Designblog

Israel is only 60 years old, so it’s hard to define what exactly Israeli folklore is. One thing is certain – if you’re an Israeli between the ages of 18 to 25 you must own at least one big trekking backpack. On high-school graduation, on the 18^th birthday or on any other event that happens to take place around that time of your life, the most important gift you will receive is the big backpack for the following years. First, the military service years, in which the backpack is almost a status symbol among the guys, after that maybe a year in a kibbutz, and then the big trip to finalize these last few years. In the end, the backpack is covered in patches, sketches, notes and symbols it had accumulated over these years and becomes a sort of journal. I think it symbolizes an experience that everyone has to go through and which is a big part of growing up in Israel.

Zuiderzeewerken I, Halssieraad Spakenburg 2009 (zilver) / Willemijn de Greef :courtesy Marzee

At the exhibition “Gone With the Wind” I saw a series of oversized necklaces made by Willemijn De Greef. The size of these necklaces made it seem like they were made for gods and I had the association of the gods in the Norse mythology. In this mythology jewelry play an important role. For example the goddess Freja owns a necklace called Brisingamen.

As a child I was very fascinated by the tales of the Norse mythology. The stories were told to me in school and it was interesting to know that the people who lived their life’s by the rules of this religion had walked the same grounds as me.

I think it’s interesting to think of the mystical beauty jewelry represents in such an old mythology. It puts the concept of jewelry in an interesting perspective, that the fascination of it is so old, and it becomes very clear that the value of jewelry is definitely not only material

When I saw the work of Caroline Fuchs, Appeltjes van Oranje, the mannequin children playing in outrageous bizarre clothes, I connected the piece to the changelings in the old folk tales of my country Iceland, called “þjóðsögur”, because I thought they looked so creepy! For a very long time these “þjóðsögur” only existed orally, they were passed down from generation to generation. In the stories about the changelings, elves would steal an infant and replace it usually with an old elf who would take on the image of the infant. This changeling would cry relentlessly, be greedy and behave mischievously. The parents did not know what hit them! In the tales when the mother realizes that she is actually taking care of a changeling she often tries to harm it, she beats and kicks it. Cue a strange old elf-lady to enter bearing the true child in her arms and she usually says something like: “I cherish and love your son but you abuse my husband!” Then she leaves the child with her mother and leads her husband away. The “þjóðsögur” are still told today and read and enjoyed. They are one of the most important parts of our cultural heritage. People also make references to them in everyday life, for example when a child is behaving badly people will call it a changeling.

Growing up with two different cultures, Switzerland and Italy, I associate a lot of feelings with Folklore.
In the exhibition Gone with the wind I felt a special connection to the 7 contemporary design interpretation of the net menders. Across the room you just saw black-white dresses that looked similar. Amidst the net-landscape I caught the details. It reminded me of the feeling I had in my childhood when we went to a farmer festival of my Swiss-grandfather. I wore my traditional costume and was amazed by all the others. They looked all so perfect in it and every costume was different when I looked closer. One had more stitches or more golden knobs. They came from different cities. Every canton has their own traditional costume and also inside of the canton there are differences between the regions or daytimes. The “Kantönligeist”, as we say in Switzerland, is omnipresent.

It was in the middle of the ‘Walpurgisnacht’ (the night from April 30 to May1) when a small group of German teenagers sneaked to the marketplace of a neighbouring village in Oberfranken to steal the ‘Maibaum’ which was supposed to be erected there during the festive gathering the following morning. If they succeeded the villagers would have to pay, according to this Bavarian custom, a tribute of beer and food in order to retrieve it.

It is believed that every ‘Maibaum’ has a blessing effect on its town. It is a symbol of fertility and prosperity. Although its contemporary form dates back to the 16th century its real origin is far older: Germanic tribes already worshipped holy trees long before they were christianized. Presumably these cults have their seeds in ‘Yggdrasil’, the mythologic Norse ‘World Tree’.

The Zuiderzeemuseum in Enkhuizen / Holland exhibits a modern chintz which also shows a ‘Tree of Life’. To some extend it might have the same mythologic background as the German ‘Maibaum’.

Generally the ‘Tree of Life’ is an archetype which is deeply rooted in the psyche of almost every culture. But what does it really mean to us today in our high-speed society in a more or less globalised world? And will it still have a meaning in the future?

