around the world, wishing to contribute to and participate in the AVL-ville lifestyle experiment. The atelier/commune ran successfully for almost a year, until last year when the restaurant was shut down by the authorities and much of AVL-villes land was reclaimed by Rotterdam council. People in the art world either really like AVLs arresting tactics, or write them off as juvenile. Designers seem irritated that they didnt think of AVL-ville first. Whatever AVL is, its on a grand scale, and the swelling repertoire of the AVLs operations show no sign of relenting. Which is how the company that designs art will probably exhibit at Junes Biennale with no spiel, no manifesto. If its high-concept catharsis youre looking for, give AVLs work in Sydney a miss. It is art on a human level, to be lived in, used and abused. AVL goes where architects fear to tread, because AVL has no aspirations for the inhabitants of its environments. These habitats do not mould their inhabitants by introducing lofty ideals into their immediate surroundings. Instead, they are the required spaces, created through human observation, fresh from the fleshy mould. While architects ask us us to reconsider our views and realign our priorities accordingly, AVL recognizes the human tendency towards darker, less cerebral practises. An environment, a vehicle, and illegal still, or a simple chair all state an interest in providing or allowing for the pursuit of all kinds of real human activity. Art facilitates life. Van Lieshout has always produced work that responded to his place in the Dutch urban environment. Now in the AVL aesthetic there is a sharp distaste for the chintzy, overly comfortable and altogether Dutch home. Wallpaper, knick-knacks and pet photos of any kind are discarded, replaced by a type of hyper-pragmatism refined, irreverent and dangerous. An AVL-built chair is designed for someone who wants a seat, not for someone who wants their home accesorised. Recently AVL was commissioned to design a reproductive health clinic for the Dutch Women on Waves project. The clinic is ultimately intended to operate on a ship that will sit in international waters just off countries where abortion is illegal.
Writingoneself into an entity better equipped to experience Function rules here, sometimes. Yet other works include rigid 10 metre tall figures gallery fare. AVL and relish the physical. The jail accepts the violence questions equally the usefulness of art, and the married to feats of physical endurance. The toilet, in uselessness of everything that is not art. no uncertain terms, reminds the occupant that this is the underworld. The zeitgeist has been on a long, slow trajectory towards AVL. It is part of a backlash against a Ascending the staircase at one end of the platform, media preoccupied with presenting the urban as a very different scene unfolds. A row of some 15 one extreme (in which we reside) against a rural immaculate beds lie freshly made along the length of foil (which we retire to periodically). AVL seems the wooden floor. At the termination of the platform to suggest a melding of the two notions, or at least a cabin conceals the compost toilet. The finish provides the means of importing one extreme into is rustic, but the concept seems more deliberate. the other. People warm to such fundamentally As an environment concerned with the body, it is contrasting objectives. The imagination is stirred executed on a completely alien scale. It is as though when one examines the meeting point of the knotted, its creators were Herculean, and built this place deeply grained cheap plywood and its neighbouring from the crudest materials, with their bare hands. polyester: reinforced fibreglass, perfectly finished. Sportopia becomes like some strange monolithic The three monthly inevitability of emptying your machine, dedicated to preoccupations with the body, Compost Toilet (2001) now matter how enlightening pumped up like a gym junkie an idea taken too far. or grounding is also at odds with interiors designed only for the most debauched excess. AVL design See AVLs work at the Biennale. First, you realise speaks of a duality that we can neither make sense that whatever it is, you can make it yourself. AVL of, nor defeat a duality so inherent in modern life wants this. The ability to inspire has always been that it almost defines the term itself. Wanting paramount in art, and your interest gives you the the country, being in the city. Needing a career, plasticity of a Barbapapa eager to provide for knowing that a career is a crock. The desire for the oneself. Then you see that to do so is to remove hippie archetype of free love and living from the yourself from the worsening syndromes of the land clashes violently with the possible eventuality designer as god, and the artist as something beyond of having to defend yourself with home-made god. As the person most keenly aware of what you armaments. want, you come to understand why doing it yourself Earth 2002. is art. But its addictive, and as AVL (and some imaginary shape-shifters) help remind us, big things AVL-ville is currently concerned with commissions come from realising the beauty and strength in and exhibiting globally. The Atelier has numerous knowing how to build. made-to-order works ranging from car/chicken coop hybrids to gigantic fibreglass sculptures. One recent work is Sportopia (2002). It is comprised of a massive oblong scaffolding platform, almost 3 metres high, defining two related spaces. Underneath the platform, lit by bare bulbs, is a Hades equipped with a working gym, eating facilities, upholstered furniture that might pass for gynaecological examination chairs (or props in more sordid activities), torture racks and the ubiquitous AVL spirit dispensers. In one corner the blue polyester shaft of a compost toilet protrudes through the ceiling from above. Next to it, vertical scaffolds create a small prison cell. Here, one subjects himself to a punishing physical regime, or is subjected to one. Tables, chairs and cutlery exist only as a means of fuelling a body, maintaining momentum, building 95