On Tuesday 9 November 2010 the AMFI – Amsterdam Fashion Institute is holding an international symposium entitled Beyond Green, The System of Fashion, in the World Fashion Centre in Amsterdam. The aim of the symposium is to provide information to students and teaching staff in higher education on new developments in sustainability and fashion.
Date: 9 November 2010 Programme: 10.30 am to 4.30 pm Language: English Location: World Fashion Centre Address: Koningin Wilhelminaplein 13, Amsterdam Entrance: 100 euro
The symposium is free for students and teachers of Fashion and Design Schools. Registration & information: m.m.van.de.beek@hva.nl
The System of Fashion is the central theme of Beyond Green this year. The creation of a garment is a complex process: an endlessly long chain of processes which are often unethical, inefficient or cause pollution. It is therefore important to get more insight into the complexity of the manufacturing process, so that we can identify opportunities to produce in a more sustainable way. If the fashion industry wants the manufacturing process to be more sustainable, it is important to offer fashion students the knowledge they need to make it so. The students of today are the decision makers of tomorrow.
Beyond Green Gallery: Station Blue
The sub-theme of this year’s programme is Jeans; one of world’s most popular garments but also made from one of world’s most environmentally unfriendly fabrics: cotton. Some of the speakers will address the subject of Jeans. The Beyond Gallery is also organized around Jeans and is called Station Blue. The gallery includes presentations on innovative projects by young designers and grass-roots organisations, and exhibition stands manned by numerous companies connected with fashion, textiles and sustainability. stationblue.wordpress.com
Free Fashion Challenge
At the Beyond Green symposium the Free Fashion Challenge starts: 15 fashion addicts from all over the world will stop buying clothes for one year. Free Fashion is a graduation project of Laura de Jong in collaboration with AMFI. With this challenge the meaning of consumption within the definition of fashion is being explored. Fashion students from the Netherlands, Australia, Japan, Israel, England and the United States take up this challenge and so do Nannet van der Kleijn (creative director AMFI), Frank Jurgen Wijlens (lecturer visual culture and communication AMFI) and Anneloes van Gaalen (Paperdoll writing). See how these fashion addicts go cold turkey on www.freefashionchallenge.com
“Grondvormen (Dutch for ‘fundamental forms’) is a spontaneous collaboration between designers Sander Boeijink, Nienke Sybrandy and Jeroen Wand. We got to know each other at the Sandberg Institute and soon discovered through experience that by working together, the three of us could think further than we can individually. We each have our own methods, but share a fascination for the archetype of stereotypes. Together we have discovered new possibilities in ordinary things. It begins with a prototype and ends with a thing that is unique among its own kind. The materials typically used are wood, glass and flora.”
A documentation of Adrian Woods his speech about his inspiration and the ornamism project at the Pecha Kucha Todays Art edition on the 25th of september 2010.
Why is it that dogs aren’t yet blue with red spots, and horses don’t yet radiate phosphorescent colors over the nocturnal meadows of the land?
This is a question posed by media philosopher Vilem Flusser in his essay Curie’s Children and sums up the basis of my fascination.
I am not a biologist, not a philosopher, but a boy who always dreamt of being an inventor.
Behind me you can see the origin of my interests. My chinese grandpa. Together we used to watch endless reruns of robocop, thunderbirds and star trek.
These science fiction sessions slowly took over my dreams, and my dreams shaped my ambitions.
Chief Engineer La Forge, Willie Wortel aka Gyro Gearloose, but mostly someone who i discovered later in life, Stelarc became my idols. Stelarc is basically an artist/inventor who focusses on extending the human body by means of technology.
After my high school i pursued my dreams a began a study called Engineering, Design and innovation on the HVA in Amsterdam. Before i knew it i got stuck in a web of rules and unmotivated students, it felt to much like the factory of normality. Innovation and design where in my opinion much less a priority then enhancing the newest oil or chicken factory.
