rimbert-riviere

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In my practice, I cross over references and link them in an unhierarchical way. Those fragments glued together become monsters. Their skins and surfaces are seductive, colorful and shiny, but they hide something disturbing. They outline bodies that stand between humour and the uncanny. Like a trompe l’oeil, they flirt with the eyes of the viewer, even if finally an empty character stands behind the gaze. The emptiness of those grotesque figures is reminding us that everything around us could be an imitation, a ghost coming back from the past, or a combination of something haunting and humourous.

NO TITLE

• LEVI VAN GELDER • BENEDENLEEUWEN (NL) • DESIGN

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/levi-van-gelder

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I tried yanking my legs out of their sockets, dislocating them and putting them elsewhere useful. I tried growing extra tall, growing extra flesh. Eating bugs to muster extra power. Holding my breath and biting my teeth and moving my rotting vessel towards a way out. I remember I cried and felt guilty and angry about crying since this would defeat the objective to evolve into a normal stoic human that muffles its tears.

UNTITLED CERTAINTY

• LUCIA FERNANDEZ SANTORO • ZURICH (SWITZERLAND) • THE COMMONERS' SOCIETY

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/lucia-fernandez-santoro

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Immersive installation exploring space expansion between mirror, body, lights and smoke. Study on the physicality of smoke and the narrative potential it contains. How, conditioned by a few factors (lights, mirrors) it induces the viewers in a state and space for individual storytelling to occur. Study on everyday life and its fictional potentials. How is a body a story, how can the narrative association of the body be removed from its primal interpretation? E-publication of thesis illustrated and with sonic interpretation.

KEYS

• ANNA MARIA BALINT • BASEL (SWITZERLAND) • FINE ARTS

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/anna-maria-balint

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Keys is a video work showing simultaneously different sceneries, directing the viewers vision to various objects. The shown objects are keys in the narrative to unknown meanings. “There is this thing which transforms in front of ones eyes, memorized in the mind, as both of the images, present and transcended into abstraction.”

THE SAME COIN

• LIESELOT VERSTEEG • BEVERWIJK (NL) • FINE ARTS

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/lieselot-versteeg

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When owning a power symbol (many, large, big) on ones body, it causes that body to be shattered with holes through which everything that the symbol incarnates can be experienced. I think ‘power’ then beams out from every coin-hole.

DO WHAT YOU LOVE

• MICHAEL WEBER • KARLSRUHE (GERMANY) • STUDIO FOR IMMEDIATE SPACES

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/michael-weber

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Do What You Love is a series of web-based sculptures fantasizing on today’s immaterial worker in the neoliberal city. Labour as a state of accomplishment and utility has been replaced by its lifestylization. The immaterial worker experiences labor marketed as a product, masked as a service to optimize the daily work routine.

HELLO NONHUMANS, https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/letters/hello-non-humans-by-zippora-elders

LETTER BY

ZIPPORA ELDERS CURATOR

EDITORIAL LETTERS

SEVEN *CLICKING* INDEX FINGERS 25

GRADUATES MENTIONED

• HANNA VALLE • ANOUK ASSELINEAU • ANDREA GONZÁLEZ GARRÁN • ALEKSANDR SERGIENKO • SELINE DURRER • VERONIKA FABIAN • MARGARET MUNCHHEIMER • SIMPSON TSE • MORGANE DE KLERK • TALI LIBERMAN • NATALIA JORDANOVA

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DEAR NON-HUMANS,

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/letters/hello-non-humans-by-zippora-elders

ZIPPORA ELDERS

You can be tools, you can be dead, you can be unknown to me still. You can exist in my imagination and you can exist outside this world.

Dear Non-Humans, Are you familiar with love? In human language it means deep affection. To be honest I think some humans are more capable of loving non-humans than each other.

Except, maybe, for those who they consider non-humans while they’re actually humans as well. Are you still following me here? It seems that to some, humans become lesser humans when they are threatening our own safety.

And safety, another non-human, is a strange thing you know: it doesn’t necessarily mean being protected from danger. It means a lot more than that. Things unnecessary even.

I’ve witnessed humans neglecting love in favor of extended safety, luxury, the familiar. It’s twisted.

With humans, safety apparently easily turns into greed, and in turn anxiety – all about possessing non-humans.

And it gets even more twisted, because one of the non-humans that we’re probably most dependent on, we are actually protecting the less: a climate that we humans can survive in. And to make it even worse, that often comes with simultaneously running over other humans that look less similar to ourselves.

My apologies, I’m not sure if any of this is actually of your concern. Many of you non-humans will be better off without us anyway. So let’s turn to the non-humans that we do value – and even make ourselves. And sometimes such special ones! Humans are currently graduating from art school by making you, and in making you they’re reflecting on your meaning. No taking for granted at all. Isn’t that hopeful? Let me give you some examples.

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DEAR NON-HUMANS,

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/letters/hello-non-humans-by-zippora-elders

ZIPPORA ELDERS

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Our current state of saying goodbye to old narratives and realities, while not recognizing new horizons yet, is a recurring topic for several of these artists. For example, the speculative and bodily landscapes of Hanna Valle created strange narratives where labour and fantasy come together. Also Anouk Asselineau blurred realities by her immersive recorded story, the Female Hypnotist. In addition Andrea González Garrán investigated our material culture in order to produce alternate dream worlds. And Aleksandr Sergienko searched for new romanticism and experiencing true belief: through his colourful, bright works he is encouraging sensory receptivity for events from the past and future. In turn Seline Durrer in her work searches for “slowing up”, as a chance to rethink the present.

That present was especially challenged during the semi-lockdown that the virus brought upon us. Veronika Fabian is using jewellery as an intermediary between the self and society and as a mediator of value and identity, exploring the lasting bond that we have with our objects. With this in mind, it is interesting how she noted how working from home really messed up her work-life balance: “Work can be an addiction quite easily.” You probably wonder how this affected her bond with and between home objects and work objects? Also Margaret Munchheimer – who researches hand work and gestural communication – during lockdown began working in strange, typically unused corners like the laundry room. “I sat there on a stack of blankets, working with wire and pliers creating sculptures.” And Simpson Tse – who explores notions of affective work – even had the realisation that he had never lived with a toilet of his own: “In the most practical sense, maybe we do not need one! Then again, the last two months has heightened another realisation of being privileged enough to be able to gain access to stable accommodation and a certain degree of personal space.”

Musing about living with your designs, Morgane de Klerk’s developed a bunch of sensitive protectors. “Who is assisting who, nowadays? Is it the object or the

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DEAR NON-HUMANS,

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/letters/hello-non-humans-by-zippora-elders

ZIPPORA ELDERS

user?” Her hybrids between devices and jewellery, are protecting their users from being unwillingly traced or reminding them that devices are essentially tools to benefit from. Indeed wishes to care and be cared for are a tough question for us humans in these days: “I wish to find enough financial stability to be able to have a small family,” she said. “While this is a rather normal wish for a 33-year-old woman, the status of creatives is often so precarious that it feels like a luxury to project ourselves in a future in which we could provide and support anyone.”

In general navigating ourselves while being observed and simultaneously observing seems even more of a challenge than before. In his project Tali Liberman unveiled the bias from interfaces that seem neutral by design. Unrendered Road traces the road between Jerusalem and Jericho, which would be dismissed by Google Maps. In turn Natalia Jordanova’s alienating yet attractive sculptural installation is itself developed as an ecosystem of images and signs. She quite hopefully stated about the current tides: “I believe that form is just a possibility, and so if conditions change that form can also transform.

Essentially, ideas can not be taken away ...”

Dear non-humans, you can be divided between the nonhumans that were already there (or will enter from elsewhere), and the non-humans that have been created by or due to humans. The latter are often designed.

Therefore I hope you can forgive us for acting so human-centric in basically everything that we do, for forsaking you so often. But believe me: those rare moments when we actually are trying to balance life a bit with beauty, we mean well, and when we do that by simultaneously reflecting upon ourselves, we do too. Indeed such non-human artefacts are made in collaboration with one of my favourite non-humans: imagination.

Likely, as a human, one needs imagination to foresee a future in our imagined lineair perception of time.

And especially now one needs imagination to genuinely

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DEAR NON-HUMANS,

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/letters/hello-non-humans-by-zippora-elders

ZIPPORA ELDERS

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believe that we’re living in a fertile and good world.

Perhaps imagination will keep us safe – at least in our minds and souls – and make us survive after all.

I don’t know. But maybe you do.

In honour of you I am inviting anybody viewing these graduation works to blur their biased difference between humans and non-humans. And to give both their equally devoted attention.

Z.

Graduates mentioned: sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/hanna-valle sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/anouk-asselineau sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/andrea-gonzalez-garran sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/aleksandr-sergienko sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/seline-durrer sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/veronika-fabian sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/margaret-munchheimer sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/simpson-tse sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/morgane-de-klerk sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/tali-liberman sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/natalia-jordanova

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OFFSPRING

• HANNA VALLE • VANTAA (FINLAND) • DESIGN

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/hanna-valle

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‘Offspring’ is an ongoing visual research about speculative and bodily landscapes.

FEMALE HYPNOTIST

• ANOUK ASSELINEAU • MELBOURNE (AUSTRALIA) • FINE ARTS

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/anouk-asselineau

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Female Hypnotist is a short story written by Anouk during the quarantine. The story has been sitting for about a decade and is now being released through writing. Currently Anouk is holding voice auditions for the story to be read, recorded, the recording will then be pressed as a record.

ES IMPOSIBLE NO PUEDE SER

• ANDREA GONZÁLEZ GARRÁN • MADRID (SPAIN) • DESIGN

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/andrea-gonzalez-garran

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It is impossible it cannot be: something too good to be true. It is impossible it cannot be: something that cannot be because it is impossible and is doomed to disappear. Radical hedonism, Nowhere girls, being out of time, super power, absence of fear: I start to flirt with the idea that the memories – supernatural – of that scene, subversion, infinite music, heartbeats beatmatching beats, being part of something completely new, speeding cars, tireless dancing bodies, memories of transcending to another world that still live – are connected to the notion of the vampiric.

ASCENSION

• ALEKSANDR SERGIENKO • KERCH (UKRAINE) • FINE ARTS

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/aleksandr-sergienko

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The soul was wandering through experimental exploration on dramatic issues, studying phenomena of catastrophe of the world in its wide sense. That’s why after odious thesis, it needed spiritual growth and salvation, hence, it needed peaceful conclusion. Ascension is a selection of works which are eventually clear, solved, bright and optimistic. It’s just an exit from the past with long awaited maturity.

OVERTURE

• SELINE DURRER • LUCERNE, (SWITZERLAND) • CHALLENGING JEWELLERY

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/seline-durrer

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Overture acts as a vocal ‘Auftakt’ for graduation, reflecting the urge for a slowing up and a wishful reality as a chance to rethink the present – where the value of virtually everything is measured in quantitative economic terms of time and money.

A personal manifestation, Overture aims to return to the essence; instead of adding more things devoid of humanity, diversity or complexity and to create awareness of the most precious commodity we have: time.

YOU, ME AND YOUR STUFF

• VERONIKA FABIAN • KECSKEMÉT (HUNGARY) • CHALLENGING JEWELLERY

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/veronika-fabian

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In her project ‘You, me and your stuff’ Veronika Fabian presents a series of chains made of reconstructed everyday objects.

Using jewellery as an intermediary between the self and society and as a mediator of value and identity, the work explores the lasting bond we have with our objects. Building on the tension between image and materiality, commodity and uniqueness, craft and design in contemporary society, her experiment aims to create an ongoing dialogue allowing individuals to engage at various stages of the creative process.

ALPHABET OF TOUCH, 2020

• MARGARET MUNCHHEIMER • LAKEPORT, CALIFORNIA (USA) • CHALLENGING JEWELLERY

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/margaret-munchheimer

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Stemming from my thesis research regarding craft as human heritage, I began this object investigation referencing the ideas of both hand work, and gestural communication. Current prototypes are made of soft black iron wire, depicting life-size abstracted images of hands, with the effect of 3D line-drawings. The visual impact of the hand has shifted since the effects of quarantine and social distancing. Regardless of my initial interpretation for the work, the current reading is unmistakably about human touch and the lack of contact; a temporary layer of interpretation, but nonetheless relevant.

