catalogue 2014 | Dogtime

Catalogus DOGtime 2014

o r i g i n h e r e m e a n s t h a t f r o m a n d b y w h i c h s o m e t h i n g i s w h a t i t i s a n d a s i t i s w h a t s o m e t h i n g i s a s i t i s w e c a l l i t s e s s e n c e o r n a t u r e t h e o r i g i n o f s o m e t h i n g i s t h e s o u r c e o f i t s n a t u r e t h e q u e s t i o n c o n c e r n i n g t h e o r i g i n o f t h e w o r k o f a r t a s k s a b o u t t h e s o u r c e o f i t s n a t u r e o n t h e u s u a l v i e w t h e w o r k a r i s e s o u t o f a n d b y m e a n s o f t h e a c t i v i t y o f t h e a r t i s t b u t b y w h a t a n d w h e n c e i s t h e a r t i s t w h a t h e i s b y t h e w o r k f o r t o s a y t h a t t h e w o r k d o e s c r e d i t t o t h e m a s t e r m e a n s t h a t i t i s t h e w o r k t h a t f i r s t l e t s t h e a r t i s t e m e r g e a s a m a s t e r o f h i s a r t t h e a r t i s t i s t h e o r i g i n o f t h e w o r k t h e w o r k i s t h e o r i g i n o f t h e a r t i s t n e i t h e r i s w i t h o u t t h e o t h e r n e v e r t h e l e s s n e i t h e r i s t h e s o l o s u p p o r t o f t h e o t h e r i n t h e m s e l v e s a n d i n t h e i r i n t e r r e l a t i o n s a r t i s t a n d w o r k s a r e e a c h o f t h e m b y v i r t u e o f a t h i r d t h i n g w h i c h i s p r i o r t o b o t h n a m e l y t h a t w h i c h a l s o g i v e s a r t i s t a n d w o r k o f a r t t h e i r n a m e s a r t m a r t i n h e i d e g g e r t h e o r i g i n o f t h e w o r k o f a r t 1 9 3 5 o r i g i n # 6 m a n e l e s p a r b e i g a s c a a m s t e r d a m 2 0 1 4

With respect and admiration for all you have achieved.
It was an honour to have worked with you.

Manel Esparbé i Gasca
Head DOGtime Bachelor Programme
Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam

Fine Arts

THEORY AS A ROADMOVIE (MY LIFE AS A SNAKE.)
For me, working on a thesis is an open construction. As is with teaching. There is no plan. There are no plans at all. There is just me and my student in this open construction without plans.
What are we going to do? We are going to improvise. Improvising as in real life.
It’s important to link study and art, and the study of art to real life. There’s no other subject.
I never know where my students and their thesis will end, and I am not interested in the end either. I’m interested in the ups and downs along the track, the good and wrong decisions, the insights, die Aha-Erlebnisse, the fuck-me’s & the fuck you’s, the joy of understanding, of mental freedom, the importance of research, the strength of words and the urge to be at the centre of your own mind. Of our own mind. Just to be in the centre of our own mind.
What is the essence of having an opinion? Do I have an opinion? What is the meaning of having an opinion? Am I able to catch my opinion in words? What are words good for? Does my thesis have an end? A start? Does a thesis need an end or a start? Who am I? What am I doing? Who’s this man in front of me?
Working on a thesis is a kind of roadmovie; a roadmovie without a script. The voyage is the script. I’m the coach on the couch. I’m my student’s best friend and best enemy. I’m a snake when I have to be, and if they think I’m a dog: I bark :-)
No more classical teachers in this multiplying society, this wonderful schizophrenic era, please! We are the chameleons of the twenty-first century!
So here I am, next to my student, in a car and we don’t know where we are driving to, yet. We talk, we are silent, we smile, dream, we discuss the landscape, control the speed of the car, proclaim the supremacy of imagination and try to get as deep as possible into our temporary conspiracy.
Whatever the subject may be, we will come out with ‘something’, iets, something that grew out of the emptiness of our open construction without any plan.
It’s like making art. But from the other side. Exactly from the other side…

Q.S. Serafijn
Thesis lecturer DOGtime 5 Fine Arts

WARMER WHITE
somebody is walking with a bucket
something is ripped apart
a curse, fuck this
weight loss
windows
nothing is cleaned (in overalls)
a beamer light blows, fuck this
paint is mixed, spilled and splashed
baby’s made
a carpet could fly
things fall
a murder solved
penguins, pebble beach
arriving on horses, bikes and BMW’s
a heart close to exploding
red is preferable so is black tape, a better blue and a warmer white
The last months before the graduation show are a mix of energy, sacrifices, nerves,
failures, success, questions, big rushes, last decisions, hunger for improvement.
It’s a privilege to be amongst this feverish DOGTIME mix.

