Defining psychogeography by breaking it down into two parts: it’s the psychological and the geographical. Psychogeography was used by Situationist as a study of the specific effects of the geographical environment on the emotions and behaviour of individuals. They were creating a channel of communication between the city and it’s citizens to strive for a better habitat and to create an utopia.
We are all born into this world with a natural curiosity for our surroundings, and based on our early interactions and experiments we created our own interpretation of an Utopia. When we are thinking about our personal Utopian space, we are describing how different places, smells and colours make us feel and behave. We are transforming our desires into objects we like, materials we feel comfortable with, people we trust and streets we know.

There are many environmental factors like our surrounding people, possibilities, opportunities and social facilities that can influence our desires. This makes me question if we should pursue our desires unconsciously (surrealist) to keep them as honest as possible. Sometimes I feel that our real desires change as soon as we think about it and act like it. When we are not conscious, we are not able to change them. A big part of these influences are the many choices we have nowadays. The amount of choice is overpowering our true desire, which makes it hard to feel satisfied. This might be the reason why our desires are changing and transforming itself over and over again. Because of the many choices we have to tend to get lost in between purpose, desire and satisfaction.

"Tiger & Turtle - Magic Mountain" by Heike Mutter and Ulrich Genth

To let go of these desires and expectations for a little while we can do a “Dérive” through the city. This was introduced by Guy Debord in 1956. The concepts origins are in the Letterist International Collective based in Paris, where the dérive was a critical tool for understanding and developing the theory of psychogeography.
The dérive is an unplanned journey though a landscape (mostly Urban) where the participant is following a new logic that let’s them experience the landscape again, and that will force us to see what we would otherwise ignore.

Where a dérive in those times was all about exploring the streets and its environments, I think that a dérive nowadays has a lot more to offer: while we are having a moment of un-defined time in this “always-online” and time-focused world we are living in, the architectural spaces are inviting us to move. The choices we make are becoming an exercise of creating alternative ways of interpretation instead of passively following the traditional map. We are challenged to take courage and to get lost solely in order to find one’s way again.

Hereby I recommend everyone to get lost every once in a while

1. [x] [ This site is created by a psychogeographical collective, where they write (and photograph) their wanderings and mapping of the past, present and possible ]
2. [x] [ This is a beautifully written portrait of a place, based on history and personal associations. ] 

Adding the contemporary to the psychogeography:

Nowadays, digital mapping and mechanisms of exploring geographic environments by using mobile phones or pc’s have reached a high level of development and importance. You can find a traveling guideline for the most simple things as well as very detailed environments from all over the world. This way current knowledge has transferred the concept of impossible into possible. ( there even exists an application called “derive“ that is helping you to get lost…….. ) It reminds me of the interpretation given by Situationist for the absence of utopia: “No utopia can no longer be available because the conditions to become reality already exists” Yet do these things only exist to maintain the current state of things and not to serve the needs for quality life.

This knowledge and technology has created the development of Urban Interactive Installations and happening of interactive challenge. This whole new way of investigating and the human involvement in geographical environment has developed into another way of using psychogeography, where artists started to work by the theory of the Situationist and tried to approach the dynamics of human presence and behavior. In fact, in many cases the artists who use the terms of dérive and psychogeography are not practically associating their work with the impression of these concepts, as originally interpreted.

Examples of Interactive installations:

1. [x] [ 14 interactive installations in NYC ]
2. [x] [ “Sway’d” – Interactive Public Art Installation in Salt Lake City ]

Also the Situationist have inspired many street artists, especially in term of content and composition . These artists are expressing their imagination on the wall by using the techniques of détournement and the construction of Situationist to create a whole new atmosphere in the city.

BANKSY - 2007 [above] • Edgar Mueller - Lava Burst

“The revolution in everyday life, breaking its present resistance to the historical (and to every kind of change), will create conditions in which the present dominates the past and the creative aspects of life always predominate over the repetitive ones. We must therefore expect that the side of everyday life expressed by the concepts of ambiguity (misunderstandings, compromises, misuses) will decline considerably in importance in favor of their opposites: conscious choices and gambles”.

– GUY DEBORD May 1961

[x] Here you can read “the society of the spectacle” by Guy Debord. The book consists of 221 theses where he traces the development of a modern society in which authentic social life has been replaced with it’s representation.

The 60s was a very significant era in terms of cultural and technological advancement. It was the era of counterculture, and a social revolution. It was the “space age”, in which there were countless advancements in technology and space exploration. It was an era of optimism and playful experimentation, in which there was a rise of avant-garde and outlandish sensibilities in art and design.
 

Archigrams pop-art aesthetic

England was one of the main countries which experienced the counter culture of the 60s very intensively, so called the “swinging sixties”, and this reflected evidently in art, design and architecture. Archigram is an example of a highly visionary, avant-garde architectural movement from that time and place. They were very experimental and pro-consumerist, and were very significant in that they questioned and opposed to the traditional conventions of modernist architecture and city-planning, finding it to be too homogeneous and lacking of individuality. They defended individualism; that each person should be able to be part of the design process of their own homes, those homes should be personalized. They also defended expendability; that cities could change and grow constantly through time. They were highly influenced by trends of the era in their designs. Their aesthetic was very in line with pop-art, with lots of imagery of consumer products in their designs, which makes sense considering their pro-consumerist stance, and their perception of housing as a consumer product. They were very technologically forward and optimistic, and indubitably utopian.
 

The Plug-in City

The Plug-in City is an example of one of many of the outlandish designs proposed by the members of Archigram. Designed by Peter Cook in 1964 – the leading figure of Archigram; it proposed to have modular residential units which would be plugged in to a central infrastructure mega-machine. Adhering to the ideal of expendability, the modular units could be carried around by cranes depending on necessity and preference.
 

The Walking City

The Walking City is another project, proposed by Ron Herron in 1964, which proposed a nomadic city infrastructure in which none of the components of the city are tied to a specific location. Robotic structures would roam around, depending on where the owner wanted to take it.

Incontestably, none of their projects were actually realised. Their projects required technological advancement which would be far from where we are even in our current times. Even if one of their projects were attempted to be built, it would require funding. Indeed, their projects were quite utopian and optimistic, in true 60s fashion.
 

Constant’s New Babylon

Utopian ideals in design seemed to be a common theme running through the era throughout the western world, another example being Constant Nieuwenhuys; a Dutch designer/artist who also proposed similarly utopian projects, which were also far from being realised. He also defended individualism, and was opposing to the traditional conventions of homogenous modernist city planning, but didn’t necessarily stand by pro-consumerism. He also made a proposition for a nomadic city, in which playfulness and creativity were inhibited.

There seems to be more of a cynical and pragmatic attitude in our current times, so these utopian ideals and optimism may seem superfluous to us 21st century folks (including me, when I first started reading about them, I was quite cynical about their outlandish projects) – but, perhaps such an optimistic and utopian attitude, and playfulness is exactly what we need, in our current world infected by political turmoil, and conservatism.

Project inspired by The Walking City
The Archigram archival project

A page of the 3rd publication from the first english version of Utopia, made in 1597 by Raphe Robinson

The book Utopia was published in 1516 by Thomas More. The word itself means “nowhere”, from the ancient Greek language. As it is said, it was written to give an example of a better society rather than the one of  Europe in the sixteenth century could be like.

As I started reading it there was just one question that kept arousing into my mind: how could the Utopians be so willing to obey the rules? Was More making use of his famous black sense of humor when he designed them?

The Utopians are a group of devoted, placid people; they all dress with the same garments and eat in big cantines. Their sense of community is greatly strong. They agree with all the rules. But that sounds so atypical. More, as many other utopians have done, created a little society where human feelings as fear, hate, jealousy and rage almost didn’t exist.

In fact, many utopic authors created a world in which these feelings didn’t exist either. Like the dystopian work of Aldous Huxley, “A Brave New World”, in which humans take pills to be constantly happy. Most utopias are made to terminate all bad feelings. But why not learn to control them and coexist with them? The deeper the pain, the deeper the joy. A world without these feelings would be a passive world. And in a passive world, there’s little space for big strokes of imagination and self-thinking. How boring would that be…
 

An example of how the island of Utopia could have looked ~ how it was illustrated in the first edition

 
That lead me to think that most utopias are dangerous. As they represent the most ideally perfect aspects of society/mankind, and perfection is a subjective concept, they are very susceptible to not to fit the personal needs of every human being. So they can easily set apart any person who doesn’t correspond the same ideal, and put her in a cage.

Hitler almost realized his own utopia, and drove many people to serve him in this savagery. Maybe the others could sympathize with him because they saw, too, the heaven in Hitler’s mind. However after the discovery of the Holocaust, utopias could never be the same.

I’m not sure if I could, as many people do, relate that much Thomas More to the humanists of the 15th century. They put for the first time men before God, seeked the ability of the human being to think by itself and break with traditions, and supported more the science rather than the superstition. Thomas More was a deeply religious person, and he even stated being God’s servant when he was executed. However, his book Utopia pursues the finest achievement of a human community in what regards society organization, behaviour and education. So to have gone gone so deep into the matter, shouldn’t More have had a real passion for humanism?

More’s book is not easy to read. Used as we are, “free” educated thinkers from the 21rst century, to judge and compare everything with our current times, I think it’s difficult to put yourself into the mindset of the 15th century. I believe it’s a truly visionary book to be written back in that time, when religion had a considerable place in the european population, taking big imporance in every act.
 