The noise from the boots that hit the cold wet floor, yelling men shouting and cursing, fork lift trucks and pallets that hit the floor with a loud bang. And the ice-cold air from the freezers. This all together make you realize your in the fishing harbors of IJmuiden. Typical for this environment.

From their sixteenth age the lads in IJmuiden are ready to work in these harbors or as fishermen on sea. They get the full gear. A blue overall, yellow boots, yellow gloves, a tattoo of an anchor, ship or mermaid. And of course the golden earrings.

Atelier Ted Noten made a collection of earrings called “New identifications”. My personal connection with that work is simple. In the city IJmuiden where I was born all the men wear these earrings. These 18kt earrings will cover the costs for the funeral when fishermen die in a storm out in the open sea.

Ted Noten his series have new images/symbols from the 21^st century as Ipod’s, windmills, skateboards and so on.

Burning paper money (also called Hell bank note or joss paper) to worship deities, honor ancestors or rest ghosts in peace is one of the most common rituals being practiced in Taiwan. The ritual is related to the belief that after the paper money is burned, it travels to the other worlds where deities, ancestors or ghosts reside.

There are different sorts of paper money, each varying from another in terms of size, pattern and purpose; however, in general it can still be divided roughly into two categories: gold and silver, which indicates the color of the square-shaped foil attached to the center of each paper money. The gold foil represents the higher rank of the deities while the silver one is therefore only used for ancestors or ghosts.

As a child, I had always been fascinated by the act of burning paper money because it somehow added more fun and interesting factors into the whole religious ceremony and summed up the whole ritual as a climax in the end.

*inspired by: Borststuk Souvenir, 2008, Robert Smit

Zeeuws-Vlaanderen seems to me an independent country, located between The Netherlands and Belgium. The fortified city Hulst, surrounded by star shaped ramparts, her mill, castle and basilica represents real folklore to me. The city attracts Belgium tourists, who consider it as a Dutch city, and the Dutch tourists, who consider it as a Flemish area.
The folkloric tales about the sly fox Reynaert, who even managed to deceive the king of the animal kingdom, king Noble, are still alive. The still vividly living fable functions as decoration of traditional café’s where the same family issues are being discussed for ages.
It seems as if the idealistic way of remembering cannot escape the area through the water of the North sea and the Westerschelde, surrounding the land. This water touching land doesn’t have public transport such as trains (it only has busses which makes rounds a few times a day). Maybe this is one of the reasons why I found it to be a forgotten piece of the Netherlands. Such a isolated piece of land with hidden treasures.
Because who of those raised in the big city, have ever visited Zeeuws-Vlaanderen, whom of them have ever taken part on mussel festivals. Where breaths the Zeeuwse shore (shore of Zeeland) so that you will always cycle with the wind in your face.

This picture was taken at my First Holy Communion in the Roman Catholic south of the Netherlands, where Catholicism has become more like tradition than religion (although one can ask whether religion is not always more like tradition than anything else).

The style of dress in this picture is quite representational of what I remember most about this ritual. Girls got dressed up in the most outrageous princess-like dresses and boys looked like forgotten side-kicks in their little monkey suits. Only later did I see that the girls were really dressed up as brides of God, and the boys, I don’t know what to make of. This cultus of female dress, as is also visible in the historic Dutch attire that is now on view at the Zuiderzee Museum exhibition “Gone with the Wind”, is a jumble of mixed messages of virginity and seductiveness, sobriety and decoration, even in children’s holy rituals.

The exhibition to the Zuiderzee-museum itself was preceded by a moment in which I really felt connected to my country, the Netherlands. Descending from the train, the wind and sky managed to awaken conflicting feelings regarding the Dutch folklore. A typical Dutch sky colored in dark purple gray pink, white beige and all colors in between carrying raindrops building up in the belly of the sky. Waiting to burst over the open waters of the Ijsselmeer. The smell of wooden boats and the whistling of the wind through the energetic sails with stature and strength. By pushing my sunglasses higher up and closer to the eyes, the lines separating the sky from sea became clearer. Pushed by the wind and the rain, the rhythm of the roofs covered with red tiles led to the smell of the Hema “rookworst” warming my mind. Seeing the beauty with a soberness and acceptance of circumstances, surviving in tougher times characterizes the Dutch people and at the same time bonds me to them. Looking at the way they deal for example with the weather by inventing an umbrella suitable for tougher times, I think it symbolizes the Dutch people. keyword: storm umbrella

Last week, while visiting the Zuiderzee museum in Enkhuizen, I was sent back to my childhood years through the works of artist Caroline Fuchs (NL 1964), who amongst 54 other artists, designers and photographers were asked to create works for the exhibition “Gejaagd door de Wind” which theme was “Folklore”

Fuchs created a room full of infant dummies wearing their folkloric Queen’s day customs. When entering the room, a Brazilian folkloric character, the Saci-Perere, jumped into my mind. Not that the dummies were black or one legged, neither did they smoke pipes or wore red hats and shorts, but the somewhat magical atmosphere in the room created by the unusual styling, use of vivid colors and choice of rather scary dummies just sent me to a different time and place.