Pieter Kusters
Lecturer DOGtime 5 Fine Arts

ESTHER BRAKENHOFF
ebrakenhoff@planet.nl

Titel scriptie:
Re-site
site, site-specifiek, site-gerelateerd

Link naar scriptie (PDF)

My work focuses on the perception of place and space. With different mediums, like drawing, sculpture and photography, I explore the way we relate with the world around us through our senses.
Besides perception, I am interested in the way we interact with, inhabit and map space and place. Construction manuals, floor plans, roadmaps, Google maps and Google glass show an abstracted image of the world, but also manipulate this image and our interaction with the world. I reuse these mappings and representations to create a new awareness of place and scale in my work. Abstraction and visual distance is counterbalanced by a concentration on the material, tactility and the work process.

Objectbenaming Apenrots

MARTA COLPANI
mcolpani@gmail.com, martacolpani.com

Title thesis:
Elsewhere

Subject:
Elsewhere researches the idea of foreignness by looking closer at how our environment, our stories and the objects we own are given shape. We design our objects, our nature, our narratives and they - in turn - direct our perceptions and beliefs continuously and almost seamlessly.
Various artists have been interviewed and their practices are discussed in relation to art's potential to subvert our personal experiences by producing foreignness, and putting us in the position of the newcomer, the stranger who has to learn how to "read" the surroundings all over again. I argue that this situation doesn't make us weaker, it rather empowers us with new imaginative space.

Link to thesis (PDF)

Collecting text and images from the environment that we live in, is the way I compose my works. I don't create new images from scratch, instead I pick all kinds of different "parts" from what is around us, and I put them in the spotlight. I present them outside of their original context so that they can convey new meanings to the viewer, either remembered or imagined..

A window still looks like a window once I have captured it with my camera, isolated it from its physical surroundings with Photoshop and blown-up on a white wall. But from that white wall, that same window will also create new space for itself and will start to exist in our thoughts as something else.

It is essential for my work to be grounded in the cultural, social and physical environment and its architectures. For instance, how do smaller or bigger windows direct us towards a different behaviour, or different ideals even? What does it mean to my body or to my feelings that a door opens to the outside, instead of to the inside of a room? How does the meaning of words take shape in the language we speak, by us speaking it? The concrete construction of our surroundings, as much as the words and gestures that we use to communicate with others, construct our beliefs and imagination..

Art is my chance to place different elements of the daily environment as we know it in a context that is more free, where they can become something else than what they were initially intended to be. Especially formal elements of the environment that direct our thoughts and behaviour (words, objects) can be presented on their own, out of their original situation, so that they are allowed to become functionless and be only form. They can become something personal to the viewer, who is given the power and freedom to create his own story with them and so to own them anew.

HET GEMAAKTE LAND II

MARC VAN DIJK
mail@marcvandijk.nu, marcvandijk.nu

Titel scriptie:
De berg, de grot en de leeuwenfluisteraar
Kunst en mythe van ver voor nul tot nu

Subject:
Analysis of and reflection on the Gordian Knot of art and myth

Link naar scriptie (PDF)

I often involve people in my work in a very direct way. History and current events are my raw materials. I work as a writer, journalist and artist. In my visual work these disciplines overlap.

My graduation project is based on the case of Olaf H., a possible new judicial error. Olaf H. is a truck driver, serving a life sentence since 2004 for a double murder and attempted murder. Philosopher Ton Derksen published a book about this case, in which he shows that the evidence against Olaf H. is very slim.

With five actors I reconstructed the murders, in two versions: ‘Olaf shoots’ and ‘Olaf hides’. The reconstructions where done on a set that matched the crime scene in terms of geography and sight lines. This resulted in a video installation about (tunnel)vision, (re)construction and truth.