LIVING IN A BLUR

• SIMPSON TSE • MELBOURNE (AUSTRALIA) • THE COMMONERS' SOCIETY

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/simpson-tse

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During this period of soft quarantine, my room is a workplace, a gym, a library, and also a cinema and its foyer, now occupied not by a crowd but by audio visual transmissions from other rooms in the city and further afield. The divisions between work, entertainment, leisure, and relationships bleed into one another. Originated from a fascination of the background blur options in video conferencing applications, Living in a Blur is a research project looking into these contemporary notions of blurriness, and how blurriness could be seen as the aesthetics of both our social facade and emotional interiors.

HEY DEVICE, SHOW ME PRIVACY

• MORGANE DE KLERK • LISIEUX (FRANCE) • CHALLENGING JEWELLERY

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/morgane-de-klerk

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Who is assisting who, nowadays? Is it the object or the user? The mixed-media installation aims to raise awareness on the value of the numerous personal data collected, and on the loss of privacy and control generated from the quantification of our behaviours. It consists in a series of tangible objects; hybrids between devices and jewellery, protecting their users from being unwillingly traced and/or reminding them that devices are essentially tools to benefit from. This reciprocity between the object and the user is an interaction based on trust – a type of trust currently put at stake.

UNRENDERED ROAD

• TALI LIBERMAN • THE NEGEV (ISRAEL) • DESIGN

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/tali-liberman

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Our reliance on seemingly neutrally designed interfaces makes our interactions with devices feel natural but when applied unequally, systems and technology also concentrate power and knowledge, enable and disable our access to places, and to certain actions. The video installation Unrendered Road traces the road between Jerusalem and Jericho. A road that Google Maps will not direct you to, the unrendered road. By documenting and bringing together different experiences of the road Liberman unpacks existing knowledge systems, regulations, and legislation, as an attempt to expose the political and historical circumstances manifested through the interface.

BURSTING BUBBLES: ANOTHER TRUTH

• NATALIA JORDANOVA • SOFIA (BULGARIA) • DIRTY ART DEPARTMENT

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/natalia-jordanova

The sculptural installation is developed as an ecosystem of images and signs. Its narrative explores myths, science fiction imagination and the desire to know. The world, as defined, consists of objects resembling fortune-teller orbs and two-dimensional sculptural pieces. It mimics the way technology is using models, systems, and elements of nature to solve complex human problems. The proposition is for a non-human centred subject, no single narrative and no single truth.

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THE SUBJECT OF THE EMAIL THE NAME OF LETTER BY

THE AUTHOR EDITORIAL LETTERS

SEVEN *CLICKING* INDEX FINGERS 43

GRADUATES MENTIONED

• AIMÉE THERIOT • ALEKSANDR SERGIENKO • ALEX KUUSIK • ANDONI ZAMORA • AMBER OSKAM • ANDREA GONZÁLEZ • ANOUK ASSELINEAU

THE SUBJECT OF THE EMAIL

THE NAME OF THE AUTHOR 64

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I

• EMIRHAN AKIN • 38.9637° NEAR 35.2433° EAST • DESIGN

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/emirhan-akin

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BULLY / INTONATION / ARCHETYPAL TRUTHS / REINVENTION / PUBLIC HUMILIATION / APOCALYPSES / RITUALS / GENTRIFICATION / CONSTANT HYBRIDIZATION / INQUIRY OF THE SELF / MASKS / PROPHECY / RIPPING OF THE PLASTER / DISARMING THE NEW BORN SOLDIER / THE WISDOM OF INSECURITY / MONUMENTAL CHALLENGE OF SELF-AWARENESS / MEETINGS WITH THE REMARKABLE MEN / DYSFUNCTION OF THE CHILDHOOD / DEATH IS OPPOSITE OF EVERYTHING / A LIST IS NEVER DONE / ENTRANCE IS ALSO THE EXIT / CAN I KILL MY SELF?

KITCHEN CONVERSATIONS

• PATRYCJA ROZWORA • WARSAW (POLAND) • CRITICAL STUDIES

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/patrycja-rozwora

46 64

My podcast series Kitchen Conversations aims to open up the mysterious and vague ‘Eastern Block’ to a broader, international audience. Each episode is devoted to one artist exploring their interest and urgency to create within the framework of the post-Soviet sphere. I take after Madina Tlostanova that we should delink from the losing battle and from the logic of ‘catching up’ in the sphere of knowledge production. This podcast looks at how we can be aware of other models (especially non-Western ones) – but instead of replicating them, create new models accurately fitting the specificity of our current conditions.

THE SWIMMING POOL

• CARMEN DUSMET CARRASCO • HOME (SPAIN) • DESIGN

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/carmen-dusmet-carrasco

47

The work emerges after a 2-year, domestic-ethnographic research. In an attempt to find proof of what it means to practice care, Carmen develops an obsession to observe and capture her mother’s journey towards a precarious retirement. What began as a socio-economic study of female poverty in Spain, led to an intimate negotiation of a mother-daughter relationship.

The work unapologetically submerges the viewer on a raw, personal journey about the cyclic aspect of life and the desperate qualities of love.

SOUR • VERONIKA COUNTERFEITS BABAYAN • THE WOMB (C-SECTION) • DIRTY ART DEPARTMENT https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/veronika-babayan

48 64

SOUR COUNTERFEITS is a setup of a forgery lab which consists of several elements and shows the production of fruit leather. This slow method of sun-drying fruit has been practiced predominantly by women in the Caucasus and Middle East.

The work imitates the tradition of fruit leather as an inherited routine of a maternal practice that is part of a collective memory. The recipe takes the form of a mnemonic device, which has the ability to transmit both transgenerationally and transnationally. Here, it is regarded as a vessel through which collective stories can be preserved and transmitted.

MISREPRESEN• LINDA TATIONS: STAUFFER CLITORIS • WINTERTHUR AND (SWITZERLAND) BASKETBALL • DIRTY ART DEPARTMENT https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/linda-stauffer

49

In this subversive play, a utopian story called “Misrepresentations” advocates for a more agender thinking. Touching upon critical notions in feminism such as gender politics in sports and the mystification of the female anatomy, the characters of this alter-world appear in form of marionette puppets. The dimension-spectrum of props and sculptural objects are blurring fictions and realities.

GHOSTLY VOICES, NOISE AND STATIC

• MARÍA MAZZANTI • BOGOTÁ (COLOMBIA) • STUDIO FOR IMMEDIATE SPACES

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/maria-mazzanti

50 64

Ghostly voices, noise, and static is a 24-hour hotline for audios about the invisible within the dominant narratives produced by the city. The phone menu becomes a front line for the unheard and unreadable through landscapes of opposition that violently silence the underrepresented. The line works as a fragile archive of the invisible ghosts and female characters that inhabit the city. The line’s beta version consisted of a series of text messages that were read and performed in a communal reading by the attendants.

MODERN BEDOUIN

• LAILA EL MEHELMY • JEDDAH (SAUDI ARABIA) • CHALLENGING JEWELLERY

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/laila-el-mehelmy

51

Inspired by the duality of lives of Saudi women: the contrast between behavior and dress, between inside and outside.

Using Bedouin motifs, which form the bases of my modules and are used in the jewelry pieces I present here. Using resin and injecting playful and vibrant colours which are in distinct contrast to the traditional colour pallets. The modular system of adding and subtracting pieces allows the pieces to grow or shrink depending on the wearers desire. An innovative take on deep heritage, an extension of how women in Saudi live modern lives in traditional society.

REPAIR -› NO CHANGE

• MAREK MROWIŃSKI • SŁUPSK (POLAND) • CHALLENGING JEWELLERY

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/marek-mrowinski

52 64

The thesis consists of text strikethrough right after the writing is accomplished. The No Change project includes making identical copies of already existing own works, using the same materials and time-consuming techniques.

EVERTHING IS VALUES

• MARILYN VOLKMAN • CORPUS CHRISTI, TEXAS (USA) • CHALLENGING JEWELLERY

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/marilyn-volkman

53

Marilyn Volkman is Aurora Fleischer, The DUO, Zsófia Puskas, Hans Dekker, Mila Shadid, Paul Desjardins, CELESTE, James Carmiel, Brit Harding, Edgar van Dijk, THE COMMITTEE, Jane Booysen, Rebecca Ruskin, Lotte Moritz, Rod Nutt, Helen Brouwer, Lucia Bianchi, Marloes de Vries, Émilie Gainsbourg, Vasil Wiśniewski. Marilyn Volkman is Marilyn Volkman.

FEARLESSNESS is COMMUNITY. CHALLENGE. EVERYTHING IS VALUES.

SOMETHING HAPPENED HERE

• KASPER VAN MOLL • NIJMEGEN (NL) • THE COMMONERS' SOCIETY

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/kasper-van-moll

54 64

Welcome to my world. This is your world now, too. Crawl inside the cave-like space I’ve built. Meet my friends. Watch the curtain being pulled back. Enjoy the scenes, a collection of movie-stills. A non-sequential storyboard of friends meeting friends. Look at the eyes, look at the hands. Some invite you in, like an open window. Others might seem to float in vast nothingness. Trust me, when I tell you it all happened for real.

DEAR KRAFTWERK, https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/letters/dear-kraftwerk-by-leon-kruijswijk

LETTER BY

LEON KRUIJSWIJK CURATOR

EDITORIAL LETTERS

SEVEN *CLICKING* INDEX FINGERS 55

GRADUATES MENTIONED

• NICOLÒ PELLARIN • CÓILÍN O’CONNELL • ROMAN TKACHENKO • JOANNE VOSLOO • CINDY WEGNER • STEPHANIE SCHUITEMAKER • GABRIELLA GOLDSMITH • LUCA SOUDANT • PEDRO MATIAS • ANTONIO LÓPEZ ESPINOSA

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DEAR KRAFTWERK,

LEON KRUIJSWIJK

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/letters/dear-kraftwerk-by-leon-kruijswijk

Dear Kraftwerk, (Cc to all other signifiers of a paradigm shift), First of all, I want to express my condolences on the recent loss of Florian Schneider – one of your founding members. All together you created a band that would change the understanding of tone, sound and music infinitely. You have started on the paved way of an Autobahn (1974), but your journey with an unknown destination led you off the beaten track, during which you explored, assessed and embraced the possibilities of a new mode of music creation through the sole use of electronic instruments. Not only the technique was new – your lyrical views were visionary of a world becoming ever more structured, defined and controlled by electronic devices. Considering your work as the prelude of an electronic turn, a plethora of other turns are taking shape at the moment, which we are only in the midst of grasping. An obvious turn emerging from the electronic sphere is the digital one, which, like a liquid entity, found its way to the deepest point possible, as the digital sphere has become one of the fundaments of many societies across the world.

Naturally this phenomenon has been used as much as critiqued within the arts. For example, Nicolò Pellarin leaves behind a fictional landscape with non-alphabetic language in urban spaces, with which he unsettles everyday scenarios in real life to revert attention back from the digital sphere to the physical one. This might be a solution for the way we increasingly inhabit the world through our digital devices. Cóilín O’Connoll contrastingly creates an abundant archive of digitized Neolithic stone monuments to scrutinise our methods of processing the past, present and imaging the future.

How did you, dear Kraftwerk, continue to imagine the future while pandemics and disasters; fights for systematic changes and equality; economic and political crises; upheavals and wars were profoundly shifting the world around you throughout the years?