Renaissance artists from the 15th century seeked, too, to find perfection and utopy in the human body

And exactly 440 years after Utopia was published, Constant Nieuwenhuys started working in New Babylon. His structures were motivated by the devastated cities he saw after World War II; he started thinking about how architecture influences daily life, and how it creates a specific environment depending on its shape and interior organization. When I thought about Constant and More together, I couldn’t imagine such differents idealists. But as soon as I started going deeper into his ideals, and tried to understand them, I could see some resemblances. On one hand, I think they were united by the fact that they both had a fascination for anthropology. Constant and More put a great effort into imagining, each one their own way, ways to enhance culture and society. What would have happened if we combined the community of More with Constant’s architecture? Perhaps it would have been a total failure, as it is like combining two opposite worlds that scream for way divergent paragons of life. Constant architecture was made to play, whereas iddleness was totally forbidden in More’s book.

An example of one of Constant's scale models for New Babylon

I can also imagine that some art tendencies would have been banned in Utopia. As they hide, as well, butcher houses because it stimulates human violence, they would have probably limited art to just beautifully looking things that appeal to “nice acts”.

But what More, with his deeply religious faith (which maybe nowadays would have been translated into a deep love for mankind) would have designed for nowadays? Aren’t we almost living in a utopia right now, isn’t Amsterdam some sort of bubble? How would he would have felt in our current capitalist world? He was not an artist but I believe he had a deep love and understanding for humanity. Which doesn’t take him that far from art..

Imagine a

sculpture, 26 meters  red,  yellow ,green metal

reaching into the sky   –    an open hand,

waving with every breeze.

click on picture to see more beautiful pictures of Chandigarh
made by Fernanda Antonio for Arch Daily

left: Le Corbusier right: Jawahal Nehru

an open hand [interview]

open to give and open to receive,

a recurring symbol in the work of Le Corbusier

a sign of peace and reconciliation.

The city of Chandigarh was planned to be the capital city of the province of Punjab.
Punjab was left without a capital after India’s decolonization , leading to the partition of East and West Punjab. Lahore, the former capital of Punjab, became part of Pakistan in 1948.
Just three years after leading India to independence, Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s prime-minister, commissioned the planning of a new capital to the architects Mayer and Nowicki.
Nowicki died in a plane crash in 1950 and Le Corbusier was asked to finish the project in 1951.

Being less popular  in Europe and the U.S. at the end of his life Le Corbusier, was hungry to realise his ideas had the ambition to realise them in one last big project: building Chandigarh gave him that opportunity. With the personal blessing of India’s prime-minister Nehru, who called Chandigarh his dream city.
It is important to state that there were already plans for the city of Chandigarh and it is false to believe that Le Corbusier planned the whole city himself, which he did not.

Chandigarh as planned by Le Corbusier

Le Corbusier’s plan was very similar to the one prepared by Mayer and Nowicki, changing original curved road networks with rectangular ones and grid iron patterns for fast traffic roads. Mayer’s Urban Village became a Sector in Le Corbusier’s plan. The idea was to build a Garden City without high skyscrapers, embodying big ambitions of social living conditions for its citizens. Le Corbusier’s modernist ideas about light, space and greenery were widely incorporated in the plans.

Chandigarh in numbers:
1.000.000 citizens (and growing) : divided over 57 sectors :
each sector is 800m x 1200m (resembling a traditional Indian ‘mohalla’) :
the city has 8 types of roads (these are all labeled)
Every sector has its own public spaces to centralize the daily life of citizens and avoid scattering all over the city..

this pictures links to an interactive map of Chandigarh!

V1: arterial roads which connect one city to another

V2: urban, city roads

V3: vehicular road surrounding a sector

V4: shopping street of a sector

V5: distribution road meandering through a sector

V6 residential road

V7: pedestrian path

V8: cycle track

the Capitol Complex with the High Court designed by Le Corbusier: a concrete structure with columns of the recurring red, yellow and green, with a structure of rectangles starting from the first floor ending in bigger rectangles (now with air-conditioning in them) bending towards the streets, and after a solid concrete ceiling, a gap held by other pillars to make way for a great concrete roof including a canopy, so if you can stand out of the sun in front of the court

the Capitol Complex with the High Court

The Legislative Assembly is of the same concrete grandeur, but with a big superficial pond around it; it is less high and more rectangle than the High Court, there is a massive canopy held by thin walls with square windows in it, this is the place where the Assembly of Punjab ánd Haryana (a state which separated itself from Punjab in 1966 on a linguistic basis)

The Palace of Assembly by Benjamin Hosking for Dezeen The picture links to an article and more beautiful pictures of the concrete buildings in sector 1

With merely naming Le Corbusier, I do not do justice to his cousin Pierre Jeanneret who was leading the design of the structure of sector 1 and designed multiple other buildings, like the University:

Former University building designed by Pierre Jeanneret

By designing he perfect city, Le Corbusier’s hand stretches out to touch each individual life ledin Chandigarh. By designing an environment based on smaller sectors, Le Corbusier, Mayer, Nowicki, Piere Jeanneret and Jane Drew understood how overwhelming big cities can be—in that aspect, I think they were ahead of their time. Recent studies show that Chandigarh is the wealthiest city of India and also has the happiest citizens, therefore I think, the life long learning experience formed Le Corbusier and I believe that Chandigarh is one of his masterpieces. Chandigarh certainly earns it’s place on the Unesco World Heritage list, which he obtained this year.

Public listening to poetry at the Open Hand Monument last December picture [links] to the facebook page of a poetry collective

Situationism is an artistic, philosophical and political movement between 1957 and 1972, influenced by Dada, Surrealism, and Lettrism. The movement was developed by Situationist International (SI) and mainly made up of leading figures like Asger Jorn, Guy Debord, and Constant Nieuwenhuys. At first, they were principally concerned with the “suppression of art”, that is to say, they wished like the Dadaists and the Surrealists before them to supersede the categorization of art and culture as separate activities and to transform them into part of everyday life. From 1962, the Situationists increasingly applied their critique not only in culture but also to all aspects of society.

Look at this video link I found on Youtube. It will be helpful to your understanding regarding an overview of Situationism.

Spectacle Society by Guy Debard 1967 [download copy]

The ‘Spectacle’ is a central notion in the Situationist theory, developed by Guy Debord in his 1967 book, The Society of the Spectacle. Here is a good description of  the ‘Spectacle’.

Debord’s concept of the ‘Spectacle’ is a form of commodity fetishism. Debord emphasized that the spectacle is not a collection of images, but rather, “a social relationship between people mediated by images.” … The ‘Spectacle’ is “the concrete inversion of life” and the “autonomous movement of non-life.” The principle of the spectacle is “non-intervention.”  … For Debord, capital accumulated beyond a certain threshold is transformed into images. Debord updated and expanded upon Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism, applying the idea of reification to all areas of social life.

As I understand [x],  ‘Spectacle’  means the society of kind of mass media, capitalistic and consumerism.  The post-war capitalism was changed to ‘consumption’ capitalism through the economic boom. For instance, the revolutionary ‘worker’ who was producing in a factory became a conformist ‘consumer’ shopping in the market. The Situationist believed that consumptive lifestyle was isolated human from society and criticized this  ‘Spectacle’  environment also.

I think they didn’t want to conform to some social structure because capitalism didn’t allow it, to imagine human’s fantasy. I supposed too because the social atmosphere was focused on a function to make mass production. And also, the modern city planning didn’t leave space for imagination or expression. Most of the architecture were influenced by modernism style with technological advances, thus the building came out of functional and formalized form. Therefore they had doubt why we have to live in functional space without our desires.  Therefore some of the artists start to dream of utopia.

The Dutch artist, Constant Nieuwenhuys, proposed the ‘New Babylon’ which is 1960s imaginary city concept. He expressed his ideal new world and believed that new environments would be created where everyone would be free to move around as they wished. His work implied a new form of urban life.

I was impressed by his work ‘Labyrinthine Space’.

'Labyrinthine Space / Doorlabyrinth' by Constant (up) / 'Steel Labyrinth' by Belgian artist Pieterjan Gijs and Arnout van Vaerenbergh (down)

To me, it looks like an imaginary space for play. Of course, different feelings are awoken, depending on the viewer’s insight. I felt that going through unlimited revolving doors. All of the doors seems to be taking me to other connecting spaces. So you can  imagine this to be a new exit or entrance to go or do something, whenever you go through the revolving door. If so, it really needs our boring reality as a small play. I made my ideal space using revolving door’s image easily as below.

My ideal  space 'Unlimited doors' influenced by Constant

At this moment the majority of the population on earth lives in an urban environment and the digital information era is attempting to decrease our play entirely. It says, even if capitalism develops more, it does not create the spare time to dream yourself. Perhaps we have lived only as conformist consumers and not as creative producers in modern society. At this point, Constant’s utopia project is and will be an excellent source of inspiration to find a solution in contemporary life as I experienced myself in that small “play space” through the revolving doors. I guess this meaning of “play” could be slightly different from what the Situationist wanted. Of course, we are living in a different period. Nevertheless, the critique of Situationists has relevance to the contemporary debate. So, it could be a good alternative measure in our society and we know such a change is possible through various appropriate behaviors. So I suggest; consider to find your own small play from now on.

Le Corbusier was a well-known architect who designed in many ways, the foundations of architecture and building systems in the way we are observing it today. Le Corbusier was one of the first architects who has developed the way to take advantage of concrete. His modern building designs were inspired by his vision to adapt the architecture to the industrial age. The buildings should “work” as a machine that serves the residents, as he was claiming. He wanted to create utopian structures and  surroundings that would fit the working people and provide them the best quality of  life. He developed a theory of urban planning based on simple, non-decorated, functional design

Le Corbusier, looking on a scale model made for one of his designs. You could definitely see the connection between it and the Brutalists architecture.