Olaf H. twee reconstructies (setfoto)

Olaf H. twee reconstructies (videostill)

BARBARA DUBBELDAM
barbara.dubbeldam@gmail.com, barbaradubbeldam.nl

Title thesis:
Procession of the Damned
Life near the event horizon of a postmodern black hole

Subject:
"Sensitivity for the expressiveness of images, and knowledge of literature are strengths of Barbara that come together beautifully in her thesis. The thesis can be read both as a text and picture essay. The text intelligently circles around the first signs of a possible global, literary and philosophical apocalypse. She then isolates poor images from the global digital B-universe feeding them with pleasure to the hungry black hole, black of ink... Admirable thesis, tip of an iceberg ... " [Q.S. Serafijn]

Link to thesis (PDF)

‘When you are young, you always expect the world is going to end. And then you get older and the world still chugs along and you are forced to re-evaluate your stance on the apocalypse as well as your own relationship to time and death. You realize that the world will indeed continue, with or without you, and the pictures you see in your head. So you try to understand the pictures instead.'

I have carried this quote in the back of my mind for quite some time now, while trying to make physical sense of our technological and virtual world, and groping my way through the materials and objects scattered around the studio and other people’s backyards.

Tracking surfaces with evolving topology

Particle based viscoplastic fluid solid simulation

Wormhole

AN NGO
atngo83@hotmail.com

Title thesis:
What is a Museum?

Link to thesis (PDF)

In situ at the Rietveld Academie; more and more my art practice gets entangled with its surroundings. Its relation with the building, space, material, people, and - as a result - a leftover of a performance stage. In the past years I’ve worked with the notion of having Art to disappear; I haven’t succeeded so far. Even worse it’s starting to get a shape and a form, whether a piece of text on a wall, a photo, a ready-made piece, an assembled sculpture, an unnoticed installation or a(n) (art) conversation.

OLIVIER OOSTERBAAN
oo@olivieroosterbaan.com, olivieroosterbaan.com

Title thesis:
Supernormality

Subject:
Supernormality is that state where something normal is so normal that it becomes strange again.
In my thesis I look at that odd, exaggerated normality – which I dub ‘supernormality’. I look at how it works and how it can be used – in art specifically – as a strategy to look at and showcase normality, to reflect on the constant navigation between needing to be normal on the one hand, and wanting to be special on the other.

Link to thesis (PDF)

I look at expectations. At norms, group behaviour, being inside versus outside. The expectations of shared beliefs, a desire to be uniform. And together with those desires, simultaneous attraction and disgust, a tiring unease.
I take a normal artefact or scene, one that most of us will know or recognise: a meeting, a walk, a house, a dinner. Then, I highlight it, set it apart, make it strange, make it fail, make it absurd.
The exact object of the scene is not so important. It is once removed from what is shown, the content at a meta level. It is the ‘how’, not the ‘what’, that counts. In the assembly and presentation there are humors of melancholia, artificiality, childlike guises, being together and apart in a group, a want for an experience.
The viewer - having become an unwilling participant, because this is also about them - is reminded of the strangeness of our behaviours, of what we do to belong or not belong. With it I can hopefully create, or show the possibility of creating, liberty, a free space.

OLIVIER 20140528-20140528_204237 Ascending [place a forward slash here] Mobility (installation view)

Ascending / Mobility [installation view]

Olivier Oosterbaan - Ascending [place a forward slash here] Mobility (detail)-01

Ascending / Mobility [detail]

Olivier Oosterbaan - Ascending [place a forward slash here] Mobility (detail)

Ascending / Mobility [detail]

Stability Security (working title) [detail]

KEIKO OYAMATSU
k.oyamatsu@gmail.com, www.keikooyamatsu.com

Title thesis:
The Presence of Absence

Subject:
As an artist born in Japan, but now living and studying in the Netherlands, I have developed a particular viewpoint, which is born of merging and integrating two contrasting cultures. The intention and purpose of my thesis is to evaluate contemporary art, largely governed by Western values, from my Eastern point of view and personal perspective. This opens up a dialogue that leads to new insights. My analysis centres around the concept of 'Ma' ('negative space' or 'space in-between’), with its origins deep in Japanese culture, but with its global meaning. In the first chapter I start with an investigation of the perceptual differences between 'Ma' in Japan and 'Ma' in the Western countries, in the domain of human interaction, subjective self, and physical environment. Chapter 2 examines and analyses 'Ma' in the works of both Western and Japanese artists such as Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, Francis Alys, On Kawara, and Rei Naito. My line of thinking is inspired by mixtures of Western and Eastern philosophers such as Roland Barthes, George Gurdjieff, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho), Dogen Zenji, Hu Shih, and others.