Because my dad is a photographer born on northern english farmland, i not only grew up with science fiction, but also with a camera and a mountain boot. After 2 years of Engineering, Design and Innovation it became clear to me that my creative side would find it’s place on a photographic study at the Royal Academy of Arts here in The Hague. After my second year it was obvious to me that i should focus on still-life photography.
Creating new worlds as i saw them fit, futuristic inventions, thus still handicraft. Inventing as i dreamt about it as a boy. The next three images that you see are part of ‘The ornamism project’. This particular image is a collaboration with Joost Haas, who also was a speaker at Pecha Kucha in The Hague last year.
Because of my childhood influences i focussed thematically on the influence of man on nature. Trying to photographically portray the border between the natural and the artificial. In my graduation year i started my thesis with researching science fiction, in particular cyber and bio punk. Via bio punk, a science fiction sub genre focussing on a dystopia created by bio technology i got introduced to bio art.
Bio Hackers, DIY Bio, creating new life outside of the confines of the natural sciences. Will the creation of new species become part of the arts? How developed is the use of modern biotechnology in the new media arts? Shall the flora and fauna become a similar design object as a common handbag?
Bio-art is an art where biotechnology is used as medium. Per example Eduardo Kac and his controversial genetically altered glow in the dark bunny called Alba. Alba drew wide spread media attention to the public status of transgenic organisms. The tissue culture and art centre grew a miniature jacket from living cells, called victimless leather.
But what is my role, as a photographer, in this pioneering new media art? After completing my thesis, it was clear that a lot of bio-art is meant to stimulate debate about developments behind the closed doors of the biotech conglomerate.
By using technology at the forefront of natural science in a different context it reexamines the position of science, life, and art. The main critique bio-art has, is that it merely displays what happens in biotechnology, without actually adding anything.
Because of this presumption, and the not always appealing esthetics, a large part of the uninformed public doesn’t give enough attention to bio-artists to discover the actual meaning of the artwork. That it often has a strong poetical and philosophical reasoning.
In short, i think bio-art has a great ideology, but reaches a relatively small target group. By using the strength of photography, a very accessible mass medium, i want to enlarge the reach. Hens ‘the ornamism project’ was born.
The ornamism project consists out of a website, a promotional flyer campaign, a book and a installation.
On the blog of the website i collect work from artist who work on the juxtaposition between the natural and the artificial, and indirectly stimulate discussion about biotechnology. On the about page you can read the project description. And the learn section is devoted to more in depth information accompanied by a short film by me. Now 20 sec of that film:
Film
The flyer campaign is spread out throughout the Netherlands at ‘curious’ places. Universities, libraries, and well at this Pecha Kucha.
Everybody can take a flyer, it is spread around the room. The front of the flyer shows one of my images, combined with the qoute from Vilem Flusser mentioned earlier. On the back is a short definition of the word Ornamism and the web address.
In the book, that is momentarily exhibited in the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam, i combine quotes by well known philosophers, artists and scientists with my photography. By censoring the quotes that are in advantage, en shouting out the quotes in disadvantage these combinations point out the often old-fashioned opinion people have towards the bio-arts.
The book was available in as a very limited edition and is sold out.
In the installation my work takes a critical role towards the life sciences by combining 2 photographs with a taxidermic transgenic cat, and a gene deprived floral sculpture. Both the sculptures are accompanied by patent numbers to point out what is happening in the goldrush of patenting genes. Big corporations like Monsanto have developed monopoly positions, the commercialization of nature is at hand.
For example, most people will be shocked to find out that 1/5 of the human genome is patented. If you want to find out more about the project, take a flyer, and become a member of the ornamism facebook. Like i said earlier, the book is exhibited in the Nederlands fotomuseum, and the project will be exhibited at the Nieuwe Oogst exhibition in Nijmegen in November. Also keep your eye open for the alter nature exhibition coming to Hasselt, Belgium in november, where part of the project will be exhibited.