 
Inspired by his ideals, the Brutalist architecture style was developed. The Brutalist architects were broadly active in Germany, UK, France, Italy, Australia, Israel, Yugoslavia, Japan and the US. Mainly at the first half of the 20^th century until the seventies. Brutalist design is characterized by the exposed cement and simple functional structure. The structure supposed to represent the essence of a building, therefore the most important elements are the materials, space and form. The name, Brutalists come from Le Corbusier’s expression (French) – Béton Brut, which means raw concrete.

One example of an utopian Brutalist experience is in Be’er Sheva. “The capital of the desert” in Israel. After Israel was established in 1948 the new government encouraged the building up modern, progressive projects. The new developing country had a lot of new migrants coming from all over the world. Their vision was to make all these people feel and act as one united nation. Even though they were coming from such different backgrounds, they were bound to be as one. As more and more newcomers continued coming, there was a constant need of new buildings. That aspect gave the chance to many architects to bring to life very unusual plans.

 

Ben Gurion university : Be'er Sheva • A typical .Béton brut (French) raw and concrete wall texture

 
The leaders on those days believed that they were designing the future society of ideal new kind of people under a socialist narrative. Moreover the architecture was a tool that could represent this ideal society and help shaping it. Therefore they were even dreaming of having a large modern, green, “western” oasis. A city in the desert area, that before that wasn’t as developed or inhabited with many people. To bring the civilization, the great strong structures that represent a progressive, successful society

Women walking at the fifth neighborhood, Be'er Sheva. After it was recently build

One of the most famous projects in the city was designed by Avraham Yaski and Amnon Alecandroni. They were planning a very long building that was part of an utopian neighborhood – a large scaled housing project, called “The Fifth Neighborhood” – in Hebrew “Shouna hei”. This neighborhood was designed as “A Model Neighborhood” and it includes different architectural projects that were supposed to show different kind of modern, progressing attitudes towards the deserts conditions.

The most well known one, that also became as a symbol for Israeli Brutalist building is the Quarter Kilometer Long Building . This project was completed in the 1960s. It used to be considered as the longest block in the Middle East. The Idea was to build such a long building that will block the wind and the dust, then in the surrounding of it they were building up lower houses that enjoyed from protection of the larger structure. Inspired by Le Corbusier the first level is only pilots and is being used as an open space. The building is very geometrical and simple and there are any windows that have a wide conceit frame to differed it from the strong sun shine.

Back then, they were really dreaming about having great life quality, adjusted to the weather conditions. The creators of this building, neighborhood and city believed that they could subjugate the natural conditions of the place if they would just build in the right way. If it would be big enough, massive enough – the desert will surrender to the architecture. They were planning this buildings to be designed and built in high quality  standards, for medium class residence. Eventually when utopia meets reality different things happen. Despite the innovative design, this building “has become an urban legend bleak, a magnet  for problems and crime.” Avraham Yaski, the leading architect “of the project referred to it as a “conscious tryout that completely failed”

The quarter-kilometer block, today.

The longest block in the middle east. 1960. Be'er Sheva.

Today many people criticize the Brutalist style, claiming that the exposed cement, the rough structures and the simple geometric shapes looks massive, neglected, aggressive, ugly and represent the way the regime was trying to force this unreal utopia version. Building in the same way they where trying to led the people as one machine that needs to serve a certain kind of a national dream.
While wondering about that I find my self split between a respectful, even amazed feeling towards those architects that dared to dream and to try something that was so revolutionary at the time and the feeling that this vision of great wide buildings with European meadow in the desert is so alienated and disconnected from the traditional way of surviving in this landscape
I think that this contradiction represent a very familiar complexity that exists in the Israeli society still today. The contradiction between the utopian vision of being part of the European culture (in that case architecture and urban design) and the fact that the country is based in the middle east, that lots of the civilians are coming from middle eastern, north African countries and that it is surrounded with very reach culture that makes it impossible to fully deny those other influences that pops up and stand against that utopian vision. In a way the quarter kilometer block is a living example for that complexity

A cover of the book: Avraham Yasky, Concrete Architecture. A monograph on Yasky's work by Sharon Rotbard

The human being is qualified as « homo sapiens », the man who knows and « homo faber », the man who makes. « Homo ludens » is the man at play.

So i decided to find out more about Constant Nieuwenhuy’s « homo ludens » and the context.

We are in the period after the second world war, everything is destroyed and has to be rebuilt. Constant had an utopian vision of how we could re invent our world, and for him it was a real possibility. We had to forget how we did thing in the past (traditions, routines, processes, plans…) and create a new world from dust, that he called « New Babylon ».

The people of the « New Babylon » world are called the « homo ludens ». He insisted on the importance of play. Something joyful, pleasant and adventurous in our daily lives. People could transform, recreate our environment according to their new needs. Everyone could use his creativity as he wished. Art would exist as part of our day-to-day existence, everyone would be an artist. He puts the human in the centre of everything. Mobility is another key dimension because it was getting easier to travel across the world. Constant saw the new babylonians as a new race of nomads with unlimited freedom to decide about the appearance of their surroundings.

I think this staircase is the perfect representation of Constant’s idea of « homo ludens ». The stair’s principal function is no more the useful part of it, to go up and down. The amusement of going up and down is what it is about. It isn’t the most practical staircase but when you go up or down, you have fun.

The opposite of this new concept of a « ludic society » is the society we are in now, a « utilitarian society ». A society based on the exploitation of the human being’s capacity for work in any kind of domain. « Utility » is the principal criteria of a man for his activity. The creative man can only claim his right on rare occasions.

The « ludic society » on the contrary is freed from repetitive production work. It would be a « classless society » with no more hierarchy. A society were individuals developed and discovered their own creativity with others. Constantly at play, an uninterrupted process of creation and re creation.

How would « social justice » work in this new world ?

Equality and freedom between everyone is the principle of social justice. Freedom depends not only on the social structure but also on productivity. Supposing we are in a world where people create daily, if there is no production then this society doesn’t work. Productivity depends on technology. The new technologies we discover every year give us new ways of doing things, more possibilities, more freedom for the « homo ludens » to play with.

With theses new possibilities people innovate, make something new, re do, renew, rebuild, restore, transform, change… This is in effect the role of a designer but in this world there wouldn’t be any constraints.

These innovations can be used in all kinds of activities. For instance, Constant imagined that air conditioning in  « New Babylon » does not only serve to recreate, as in a « utilitarian society » an « ideal » climate but also to make it possible to vary the ambiance to the greatest possible degree.

Technology and innovation enable creativity. For example, we can now bring to reality what was a simple 2D image on a computer. There are many kinds of innovations but I think that artificial intelligence (see also : 7 trends for artificial intelligence in 2016 ) is going to be the major innovation that will have an impact on our society and really affect our creativity in the future.

Imagine a world where « homo ludens » would be able to have artificial intelligence (AI) assistants. You could not really make the difference with a human. They would have all the data of the world in their system and would use « deep learning » .

« Deep learning » is different learning methods where the AI has advanced audio and visual analysis skills (facial recognition, voice recognition, computer vision…). They would be able to modify their attitude based on the past, they learn. If you are a bit curious about this subject I advise you to watch the tv series « Westworld  ».

With all this data and advanced technology IA assistants could give to « homo ludens » a different perspective about their production and bring real technical and practical support instantly. It would be similar to the character « Jarvis » in Iron Man. What is interesting about this AI is that it is invisible.

Artificial intelligence and « homo ludens » could work well together but AI can be dangerous if it is not well controlled.

 
Guy DEBORD - Concept of "Derive"
How could people renounce to act, to move into a defined space?

“Follow the line. Walk. Turn left. Straight on. Turn right.”
Everyday is the same way. Wake up, go to work, one way. Finish work, go back home, same way. Same streets. Same sidewalk. Same hall. Same way to move into a defined space. I’m bored. I have the feeling of being programmed. I walk as an automate. The way I’m moving is determined by the space. A space, which has been built to create a certain kind of movement. Movements chosen by the hand of the architect.
I’m bored.
I want to derive.
I want to EXPLORE.
I want to be excited.
Let’s break the routine.
Let’s take the chances as a guide.
Let’s follow the chances.
The derive is defined by Guy Debord (a French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker, member of the Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding member of the Situationist International) as a fast technical way to go through different atmospheres. It is deeply linked to the space and to how people recognize it. The right words are “the psychogeographical thought”.

The human being evolves during his life through different spaces. He is acting, moving because of his feelings but also because of the space he is in itself. If the space is small, without windows, just made of walls, he will turn around in circles like a wild beast, searching for some space to explore. Put him into a wide space, with no walls, maybe he will run, maybe he will walk but he will have the freedom to explore. The space, thus, determines our behavior.
The chances has an important repercussion on the derive, even if the mind and feelings about the space, are still the elements which affect your choices. You’re walking in the street without any goal, you want to get lost, to explore. To your left, there is a narrow passage, it seems calm and quiet. To your right, there is a big street, noisy and full of people. Which one would you choose? Which path will attract you the most? Your feelings will help you choose.
The derive is something you can do by yourself, alone, but it has more impact in a small group. People can help you discover different places you don’t know, they can help you appreciate it. Also, a group of 4/5people maximum can create a different energy than if you were just by yourself.
 