Link to thesis (PDF)

I combine a variety of media such as video, installation, and performance. As for physical materials, I like to use the basic elements such as earth, water, wood, and stones. I enjoy their smells, their feel and touch - it satisfies a basic, primary urge.
Being a female artist, my recent artistic fascination revolves around the womb -matrix- and I bring its spirits in my work. Honestly, I am surprised how mysterious this female organ is! It is so closely connected to the nature. It reflects all of earth's cycles, the waxing and waning, the ebb and flow, the changes of the seasons and many of the ups and downs we experience in our lives. For me it also symbolises the connection between this world and another world, the gate we pass at birth and through which we give life. It is a magical "space in-between"; a meeting point between the present, the past, and the future; a space of silence, of being, and of female consciousness, where all paradoxical parallels co-exist.

Thanks to Fontrodona Art Space

Floating World

Half Empty (still)

Half Empty (still)

Half Empty (still)

Half Empty (still)

JOHANNA ROBLETO
mail@jrobleto.com, www.jrobleto.com

Title thesis:
Communion through exclusion
How can exclusion lead to communion?

Subject:
When society fails, new subcultures are born as a resistance to the current state of society. In the exclusion from society, a new form of communion is born. People who live in stigmatised areas in harsh conditions where they feel excluded from society can, through music, clothing, art, etc., gain a voice to be heard and listened to, an expression of their own existence. Creating a communion in his or her own being. Some by silence and others by showing resistance, some through music, some through visual expression such as graffiti and street art and some by throwing bricks.

Link to thesis (PDF)

In life the decisions I make often come from an impulsive act. From an intuitive decision making rather than logical as cause and effect.
My approach to painting starts the same way, intuitive combined with stern appraisal, not knowing what a painting will look like when completed.
To relate to the cause and effect requires a transparent and simplified view of the world. Such is, however, not the world to us humans. Each painting becomes a chapter, as windows to something else.

"What´s magical about painting is that the thing about time is that its always over. What happens when you paint is that you can reserve it. You can't do that with life" [Per Kirkeby]

untitled
oil on canvas, 130 x 184 cm

untitled
oil on canvas, 150 x 159 cm

TANYA VAN LINTERLOO

Titel scriptie: DEZE SCRIPTIE IS EEN ONDERZOEK NAAR DE FYSIEKE VERHOUDING TOT RUIMTE Onderwerp: Het concept van het lichaam in de ruimte is zeer essentieel voor mijn kunstpraktijk en in mijn werken, of het nu video, installaties of sculpturen zijn. Ruimte, tussenruimte, leegte, haar aanwezigheid intrigeerd mij. Mijn interesse in de fysiek verhouding tot ruimte heeft geleid tot het opsplitsen van dit onderwerp in ‘Body in Space’ en ‘Body in Time’. In kunst-jargon betekent het Engelse woord ‘body’ meer dan enkel het fysieke lijf. Het betreft ook in meer abstracte zin het volume. Welke begrippen en concepten worden gecreëerd met betrekking tot lichaam in de ruimte ́ of ́lichaam in de tijd ́ in de hedendaagse kunst? Link naar scriptie (PDF)

‘Het simpele zichtbaar te maken waar de ingewikkeld heid achter schuil gaat’ MY WORK IS RELATED TO THE SIZE OFF MY REACH It is not about autonomous sculptures. The sculptures are related to a movement that I perform in a space, while making the sculpturesAs the body shapes the sculpture, the material is at least as decisive for the shape of the sculpture. At the same time I push the material and the form to its limits. The works are related to my body. Sculptures that work as an inscription of a movement in a space.