The ornamism project wil be exhibited from 06-11-2010 till 15-01-2011 at Bart Kunst in Huis in Nijmegen, Netherlands. Five new images and a gripping new installation will make this one to remember.
The ornamism project will take part in a group exhibition focussing on the best graduates from 2010. 11 artists from 12 Art Schools throughout the Netherlands join together in Nijmegen to make an all new exhibition, Nieuwe Oogst.
Salon Thursday October 28, 8 pm, with Sascha Pohflepp, Sheref Mansy, Lucy McRay and Koert van Mensvoort. Science and technology are moving closer to adding living organisms to our cultural toolkit. Microbes are already making insulin and soon they may produce the world’s fuel supply. Their potential is limited only by our imagination.
The emerging field of synthetic biology aims to transform biology as we know it into a discipline of engineering. The top-down BioBricks approach prefers to hack existing organisms. The more research-oriented field of so-called protocells aims to create minimal living machines and may on the way discover the nature of life itself. What both technosciences share is that, if successful, they will profoundly shift or even erase our distinction between nature and culture. After the first truly artificial life form has been created and employed, everything can potentially become technology.
If their main subject is increasingly an object that is made, biologists are becoming creative. What will be the role of the arts in a future where life is a thing to be designed? Will scientists become the poets of the time, or do art, design and architecture need to play a role in this development? Can these possibilities be explored collaboratively?
This Salon will be exploring why our notions of nature and technology may need to change and look closer at work in both art and science. From the body as architecture to the soft systems of the future and scientific research focussing on artificial cells as life-like machines. syntheticaesthetics.org
Sheref Mansy
Sheref Mansy obtained his bachelor’s and doctoral degrees from Ohio State University. After a postdoctoral position in the laboratory of Jack W. Szostak at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, Sheref was awarded a career development award from the Giovanni Armenise-Harvard foundation. He joined the University of Trento as an Assistant Professor of biochemistry in 2009. His research interests are in the development of in vitro reconstructions of life-like systems… smansy.org
Lucy McRae
Lucy McRae is an Australian artist straddling the worlds of fashion, technology and the body. As a body Architect she invents and builds structures on the skin that re-shape the human silhouette. Trained as a classical ballerina and architect her work inherently fascinates with the human body.
Her provocative and often grotesquely beautiful imagery suggests a new breed; a future human archetype existing in an alternate world lucymcrae.com
Koert van Mensvoort
Despite the global awareness of our fragile relation with nature and the countless projects initiated to restore the balance, almost no one has asked the question: What is our concept of nature? And how is our relation with nature changing? Koert van Meensvoort is an artist, scientist, designer, inventor, philosopher, doctor and runs the blog www.nextnature.net koert.com
Sascha Pohflepp
Sascha Pohflepp is an artist, designer and writer. He is interested in past and future technologies, notions of art, business and idealism, what they mean to us and how they inform which worlds come true and which worlds are discarded. He holds a degree in Media Art from the Universität der Künste Berlin and an MA from Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art in London. . pohflepp.com
More information
Synthetic Aesthetics, Thursday 28 October. Mediamatic Bank, Vijzelstraat 68. Starting at 8 pm. Free entrance. Please RSVP.
From 21.11.2010 to 13.03.2011 at Z33 in Hasselt, Belgium.
Alter Nature: We Can shows the work of 20 international contemporary artists and designers. The exhibition focuses on the different ways in which people have displaced, manipulated or designed nature: from small gardens to private islands, from carrots and bonsai trees to acoustic plants and orange pheasants.
In Alter Nature: We Can, Z33 looks at the sub-aspect of fauna and flora in nature. Through the works of some twenty international artists we explore how humankind manipulates nature and how the concept of ‘nature’ constantly changes as a result of this.
The works are not about using nature to meet basic needs (such as health, food, protection, etc.). Interesting projects in this context are legion, but grouped together they almost inevitably lead to simplified contradictions. On the one hand, one has projects that look ‘positively’ upon transforming nature: they find out what technology can do or they show solutions. These projects are often criticised because they seem to subscribe seamlessly to the scientific belief in progress. On the other hand, some projects show the negative side; they look at interventions in nature that have gone wrong. These projects are criticesed to bethe autonomous art corner’s wagging finger. They criticise but do not offer any solutions.