While Roman Tkachenko has been investigating the political implications of the design of public spaces in order to disclose its vulnerabilities and misuses, 57

DEAR KRAFTWERK,

LEON KRUIJSWIJK

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/letters/dear-kraftwerk-by-leon-kruijswijk

64

the meaning of the term ‘public’ is shifting due to the COVID-19 pandemic. People across an entire globe have been confined to their private spaces, at least those who are privileged to stay at home and to have a home. The private sphere has never been so closely intertwined with the public one. Forced to meet with appropriate distance, over the phone or digitally, it has become clear that a sense of belonging among people is created not only within, but also beyond both these physical spaces. Communities have gathered through proxy moments of contact, considerably online.

Some might even say that our online identity has become more important than the offline parallel universe, like Joanne Vosloo is exploring by crafting digital images as well as through the writings of her alter ego Octo Jozer. In addition, Cindy Wegner is looking into which actions have been undertaken to connect people when togetherness was missing. Wegner in particular focuses on the reunification attempts and processes of the former East and West after the fall of the Berlin wall, which also raised questions on the sense of belonging.

Your electronic sound, dear Kraftwerk, actually travelled from West-Germany to the USA, where it laid the foundation for house music and influenced many musicians, as we among others can hear in Aquabahn (1994) by Detroit’s Drexciya. Some of their new sounds, as well as from many others, created on the other side of the Atlantic then crossed the ocean. From the late 1990s, the Berlin record label Tresor started for example to release records by Drexciya. Such sounds have heavily influenced the capital’s techno scene, which became world-renowned. So, my dear Kraftwerk, it is safe to say that we can feel connected through art regardless of its form, right? However, as Stephanie Schuitemaker is asking us, why do we resonate with art and why do some works resonate more than others?

Over time, another wave of changes rooted in the era you started has become more and more layered in order to represent the complexity of issues at stake. The relationship between body, sexuality, gender and identity has increasingly challenged dominant norms and 58

DEAR KRAFTWERK,

LEON KRUIJSWIJK

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/letters/dear-kraftwerk-by-leon-kruijswijk

systems such as patriarchy and heterosexuality. This has led to more fluid ideas about this relationship, opening up space to let the actual mind and feelings reign, as in the work of Gabriella Goldsmith.

Gender performativity in sound and music has been scrutinised too. Luca Soudant investigates the tactility of sound and the way it can touch a body, both emotionally and physically. They explore how we can use that to our benefit in order to bend it in ways we prefer to think about the world, away from rigid and normative structures. As a matter of fact, following Pedro Matias’ line of thinking, the future of the world is letting the body fully sink in softness, to eventually surrender into soft matter until we have no shape, with the purpose to accept and embrace liquidity, fluidity and continuous flux. Will an Autobahn or Aquabahn then still be needed to start journeys to the undiscovered? Can I invite you for a group discussion with these artists about such unknown futurities? Let me know, because I definitely want to embark on this adventure with these graduates, but before I do so, I will join Antonio López Espinosa in uttering a goodbye: [...]

A sonic farewell, towards nowhere, but the map of the one who got lost, on purpose, for the one who needed to find, not to achieve, to find where there’s nothing to be eaten, nothing, but the shadow, of the infinite blossoms, of the infinite ssssuns, of the infinite mooons. [...]

Léon Kruijswijk 59

DEAR KRAFTWERK,

LEON KRUIJSWIJK

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/letters/dear-kraftwerk-by-leon-kruijswijk

64

Graduates mentioned: sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/nicolo-pellarin sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/coilin-oconnell sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/roman-tkachenko sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/joanne-vosloo sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/cindy-wegner sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/stephanie-schuitemaker sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/gabriella-goldsmith sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/luca-soudant sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/pedro-matias sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/antonio-lopez-espinosa

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ANTIHYPERGRAPHY

• NICOLÒ PELLARIN • VENICE (ITALY) • DESIGN

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/nicolo-pellarin

61

A series of attempts towards the creation of a fictional-landscape generated-non-alphabetic language. A beyond the rational, web of visual and physical textualities generated and left by and through the land space, as infective, ephemeral forms of communication. Anti-hypergraphy questions the role of translation as a crucial tool in the definition of the relationship between human/landscape-landscape/human in contemporary practices such as visual communication and graphic design.

BLOOD FROM A STONE

• CÓILÍN O'CONNELL • DUBLIN (IRELAND) • DIRTY ART DEPARTMENT

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/coilin-oconnell

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Beginning with an impulse to create an archive of surface scans of Neolithic stone monuments led to the gradual amassing and production of a collection of photos, videos, books, and drawings. Following in the mould of obsessive UFO enthusiasts, amateur archaeologists and treasure hunters with a desire to find explanations, value and meaning. It became clear that a space was needed to present the collection and as with any museum it reveals as much about the social environment it is located within, the hang ups of the curator and our methods of processing the past, present and imaging the future.

SWEET HOME-OFFICE WORK

• ROMAN TKACHENKO • ROSTOVON-DON (RUSSIA) • STUDIO FOR IMMEDIATE SPACES

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/roman-tkachenko

63

This work is a reflection on the current focus on private spaces where we are all confined, those who are privileged to stay home. And the attention it has brought up. Even though we are all at home, the world keeps running. Now from home to home. The current system still manages to interfere in private space and start to suggest or possibly dictate how a household should be run. What is home? Has home come closer to a farm, as a household that generates income and around which a full life revolves?

ASSEMBLY • JOANNE LINE VOSLOO OF DREAMS: • PRETORIA CRAFTING (SOUTH AFRICA) OPPOSITES. • CHALLENGING JEWELLERY https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/joanne-vosloo

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She became a collector in this game. Finding pieces of this gem called “Eredium” that would add up so she could afford the skin for her mech. Although Mune could not see them physically in real life, their avatars represented cooler, more extreme versions of themselves; just like her. She was able to express herself in this digital realm. Most importantly collecting as many objects as she wanted to. If that black screen would go out without her saving, they would be lost forever. Objects collected to retain her online identity were more important than her offline reality’s parallel universe.

THE FOURTH WALL IS MISSING

• CINDY WEGNER • BERLIN (GERMANY) • THE COMMONERS' SOCIETY

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/cindy-wegner

65

The fourth wall is missing is about human togetherness. It advocates a new local collectivity. After the Berlin Wall fell, the peripheral borders of East and West disappeared. In the face of the “reunion” process in the 1990s, a social and urban restructuring process took place, raising questions on a sense of belonging. My research on urban developments in Berlin over the last decades are juxtaposed to a plot of land on Zeeburgereiland, a newly developed urban area on the east side of Amsterdam.

AMPLIFIER

• STEPHANIE SCHUITEMAKER • AMSTERDAM (NL) • CHALLENGING JEWELLERY

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/stephanie-schuitemaker

66 64

Why do we resonate with art, and why do some works resonate more than others? In a series of videos I explore how resonance occurs from different design principles. Applying Bruno Latour’s Mediation theory, I research the agency of various works of art, questioning the conditions for resonance. Nurturing these conditions, I believe, allows us to deeply honour the objects, nature and the self.

A HOPELESS ROMANTIC

• GABRIELLA GOLDSMITH • ÅRHUS (DENMARK) • CHALLENGING JEWELLERY

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/gabriella-goldsmith

67

In overall the jewellery collection is inspired by the haute couture scene and a fascination of romanticism and surrealism.

Each jewellery will consist of one avant-garde piece which will be followed by a more accessible jewellery line as a successor.

The collection should consist of: a good level of craftmanship, a clear concept and coherency, and be accessible.

ON SONIC TOUCH

• LUCA SOUDANT • CADIER EN KEER (NL) • CRITICAL STUDIES

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/luca-soudant

68 64

Under the name Carol Tactile, Luca offers a service: a moment to speak over the phone about the tactility of sound. They offer a moment to share thoughts on the way voices, beats, noises, frequencies can touch a body. They do not only mean touch in an emotional sense here, but literally, how sound does something do the cells of our bodies (human and non-human).

How sound pierces through our flesh, the chair we sit on and the people we hold, and, how we can use that thought to bend ways in which we might think about the world.

THEY SAID: ‘I’ WAS NEVER AN ISLAND

• PEDRO MATIAS • LISBON (PORTUGAL) • FINE ARTS

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/pedro-matias

Our future is letting the body sink in softness

To listen closely to territories’ collapsing.

All bending, The light intersects us.

The shore is a never-ending collaboration

Once arid-deserts of over-washed skin.

From far, all islands are skin and bones.

we break, and fall we break and fall.

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When too far from sustainable, we break and fall.

Look, there is no need to avoid thinking

To surrender into the soft matter until we have no shape.

Slow sun rises.

Eternal sunsets.

DEDE DDEDE SSSE SESE SERTRTTT

• ANTONIO LÓPEZ ESPINOSA • MADRID (SPAIN) • THE COMMONERS' SOCIETY

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/antonio-lopez-espinosa

64 70

“dededdedesssesesesertrttt” is an expanding amalgamation of encounters with my nomadic self, resulting an unfinished exquisite corpse of manuals, encounters, made up words, secrets, dreamscapes, and other fleeting tricks, presented on the form of a (sonic) farewell. (Whispers) My love, we have to remember these words forever: “The map is not the territory. A body is the shadow of something else”. My love, this is what we call “mothyfication”. (Darkness) (The whispers are still on the distance. They seem to come from below)

DEAR COUNTRYSIDE, adjust URL on all essay pages to: https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/letters/dear-countryside-by-jules-van-den-langenberg

LETTER BY

JULES VAN DEN LANGENBERG CURATOR

EDITORIAL LETTERS

SEVEN *CLICKING* INDEX FINGERS 71

GRADUATES MENTIONED

• ALEXANDER KUUSIK • BEATRIZ CONEFREY • CONSTANTIN DICHTL • DIMITRIS THEOCHARIS • EVA VAN KEMPEN • FRANCISCA KHAMIS GIACOMAN • HELEEN MINEUR • KAMILA KANTEK • JANINA FRITZ • JESPER HENNINGSSON • SOPHIA SIMENSKY • TALI LIBERMAN • THORBEN GRÖBEL • CHARLOTTE ROHDE

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DEAR COUNTRYSIDE,

JULES VAN DEN LANGENBERG

adjust URL on all essay pages to: https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/letters/dear-countryside-by-jules-van-den-langenberg

Dear countryside, EXT. CENTRAL STATION - MORNING It’s Fall break. We enter a rental bus that seats about thirty people. As the engine starts, the driver fills a cup with water and puts a leaf with a needle in it to float. His DIY compass points North.

BUS DRIVER (grinning in an accent while cleaning up his navigation ritual) “Let’s take the country’s side today” Some smiles appear on passengers’ faces. The driver takes a sip of water.

Building upon curator Sébastien Marot’s Agriculture and architecture: taking the country’s side on display during the 2020 Lisbon Architecture Triennale just before the global Covid-19 confinements started I want to invite you, organisations, companies and individuals on the countryside and graduates of Sandberg Instituut, to develop a renewed lens on the Dutch countryside landscape. How to redistribute where people travel? What does the post pandemic relationship between the cities and the countryside look like? How can outdoor leisure and (art) tourism coincide with for instance the actual production of food in the landscape? Dear Countryside, let’s meet in October and discuss how your ideas relate to the graduation works of Sandberg Instituut’s 747 by Alexander Kuusik, The Host by Beatriz Conefrey, A Wayfarer’s Journal by Constantin Dichtl, Mapping by Dimitris Theocharis, Tracing Filigree by Eva van Kempen, As far as I can remember by Francisca Khamis Giacoman, Epoch by Heleen Mineur, Now / here by Kamila Kantek, Auf Dem Wege Zur Quelle by Janina Fritz, Quinta del Sordo by Jesper Henningsson, St. Anthony’s Wilderness by Sophia Simensky, Unrendered Road by Tali Liberman, The Title of The Work by Thorben Gröbel and Control by Charlotte Rohde.

Soon after the bus leaves the central train station of Amsterdam, a loud “Oh my god, oh my god, really?” comes from the bus speakers and fills the vehicles space.

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DEAR COUNTRYSIDE,

JULES VAN DEN LANGENBERG

adjust URL on all essay pages to: https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/letters/dear-countryside-by-jules-van-den-langenberg

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SPEAKERS (Loud)

“Oh my god, oh my god, really?”