 
The exploration supposes a kind of calculus which helps you to know where you are going. That’s what the map is for. In your daily life, you just know the streets you need to take to be at specific places. Take a map and start to look at what is around you will help you to understand how the city is built and how you can play with it.
“What if today, I decide not to turn left but I chose to go right, to get to my office?”
A small change of your routine can have a very positive impact on you. Your attention will be different so you will start to feel the pleasure of the unknown.

First cover Guy Debord’s book

In architecture, the derive creates new spaces, new ways to go, to move and to determine the space. 

Everyday you take the lift, go to the 3rd floor and open the second door on the left to your office. No excitation. Tomorrow, you will climb the stairs, try a new way to move and you will rediscover a place you thought you knew.

Why not create a place where the owner could remove the walls to make the space bigger or smaller? A place where he could be his own architect, a place where, he has everyday, the possibility to create his own space. For example, in 1955 a building was built in New-York in which three four room apartments could be turned into a big twelve room apartment thanks you moving walls.
Also, one of the most famous architecture of De Stijl movement, the “Schröder House”, illustrates very well this idea of transformable space. The Rietveld Schröder House in Utrecht was built in 1924 by Dutch architect Gerrit RIETVELD for Mrs. Truus Schröder-Schräder and her three children. She commissioned the house to be designed preferably without walls. It is visually very simple with its use of primary colors and geometric shapes. The outside-inside boundaries seem to blur, thanks to its many windows that open up completely to welcome nature indoors.
 

 
This house is a great exemple of a home you could easily transform to suit the weather, your mood. The simple and straightforward house was made using long-lasting, affordable and standard materials like concrete, glass and wood, with floors made from rubber and even some small cork areas in the bedrooms, for standing when getting out of bed. A doorbell and a long horizontal window that only open a small area to receive the post straight to the working desk inside. Upstairs, three bedrooms and a living room area around a central staircase and fireplace can be dynamically turned into a open big open space when opening wide up the sliding the walls.
The whole idea of derive deeply echoes Constant’s work. After WW2, the artist saw the destroyed cities as a possibility to rebuild them in a different way. He started to think about a New Babylon, a city that would offer to his citizens a new way of life, a new way to explore the space. Stairs, ladders, open spaces, light… Everything in his mock ups gave the user the possibility to create his own space, his own movements, his own rules. On a certain level, we can say that Constant wanted to give us the possibility to derive. This idea echoes Guy Debord ’s sentence, “One day, people will build cities to derive”.
To my mind, i think that with or without those utopic cities, we already have the possibility to derive. As human beings, we are building our own limits. If we decide to see our everyday life as a playground, if we push ourselves out of our landmarks, out of our comfort, we became the actors of our derive. The main problem of derive is finally how we accept to deal with the notion of freedom, the freedom we are giving to ourselves.

Constant Anton Nieuwenhuys (21 July 1920 – 1 August 2005)

After the end of the war the housing problem in the Netherlands was the ‘number one enemy’. In the early 50s Nieuwenhuys was seeking for new pathways in which art could contribute to reconstruction of the post war Europe. He envisioned an art that was at once “lyrical in its means and social in its very nature” (1956). That period of time was crucial for Constant.

After the Cobra period, Constant Nieuwenhuys’ work becomes more abstract. It develops more and more towards spatial experimentation and architecture. He starts to study architecture with the books of Aldo van Eyck. During that period Constant comes up with the question of how the construction of a city contributes to the quality of life. He starts to realize how the modern structures that surround us influence us. Before that, in the Cobra time he focuses on collective art and rejects individual art, now he goes even further by striving for a synthesis of arts. He tries to break the boundaries between art professions like painting, sculpting, architecture and technology, he feels like they need to be eradicated. In this period of time Constant is searching for artists with the same views as him; he works together with architects like Gerrit Rietveld, Aldo van Eyck and Stephen Gilbert.

(Symbolic Representation of New Babylon), 1969.

The exhibition “Constant. Space + Colour. From CoBrA to New Babylon” at the Cobra Museum in Amstelveen, showed that development of Constant’s work.
Constant worked together with many different artist during his life and was not afraid to experiment with his style and way to approach his work. He both painted, made sculptures and made graphic work. It was very clear when you walked through the exhibition at the Cobra museum that his main approach have been space and colour during his lifetime. Constant’s development from Cobra to New Babylon was told by a narrative and you were guided through the exhibition that represented both his avant-garde experimenting paintings and his urban architectural sculpture work.

Shown at the exhibition was this one video installation called Gyromorphosis which is made by Hyman ‘Hy’ Hirsh. Most of the works in the exhibition were presented live as maquettes whereas Gyromorphosis was the only digital piece that displayed the New Babylon ideas not by Constant himself, which was attention grabbing.  Hirsh was born in Pennsylvania in October of 1911 and was an American photographer and experimental filmmaker. He was also one of the first filmmakers to use electronic imaginary. From looking at more of Hirsh’ work it is possible to make a conclusion that he treated films as malleable objects by constantly editing and re-editing them, mostly using live music instead of pre-recorded soundtracks. Hirsh did in fact dedicate himself to working with the describing form as seen in his other works. In Gyromorphosis,which he made while staying in Amsterdam, Hirsch strives to display the kinetic qualities of the New Babylon structures of Constant Nieuwenhuys. One by one he puts parts of the structures in motion and films the details with colored lighting having them overlap each other, appear and disappear. He creates a sensation of acceleration and suspense suggested by the work itself. He uses music from the Modern Jazz Quartet which becomes a great part of the piece; rough and blunt shapes together with very soft sound creates a great contrast that is hard to miss.

Gyromorphosis, 1954

Hirsh works with the describing form, which is a way to represent the weight and space of sculptural form on film.”To realize this aim I have put into motion, one by one, pieces of the sculpture and, with colorued lighting, filmed them in various detail, overlaying the images on the film as they appear and disappear. In this way, I have hoped to produce senstation of accelaration and suspension which are suggested to me by the sculpture itself.”, says Hirsh. (note by Joost Rekveld). It is a way to describe in moving images what is fundamentally still. You might say that a sculpture is described by the space around it, described by the the experience or the touch. The moving image places the viewer in another position and remove the viewer from the direct and individual experience. The individual sense of the material, surface and environment that you experience during a first hand encounter with a sculptural form is now in the describing form framed through the lens of a filmmaker. It’s a document caught in another time and scape than the one you experience yourself in front of the actual sculpture. It is in the tension between these two states that avant-garde filmmakers, and the artists themselves, have brought their singular and experimental approaches to filming form. Another artists, who actually have worked with dynamic videos of this kind as well was László Moholy-Nagy, who while working at Denham studios created kinetic sculptures and abstract light effects. Artists present new ways of using the moving image to offer other and different perspectives on sculptural form.

Spending a lot of time thinking about the principal behind the idea of putting Hirsh’ work in the New Babylon we have decided to look for a direct search of answers (contacting the curator of the exhibition). Thanks to Laura Stamps, modern arts curator at the Gemeente Museum The Hague we got a clear answer. She explained to us that the exhibition was not only consisting of the works Constant has made in the specific time of the New Babylon but also his steps towards it, for example there is a whole room dedicated to the time frame of Nieuwenhuys being a part of the Cobra movement, and another one dedicated to Constant’s research of the ‘synthesis of arts’. Mentioning all of the previous periods and having a separate space for them in the exhibition plays a very important role because that is what influences the development and new ideas and methods of working, which will eventually lead to the creation of the New Babylon project. Then alongside the artworks the curator chose to show a selection of of documentary material (pictures, collages, flyers, correspondence and films). Laura has mentioned that for her ‘Gyromorphosis’ also functions as a sort of documentary material because it is a film in which the artworks of Constant play a lead role. Hy Hirsh is the maker but the film is obviously a collaboration between the two. The way the film is made – it gives you a psychedelic, new age feel – reflects the time that it was made in very well. The curator has integrated this film (as well as other documentary material) because it gives you a feeling against what background New Babylon was created.
To summarize this research, it is important to mention that the pathway of an artist is a very important factor of his work as whole. Constant Nieuwenhuys in this case, going from Cobra to the New Babylon, which stylistically are so different from each other, are still tightly connected. Collaborations with others, Hy Hirsh for example, also plays a big role in the whole process, giving it the needed documentary aspect.

text by Vica Allakhverdyan and Sofie Bredholt

After World War II, much of Europe is in ruins. People in Europe had experienced two world wars in three decades, many wanted peace and quiet and to try going back to the old order. Women who, during the war, had gone out to work would now stay at home. Some young people who had grown up during the war wanted to explore the newly won freedom. The young artist Constant Nieuwenhuys was one of these young people. He and his family went into hiding to avoid registering for ‘Kulturkammer’ (Nazi Chamber of Culture) so that he could continue to sell his art. When they hid in the house of Constant’s brother in law, his brother introduced Constant to philosophy. He began to read Karl Marx which would be a great source of inspiration for him later on.

1948 Constant created the international artist collective CoBrA. It was a collection of radical young artists from northern Europe who was against war, nationalism and militarism. They wanted to explore a new freedom through art and new perspectives through child- and folk art, mixing different materials and work collectively. Many of them were also Communists, who didn’t see it as the function of art to hang in the bourgeois homes. After CoBrA, Constant concentrated on his project New Babylon, creating models, collages and paintings to figure out what a post-marxist society would look like. His models show buildings that rise up on pillars from the ruins of the old capitalist society. ‘Homo Ludens’, man after a revolution, that no longer need to work as all the work had been automated by machines. He is no longer a worker but spend his own life and time for play. All land in New Babylon was owned collectively and the models show horizontal buildings for a horizontal community, and large open spaces as architecture was not to limit the spawning of Homo Ludens. Instead, it could constantly be modified to needs and desire.