The Saci-Perere is, without doubt, the most famous character in Brazilian folklore. Apparently he chooses to live  close to farms and will not cause major harm, but there is no little harm that he won’t do. He will hide children’s toys, set farm animals loose, tease dogs, and curse chicken eggs preventing them from hatching. In the kitchen, the Saci would spill  salt, sour the milk, burn the bean stew, and drop flies into the soup.  In short, anything that goes wrong — in the house, or outside it — may be confidently blamed on the Saci.

Besides disappearing or becoming invisible (often with only his red cap and the red glow of his pipe still showing), the Saci can transform himself into a Matitaperê or Matita Pereira, an elusive bird whose melancholic song seems to come from nowhere. One can escape a pursuing Saci by crossing a water stream: the Saci will not dare to cross, for then he will lose all his powers. Another way is to drop ropes full of knots; the Saci will then be compelled to stop and undo the knots. One can also try to appease him by leaving behind some cachaca, or some tobacco for his pipe

Welcome to part 3 of : tagging slow design. This is a worksheet on which all the link-topics and post-it tags collected on the “slowWall” are listed in relation to the research subjects as components of the ‘slow design project’. (researches can be downloaded as .pdf’s).

link topics.

Performance links the Morgan O’Hara research to the one on Julia Mandle. The Julia Mandle research links to the one on Richard Long on the topic street /nature & art, by slow movement to the Kunsthalle Bern exhibit and by sensibility & violence to the Psychogeography research. Psychogeography has the link topic urban life with the Karmen Franinovic research, consumption /destruction /life style with Futurisme, against and pro community with Wim Wenders, evolution of everyday life to Downshifting, and a anonimous link to Maria Blaisse. This anonimous link is not the only one linking Marie Blaisse. Link topics like art and left over, connect this research to Uta Barth. Karmen Franinovic links to Christian Nold by means of the topic mapping, and to Psychogeography by urban life, to Futurisme by life is getting faster & people are getting a social, to Julia Mandle by just stop & think and to Richard Long by the link a way to see. Richard Long links to many other researches: to Sophie Calle by self related art, to Christian Nold through a line made by walking, to Karmen Franinovic linked by the topic a way to see, to Downshifting by choosing slowness. Downshifting links back to Julia Mendle by the link topic us and them, to Psychogeography by revolution of everyday life, to Futurisme tagging the link with designed lifestyle, to Marie Blaisse by us and them, and to the Kunsthalle Bern exhibit by reflect /a closer look. The research on Futurism has some remaining links to Julia Mandle through the topic exploring / explosive / sculptural. Following links from Wim Wenders to Uta Barth is made possible by the topic notice the small things in life, to Christian Nold by moving /memories. Mapping links Christian Nold to the Ambient/Brain Eno research while that last one makes a link back to the Kunsthalle “The Half and the Whole” exhibit creating a take time to cook link.

Reading all the researches the links will surely start to make sense, as will their variety shed light on the specific nature of many of them. Some research subject however did not create any link at all, like in the case of Maison Martin Margiela. And it was 0nly after some discusion that the performance link was created between Sophie Calle and Karmen Franinovic. Uta Barth was anonimously linked to Richard Long which might have been an intuitively act

Post-it tags.