Unsure of the sender, the crowd of tourists becomes alert and as the vehicle takes an unexpected exit towards the highway around town, heading much further North than the brochures advertised, a repetitive question fills the bus “Are you with me?” again via its speakers.

SPEAKERS “Are you with me?”

Looking to the roof and through the bus windows; an empty Boeing 747 in a grey sky crosses their route performing its final flight. Enticed by the unidentified voice, the passengers take sips from a milk carton found on their seats upon entering the bus.

As they pass more and more flat landscapes with grass and cows one of the passengers in the back asks a person in his row of seats.

PASSENGER IN THE BACK “Under what circumstances was this object made? Will it ever reach the public eye? What does it say? Does the place of creation travel?”.

A milk mustached tourist gazes back at his fellow traveller in amazement.

By merging the methodologies and notions of farming, art fairs and tourism industry: how to renew the lens we put on our regional landscapes? Learning from the Triennale: “What we eat is arguably one of the strongest determinants of space, landscape and architectural structures and is a phenomenon which bridges different eras and multiple scales. Agriculture is at the centre of political and economic structures, community interactions and land management – agriculture was, after all, the reason why cities arose, in a centuries-long interaction that facilitated the development of modern civilisation

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DEAR COUNTRYSIDE,

JULES VAN DEN LANGENBERG

adjust URL on all essay pages to: https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/letters/dear-countryside-by-jules-van-den-langenberg

itself. It is through food that geography and its potential are celebrated, that history is incorporated into tangible and intangible culture and that bonds are created between people of different generations, cultural backgrounds and incomes. Food is our common ground.

However, current urban food systems are one of the main drivers of environmental destruction, negatively impacting land use, reducing biodiversity, exhausting and polluting water resources, and emitting a significant amount of greenhouse gases. On the other hand, cities – the main form of human habitat today – also pose challenges for environmental preservation and natural resource management in relation to their underlying economic and social dynamics. Nonetheless, cities aggregate huge intellectual and economic resources, openness to new behaviours and political power and will play a key role in our future.

The interdependence between the urban and the rural has existed for significantly longer than the period prior to their mutual reliance.

Therefore, in a context of growing world urbanisation, changing diets and lifestyles and with the growing threat of climate change, it is urgent to rethink the interaction between the city and its surroundings, the countryside, not as two antagonistic realities, but according to a dynamic of complementarity, in which the greatest potential for transformation may reside for the resolution of our current planetary challenges.”

In a distance a silver colored farm-like construction reflects the sunlight; as the bus approaches the agricultural enterprise it appears to be entirely made of the silhouettes of steel corn plants. The bus drives past a filigree gate and pulls over and empties as the passengers take a breath of fresh air and take in some of the sun that warm October day.

FARMER (Enthusiastically screaming) “Come, melt with us!” screams the farmer walking towards the tourists from her field with cows. An uncanny encounter happens when a few of the tourists step onto the grass and approach the animals with their hands and feet on the ground.

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DEAR COUNTRYSIDE,

JULES VAN DEN LANGENBERG

adjust URL on all essay pages to: https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/letters/dear-countryside-by-jules-van-den-langenberg

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Between the grass, robotic centipedes crawl around dumped orange peels. The cows licking faces of tourists continues for a bit when the bus driver walks up to the group.

BUS DRIVER “Toilet break’s over, we need to get back on our unrendered road”.

A quick 3d scan of the group in the field is made before the vehicle departs further down the countryside. [...]

Looking forward to meeting you in October, Jules van den Langenberg

Graduates mentioned: sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/alexander-kuusik sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/beatriz-conefrey sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/constantin-dichtl sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/dimitris-theocharis sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/eva-van-kempen sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/francisca-khamis-giacoman sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/heleen-mineur sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/kamila-kantek sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/janina-fritz sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/jesper-henningsson sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/sophia-simensky sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/tali-liberman sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/thorben-gröbel sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/charlotte-rohde

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747

• ALEXANDER KUUSIK • BRISTOL (UK) • FINE ARTS

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/alexander-kuusik

77

A video in two parts. In the first, a planespotter films a Boeing 747 as it leaves Schiphol with no human passengers. Tracking its movement by intercepting radio frequencies and his own knowledge of the flight path. A final 747 flight, as the aircraft becomes obsolete and KLM retires the plane that defined the early jet age. In the second, a carillonneur rehearses within an empty building. Its bells ring out across the closed offices in Amsterdam Zuidas. Incorporating a musical cipher provided by the artist; a carrier of an encrypted message, transferred through the physical striking of bronze bells.

A • CONSTANTIN WAYFARER´S DICHTL JOURNAL • ULM (GERMANY) • DIRTY ART DEPARTMENT https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/constantin-dichtl

78 64

A movement through living spaces, consisting of ghostly traces and uncanny encounters both with human and non-human objects. In reality, we do not perceive things from a single perspective, we walk around them, experience things in different angles. It is a voyage not linear but with curves and turns consisting of elements layered together building a grid of indeterminacy.

MAPPINGS

• DIMITRIS THEOCHARIS • LIVADIA (GREECE) • FINE ARTS

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/dimitrios-theocharis

79

The work has as a starting point the creation of a DIY compass. If not for the intention to do a trip, and the need for orientation or exploration, what is the point of making a compass in a place that you more or less already know your position related to the geographical north? In which way the process of making an almost banal navigation tool, in a rather familiar space like your house, can still enable you to think in a time and space scale beyond your immediate experience?

TRACING FILIGREE

• EVA VAN KEMPEN • ROTTERDAM (NL) • CHALLENGING JEWELLERY

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/eva-van-kempen

80 64

One of the components of the craft of filigree is a zig zag. This is the start of a process exploring new materials and applications in relation to this dying out technique.

AS FAR AS I CAN REMEMBER

• FRANCISCA KHAMIS GIACOMAN • SANTIAGO (CHILE) • DESIGN

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/francisca-khamis-giacoman

81

There is a temporary void in moments of displacement that arises out of the merging of a loss of one place with the dreams and desires of a new one. Territoriality then becomes a set of relationships and affections that the individual generates with its environment and community, precisely through being in transit, in relation, in motion. It is perpetually changing.

EPOCH

• HELEEN MINEUR • WOMB (NL) • DESIGN

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/heleen-mineur

82 64

A parallel Now; atmosphere, objects and information will provide elements of a tale that is not fully explained, asking the viewer to knit together. Non-linear scenes (video) will be played in a loop, with differences each time, providing a subjective sneak peek to this scenario. The robot insect is based on an ancient centipede, but has lights, antennae, possibly claws and eyes. The centipede portrays an element of ‘time’, where technology has found its ways through animal evolution.

NOW / HERE

• KAMILA KANTEK • WARSAW (POLAND) • THE COMMONERS' SOCIETY

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/kamila-kantek

83

Tracing nowhere of the mind to search for structure to persist in unbalanced and unknown ‘real’. Taking place in the virtual realm that represents memory – morphing and decay of digital representation of reality is examined to find tools to reconnect with the surroundings and define locality, question value and memory independency. By creating an independent mind space, memories and identities are reclaimed and reoccupied becoming a point cloud of references to care about and defend.

AUF DEM WEGE ZUR QUELLE

• JANINA FRITZ • BREMEN (GERMANY) • DIRTY ART DEPARTMENT

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/janina-fritz

84 64

Wandering through the day towards the sunset, you notice a big pile of fleshy pink mass besides the path. Suddenly it forms a mouth and speaks: Come, melt with us! Surrounded by the ruins of tomorrow, humanoids are bathing in liquids that sprinkle from crying eyes and bleeding rocks. Enchanted by a sip of the High Chalice, you decide to linger on and watch the setting of a metallic sun.

QUINTA DEL SORDO

• JESPER HENNINGSSON • NORRKÖPING (SWEDEN) • FINE ARTS

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/jesper-henningsson

Under what circumstances was this object made? Will it ever reach the public eye? What does it say? Does the place of creation travel?

Image: Francisco Goya’s house [scale: 1:432], 1830, León Gil de Palacio (1778–1849), Museo de Historia de Madrid.

85

ST ANTHONY'S WILDERNESS

• SOPHIA SIMENSKY • ESSEX (UK) • DIRTY ART DEPARTMENT

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/sophia-simensky

86 64

St Anthony’s Wilderness is a battlefield of allegorical fragments and poetic texts. Totemic steel corn plants, tussling water snakes and severed lion tails form a bestial landscape in which acts of violence and speculation are played out. Signs revel in the multifariousness of their meanings and the language of the natural and industrial world collide.

THE TITLE OF THE WORK

• THORBEN GRÖBEL • THE PLACE OF BIRTH • STUDIO FOR IMMEDIATE SPACES

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/thorben-groebel

87

CONTROL

• CHARLOTTE ROHDE • AIX-LACHAPELLE (GERMANY) • DESIGN

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/charlotte-rohde

under a surface of dark hair ends a meadow waving in a softer breeze I can feel your scalp the ceiling of your scape there are snakes in the grass gently poisoning your thoughts I hear their peaceful rattling as they crawl by your lower neck running rivers with my hand a little bite stings now and then they don’t like invaders but you do you like the rivers in your hair later dripping from your chin my fingers run them down measuring your thirst

88 64

DEAR PUBLIC TRANSPORT COMPANY, https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/letters/dear-public-transport-company-by-adrian-madlener

LETTER BY

ADRIAN MADLENER WRITER

EDITORIAL LETTERS

SEVEN *CLICKING* INDEX FINGERS 89

GRADUATES MENTIONED

• WOUTER STROET • KYULIM KIM • WEI TUNG KUO • ANDONI ZAMORA CHACARTEGUI • AIMÉE THERIOT • KLARA WAARA • SILVIA FAGGIANI • FRANZISKA GORALSKI • AMBER OSKAM • DAVID C. KANE

64

DEAR PUBLIC TRANSPORT COMPANY,

ADRIAN MADLENER

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/letters/dear-public-transport-company-by-adrian-madlener

Dear United States Department of Transportation, Amtrak, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Delta Airlines, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Prorail, KLM, and other related entities, Americans are currently coming to terms with systemic failure on three levels. Widespread protests spawned by police brutality and racial injustice have joined an economic crisis not seen since The Great Depression.

Having claimed over 4 hundred thousand lives in the past five months, COVID-19 continues to cause trouble in parts of the world that opened too soon, suffer from poor infrastructure, or in which the proper measures have not been implemented at the right time.

Across the developed world, this century-defining pandemic has uncovered fault lines in almost every aspect of our daily experiences and in the underlying structures that we might have taken for granted in the past. The adage “the straw that breaks the camel’s back” has come to define so much of this tumultuous period. Yet, such extremes are often a catalyst for rapid adaptations that allow us to move forward in new ways.”

One area where such a fissure has become even more evident is the state of our national transportation infrastructures. It’s no secret that a lot of our stations, airports, bridges, tunnels, railroads, roads, and highways are in bad shape. Though efforts in recent years have been made by local governments to ameliorate these essential arteries, more still needs to be done.

This multivalent crisis has arisen as an opportunity to completely rethink what renewal should actually entail.

While engineering feats like the soon-to-reopen Laguardia Airport in New York stand as finite testaments to new environmental standards and technological advancements, they do not yet fully reflect an evolved, holistic, and human-centric mindset; the cultural and social behavior that have rapidly changed in a short period.

91

DEAR PUBLIC TRANSPORT COMPANY,

ADRIAN MADLENER

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/letters/dear-public-transport-company-by-adrian-madlener

64

New approaches that rely on more immediate and softer interventions could improve our individual and collective experiences and allow us to adopt changes in a quicker yet more sustaining manner. Adhoc solutions like the painting of circles in a number of parks to better instruct city dwellers on how to follow social distancing protocols is one such example.

In the past months, officials and planners have had to ask themselves a series of tough questions. How do we better facilitate the massive flow of people through our systems at different times of the day, month, year?