In 1974 Constant gave up the development and presentation of the New Babylon project after nearly two decenniums of exploration. Many saw the project as utopian but for Constant it was a potential and real future. In the New Babylon society, people are connected through a large building that stretches around the world. A place where everyone can be received as mentioned by Mark Wigley, author of “Constant’s New Babylon: The Hyper-Architecture of Desire” a digital folder of the books content that we have got access to today –connected with our phones– and through which we can attain the content independent of place both during the day or at night.

When I went through the exhibition New Babylon at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, I thought of today’s socialism and the ideas that an alternative society is something strange and impossible. The ideology of today tells us that we live in the post-ideological era, liberal democracy won the cold war and so also the hegemony of ideological thought. We are told that we can move freely we can become anything if we work hard. Today Constant’s ideas seem naive and detached from reality ‘his idea is a utopia and today we have come to realize that we live in the best of worlds’. Today we are told that we are free. By calling something a utopia we take away its revolutionary strength, Constant is harmless because he hangs in an art museum. His models are ornaments from a naive era. When we leave the museum we leave the naive dreaming behind and come back to our “post-ideological” society.

We have acquired the freedom of choice in what we consume, but that is also as far as our freedom extends. Jens Nordfält, a doctor in store marketing, explains how the architecture of a supermarket is constructed to make us consume. At the entrance is placed freshly baked bread to make you hungry. In the back of the store is placed everyday goods that everyone needs so that one will go past many goods and increase the chance of spontaneous shopping. Placed by the checkout is sweets and cheap small goods that one can indulge in when one has been good and done ones weekly shopping. This is not play nor neutral and free from ideology, but instead reflects the capitalist utopia.

Détournement is a technique. Détournement is a style. Détournement is a tool.

• To really understand the concept of this tool, first we have to get to know it’s origins.

When we speak about détournement, the first and the most important figure we have to mention is Guy Debord.

Debord was a Marxist theorist; writer and filmmaker who is mostly known for his activity and leading membership of the Situationist International ( SI ).

In 1950, at the age of 19, Debord joined an avant-garde movement called Letterism, led by Isidore Isou. After two years Debord splits off and creates a radical group, the Letterist International.

Shortly after this collective of rebel artists and theorists was founded ( 1952 ) , détournement was claimed by this certain group.

The very first publication ( and description ) we can find on their desires; announced by Guy Debord and Gil J Wolman in 1956, was the ‘ A User’s Guide to Détournement ‘ .

After we did these very basic studies on the genesis of our subject, we can go deeper in search of the meaning and, so to say, the use of détournement.

• Every movement, every new style claims current things and situations to change. They all have the same purpose: leave the old, the used behind and create, express something new. In our case Guy Debord’s movement was a very radical, even revolutionary way of changing the meaning of art, or better, the production of it. Debord and the situationists all agreed on the fact that art could no longer stay a chic, luxurious, high class production. Rather they believed and strived for art to have a deeper, educational input. They broke down the walls of the classical and the bourgeois way of looking at and creating art by taking different elements of already existing works and transforming them into something new, to express another meaning. These changes don’t necessarily have to be drastic or aggressive. The point of it is to change a small component but then with this small detour, changing the overall expression and audience. They mainly aimed political situations and circles, but only in a peaceful and respectful way.

A very important figure and example in this case would be Asger Jorn. Jorn was a really good friend of Debord, therefore he was highly inspired and led by the situationist concept, styles and ideas. In his paintings series called The ‘Defigurations’ , we can clearly explore the idea of détournement. His works are mainly driven by political issues and his frustration with established structures and authorities within society.

Another well known example is Marcel Duchamp’s L.H.O.O.Q. where he simply adds a moustache on Mona Lisa. With this small adjustment which first looks funny and sarcastic, Duchamp changes the whole meaning of the original Mona Lisa, that presents a laid back, carefree woman, but with this detour he presents the restlessness of the women’s sexuality.

• At this point i find it more important to come up with more recent examples for détournement.

Let’s say you go to a restaurant, you get a piece of toast and a strawberry. Then you take a bite of this strawberry and you realise that it is actually a tomato. This is a concoction by the radical Star Chef Grant Achatz called ‘ strawberry / tomato ‘ . His cuisine is amazingly revolutionary as he transfers every simple ingredient into something more, something different. With this, he presents the meaning of modern cooking on a new level that is more of a performance or art than just making food for the guests. The food itself loses its meaning, it becomes the show, the whole experience. He takes a simple vegetable a normal herb or an ordinary ingredient but then the way he cuts, boils, combines them he creates tastes, techniques and culinary styles that we have never experienced before.

Another very important figure and illustration from our daily life is Banksy. We are not quite certain if Banksy is one person or a group of revolutionary artists, but the works we find and see under Banksy’s name are carrying the biggest recent political and social issues from these days.

In our case Banksy (…) could be one of the best examples how détournement works. In these works we can find well known images of current situations, famous moments and people, companies and figures. The way Banksy transforms these pieces, irrevocably opens our eyes on actual problems in our society, on existing and known political debates. The only small detour Banksy has, is that the way it’s propaganda exists might be more aggressive or intense by publishing them on public places, than the basics of détournement were created.

• However, we face an important  and interesting question now. What if we detour détournement? How far can détournement go? How can or should we divide it from anarchy?

Or maybe peaceful propaganda is not enough at all these days anymore…?!

I assume it might not be. I believe that nowadays within such an aggressive society, political parties and their choices; we have to fight the “rival” with clear, harsh and rebel tools.

So answering our questions: it is almost a mandatory for us artists and philosophers and writers, comedians, journalists or simple working class people and for all medium that is capable of, to take the peaceful elements of détournement to a next,  advanced level. We do have to go further and show our dislike or disagreement, even if it has to cross laws and politeness, for the sake of change and recognition. We have to apply effective and more powerful tools to our ideas and requirements  for them to be realised.

Constant Nieuwenhuijs. Een verbinder van autonome kunst en moderne architectuur. Wij gebruiken Constant als vertrekpunt en zoeken naar de relatie tussen zijn werk en dat van de Cobra kunstbeweging en Rem Koolhaas, een moderne architect. Hoe het werk van Constant door de cobra beweging is beïnvloed, en de ontwerpen/ideeën van Koolhaas weer door Constant, als in een kettingreactie.
 

Overeenkomsten tussen de Cobra beweging en Constant’s ideeën over New Babylon en architectuur in het algemeen.

De utopische denker Constant Nieuwenhuijs heeft zijn roots in de schilderkunst. Tussen 1948 en 1951 was Constant zeer actief binnen de Cobra kunststroming. hij was er mede oprichter van.

Cobra kwam op na de tweede wereld oorlog. Na deze heftige en gruwelijke tijd doorleeft te hebben waren kunstenaars opzoek naar een wedergeboorte. Iets om steun uit te halen of iets om te kunnen relativeren. Cobra kunstenaars vonden onder andere hun inspiratie in kinderlijke en primitieve kunst. Hiermee konden ze hun zorgen over de toekomst van kunst en menselijkheid uiten, die beschadigd waren voor de traumatische ervaringen uit de oorlog.

De kunstenaars streefden naar een utopische wereld, waarin vrijheid centraal zou staan. Dit vonden ze door te breken met het artistieke verleden en esthetica en een nieuwe kunststroming te creëren waarbij spontane activiteit en expressie het belangrijkst was.

Vanaf de jaren ’50 wordt het werk van Constant werk abstracter en ontwikkelt het zich uiteindelijk meer in de richting van ruimtelijke experimenten en architectuur. Hij bouwt een stad van de toekomst; New Babylon, vormgegeven in schaalmodellen, collages, tekeningen, landkaarten en meer. Hij wordt zich steeds meer bewust van hoe gebouwen om ons heen mensen beïnvloeden. Het valt Constant op dat de meeste moderne constructies vooral praktisch zijn en saai en dat ze nauwelijks ruimte bieden voor een speelse en creatieve manier van leven.

‘Burning Earth‘, uit 1951 (boven), een schilderij door Constant aan het einde van zijn Cobra periode. Je ziet al meer interesse voor ruimtelijkheid in zijn werk. Waar het voorheen altijd plat is geweest. Ook lijkt de constructie rechts achterin het schilderij bijna op een van de latere werken van Constant. Een New Babylon compositie, (onder).
 

New Babylon is een radicale, doch logische opvolging van de Cobra periode in Constants carrière als kunstenaar. In beide is een diepe drang te zien, een zoektocht naar vrijheid en verandering. In het New Babylon project van Constant gaat hij uit van een alternatieve, volledig geautomatiseerde maatschappij, waarin arbeid overbodig is. In zijn ideeën over deze moderne en vooruitstrevende samenleving is de mens vrij om zich volledig te richten op het ontwikkelen van creatieve ideeën. De spelende mens bepaald zelf het uiterlijk van zijn leefomgeving. In beide levensfases zoekt constant naar zo’n alternatieve levenswijze. Zowel in de cobra beweging als in de New Babylon tijd was Constant opzoek bezig naar een ideologie van ultieme vrijheid en spel.

In beide delen van Constants leven drukt hij een utopie uit, geïnspireerd op wat er op dat moment in de wereld aanwezig was en wat hij daar graag anders aan zou zien.
 

Relatie Constant Nieuwenhuijs en Rem Koolhaas

Zowel Koolhaas als Constant gaat uit van de sociale functie die architectuur te bieden heeft. Het heeft de kracht mensen met elkaar te verbinden doordat ze in een bepaalde ruimte zijn met een bepaalde ambitie, een functie.