No links did not mean no tags. Time, Maison Martin Margiela for example was closely read and tagged with post-it. This created tags like memories, replica, time(less), can’t relate to it, time, physical picture of memory and the photographical tag to a picture by Mark Manders. Wim Wenders (present in our research list because of his beautifull documentary “Notebook on Cities & Clothes” about fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto) generated also many tags like sublime, I finally found time, hillbilly, surreal, the truth, place, moving. Sophie Calle tagged by the moderator with authorship, generated: life=art, stories, documenting life. Uta Barth looking was tagged: rainy day with half closed eyes, in between places, no left over, sunday. Ambient the research connected to Brian Eno tagged as big here long now was retagged as live the moment, loosing yourself, don’t think, sound. Christian Nold place-ness got tagged with keywords like biomapping, google earth, links, remapping memories. Linked to many, tagged by few. Julian Mandle pause, was tagged with pause from urban flow only. Morgan O’Hara gestures was tagged with trans, transforming, concert-art, transmission, energy of moments, reaction. Maria Blaisse architecture by border between self and not self. Futurism with fast life, life style, save time? Downshifting was tagged with life style too and change assumption. Richard Long tagged as a subject with landscape was enriched with the two tags: exploring fast and slow and perception of space, time and personal potency. Psychogeography with destruction of community, philosophy, socialism, anarchisme and urban live. Finally Karmen Franinovic subtraction, served as a hub for the tags: observe, spontaneous landscape, discover a realy nice place that never be online, easy fast, MTV generation, reflect, and observe. Some researches like Conditional Design re-mapping did not make “the slowWall” and were concequently not linked

added tags from the slow design lecture.

scale, gestures, measurements, relations, sustainability, evolving, creative activism, reveal, expanding awareness, reflect, engage, participal, deceleration, fresh connections, rhythm, probing, (im)materiality, metabolism, reflective consumption, live span, memories, community, record, tracing, (human) body, break (take a break), nothingness, inclusive, transparent, re-mapping, connection to scale

read also: >tagging slowdesign part 1

Brian Eno’s repetitive music. He is known as the creator of the so called ambient music which is a low volume music designed to modify one’s perception of a surrounding environment. That sentence is true in the fact that I stop being annoyed by all the people around me and I turn inwards. I notice my own heartbeat, the way I move through the crowd; all the little details around me seem beautiful and unique. Even the fat lady eating Febo is strangely hypnotizing.
That’s the thing about ambient music, as Brian Eno termed, it can be either “actively listened to with attention or as easily ignored, depending on the choice of the listener”. If you listen to it in your headphones then you are alone in your own world but if it’s in the background ,for instance in a restaurant, it turns into elevator music. Eno used the word “ambient” to describe music that creates an atmosphere that puts the listener into a different state of mind; having chosen the word based on the Latin term “ambire”, “to surround”.

The importance of living in the right now, in the moment, seems to increase every day. Like Brian Eno talked about in his essay for The Long Now Foundation

“Now’ is never just a moment. The Long Now is the recognition that the precise moment you’re in grows out of the past and is a seed for the future. The longer your sense of Now, the more past and future it includes.”

I think what he means is that we should all live in the moment because who knows what will happen in the next 5, 10, 20 years. The glaciers might have melted and we could all be living in boats. Well, I certainly don’t want to be that pessimistic and I usually think about the future in a positive way. But when I start to think about this type of stuff I prefer to live myself in the moment. The dinner I’m going to eat in a few minutes, I need to clean the table first and then I might go to the bathroom. I love the fact that I don’t know what is going to happen so I tend not to plan too long ahead, although I have a plane ticket back and forth Amsterdam and Reykjavík months in advance. I know that I will spend my summer in Reykjavík with my friends and family and I will probably get a work in my mothers business. I think I know those things, but they are still 3 months away. A lot of things can happen in 3 months. Making a plan gives you a false sense of security that if everything is going according to the plan then you are safe. A plan gives you also something to look forward to, then you know that you won’t be stuck doing the same thing months ahead. Living in the right now while making plans is the perfect solution, to always have something to look forward to and still enjoy what you are doing in that specific moment.

link to Big Here and Long Now
link to Brian Eno
links to Ambient Music: Music for Airports interview on this subject

Ambient is a posting by Thordis Zoega

After lecturing on “slow principles in design and art” by Carolyn F. Strauss, students reflected upon their own work and process before starting a research into a variety of slow design and art related subjects. To clarify the effect slow design can have on the work in progress we invited Marie Ilse Bourlanges to present her work and share insight in her working process.

To present Slow Design a carefully selected list of research subjects was crafted. This selection presented “slowdesign” in various contexts of works and ideas (even ideologies), so that it could be recognized as a set of priciples against which ideas, processes, motives and outcomes can be interrogated. Much emphasis was put on the creation of specific keywords to accompany the students on their research. Keywords/tags that surfaced during the Slow Design Lecture and keywords/tags that were formulated at the slowLab website were added to the search subjects. These tags together with the ones created on the “slowWall” added meta data to the project

a physical process of linking and tagging with crèpetape and post-its.