How do we suggest, educate, and enforce that people maintain distance? How will these new measures impact our budgets and economies? How do we mitigate the impact of this crisis on the social structures that normally depend on a careful, unregulated balance of individualistic pursuits and coexistence in this new reality? What can new technologies and sets of tools do to ease these swift transitions?

It’s clear that an interdisciplinary approach is necessary to better solve these dilemmas. Students at postgraduate art and design school Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam are familiar with these set of methodologies and often engage a wide range of skill sets to better comprehend, communicate, and alter the world around them.

This letter is an open proposal to reimagine every step in the process of commuting or traveling in a pandemic and post pandemic context, as a point of inquiry from various vantage points. One condition reflects a more mundane routine and a certain set of factors whereas the other represents a more sporadic occasion for most and another set of elements. However both are accomplished by employing the rich tapestry of interconnected infrastructures and vehicles that are made available to them on a daily basis Achieved through different forms of empirical investigation, this multilayered research project would ultimately seek to understand how a wide range of

92

DEAR PUBLIC TRANSPORT COMPANY,

ADRIAN MADLENER

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/letters/dear-public-transport-company-by-adrian-madlener

people are adapting to new behaviors, cultural norms, and actual modes of transportation. The study would take in consideration practical issues of time, space, and value, but also the more intrinsic issues of shifting etiquettes, moods, and interpersonal relationships.

As a measure of their completed or ongoing theses and particular interests, a select group of recent graduates from the Sandberg Instituut could offer their insight, intellectual focus, and practical aptitudes in the aim of drawing out a more meaningful set of results.

Wouter Stroet employs cartographic techniques to understand better how our public spaces are direct reflections of those who decide on how they are planned and built. His images capture cataclysmic events in time and space.

Kyulim Kim seeks to identify and highlight places in our concrete urban landscapes that have been overlooked. She employs both sound and image to question how global events have impacted the infrastructural environments we might take for granted.

Wei Tung Kuo is currently developing a mobile application that guides people through their immediate environments, daily routes, and audio instructions that might make them reconsider and come to terms with different aspects of that transitory environment.

Andoni Zamora Chacartegui questions the conventions of physical behaviors. She aims to draw links between these mannerisms and the cultural practices that define our societies.

Together, these four artists, amongst other graduates AimĂŠe Theriot, Klara Waara, Silvia Faggiani, Franziska Goralski, Amber Oskam and David C. Kane, could comprise an invaluable resource to such a research project.

Whereas Stroet and Kim could unearth the raw data of time and space, Chacartequi could help evaluate what

93

DEAR PUBLIC TRANSPORT COMPANY,

ADRIAN MADLENER

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/letters/dear-public-transport-company-by-adrian-madlener

64

changes in collective behavior are occurring. Tying it all together would be a mobile guide based on a multi-narrative paths model in which the users select their own desired journey through a set check in point. This tool would allow them to at once become more aware of their commute or trip and adaptable when it comes to navigating unforeseen road blocks.

We would be honored to invite you to these talent’s respective graduation presentations later this year, through either digital or virtual channels, and to introduce you to their work. Reflecting the nature of this research proposal, a guided tour that focuses on the most relevant projects through these shows would provide you with a more concise framework.

Please let us know of your interest and we would be happy to provide you with further information.

Sincerely, Adrian Madlener

Graduates mentioned: sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/wouter-stroet sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/kyulim-kim sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/wei-tung-kuo sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/andoni-zamora-chacartegui sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/aimee-theriot sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/klara-waara sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/silvia-faggiani sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/franziska-goralski sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/amber-oskam sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/david-c-kane

94

HOW TO • WOUTER LOOK AROUND STROET RATHER • AMSTERDAM THAN (NL) AHEAD? • DESIGN https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/wouter-stroet

95

In the spring of 2017 there was a gas explosion in the Schaafstraat, a street in the Hamerkwartier in Amsterdam Noord.

Back then I used to live in that same street. After the fire two contemporary art galleries opened together with a warehouse for a craft beer brewery. The area that got completely destroyed by the fire now functions as a parking lot. Through documenting the material remains of the site I aim to investigate and digitally preserve the cracks, the spill-overs and the growovers to capture what was once a building in a neighborhood that is now rapidly changing.

MOVE OR DIE

• KYULIM KIM • DAEGU (SOUTH KOREA) • STUDIO FOR IMMEDIATE SPACES

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/kyulim-kim

96 64

This video is being made during the Covid-19 outbreak period, questioning what is still running and what has stopped. The video mentions the global operation of UPS which sponsored Great migration project of National Geographic Channel, connecting this ‘move or die’ campaign to the circulation of the video itself. The video was filmed in A10 Highway and the railway built on the dike in Bos en Lommer area, Amsterdam.

CHOOSE YOUR JOURNEY

• WEI TUNG KUO • TAIPEI (TAIWAN) • STUDIO FOR IMMEDIATE SPACES

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/wei-tung-kuo

97

It is not my graduation work but something I will do soon in June, on my way until the splendid finale. It is gonna be an audio walk for everyone who has never experienced the location the same way. A journey that you have to make a decision and follow the instructions. A journey about a concept that bother each of us so much in our lives, especially in this moment.

OPENING AN ALREADY KNOWN CONTENT

• ANDONI ZAMORA CHACARTEGUI • LEKEITIO (SPAIN) • STUDIO FOR IMMEDIATE SPACES

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/andoni-zamora-chacartegui

98 64

My project will consist in a live performance that will play with its very structure by being repeated loop. In every repetition of the scene the fictional content will lose its meaning and the linearity of the play will be fractured. The scene will be perceived from different fronts every time, turning the audience into an active factor that interferes directly in the narration.

As well as the script, the set will be updated for each reenactment until it reaches its limits with the reality, caused by the accumulation of the material that is going to be replaced for each repetition.

SOUND IS THE SOFTEST TOUCH

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/aimee-theriot

A meditation on intimacy, closeness and aural erotics, parting from the phrase “sound is touch at a distance.”

99

• AIMÉE THERIOT • MÉRIDA (MEXICO) • CRITICAL STUDIES

SUNSCREEN • KLARA IN WAARA THE • STOCKHOLM CRYPT (SWEDEN) • FINE ARTS https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/klara-waara

100 64

For the digital part of the graduation, I am making a video in which objects carved out of rotten, compressed wood is under observation in my garden. I have treated the materials with resilience; the wood has turned clay-like. The objects function as transmitters and receivers, projecting fragmented memories of the future and past on one another as well as into the lens of the camera and the microphone. Echoes appear. The surrounding elements of light, weather and living creatures animates the objects in the truest sense of the word, assisting them in communicating messages.

I,

• SILVIA FAGGIANI CREATOR • ROME OF (ITALY) MOTIVATORI • CHALLENGING JEWELLERY https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/silvia-faggiani

101

As a necessary act of being confronted with the coming future and establish who am I, I, Creator of Motivatori started to exist as such and work towards defining what that means. I, Creator of Motivatori focus on investigating the necessity, and ultimately, to create tools without judgement, to make people aware of the power of individual contribution to the common good. Currently involving rituals and celebrations to build and strengthen a sense of togetherness.

DEAR • FRANZISKA AUTHORITIES, GORALSKI ...

• RADEBEUL (GERMANY) • THE COMMONERS' SOCIETY https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/franziska-goralski

102 64

“Dear authorities,…” is a thought-model as well as a concept for a structural modification on the governmental level.

It comes in the form of letters and speculates how critical, artistic, queer, unsettling thinking and processes can be equally represented and rooted in society, valued and attention given like e.g., the military. Flooding the ministry’s office. How does an adequate space for these processes would look like and enfold? Start with a name and call it the Department for Potentiality to Act.

SAND CASTLE

• AMBER OSKAM • HAARLEM (NL) • THE COMMONERS' SOCIETY

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/amber-oskam

103

A year of research into sand extraction and movement of people. Following the lines along which sand is travelling and used.

Untangling the power relations that are active in the phenomena of extraction. Collecting sand stories. Exchanging borderless sand in a world of borders. Control over contamination. Touching the different actors and their (in)ability to move.

Building a sand castle on Zeeburger island. Alongside the current construction of residential buildings.

EVERYONE'S • DAVID C. ALLOWED A KANE FUTURE THEY • LIVERPOOL DON'T CARE (UK) TO MENTION • THE COMMONERS' SOCIETY https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/david-c-kane

104 64

Magnetised by twenty-first century pandemonium the work is a series of video and sound installations that explore the future as a mythology. Each component is a stand alone audio-visual (re)imagining of lost and forgotten futures that searches for a destination that might not exist but moves towards them anyway – assembling each of the pieces in any given order creates new speculative fictions as an exercise in worldbuilding.

DEAR READER, https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/letters

LETTER BY

LAURENS OTTO CRITIC & CURATOR

EDITORIAL LETTERS

SEVEN *CLICKING* INDEX FINGERS 105

GRADUATES MENTIONED

• DAVID C. KANE • FABIAN TOMBERS • BEN TUPPER • SARA SANTANA LÓPEZ • NICHOLAS REILLYMCVITTIE • MIRIAM KONGSTAD • MYRTO VRATSANOU

64

DEAR READER,

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/letters

LAURENS OTTO

Dear reader, I’m writing this letter to you, because you are reading it now.

If Modernity was an attempt to take hold of the present, our current times are geared towards the future. Or rather: the present is formatted by the future. The present can no longer be extrapolated from the past, it is supposedly governed by speculations on what’s believed to come. What happens today is based on a pre-emption of the future, or, so are we told.

Extracted data sets determine actions in the present, based on predictions of the future. They provide models to predict crime, locate diseases, and determine consumer behaviour – in advance. When a website suggests products even before you know you need it, it is creating your pre-emptive personality. More detrimental are pre-emptive policing and drone-strikes, taking place before harm is done.

It took me a few days to decide who to write this letter to: who holds the most sway over the future?

Is it Amazon, as the company with the biggest investment in research & development? Or Alphabet, Google’s conglomerate, as the prime holder of internet services and other data-related businesses? Or, should I write to Bridgewater, the world’s biggest investment fund? As a hedge fund it anticipates movements that are yet to happen, producing returns uncorrelated to current market indices.

But I prefer writing to you, dear reader, being in the now.

No matter how much of the present is governed by corporate and state fuelled predictions of the future, abiding by that logic is fatalist. Neither the present, nor the future, are set in stone. Protests against racism and police violence, for instance, suddenly pushed for much more radical demands than earlier (more modest) requests to reform criminal justice. It made me see how much some of the graduates of the Sandberg Instituut in 2020 are vested in the present, even when their work appears to be future bound.

107

DEAR READER,

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/letters

LAURENS OTTO

Researcher and artist David C. Kane’s work explores 64 the utopian impulse and the desire to (re)imagine the future through a political corrosion of late capitalism. Magnetised by twenty-first century pandemonium, the work Everyone’s Allowed a Future They Don’t Care to Mention is a series of video and sound installations that explore the future as a mythology.

Each component imagines lost and forgotten futures, creating new speculative fictions as an exercise in world-building.

Fabian Tombers investigates post-capitalist desires through fully automated luxury queer space communism, solar punk revolutions, domestic realities and psychedelic socialisms. He explores what a design practice of resistance may looks like, calling to ‘embody your utopias today’.

Other works have a more imminent scope. Ben Tupper works with essay and fiction to explore how language can be understood as a site of social struggle.

His stories aim to create a world that taps into the uncanny. Short Worlds for Radio is a collection of very short stories that are broadcasted during a moment of interlude, where listeners would usually hear a radio jingle or a commercial.

Sara Santana López looks in the power relations inscribed in cultural practice, to find ambivalent strategies which implicate herself simultaneously as author, mediator, and part of the public. Her work Escribas Modernas is a long-term collective translation of Cristina Morales’ novel Lectura Fácil.

The slow pirating process towards a free multi-authored publication, makes distribution political and transformative, a living process. Rather than an effort to project global solutions for the future, it’s a local proposition in the present.