Bij Rem Koolhaas zie je duidelijk dat de persoon die zich in zijn architectuur bevindt, een gebouw van hem betreedt, onderdanig is aan zijn ontwerp. Een voorbeeld hiervan is de Nederlandse ambassade in Berlijn.

In dit gebouw is er een deel met een glazen vloer waardoor je bij mensen met een rok of jurk inkijk hebt in het kruis.

Dit veroorzaakte bijvoorbeeld al een probleem bij de opening van het gebouw. Bij deze opening zou de toenmalige koningin Beatrix aanwezig zijn. Zij draagt altijd een jurk of een mantelpakje.

Het idee dat je onder de rok van de koningin kon kijken als men zich op de etage eronder zou bevinden, zorgde voor een schandaal. Maar dit werd uiteindelijk simpel opgelost door er een loper te leggen voor de opening van de ambassade. Het gebouw heeft ook richtlijnen die je naar bepaalde hoeken en punten dwingen te kijken.

Rem Koolhaas straalt met deze keuzes een bepaalde brutaliteit uit. Het gebouw wordt een ervaring voor diegene die er binnentreedt en gedwongen is zich aan deze ervaring over te geven. En dat zie ik in ieder ontwerp van Koolhaas. In ieder van zijn gebouwen voel je zijn aanwezigheid sterk. Hij laat het gebouw als een gids aanvoelen die je er heel natuurlijk en toch gedreven doorheen leidt.

Tijdens het onderzoek kwamen we terecht bij een filmpje over het theater wat Rem Koolhaas heeft ontworpen voor Taipei. Het is interessant om te zien hoe hij naar theaters kijkt.
 

 
We zien een duidelijke connectie tussen het Theater in Taipei van Koolhaas en de stedenbouwkundige plannen van Constant. Rem Koolhaas bouwt hier een nieuw gebouw over een reeds bestaand gebouw heen. Het theater wordt over de nachtmarkt heen gebouwd. Hiermee wil Koolhaas twee werelden combineren die beiden ‘s avonds floreren. Hij vertelt in het interview dat in Taipei de mensen laat naar bed gaan. En is het nachtleven dus heel belangrijk. Hij gaat in op hoe mensen zich gedragen, waar ze zijn en waarom. Hij analyseert en onderzoekt ieder detail voor dat zijn ontwerp tot stand komt.

Het idee van een nieuw gebouw over een bestaand gebouw heen bouwen, in plaats van de nachtmarkt te verplaatsen, zoeken zij naar een manier om het oude en nieuwe samen te laten komen, is door Constant geïnspireerd.

Koolhaas slaagt er in allebei om ruimte zo efficiënt mogelijk te gebruiken.

Zo worden verschillende werelden gecombineerd. De code van het combineren houdt Koolhaas ook binnenin het gebouw aan. Hij plaatst de drie ruimtes naar elkaar toe met het podium als centrum. Als publiek zit je om de drie podia heen alsof je in een arena naar sport zit te kijken. Alleen heb je dat als publiek niet door. Iedere tribune wordt als aparte zaal gezien. Per tribune kijk je naar een andere voorstelling, zoals je dat in de klassieke theaters ook hebt. In iedere zaal wordt een andere voorstelling gespeeld. In deze constructie kun je de schotten tussen de drie podia weghalen. Hierdoor creëer je een nieuwe ruimte. Dit geeft een breder perspectief voor het gebruik van deze ruimte. Voor theatermakers is dit een interessant gegeven. Ze hebben nu meer inspraak en keuze in het gebruik van ruimte. Voor andere doeleinden wordt de ruimte nu ook interessant. Koolhaas slaagt er hier in om zoveel mogelijk uit een ruimte te putten. Zodat deze nog functioneler gebruikt wordt.

We hebben het idee dat je in de gebouwen van Koolhaas nooit alleen bent. Hij maakt scheidingen maar toch weet hij de ruimtes niet zo te isoleren dat het afgesloten en op zichzelf bestaat.

Constant en Koolhaas zijn eigenlijk de hele tijd op zoek naar hoe ze mensen met elkaar kunnen verbinden door de functies die architectuur als doel heeft.

text by Eefje Stenfert en Renée Zadelhoff

Last September, after visiting the exhibition about Constant Nieuwenhuys’s ‘New Babylon’ in The Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, I delved into his work and ideas. I came a across a movie about Constant titled: City Rising by Metahaven. Intrigued by this contemporary view on Constant’s thoughts of society, I started to examine the thoughts of Metahaven on the web and especially found one of their latest works called The Sprawl (Propaganda about Propaganda), interesting. Having seen the exhibition and both the works from Metahaven, in my opinion the freedom of the individual is central in all three. Though the way the individual is presented by both Constant and Metahaven, especially in The Sprawl is entirely different. This led me to ask some questions:
Can we actually call ourselves free individuals with all the contemporary propaganda thrown at us? Should we act more towards Constant’s ideas? Is Metahaven pushing us into the right direction?
To explain my thoughts and to enlarge upon these questions, first I’d like to shortly introduce Constant’s ‘New Babylon’, Metahaven (City Rising) and The Sprawl and later on give insight to a correspondence between Metahaven and me.

New Babylon
‘New Babylon’ is the imagination of a progressive and modern utopian society by Constant Nieuwenhuys by means of maquettes, drawing, movies, graphics and manifests. In ‘New Babylon’ dynamics are crucial and where the inhabitants arrange their artificial environment. An automated community where labor is unnecessary whereby everyone can fully focus on developing their creative ideas. The individual decides how it’s habitat looks like without any restrictions or creative borders.

Metahaven
Metahaven is a Dutch design group based in Amsterdam founded by Daniel van Der Velden and Vinca Kruk. They’ve already had many exhibitions including the MOMA PS1 in New York and the Museum Of Modern Art in Warsaw. The group released several films and graphic designs focusing on contemporary political and social issues. For this instance City Rising (2014); a homage to Constant Nieuwenhuys’s ‘New Babylon’. The film is an exploration of the individuals’conditions of life, work, and love in neo-liberal times where the architectural maquettes of Constant’s ‘New Babylon’ are displayed in the video. This is a general example of what Metahaven deals with.

The Sprawl (Propaganda About Propaganda)
The Sprawl is a multi-channel video installation, feature-length film and episodic online documentary that considers the “ways in which fantasy can be designed so as to seem or feel like a truth”, as Daniel van der Velden describes and states that the Internet has become a disorganized geopolitical super weapon. Where, for example, funny cat videos distract us from urgent matters and that’s where The Sprawl jumps in by asking pressing questions about the internet in relation to our idea of the independent individual few others dare to ask. Looking at the design one can see that The Sprawl is a paranoid, digital trip in which the form and content keep on influencing each other in combination with futuristic beats and sounds by Kuedo, green screen-manipulations and glitch elements which deliver a chaotic and high pressuring image to the viewer.
All the different parts of The Sprawl, the so called “Shards”, can be found on the website sprawl.space; the interface of the project.

The Contemporary Individual
In both Constant’s ‘New Babylon’ and Metahaven’s The Sprawl, there is an interesting and different way how they approach and think of the individual. Constant claims –for his utopia to fully act well– that every individual should be able to free himself from daily routines such as labor, to become an adventurous, playful and dynamic human being, what he calls the ‘Homo Ludens’. So as a community, all individuals can create a new society where everything can be artificially influenced. Metahaven puts a question mark over the reliability of the internet and the information flows the individual engulfs. What is fantasy and what is real and objective? The internet makes extensive use of propaganda where the individual only gets the information certain people wants them to get. The Sprawl is trying to clarify this; that third parties and the internet form the individual by deciding which and what kind of information we can assume to be relevant. Metahaven tries to convince us we’re not that much of individuals at all, because of all the contemporary propaganda thrown at us.

In the correspondence between Metahaven and me, I asked them a question about The Sprawl to better understand the true meaning and purpose of the project.
My question: (Translated from Dutch) “How does Metahaven thinks to convince the individual by means of The Sprawl that the information we absorb in our daily life is manipulated; and in what way their chosen design contributes to this goal?”.
Unfortunately Metahaven didn’t want to answer the question based on the facts that they don’t speculate about their own made work not knowing what will be written about it and they don’t want to interpret their own work; they are of course fully entitled to do so.
However, they did send interesting references to articles which already conduce to better understanding The Sprawl. Troubled I couldn’t completely understand the project first;
from the article of Ruth Saxelby (see link below), it became clear this is actually a conscious choice of Metahaven:

-The Sprawl is less concerned with what “the truth” is, and more interested in the impact that the internet avalanche of conflicting truths has on the reality we experience, both individually and collectively.-

-The Sprawl’s tagline is “propaganda about propaganda,” and its third manifestation—dropped like breadcrumbs across YouTube—is the one that feels closest to the spirit of the project; its fragmentation is a reflection of the way we half-see, half-read, half-understand the world in these hyper-distracted times. But what does propaganda even mean today?-

“I used to think that propaganda was about persuading people. Jacques Ellul who wrote the classic study of propaganda in the 1960s, French philosopher, called it mass persuasion. He didn’t say propaganda was good or bad, he said it was a part of modern society, a part of technological society, a part of mass industrialized society, whether it’s getting people to wear condoms or to get them to become Maoists. Soviet propaganda used to be, ‘Believe in communism, Moscow is the shining beacon on the socialist hill.’”
“Now it doesn’t seem to be about that. It’s just about deconstructing the other side, disrupting Western narratives, of any sort. There’s a steady stream of disinformation whose purpose seems to be to sort of undermine the very idea that truth is provable.”—Peter Pomerantsev, The Sprawl

Metahaven Is Breaking The Propaganda Machine – The FADER–
Every individual has the right to create it’s own truth and what to believe. The internet gives us the idea we get equal choices and information flows, though this isn’t true. Big parties as multinationals, internet-companies and media-tycoons or even Metahaven, have a greater possibility to proclaim their “truth”. The individual is often not aware where certain information arises from.
To get back to Constant and Metahaven together. It indeed seems we, the many individuals, are trapped between many flows of information each claiming to proclaim the truth; while no one really knows what is the “truth” nor whether it exists, and far from being able to call ourselves “Homo Ludens”.