Within this context adopting slow design as a working principle in our educative process, it became important to underline and make visible the relations between these student investigations. To emphasise a surfacing network between the subjects we did draw visible links between the research results, adding link topics. Additional tags could be post-it to each others research A4 to create shared keywords/tags.

Tags (trefwoorden [dutch] or entrances) are non-hierarchical keywords or terms. They make possible to search and find data. Tags create meta data. During the past years Web 2.0 applications like Youtube and Flickr added immensely by allowing users to add “free-form” tags as a tool for searching. The interesting thing is that tagging presents a system in which there is no information about the meaning or semantic of each tag. Orange might refer to fruit or color. Retagging found data even led to tag based social networks on the web. Tagging on this Designblog!

read also: tagging slowdesign part 3

wall tagging-linking methodology by Carolyn F.Strauss : slowLab

Our modern world is dominated by speed, we’re addicted to it. We try to squeeze in as much as possible in every minute of every day. All the mintues of the day are a race against the clock. The last 150 years everything seems to get faster, our world had turned into a race of the fastest, not the fittest. Quantity has become more significant than quality.
It’s time for a new approach on the time and the experience of it. Following this philosphy a cultural revolution has begun against the notion that faster is always better. It’s not about doing everything in a snail pace, but about doing things in the right speed. With the right speed you become more aware of the world around you.
Slow movement is also a strategy artists use to explore a new world, parallel to the real one. By examining and exploring the decelerated movement, you experience a completely new place that tells a totally different story then the movement would in a regular pace. The quick movement easily misses the essence of the being. New interpretations and other information occur by applying a slow movement strategy.
Art wants to be looked at closer and deeper, and not to function as a spectacle for the consumer. By engaging more with the work, you get introduced in the inside world, which is not visible in the beginning. It’s like reading a book, as the ‘halves of it’, instead of looking at the cover, the ‘whole’.



The Kunsthalle of Bern shows an exhibition of artworks focussed on the slow movement.. Reading about the slow movement and looking at the works made me rethink about looking at art. I’m not a person who takes the time to look at art more closely. I judge by the cover, the ‘whole’ of what I see.
Last christmas I visited Paris and went to Centre Pompidou. Mindlessly I passed the diffrent works, without truly engaging. After a while I realised I had no clue what I had seen. Then I forced myself to take a closer look and a stronger connection occured to me. Your experience a higher level of commitment, when you let yourself get absorbed into the work. Most people do not reach this level, because they crossmark the artworks they saw and feel satisfied by saying “I’ve seen a real….”. Again; it’s not about quality, but about quantity.
The quest for understanding works hand in hand with a process of decelaration. There are no routine practices that could be used to save time. Why hurry through art and miss it’s essence? An artwork was build out of energy, emotions and time and it deserves to be experienced with the same care.
“Slow Movement or: Half and Whole” means life before art and life after art.

by Bregje Sliepenbeek: download as pdf

Wonder where all the tagging started?……….

It was the 5th of February when we started a project moderated by Carolyn F. Strauss, designer, curator and founding director of slowLab. Together with the students of the FoundationYear’s D group she lectured and set of an investigation into slowdesign and related designers and artists. True to the principle of personal connection we started with a quick mapping of ourselves and our working process as designers and artists in relation to “slow” as a subject. Mapping to find keywords for processes and experiences that make up our conditions and inspiration for behaving and performing, to visualize that flow and determine specific tags to describe it. How do these tags symbolize slowness in our work and working process.
Ask yourself the question “slowMe”?
The results became clear instantly through a series of “slowMe” postings

read also: tagging slowdesign part 2

New Tags for the Rietveld Library:

How do you find interesting books when you don’t know what you are looking for? How do you stray through the collection in search of inspiration? Can the library catalogue help you or do you better construct one yourself, Exploring connections in the library between design- and artbooks, students created keywords/tags that linked them together.
a recount of tagging the library

Click the keywords/tags from the Tag-list [purple column at the left] to see all related postings, or use a yellow keyword link [below] to read the postings and experience how they are connected together. Use these keyword links to navigate between the postings!

overview, freedom, animal, elder, identity, intervention, repetition, connection, tattoo, self sufficiancy, structuur, illustration, pyramid, leader, visual language, individuality, playground, best, give, beeld, independent, shelter, West Coast, time, neon, develope envelope, fragile, construction, wisdom, invention, oppervlak, culture.