Nicholas Reilly-McVittie’s work is predominantly concerned with the relations between aesthetics and ideology. Worldviews is a video essay which traces relations and affinities between aesthetic ‘worldviews’ (artistic and scientific visual representations of the world) and ideological ‘worldviews’ (philosophies and belief systems), from the Renaissance period to 108

DEAR READER,

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/letters

LAURENS OTTO

the present day. In recognising the impossibility of a totalising worldview that could ‘see’ everything clearly, the video attempts to draw attention to what is lost from such views.

Miriam Kongstad’s work expands from a background in choreography. It is discreetly violent, static but in movement, eclectic yet stylised – a form of cynical magic. Her work Chimera or Non Compos Mentis is a collaboration with musician Alexander Holm to unite harmonica compositions, breath, voice and text to form an intimate, sensorial and dystopian soundscape, unfolding and expanding views on the body.

Nowhere is the sense of now more pronounced than in the dizziness induced by technology. Myrto Vratsanou’s practice revolves around the sensual aspects of technological, digital and material spaces. Free Immersion Notes is a non-linear journal that reflects on the potential of corrosions, glitches and aberrations in immersive technologies. The videos explore the relation between body, water, air, pressure, weight and object, expressing the scattered and oceanic feeling of being out-of-joint.

It’s tempting to forego the present for an alchemy of the future, abiding by a world where speculation determines reality. It’s an accelerationist trap, that negates the power that every present moment holds.

As Walter Benjamin cryptically assessed that every history turns to the present just as sunflowers turn to the sun, so should the present conjure the future.

Dear reader, please accept my invitation to encounter these works at the Sandberg Instituut’s Graduation exhibition from October 29 to November 1 at Het HEM in Zaandam. Let’s use that moment to see how to deflect a pre-empted future. In the meantime, continue seizing the present.

Take care, Laurens Otto

109

DEAR READER,

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/letters

LAURENS OTTO

64

Graduates mentioned: sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/david-c-kane sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/fabian-tombers sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/ben-tupper sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/sara-santana-lopez sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/nicholas-reilly-mcvittie sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/miriam-kongstad sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/myrto-vratsanou 110

SOFT SPACES & DIGITAL DOMESTICS

• FABIAN TOMBERS • SEEHEIM JUGENHEIM (GERMANY) • DESIGN

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/fabian-tombers

111

A moment after the death of time. Psychedelic dreams, shattering the veil of the real. A sudden necessity to re-invent everyday life. How to make in times of crisis? We make a tale knitted with desiring strings. An Odonian House, a quiet revolution.

Schools outside of schools, teaching without teachers and rooms without room. We want to learn to meet without expecting archetypes. To touch membranes without fear of the alien. In collaboration with Anouk Heltzel & Larissa Beyla Popanda.

SHORT WORLDS FOR RADIO

• BEN TUPPER • KENT (UK) • CRITICAL STUDIES

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/ben-tupper

64 112

Short Worlds for Radio is a collection of very short stories written for radio. Broadcast individually during a moment of interlude, perhaps where listeners would usually hear a radio jingle or commercial, the stories aim to create a world that taps in to the eeriness of the familiar yet unfamiliar.

ESCRIBAS MODERNAS

• SARA SANTANA LÓPEZ • MADRID (SPAIN) • DIRTY ART DEPARTMENT

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/sara-santana-lopez

113

Escribas Modernas is a long term project of collective translation. An English version of the novel Lectura Fácil is progressively built through the bilingual voices of various participants. It proposes a slow pirating process, from the original edited novel to a free multi-authored publication, which does not pursue a mass production-distribution of the content but for the distribution to be living process, politic and transformative.

MEASURES OF AN IMAGE

• NICHOLAS REILLYMCVITTIE • CREWE (UK) • CRITICAL STUDIES

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/nicholas-reilly-mcvittie

Measures of an Image is an ongoing research project concerned with images without observers. The project consists of a theoretical investigation into the ‘operational image’, seeking to situate the historical and epistemological basis for this phenomenon, alongside a series of moving image works that develop its implications.

64 114

CHIMERA / NON COMPOS MENTIS

• MIRIAM KONGSTAD • ODENSE (DENMARK) • FINE ARTS

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/miriam-kongstad

115

Chimera or Non Compos Mentis is the working title of a collaborative project between artist Miriam Kongstad and musician Alexander Holm. Their collaboration unites harmonica compositions, breath, voice and text which all together form an intimate, sensorial and dystopian soundscape. The breath functions as a choreographic link between the harmonica, the voice and the text in which an expanded, architectural and lyrical view on the body unfolds

FREE IMMERSION NOTES

• MYRTO VRATSANOU • ATHENS (GREECE) • FINE ARTS

https://sandberg.nl/graduation2020/draft/myrto-vratsanou

64 116

The project is a non-linear journal of relocations, reflecting on hoarding and haunting, memory, digital and physical accumulation, being out-of-joint and scattered and the oceanic feeling. The videos reflect on the uncanny potential of corrosions, glitches and aberrations in architectural structures and immersive technologies. The objects are drawing from free-diving traditions, exploring the relation between body, water, air, pressure, weight and object.

SANDBERG INSTITUUT GRADUATION 2020

117

THE SUBJECT OF THE EMAIL

INDEX

64

SANDBERG INSTITUUT GRADUATION 2020

INDEX

The Name of The Author (A – Z)

Aimée Theriot Aleksandr Sergienko Alexander Kuusik Amber Oskam Andoni Zamora Chacartegui Andrea González Garrán Anna Maria Balint Anouk Asselineau Antonio López Espinosa Beatriz Conefrey Ben Tupper Carmen Dusmet Carrasco Charlotte Rohde Cindy Wegner Cóilín O’Connell Constantin Dichtl David C. Kane Dimitris Theocharis Emirhan Akin Eva van Kempen Fabian Tombers Francisca Khamis Giacoman Franziska Goralski Gabriella Goldsmith Hanna Valle Heleen Mineur Janina Fritz Jesper Henningsson Joanne Vosloo Kamila Kantek Kasper van Moll Klara Waara Kyulim Kim Laila El Mehelmy

99 34 77 103 98 33 22 32 70 16 112 47 88 65 62 78 104 79 45 80 111 81 102 67 31 82 84 85 64 83 54 100 96 51

119

SANDBERG INSTITUUT GRADUATION 2020

INDEX

Levi van Gelder Lieselot Versteeg 64 Linda Stauffer Luca Soudant Lucia Fernandez Santoro Marek Mrowiński Margaret Munchheimer María Mazzanti Marilyn Volkman Michael Weber Miriam Kongstad Morgane de Klerk Myrto Vratsanou Natalia Jordanova Nicholas Reilly-McVittie Nicolò Pellarin Octave Rimbert-Rivière Patrycja Rozwora Pedro Matias Roman Tkachenko Sara Santana López Seline Durrer Silvia Faggiani Simpson Tse Sophia Simensky Stephanie Schuitemaker Tali Liberman Thorben Gröbel Ting Gong Veronika Fabian Veronika Babayan Wei Tung Kuo Willem Schenk Wouter Stroet Yara Said

20 23 49 68 21 52 37 50 53 24 115 39 116 41 114 61 19 46 69 63 113 35 101 38 86 66 40 87 18 36 48 97 17 95 15

120

SANDBERG INSTITUUT GRADUATION 2020

INDEX

Seven *CLICKING* Index Fingers

Delany Boutkan DEAR SOCIAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL,

9

Zippora Elders DEAR NON-HUMANS,

25

The Name of the Author THE SUBJECT OF THE EMAIL

43

Leon Kruiswijk DEAR KRAFTWERK,

55

Jules van den Langenberg DEAR COUNTRYSIDE,

71

Adrian Madlener DEAR PUBLIC TRANSPORT COMPANY,

89

Laurens Otto DEAR READER,

105 Main Departments

Critical Studies Design Dirty Art Department Fine Arts Studio For Immediate Spaces

128 129 130 131 132

Temporary Programmes

Challenging Jewellery The Commoners’ Society

133 134

121

64

SANDBERG INSTITUUT GRADUATION 2020

THE SUBJECT OF THE EMAIL

ABOUT

123

SANDBERG INSTITUUT

GRADUATION 2020

THE SUBJECT OF THE EMAIL From non humans to real estate developers, The Subject of The Email compiles the draft (released in May) and final works (released in November) of the 2020 Sandberg Instituut graduates from Master programmes Critical Studies, Design, Dirty Art Department, Fine Arts, Studio For Immediate Spaces, Challenging Jewellery and The Commoners’ Society.

The Subject of The Email is part of an ongoing series of publications by PS (Public Sandberg) developed in collaboration with graphic designers Our Polite Society. Previous editions are The Place of Birth (2019), The Name of The Author (2018) and The Title of The Work (2017).

124 https://sandberg.nl/graduation2019/publication

SANDBERG INSTITUUT

GRADUATION 2020

EDITORIAL LETTERS SEVEN *CLICKING* INDEX FINGERS Seven *CLICKING* Index Fingers is a series of letters interpreting the 2020 Sandberg Graduation Draft Works developed by various guest writers and curators. Each letter is sent out as an email addressed to an organisation, industry or part of society, adding context to the draft works and addressing related topics and phenomena as perceived by a new generation of artists, designers and (interior) architects.

Seven *CLICKING* Index Fingers includes contributions by researcher Delany Boutkan (NL), curator Zippora Elders (NL/ DE), curator Leon van Kruijswijk (NL/DE), curator Jules van den Langenberg (NL), writer Adrian Madlener (BE/USA) and critic & curator Laurens Otto (NL).

Contact ps@sandberg.nl if you are interested in contributing an editorial to next year’s publication.

125 www.sandberg.nl/graduation2019/editorials

SANDBERG INSTITUUT

GRADUATION 2020

SANDBERG INSTITUUT As the postgraduate programme of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie Amsterdam, the Sandberg Instituut offers Master Programmes in Fine Arts, Interior Architecture and Design. The five Main Departments aim to deepen the practices of artists, designers and critics. In addition, the Temporary Programmes reflect on specific urgencies in society and the arts, and the Hosted Programmes focus on collaboration with other institutes.

MAIN DEPARTMENTS Sandberg Instituut’s Main Departments are Critical Studies, Design, The Dirty Art Department, Fine Arts and Studio for Immediate Spaces. An average of only twenty students per programme allows each course to be flexible and open to initiatives from students and third parties. The course directors, who are prominent artists, designers, theorists and curators with international practices, invite tutors and guests who are able to challenge the students to critically reflect on their profession, their work and their progress.

The Sandberg Instituut is open to candidates from many different backgrounds. We require a valid Bachelor degree in a field relevant to the programme you are applying for, as well as proof of proficiency in the English language.

TEMPORARY PROGRAMMES Jurgen Bey, the Sandberg Instituut director since 2010, has sought to find ways to align the institute with the dynamics of contemporary society. Bey introduced two-year Temporary Pro-

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SANDBERG INSTITUUT

GRADUATION 2020

grammes that are developed according to urgent world issues.

Vacant NL – the first Temporary Programme – was launched in 2011 and explored the vast potential of the thousands of vacant buildings in the Netherlands. In 2013, two additional temporary programmes were introduced: the School of Missing Studies dealt with art and the public space, whereas Material Utopias investigated the shifting boundaries between materials and techniques. Other finished Temporary Programmes include System D Academy, Cure Master, Designing Democracy, Materialisation in Art and Design, Fashion Matters, Master of Voice, Reinventing Daily Life, Radical Cut-Up, Shadow Channel, Challenging Jewellery, and The Commoners' Society. Current Temporary Programmes are Approaching Language and Resolution. The two new Temporary Programmes starting in 2020 are Disarming Design and F for Fact.

HOSTED PROGRAMMES The Sandberg Instituut is hosting a category of educational programmes in collaboration with partner institutes and companies since 2017. The Hosted Programmes attempt to intertwine existing agendas and their stakeholders for a collective two-year studying period. The topics are essential for the future of our learning institute and of art education in a broader, international perspective. Therefore, the Hosted Programmes are surrounded by other in-house projects such as debates, writing, conferencing, etc. The first Hosted Programme was the Master Design of Experiences (2017–2019) in collaboration with the University of the Underground. It was part of joint investigations on the implications of ‘external funding’ for art education. Topics covered, but not limited to, were for instance cultural-diversity discussions, the implications of artificial intelligence or the relation of art to public-urban space.