Constant Nieuwenhuys,’Homo Ludens’, 1964. picto©Constant Foundation/SM

Competitive notions in interpreting the concepts of situationism are creating a dilemma. This dilemma signifies friction between the concept and its use in daily life. 

Firstly I should say that situationism and the Situationist International had been created in a different world/time than the one I live in. The concept of freedom and play as stated in many of their ideas, resemble an assembly of philosophical and empiric references that are mine, but experienced in a different context. This leads to a reinterpretation of freedom and play connected to the world I live in now.

INDIVIDUAL VERSUS GROUP 

Situationist ideas about psychogeography (dérive) and unitary urbanism clarify the concept of living in situations, freedom and play vividly. People wander through different urban areas. Having their individual feelings lead them while being directly influenced by their surroundings. An idea of exploring and living in a landscape existing of unplanned surprises.

So far, this concept might sound clear, but a paradox can be found in many of their statements.

On the one hand a person should be strongly attached to his/her own feelings/emotions/senses (individualism), but on the other hand a capitalist/materialist individualism is condemned. This states an interesting way of thinking. Complex by all means.

The word of subject in the sentence above is ‘individualism’, but in my vision on the main situationist theory (a radical aversion for ideas and practices of the powers that were), are ‘individualism’ and ‘collectivism’ interchangeable. The notion of the individual and the group as being a unity and at the same time fragmenting this collectiveness, is such a tough contradiction. This makes situationist theories approachable in many ways, but inapproachable in even more.

The radical, anti-capitalist ideas of the situationists can be very effective in extreme, collective confrontation (i.e. revolts, revolutions, marches, strikes). Meanwhile, the individual in daily life, loses strength.

An individual that constructs situations, will be living in a different situation than another individual, although their situations could overlay and complicates such an (already) unclear starting point. A situation defined for yourself, might complicate the practice of freedom and play in a cohesive, social setting.

Freedom and play should be incorporated in situations and life in general, but these terms are uncertain in ongoing effect and consequence.

EXTERNAL VERSUS INTRINSIC 

The situationist notion of the spectacle (materialist/capitalist vision on life as a narrow-minded, superficial one) still divides and unites people in their daily patterns nowadays. Although the spectacle reshapes itself continuously towards more flexible definitions.

Primary, intrinsic and united similarities are what makes us homo sapiens. The by the situationists admired concept of the homo ludens unites us too. This adventurous person at play is inside all of us. Still few people are able to fully express this as described in a situationist’s observation.

External influences, as the spectacle, restrict us human beings to be limitless in freedom and play. But also, in my point of view, originates an important part from within people themselves. External information (cultural, traditional) is necessary to reinterpret in an individual context. Therefore freedom is needed. Next to these external factors, a variety of embedded instincts and needs (biological, genetic) are prematurely existing. To approach these in a constantly free and playful way is beautifully stated, but in my conception naive, since we are  being born in an already populated world where centuries of ever transforming, created structures aren’t all based on (solely) money and power.

UTOPIA VERSUS REALITY

These situationist ideas, created and admired by artists and other people with interest and knowledge in arts, literature, philosophy and/or politics, is not made for, nor to be understood by many others. Capitalists nor communists (and many more who fill this gap).

A situationist world is a utopia. The importance of the unstructured, emotional drifts, guiding every person individually, is un-realizable.

Influence through morals, religions and politics have always been a limitation for protesters. But structure can be found in all ideas  about life. Structure requires limits. Also, a construction of situations.

Read more :

The Concept of Détournement

the pleasure of the unknown

Umberto Eco in his Six Walks in The Fictional Woods is referring to the idea of an optical illusion, for explaining how we are perceiving the fictional novels. Throughout his essay we are being shown, several illustrations with which he is visualizing the concept behind his es- say. Although it is not a children’s book, he is adding the illustration for the means of having a common understanding on the topic he is referring to and the concepts he is presenting.
While in children’s books, unfortunately, the freedom of the child using his fantasy is taken away, by – and thus imposing the fantasy of – one or more grownups, directing them in what they must see and understand as to have a common memory. I will come back on this subject later.
In Eco’s book though it is necessary to have the same understanding of the concept he is proposing. He is pointing his finger, saying “this is what I mean and not other”. Being able to maintain a certain common understanding, while using words, either in speech or writing is very difficult, as De Certeau is pointing it out in The Practice of Everyday Life:

“The readable transforms itself into the memorable: Barthes reads Proust in Stendhal’s text; the viewer reads the landscape of his childhood in the evening news.”

Simply because we have agreed that, say: cup is a cup it does not mean that we are talking about the same subject/object. Each of us are having a specific memory of the word, being related to either the time we have learned it first, space, surrounding, atmosphere, mate- rial, color, size or form, are additions to the experience we are relating the word to.
When we say the word cup we refer to all the cups from everyone’s memory, and to the only one cup we relate to personally, all the cups we have happened to see, and even the ones we do not yet know about.
Here I will make a short parenthesis for coming back to what I have said above, about the common memory of the children, whom have shared the same book in the past. Clearly there are a few objects in each generation (related to time) or cultures (related to place) we can think of, that are bringing a sudden nostalgia. Referring to one of these objects from our common memory, has the power to affirm and acknowledge the ground where one that stands facing the others. Thus sharing a specific memory of a specific object can be decisive for taking or not part of the group.

Once this idea is settled there is no need for other words to explain ourselves. We now can trust each others understanding on a number of other discussions, that we do have similar experiences.
Let’s take the 90’s generation as example. We might have experienced objects as Tamaqotchi, Nokia Querty, Pokemon and Dexter’s laboratory even though we come from all different countries and cultures. Recently I have participated in a some similar talks in a few different settings about Tamaqochi. It seems that somehow the memory of this object, keeps reoccurring. There are exactly a few specific answers to the question: “Oh! And do you remember Tamagotchi?!” that represent the object at it’s best and everyone understand their meaning.With or without the additional –
annoyed : “Oooh! Noooo, please….(it was such a stupid game, it would always die during the class)” .
and the enthusiastic : “Yes Yes! (I actually had a few)!”.
Whether one remembers more the annoyance or the pleasure, in the end both sides know exactly what it all meant or felt like. Thus trough sharing a common reference point they are becoming ‘a group’. They can now feel closer by the fact that they have shared a common/similar experience. Trough sharing a common experience the ‘other’ becomes ‘we’. While the ones that did not share the experience have a harder time to relate to the word and the meaning it carries with it.
This of course is a simplistic example and as such I am here not discussing the importance of sharing the idea of the Tamagotchi persé as an object/name, or as an experience, but replace it with something of a bigger importance – and that is where we, although having developed language to be able to transmit thoughts, can not get over the struggles of truthfully understanding their meaning and in some cases we overlook their importance by not being able to relate to other people’s experiences only trough words.

download this thesis by Andreea Peterfi
all rights to this thesis are property of the author © 2016

1933. 

John Laxaabakk was born in Sultielma, a small mine village in the north of Norway

2010.

My grandmother’s stepsister came from Holland to Gothenburg and told us (my family) that he (John Laxaabakk) had been living in our city in Sweden but now had passed. He had been laying in his apartment without anyone knowing it for almost a year.

2010.

We went to the apartment. It was sad, beautiful and intense.

There were decorative things everywhere, carefully chosen places for everything, there was a presence of life even though no one was there. Red velvet curtains, golden frames, vitrine cabinets, books, records, video games, posters, cassette tapes, paintings, instruments.. It really felt like we were invading someone’s home. Someone’s own important and personal space.

John Laxaabakk was rejected by his mother and father (my great grandfather) because of his sexuality.

My grandmother moved to Sweden to work at a factory when she was 16-17 years old. I do not think they ever saw each other again, but I’m not sure of that, I never met her either.

2016.

When we got the assignment to make a mask/headpiece inspired by someone else I immediately thought of John, I had been thinking about that I wanted to make a work inspired by and for him and with this project I saw that opportunity. The process have been quite complicated for me, both emotionally and aesthetic wise. I did not think of, at first, that when you bring something personal like this to school, or let’s say the public you have to be completely open. I learned that the information I have, my process and and final work is for everyone else to judge even though the subject is highly personal. In the end I saw my work as a homage for John rather then a mask of him

–

I started working with what I had, pictures we took when we visited his apartment, researching the village he came from, listened to cassettes he recorded where he sings and plays the guitar. I had some contact with his sister although she seemed a bit distant to wanting to talk to me about this. And I had to respect that. I decided along the way to focus more on what I saw and felt when I looked at what I had and thought about him and his life destiny.

I remember I was touched by the theatrical interior John had. I’ve always wanted to have red velvet curtains as well. I imagine us sharing an interest for the dramatic. That is another reason why I chose to work with John in this assignment. It seems that he has been forced to act during his life. That social conventions and the time and environment he grew up in didn’t accept him for who he was or wanted to be. I extracted colours in his home, thought about music he listened to and what titles in his bookshelf I could see from the old pictures. I started experimenting.