Alter Nature: We Can wants to go beyond this simplified pro-contra positioning. The works on display are therefore devoid of strict utilitarianism and the emphasis is on the historic context of intervention, the multiplicity of manipulations and our fluctuating understanding of the concept of nature.
Alter Nature: We Can is part of Alter Nature, an overarching project by Z33, the Hasselt Fashion Museum and CIAP in collaboration with the MAD faculty, the University of Hasselt, the Flemish Institute for Biotechnology (VIB), KULeuven University and bioSCENTer.
Curator:
Karen Verschooren (Z33)
Artists:
Makoto Azuma (JP)
BCL: Shiho Fukuhara (JP) and Georg Tremmel (AT)
David Benqué (UK)
Julien Berthier (FR)
Merijn Bolink (NL)
Center for PostNatural History
Mark Dion (US)
Driessens & Verstappen (NL)
Daisy Ginsberg (UK)
Tue Greenfort (DK)
Natalie Jeremijenko (US)
Eduardo Kac (US)
James King (UK)
Allison Kudla (US)
Reinier Lagendijk (NL)
Antti Laitinen (FIN)
Hans Op de Beeck (B)
Michael Sailstorfer (D)
Maarten Vanden Eynde (B)
Adrian Woods (NL)
Adam Zaretsky (US)
From 21.11.2010 to 13.03.2011 at Z33 in Hasselt, Belgium.
Alter Nature: We Can shows the work of 20 international contemporary artists and designers. The exhibition focuses on the different ways in which people have displaced, manipulated or designed nature: from small gardens to private islands, from carrots and bonsai trees to acoustic plants and orange pheasants.
In Alter Nature: We Can, Z33 looks at the sub-aspect of fauna and flora in nature. Through the works of some twenty international artists we explore how humankind manipulates nature and how the concept of ‘nature’ constantly changes as a result of this.
The works are not about using nature to meet basic needs (such as health, food, protection, etc.). Interesting projects in this context are legion, but grouped together they almost inevitably lead to simplified contradictions. On the one hand, one has projects that look ‘positively’ upon transforming nature: they find out what technology can do or they show solutions. These projects are often criticised because they seem to subscribe seamlessly to the scientific belief in progress. On the other hand, some projects show the negative side; they look at interventions in nature that have gone wrong. These projects are criticesed to bethe autonomous art corner’s wagging finger. They criticise but do not offer any solutions.
Alter Nature: We Can wants to go beyond this simplified pro-contra positioning. The works on display are therefore devoid of strict utilitarianism and the emphasis is on the historic context of intervention, the multiplicity of manipulations and our fluctuating understanding of the concept of nature.
Alter Nature: We Can is part of Alter Nature, an overarching project by Z33, the Hasselt Fashion Museum and CIAP in collaboration with the MAD faculty, the University of Hasselt, the Flemish Institute for Biotechnology (VIB), KULeuven University and bioSCENTer.
Curator:
Karen Verschooren (Z33)
Artists:
Makoto Azuma (JP)
BCL: Shiho Fukuhara (JP) and Georg Tremmel (AT)
David Benqué (UK)
Julien Berthier (FR)
Merijn Bolink (NL)
Center for PostNatural History
Mark Dion (US)
Driessens & Verstappen (NL)
Daisy Ginsberg (UK)
Tue Greenfort (DK)
Natalie Jeremijenko (US)
Eduardo Kac (US)
James King (UK)
Allison Kudla (US)
Reinier Lagendijk (NL)
Antti Laitinen (FIN)
Hans Op de Beeck (B)
Michael Sailstorfer (D)
Maarten Vanden Eynde (B)
Adrian Woods (NL)
Adam Zaretsky (US)
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