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SANDBERG INSTITUUT GRADUATION 2020

MAIN DEPARTMENT

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CRITICAL STUDIES

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GRADUATES

• NICHOLAS REILLYMCVITTIE • PATRYCJA ROZWORA • LUCA SOUDANT • AIMÉE THERIOT • BEN TUPPER

Critical Studies is a two-year Master’s programme in research and theory. The programme offers an open, interdisciplinary environment for the development of an independent research practice, while providing a rigorous grounding in critical theory, research methods and writing techniques. We are especially interested in forms of inquiry and study that are at odds with traditional academic frameworks, including practiceled research and other intersections of research, practice and theoretical inquiry.

Participants have the possibility to pursue a self-initiated research project with great autonomy, working individually or collectively with supervisors of their choice. Research projects are presented in a series of regular colloquia, which function as spaces for collective discussion and exchange. In addition to this, participants are provided with the support and resources for the development of collaborative projects related to their research, such as publications, exhibitions, screenings or symposia.

Alongside the research trajectory, participants take part in a programme of seminars, lectures and workshops. This programme provides a thorough introduction to key concepts in critical theory and continental philosophy, explores research methodologies in relation to cultural practices and supports participants in the development of a writing practice. In addition to this general programme, each month specific themes are addressed in depth during lectures and seminars given by visiting speakers. Participants take an active part in shaping the educational programme and have the opportunity to organise workshops, seminars and excursions in parallel with it.

Critical Studies welcomes applicants from a range of backgrounds, including writers, editors, theorists, artists, curators, educators and other cultural practitioners interested in exploring points of convergence between research, practice and writing.

Critical Studies explicitly welcomes applicants who want to diverge from a trajectory that they have previously embarked on, seeking an environment that offers space for further development and experimentation.

SANDBERG INSTITUUT GRADUATION 2020

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MAIN DEPARTMENT

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GRADUATES

• EMIRHAN AKIN • CARMEN DUSMET CARRASCO • LEVI VAN GELDER • ANDREA GONZÁLEZ GARRÁN • FRANCISCA KHAMIS GIACOMAN • TALI LIBERMAN • HELEEN MINEUR • NICOLÒ PELLARIN • CHARLOTTE ROHDE • WOUTER STROET • FABIAN TOMBERS • HANNA VALLE

The Design Department is a two-year Master’s programme that provides space for students to develop self-driven practices informed by rigorous experimentation. Due to our open structure, we are able to reflect on and react to current urgencies, discourses, and interests of the students and tutors. The practices of our students are informed by pressing issues, personal fascinations, deep collaborations, and lived experiences.

DESIGN UNDISCIPLINED The students and tutors of the Design Department work through the complexities and contradictions of our current time. Their modes of expression range from print work, digital interfaces, films and videos, network infrastructures, games, performances, writing, educational platforms, audio tours, and more. Although our students do not always develop design practices that conform to graphic design in its traditional sense, they share the necessity to communicate through their work, may it be an informative, lyrical, dialogical, discursive, or confrontational mode of expression. Considering design as a practice of ‘making things public’, we aim to analyse the politics inherent in design, through opening up, sharing and reviewing design in progress.

STUDENTS We are looking for students from a variety of backgrounds who like to embark upon self-initiated projects, engage in collaboration with fellow students, start new coalitions, design new forms for working side by side, learning and unlearning together. Students of the Design Department embrace their vulnerabilities, sincerely deal with their own dilemmas, and will put those up for discussion.

The Design Department furthermore welcomes students that are underrepresented in the field of design, art, education, and beyond. We acknowledge our responsibility for creating a space that is safe for all our students. Reflecting on our privileges, our position in systems of power, the department offers a range of sessions for students, tutors and staff, addressing systems of oppressions in self-reflexive ways.

SANDBERG INSTITUUT GRADUATION 2020

MAIN DEPARTMENT

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DIRTY ART DEPARTMENT

GRADUATES

• VERONIKA BABAYAN • CONSTANTIN DICHTL • JANINA FRITZ • NATALIA JORDANOVA • SARA SANTANA LÓPEZ • CÓILÍN O'CONNELL • OCTAVE RIMBERTRIVIÈRE • SOPHIA SIMENSKY • LINDA STAUFFER

The Dirty Art Department offers itself as an open space for all possible thought, creation, and action. It sees itself as a dynamic paradox, flowing between the pure and the applied, the existential and the deterministic, and the holy and the profane. It is concerned with individuality, collectivity, and our navigation of the complex relationship between the built world and the natural world, and other people and ourselves. It’s a place to build objects or totems, religions or websites, revolutions or business models, paintings, or galaxies.

The Dirty Art Department comes from a common background of design and applied art, it seeks however to reject the Kantian division between the pure and the applied. Since ‘god is dead’ and ‘the spectacle’ is omnipresent, it sees the creation of alternative and new realities as the way to reconsider our life situation on this planet.

The Dirty Art Department is open to students from all backgrounds, including designers, artists, bankers, sceptics, optimists, economists, philosophers, sociologists, independent thinkers, poets, urban planners, farmers, anarchists and the curious.

Please enjoy the trip.

The aim of the Dirty Art Department is to develop singular individual and collective practices, regardless of medium or subject, and to give an insight into how to place these practices into the existing contexts of art, design, performance, writing, pizza making, etc. The final challenge is to create a new context that is, the transformation of reality.

The Dirty Art Department promotes a strong theoretical and philosophical agenda and is open to dangerous attempts and spectacular failures. It sees itself as a journey, and wherever it stops off, it remembers that ‘Any Space is the Place.’”

Milestones: In collaboration with the Macao Collective, with which DAD has been collaborating for five years, the department was nominated for the inaugural Milan Design Prize in 2016 with the project the Wandering School, a collective living and social sculpture. In 2018 the department continued its trip with the Wandering School Part 2: Revolution or Bust!, a dérive that included meeting the oracle of Delphi, Franco “Bifo” Berardi, walking through the wilderness to Athens, clashes with Titans, a peace offering to the Gods, helping to rebuild a refugee centre, regular encounters with tear gas, and just simply being there. The collective film Revolution or Bust! was presented at the third Youth Biennale of Bolzano in 2018, curated by Christian Jankowski.

SANDBERG INSTITUUT GRADUATION 2020

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MAIN DEPARTMENT

FINE ARTS

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GRADUATES

• ANOUK ASSELINEAU • ANNA MARIA BALINT • JESPER HENNINGSSON • MIRIAM KONGSTAD • ALEXANDER KUUSIK • PEDRO MATIAS • YARA SAID • ALEKSANDR SERGIENKO • DIMITRIS THEOCHARIS • LIESELOT VERSTEEG • MYRTO VRATSANOU • KLARA WAARA

The Fine Arts Department retains a focus on autonomy and making, while addressing the social and economic roles of art production. During the Fine Arts Master’s, our students become more of them-selves, stronger in who they are and what position they intend to take on in society. They reflect on their own practice, and what it might mean on a grander scale, especially in relation to understand-ing one’s position in the world.

The Department helps to create and test a student’s individual parameters helping them to gauge the effect their work, and challenging them to be able to critically support a piece in the context of its exhibition.

At the core of the programme are the consistent conversations held with the main tutors throughout the two-year period. Alongside these regular dialogues, guest tutors are invited for seminars and tutorials both in first and second year. Studio time thus alternates with an extensive series of workshops, seminars, and one-off events, that also steer the student to less familiar areas within their practice. In addition to these guests and activities, an annual group exhibition is held early on in the year and research excursions abroad take place twice annually. These trips are subdivided in focus and aim: for second-year students, an intense winter thesis writing & reflection period is organized abroad (in the past to the Arctic Circle, The Isle of Lewis and Delphi), while the first years partake in a shorter programmed excursion outside of The Netherlands. All students join in a department-wide spring research trip (in the past to Glasgow, Athens, Naples and Sharjah).

Several times a year, students come together with staff and tutors to discuss common interests that have emerged and can be addressed with the help of experts who, following these sessions, are invited accordingly. Student-led activities, such as group crits, film nights and Monday lunches are encouraged, while internal platforms are in place to promote small-scale try-outs and experimentation in presentation. In short, the Sandberg Instituut functions as a base for the Fine Arts students, while encouraging participants to develop and test their practice both within and beyond the school.

STUDENTS Candidates should be motivated to question their existing practice. An extreme curiosity is essential, as well as a willingness to enter into deep conversation with tutors and peers. Perhaps most crucially, students need to be able to work and think independently – and not be afraid to critically reflect on their work. Prospective students will be evaluated on their motivation, previous experience and portfolio. The admissions committee will focus on the authenticity, artistry and autonomous visual quality of the work presented.

S I S

SANDBERG INSTITUUT GRADUATION 2020

MAIN DEPARTMENT

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STUDIO FOR IMMEDIATE SPACES

GRADUATES

• ANDONI ZAMORA CHACARTEGUI • BEATRIZ CONEFREY • THORBEN GRÖBEL • KYULIM KIM • WEI TUNG KUO • MARÍA MAZZANTI • ROMAN TKACHENKO • MICHAEL WEBER

Studio for Immediate Spaces is a two-year Master’s programme on space-related practices. Everything manifests in space. Migration is about space, ecology is about space, equality is about space. Space is political, economic, social, and aesthetic. Though, what exactly is space? We see space both as a theoretical entity and a real thing – continuously informing one another. To deal with space means to deal in space. To deal in space one needs to understand space as a form of discourse as well as the realm of action in the real world.

The Studio aims at exploring, investigating and shaping spatial practices that focus on the genesis and production of contemporary spatial configurations. Through extensive field investigations (excursions, studio visits, on-site workshops, location-specific method seminars), it is set up as a laboratory that tests ideas that have relevance for how we live today and how we could live tomorrow. The Studio has become a spatial agent critiquing and questioning, and possibly changing the context it works in by engaging non- academic and non-artistic actors in the urban realm. It aims to develop practices that are informed by an uncompromised and autonomous perspective in a time when spatial experts are so direly needed to proactively and productively shape the world. We are especially opening up to urban actors, as we focus on ‘the city’ in particular. The city is not the problem, but the ultimate space to live together, as one that is socially, ecologically and economically sound.

The Studio for Immediate Spaces invites ‘undisciplinary spatialists,’ whose ambition is to design, plan, test, and eventually adapt and build spaces. We prefer the collective effort of making space to an alleged genius gesture of the individual master in order to develop an alternative spatial practice – independent, collaborative, relevant. Therefore we foster collaboration in the studio as a model for education, as it is practiced in reality.

SANDBERG INSTITUUT GRADUATION 2020

TEMPORARY PROGRAMME

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THE COMMONERS' SOCIETY

Using visual, digital, and performative tools the Temporary Programme, The Commoners’ Society, proposes a new kind of metropolis that is focused on social interaction and equal opportunities over financial growth and profit.

GRADUATES

• ANTONIO LÓPEZ ESPINOSA • FRANZISKA GORALSKI • DAVID C. KANE • KAMILA KANTEK • KASPER VAN MOLL • AMBER OSKAM • LUCIA FERNANDEZ SANTORO • WILLEM SCHENK • SIMPSON TSE • CINDY WEGNER 133

The late writer, teacher and cultural theorist Mark Fisher (aka K-Punk) wrote extensively on the relation between neo-liberal politics and the rising numbers of depressions and suicides we see around us. He showed this is because we are caught within ‘capitalist realism’ and are no longer able to imagine alternative economic and social systems. According to the philosopher Byung Chun Han, this is specifically so because we became our own exploiters when the exploitation of others disappeared (or was removed) from our real life experience. We recognise that a way out is to actively see ‘the other’ again, to sense real presence so we can interrelate once more.