But realized it was way to “spacey” an I needed more decorative elements for it to be right. I listened to songs he recorded, here is one of them with a musician he admired, Nat King Cole with Nature Boy. Further down in the text there is a song from Monica Zetterlund, Swedish jazz singer.

I made it more romantic.

And started working on a costume as well. I felt I could not say it all with a headpiece. I got some dark red fabric and used interior fabric in beige and white to drape and improvise shapes and qualities.

I made the arms long to show the feeling of being captured and I added more and more layers to the costume, the person who wears it is captured but beautifully so, like a Geisha.

When I was almost done with the costume and mask I still wanted to add something more. This project was getting bigger than I had anticipated but I went with it because it felt like the right, and only, thing I could do. There was so much to say and somehow I started to get to know this person a bit, through me. My mum showed me a diary she had found the day we were in John’s home and I decided to make a small booklet out of it. He only wrote small notes a few times a month but it shows his delicate observations, his finding out that he got cancer and his quiet joy and ode to life.

2005/2016.

“At the doctor’s 9 a.m

Found out there is something wrong in my stomach

He called Axess.

And got me an appointment at 8 p.m”

“Taxi to Axess.

              The doctor found a tumor in the kidney.

               He faxed Ben, he called me and told me.

               Sahlgrenska next.”

“Grey & rainy.

No spring in site.

Suppose to get colder again.

Am a bit depressed.

But it will pass.

As long as there is life e.t.c.”

Results.

To complete the costume I made a pair of platform shoes in wood before the presentation. I wanted to be taller and more restrained to really get into the feeling of being restrained. However I should have covered them because they took to much attention from my other work. For the next presentation I will have worked on them for a bit, to make them more low key.

Thank you, John. 

I am glad I did this, I hope you are too. And I hope you know that I would love to have gotten to know you. I would have love to talk with you about music, books and all the other things that are important in life. Even though you had a tough time sometimes I see your love to life through small windows  in your home, music, writings and photographs. Thank you again.  

photo of Laxaabakk

[audio:https://designblog.rietveldacademie.nl/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Monica-Zetterlund-Trubbel-live-1968.mp3|titles=Monica-Zetterlund-Trubbel-live-1968]
Sound file: Monica Zetterlund – Trubbel (live 1968)

during this article i will probably forget the fact that there is also something about a wolf that makes it easy to use as the illustration of an illness, yet again i’m not sure; because however dark wolves may look they still hide a certain gentleness.

when we were given the design topic of making a mask out of a person that fascinate us in anyway, i instantly thought i should use this space for the study of someone who would be in any way either strongly connected to me or that had a certain impact in my life, whether i know them or not.

the topic led to a very strange brainstorm that at first only resulted in ideas of persons that deeply touched me of course, but somehow did not bring me the satisfaction and excitement i thought i needed for this project. and i have to say that all of those whom i thought of, i knew perfectly well; and back then i think i needed someone i could « inspect » in instinctive ways, without ever really knowing if i am on the right track to understand them, or going straight the opposite direction.

i need to work on someone that touches me in any way. that i feel connected to.

but i need the thrill. i need to inspect. i need to depict, i need to look for (???), i need to know it’s not for sure, i need to know i’m probably wrong, i need to wonder.

once i met a guy. i hanged with him a lot, we never really talked. a kind of silent relationship built on a completely abstract understanding of each other.

misunderstanding?

we did manage to talk about two or three times and he had trouble finding his words, he always talked really slowly and silently, and often to say a few things about his life that were quite personal; almost as though he was suddenly talking because he desperately needed to get something out of his head. it’s ok because i needed something to get in.

he drew. he needed calm. he had no friends (and never had had) (first thing he told me)

first name: ????
surname:    choose??
gender:     write smth here

meeting and learning to know someone in a context as destabilising as a hospital is quite tricky and implies many unusual factors. It is a context in which you instantly connect a stranger to a patient – not talking of any dehumanisation, but you know that you will go through certain situations with this person whether you like it or not; which eventually makes them special people who in the end you don’t know that much – although the things you know are certainly some of the most personal things you could know about them. If you add the fact that they will, in your mind and whether again you like it or not, always be connected to a medicalised and often painful period, things get even more mixed up, intertwined and weirdly complicated – but in the end that’s okay, and eventually you will sort things out on your own.

thing i drew at a point where i got lost

some situations continuously appear in my mind from time to time; some of them everyday, even if it is only for five seconds. as time passes things get forgotten, or just don’t feel the need to pop through your mind anymore; some others just hang in there and become a sort of daydreaming, neither pleasant nor unpleasant, that i realise I almost don’t notice anymore. this guy, however a stranger he may be in comparison to some other patients i’m supposed to know much better, is a person i think of a lot since we lost track of each other. i met him again two years ago quite randomly when going to an appointment at the same hospital – i was hoping he would’ve been discharged, but then i saw him, and he happened to be one of the rare patients in the unit who found a way, within his distorted mental capacities (for illness and medication purposes), to remember my face and name, he came to see me and quietly said “i’m happy you’re out, i wish i was too” – which left me this image of someone stuck for months in a situation I didn’t have the capacities to change; and with a deep willingness to break the armoured doors and take him out, but of course it’s a fantasy…which still brought guilt, love, hate, frustration and a number of questions probably never to be answered.

did he get bullied

i’m sure he gets bullied

does he like mint&chocolate chip ice cream and does he laugh like a kid when he sees someone stumble on the street
does he still play ping pong even though i’m not facing the ball anymore,

did he see the last Woody Allen movie or

does he talk all the time now
did he ever get out of hospital? what does he look like now, did he cut his hair?

has he become a cartoon maker?

or maybe he’s just stuck home video gaming seven days a week

is he alive?
what do I think?

what could I do for him?

*if i could wish for

i guess sometimes you just take things the wrong way. dream. dream again. dream always.

then i realised he made me think of a kind of hybrid mystical beast
i’m super fascinated by ballet dancing costumes especially those of the Opéra National de Paris; especially those worn for Swan Lake for instance, Jewels, the Nutcracker. but i’d say as long as a costume is theatrical, extravagant, poetic and expressive i tend to have a certain connexion to it. i know that Christian Lacroix has worked many times for the Opéra de Paris and i found each of his costumes absolutely outstanding.

i knew i needed something powerful, probably mystical also, but something beautiful, intriguing, perhaps funny in a way…something in which he could hide, something with which he wouldn’t care of walking besides a thousand complete strangers, something that would protect him and bring fascination and interest in the eyes of others.

i chose the drawing of a blue wolf.

and then this happened

i often work without really knowing what I’m doing and if it sometimes lead to good it also makes me make a lot of mistakes, but that’s o.k. when I saw the result of the structure i was working on, i really wondered where the * my mind went. not that i thought it looked terrible or anything, but when i looked back at all the fabrics i’d bought i wondered why it lead to such a dark mask.

why

why

why??????

 it had to be altered; i don’t see the point of illustrating darkness with darkness when it can sometimes be expressed with means opposite to those you expect the most. moreover i do not see him as a glaucous human being, and i remember catching some glimpses of a certain colorful beauty in him that really touched me – once we played ping pong and he laughed like a kid during the whole game because i deeply suck at this game, it was maybe one of the rare moments during which i felt the emotions coming out of him were completely independent from any medical purposes. maybe that’s also the point where I felt he could also still be a kid despite all the hard stuff he was going through and i ended up with a structure that actually brought joy to me and that i found much more relevant than the former.

it’s also one of the most important things for me, in my process. if what i’m doing makes me feel bad about things, i let go of it. Things are usually relevant when i feel good while doing it, otherwise i barely even see the point of it.

i also worked with metal for a while, studying the changing of colors that can happen with the different heating ways; using metal as jewels but also as a material that could break the use of textiles i had. only textiles seemed boring in the end, and i felt like i needed to add something maybe a little colder/stronger.

the last weeks were the most intense because it took me ten days approximately to dare adding layers to it; not that i didn’t want to, but i was scared of ruining everything and that the finality wouldn’t fit my expectations. but then i did, with yellow, grey fur, some more metal, orange and pink wool, ribbons etc that i placed instinctively (impulsively?) until i had the feeling it was done.

the sewing was long…but it was worth it, i was glad to see that my ideas had changed so much during the process, only to lead to a result that couldn’t have been more honest, and that’s exactly what i was looking for.

now I’ve made this mask i would like to create a whole scenery around it and maybe use it for audiovisual purposes. the only tryouts i have are poor quality iphone pictures; i thought of making photographs that could illustrate the life of this character, although i do not want to say that it will really be about the person i made the mask for anymore. not that i don’t want to but i wouldn’t really dare to do that; and in the way i made the tryouts i think it more as taking bits and bots of anything related whether to him, or to the kind of emotions he made me feel – and that englobes a lot of things. i see the character on the following picture more as a hybrid being containing deep human emotions than an explicit illustration of this guy. 

i think that the making of a mask for him was already huge in terms of tangibly illustrating who i see him as – what he makes me feel etc. creating sceneries around him personally disturbs me in a way, i don’t want him to be used for anything but i know that he plays a big role in these pictures. so i will continue my tryouts and maybe in the end i will find that without knowing it during the photographic process, the sceneries i will have created do still fit what i see him as…for this tryout, it doesn’t. lets say all the “naïve” parts the mask contains have been taken away by the pretty dark scenery. we’ll see!