With these perspectives on our current society in mind, the Temporary Programme, The Commoners’ Society, looks for new ways of living, making, owning, sharing, managing and maintaining; or generally for models for what we call ‘a new commoning’. The proposals we develop are manifold, conceptual and hands on, and tested ‘on the ground’.

Therefore the programme is located at Zeeburger Ijland, Amsterdam urban development area where participants have their actual work and test terrain. The site-specific campus allows the commoners, who are the people that will live and work there, but which also includes the heads, tutors and students of the programme, who are artists, designers, researchers, educators, theorists and communicators, to propose models for alternative ways of living, leading to new urban landscapes.

The programme started by building a temporary workspace for ourselves that is flexible and adjustable and makes crucial interaction with the surrounding living and working population possible. The programme takes as its departure point city-making structures such as General Management, Economy, City planning and Infrastructure, Arts, Culture and Sports, Housing, Employment, Health, Environment and Climate, Mobility, Public Space, Co-habitation and relationships.

The Temporary Programme is contextualised by a theoretical reflection upon earlier utopian models and strategies and will have a wider public programme. It is part of a larger frame where the University of Amsterdam, architectural platforms, the municipality, the project-developer, the building companies, etc. are involved. They all have specific roles and interests and we seek as much collaboration with them as possible to leverage the project and its effects. Potential partners include: University Amsterdam BPD (project developer), Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Failed Architecture, Archis/Volume, Municipality of Amsterdam, AFK, Upstream Gallery, Studio Framis NL. Within this context, participants have the possibility to pursue a self-initiated research project with great autonomy, working individually or collectively. Research projects are presented in a series of regular meetings in the area or on other locations in the city.

We use existing or build new spaces for collective discussion and exchange. Within the framework of the programme participants are also provided with support and resources for the development of collaborative projects related to their research, such as publications, exhibitions, screenings workshops, actions, events.

The Temporary Programme, The Commoners’ Society, runs from 2018–2020 and welcomed applications from amongst others artists, writers, editors, theorists, curators, philosophers, sociologists, architects, activists, designers, dancers, lawyers.

SANDBERG INSTITUUT GRADUATION 2020

TEMPORARY PROGRAMME

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GRADUATES

• SELINE DURRER • VERONIKA FABIAN • SILVIA FAGGIANI • GABRIELLA GOLDSMITH • TING GONG • EVA VAN KEMPEN • MORGANE DE KLERK • LAILA EL MEHELMY • MAREK MROWINKSI • MARGARET MUNCHHEIMER • STEPHANIE SCHUITEMAKER • MARILYN VOLKMAN • JOANNE VOSLOO

The temporary programme, Challenging Jewellery, focuses on building a persuasive collective. One that could be defined as both a corporate association and a movement, driven by a common interest in ‘team spirit’ and the relevance of the silent side of the beauty.

The initiative is driven and operated by way of a fully-functioning company structure.

This process facilitates the study of current notions of human need focused on objects.

Further investigation will also take place in fields that need aesthetic support in order to allow ‘healing’; which for example include employing aspects of jewellery in medical and political areas.

Individual research and practices continuously interact with the administrative, productive and communicative tasks that everyone in the team agrees to perform. Ideally the collective that formed over the course of the programme will naturally extend into a continued existence and significance beyond its set timeframe of two years.

Tutors, guests and participants form a mix that is characterised by its potential to explore while paying attention to the small, silent and private, the human handling, and the careful treatment of material thoughts, values and behaviours.

The Temporary Programme challenges the subject of jewellery on a fundamental level – how it relates to our present time. The approach represents an attempt to think big on a small scale, and presumes an ability to understand ‘micro-working’. The input for Challenging Jewellery is based on intergenerational dialogue. An advisory board, comprising four key figures in the realm of jewellery and design, ensures this will be done in a solid cooperation with the relevant fields. The visiting tutors and guests – varying from theoreticians and curators to contemporary architects, designers and artists – guarantee a continuous renewal of viewpoints on and insights into a discipline manifest in traditions, historical design and theoretical connotations.

SANDBERG INSTITUUT GRADUATION 2020 Emirhan Akin Anouk Asselineau Veronika Babayan Anna Maria Balint Carmen Dusmet Carrasco Andoni Zamora Chacartegui Beatriz Conefrey Constantin Dichtl Seline Durrer Antonio López Espinosa Veronika Fabian Silvia Faggiani Janina Fritz Andrea González Garrán Levi van Gelder Francisca Khamis Giacoman Gabriella Goldsmith Ting Gong Franziska Goralski Thorben Gröbel Jesper Henningsson Natalia Jordanova David C. Kane Kamila Kantek Eva van Kempen Kyulim Kim Morgane de Klerk Miriam Kongstad Wei Tung Kuo Alexander Kuusik Tali Liberman Sara Santana López Pedro Matias María Mazzanti Laila El Mehelmy Heleen Mineur Kasper van Moll Marek Mrowinksi Margaret Munchheimer Cóilín O'Connell Amber Oskam Nicolò Pellarin Nicholas Reilly-McVittie Octave Rimbert-Rivière Charlotte Rohde Patrycja Rozwora Yara Said Lucia Fernandez Santoro Willem Schenk Stephanie Schuitemaker Aleksandr Sergienko Sophia Simensky Luca Soudant Linda Stauffer Wouter Stroet Dimitris Theocharis Aimée Theriot Roman Tkachenko Fabian Tombers Simpson Tse Ben Tupper Hanna Valle Lieselot Versteeg Marilyn Volkman Joanne Vosloo Myrto Vratsanou Klara Waara Michael Weber Cindy Wegner

DIRECTORY

emirhakin@gmail.com anoukasselineau@gmail.com contact.vbabayan@gmail.com anna.m.balint@gmx.ch dusmetcarrasco@gmail.com antuanzamora@gmail.com bbbfilipe@gmail.com constantindichtl@gmail.com write@selinejosefin.com antoniolopez1910@gmail.com fabian.veronika@gmail.com silvia.faggiani@yahoo.it janina@doctor-design.de auroraandreagonzalez@gmail.com info@levivangelder.com frankhamis@gmail.com gmikagoldsmith@gmail.com info@ting-gong.com franziska.goralski@gmail.com tk.groebel@gmail.com jspr.henningsson@gmail.com nataliqiordanova@gmail.com dcros010@gold.ac.uk kamilaxkantek@gmail.com info@evavankempen.com kyulim0401@gmail.com info@morganedeklerk.com miriamkongstad@gmail.com kuoluna4513@gmail.com info@alexkuusik.co.uk liberman.tali@gmail.com ssantana.bbaa@gmail.com pedrommmiguel84@gmail.com mariazz54@gmail.com lmehelmy@gmail.com heleenmineur@live.nl kaspervanmoll@gmail.com marekmrowinski17@gmail.com mmunchheimer@gmail.com brassneckpress@gmail.com ambersoskam@gmail.com nicolopellarin@gmail.com nickr2093@gmail.com octave.rimbert.riviere@gmail.com mail@charlotterohde.de p.rozwora@hotmail.com yarasa3id@gmail.com lufernandezs@gmail.com werkvanwillem@gmail.com smcschuitemaker@gmail.com sashaserhiienko@gmail.com sophia@sophia-simensky.com luca.soudant@gmail.com linda.stauffer@me.com info@wouterstroet.nl theocharis.di@gmail.com theriot.aimee@gmail.com rbtkachenko@gmail.com fabiantombers@gmail.com tse.simpson@gmail.com ben.clenshaw@gmail.com vallehanna@gmail.com lieselot3@gmail.com marilyn.volkman@gmail.com jo.vosloo@gmail.com myrto.vr@gmail.com klara.waara@gmail.com michael.p.weber@gmail.com cin.wegner@gmx.com

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SANDBERG INSTITUUT GRADUATION 2020

COLOPHON

Publisher Sandberg Instituut Director Jurgen Bey Curator Jules van den Langenberg Editor Jason Page Coordinator Anke Zedelius Contributors All graduates Main Departments Temporary Programmes Letter writers Graphic Design Our Polite Society Website Katja van Stiphout Jeroen Vader Max Peeperkorn Printing Pumbo Š 2020 Sandberg Instituut Amsterdam (NL) Disclaimer The information in this publication is generated via www.sandberg.nl/ graduation2019 and has been carefully checked and implemented. Despite these efforts towards accuracy, the presence of errors cannot be excluded. Please send any remarks or corrections to ps@sandberg.nl.

Sandberg Instituut Masters of Fine Arts, Interior Architecture and Design Gerrit Rietveld Academie Visitor Address Fred. Roeskestraat 98 1076 ED Amsterdam Contact T: +31 (0)20 588 24 00 E: info@sandberg.nl W: www.sandberg.nl ISBN 978-90-827670-3-2

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SANDBERG INSTITUUT GRADUATION 2020 AIMÉE THERIOT ALEKSANDR SERGIENKO ALEXANDER KUUSIK AMBER OSKAM ANDONI ZAMORA CHACARTEGUI ANDREA GONZÁLEZ GARRÁN ANNA MARIA BALINT ANOUK ASSELINEAU ANTONIO LÓPEZ ESPINOSA BEATRIZ CONEFREY BEN TUPPER CARMEN DUSMET CARRASCO CHARLOTTE ROHDE CINDY WEGNER CÓILÍN O’CONNELL CONSTANTIN DICHTL DAVID C. KANE DIMITRIS THEOCHARIS EMIRHAN AKIN EVA VAN KEMPEN FABIAN TOMBERS FRANCISCA KHAMIS GIACOMAN FRANZISKA GORALSKI GABRIELLA GOLDSMITH HANNA VALLE HELEEN MINEUR JANINA FRITZ JESPER HENNINGSSON JOANNE VOSLOO KAMILA KANTEK KASPER VAN MOLL KLARA WAARA KYULIM KIM LAILA EL MEHELMY LEVI VAN GELDER LIESELOT VERSTEEG LINDA STAUFFER LUCA SOUDANT LUCIA FERNANDEZ SANTORO MAREK MROWIŃSKI From non-humans to real estate developers, The Subject of The Email compiles the draft (released in May) and final works (exhibited at Het Hembrugterrein (Het HEM / De Dood), Zandaam (NL), 29 October - 2 November) of the 2020 Sandberg Instituut graduates from Master programmes Critical Studies, Design, Dirty Art Department, Fine Arts, Studio For Immediate Spaces, Challenging Jewellery and The Commoners’ Society.

MARGARET MUNCHHEIMER MARÍA MAZZANTI MARILYN VOLKMAN MICHAEL WEBER MIRIAM KONGSTAD MORGANE DE KLERK 64 MYRTO VRATSANOU NATALIA JORDANOVA NICHOLAS REILLY-MCVITTIE NICOLÒ PELLARIN OCTAVE RIMBERT-RIVIÈRE PATRYCJA ROZWORA PEDRO MATIAS ROMAN TKACHENKO SARA SANTANA LÓPEZ SELINE DURRER SILVIA FAGGIANI SIMPSON TSE SOPHIA SIMENSKY STEPHANIE SCHUITEMAKER TALI LIBERMAN THORBEN GRÖBEL TING GONG VERONIKA FABIAN VERONIKA BABAYAN WEI TUNG KUO WILLEM SCHENK WOUTER STROET YARA SAID

EDITORIAL LETTERS SEVEN *CLICKING* INDEX FINGERS DELANY BOUTKAN ZIPPORA ELDERS LEON VAN KRUIJSWIJK JULES VAN DEN LANGENBERG ADRIAN MADLENER LAURENS OTTO The editorial series Seven *CLICKING* Index Fingers includes email letters by various guest writers and curators interpreting the works and occurring topics amongst graduated artists, designers and (interior) architects. The Subject of the Email includes contributions by researcher Delany Boutkan (NL), curator Zippora Elders (NL/DE), curator Leon van Kruijswijk (NL/DE), curator Jules van den Langenberg (NL), writer Adrian Madlener (BE/USA), and critic Laurens Otto (NL).

ISBN 978-90-827670-3-2