OVIDIU SPANIOL
ovidiu.spaniol@gmail.com

Title thesis:
Collective Memory in the Works of Contemporary Romanian Artists

Subject:
Identifying usage of collective memory in the works of several contemporary Romanian artists

Link to thesis (PDF)

My work stems from a need to change and twist the context of present or past events, existing or non-existing objects, appropriate and personalise through a conscious/subconscious filter, making use of dreams, reflection, auto-reflection, clichés and popular culture references and placing myself along the lines of Conceptual Art, Dadaism, Pop Art and Arte Povera.

number 8 in a serie

snowwhite

SANDER TER STEEGE
sandsteeg@hotmail.com

Titel scriptie:
Negatie in kunst

Link naar scriptie (PDF)

De traditie van de schilderkunst is zo rijk dat ze voor mij een speeltuin en een habitat is waar ik nooit op uitgekeken zal raken. Deze traditie, met al haar referenties en feitelijkheden, combineer ik in mijn schilderijen met foto’s, tekeningen en afbeeldingen uit mijn persoonlijk archief. Mijn onderzoek naar de materialiteit van het medium is gericht op het vinden van nieuwe, broeierige syntheses waarin de traditie steeds voelbaar blijft.

boulder beach

VINCKA STRUBEN
vincka@xs4all.nl>, vinckastruben.nl

Titel scriptie:
De verbinding tussen ruimten van een andere orde
De overdracht, het moment van raken en de positie van de focus.

Link naar scriptie (PDF)

Smooth transitions

I am interested in the rhythm and the process of perception of basic everyday phenomena of which I am usually not aware. The construction of the environment from a succession of fragments, subtle eye-movements, the shifting of the focus of looking, mental leaps and images. The position of the point of focus and the place of attention can be very diverse and shift very fast. The transitions between these spaces of different nature are perceived amazingly coherent and smooth.

I try to comprehend physical properties like the transitions within the retina reflected in the space and the limit and the contrast with the space I do not see. I would like to grasp the transformations of the dynamic and three- dimensional shape of the field of view when eye-movements encounter the static boundaries of a space.

Field of view

RUTGER VAN DER TAS
kunstvergrijp@hotmail.com, rutgervandertas.com

Titel scriptie:
Overgang naar tijdloos zijn.
De worsteling van drie kunstenaars

Subject:
My thesis is about three artists who all have their own mental problems, Willem de Kooning had Alzheimer's, William Utermohlen too, and Vincent van Gogh had a multitude of possible disorders. In my thesis I examine the period in which these disorders come to the surface through various symptoms, and how they effect the lives and works of these artists, up to the point that where they are no longer able to work or socially function.

Link naar scriptie (PDF)

The common thread in my work runs through mental instability along the advancing digitalisation of our humanbody into the anatomy of our existence.

Geen tijd te verspreken
40cm x 50 cm

Bottleneck
200cm x 140cm

goatie
24cm x 30cm

Sisispex (3)
120 cm x 140cm

STEFFEN VOGELEZANG
svogelezang@gmail.com, www.steffenvogelezang.nl

Title thesis:
Tiles
(living the good life)

A flower or plant, pelican or cream cake can motivate a painting. Anything can be a reason to paint. So I paint everything.
A painting encapsulates its own space, its own universe. I want my paintings to exist in their own worlds while touching ours. Through recognisable associative elements, and the researching of space in the painting, I want to create tension between both worlds. Every painting creates its own set of rules resulting in a unique individual focus that forces me to research painting itself.
Each individual work demands something different from me. The treatment of the paint, the use of color, the composition, all these factors combined generate their own context within each painting.

Tiles living the good life

Magic cake

House cake

ELEONORA VOLPI
popinapiwi@gmail.com

Title thesis:
Perception, Identity and 2 Identities

Link to thesis (PDF)

I guess I can say that with my work I investigate what identity and perception are. How differently I relate to myself and that what surrounds me depending on the moment, and how limited I am as human being : it is a matter of facts. I never perceive the truth, but only what my brain allows me to perceive, depending on my needs.

bitmom (still)

IDUM
Interaction Design Unstable Media

CATALOGUE OF EFFECTS
In most of the stories and novels by the Japanese author Kobo Abe, writer of ‘The Woman in the Dunes’, famously adapted for cinema by Hiroshi Teshigahara, the main characters do not have a name. They are more or less synonymous with a profession, or they are just beings, without any specific qualities. They could have been anyone. Like in the story ‘The Box Man’, in which the nameless protagonist gives up his identity and decides to live in a large cardboard box he wears over his head. As he wanders through the streets of Tokyo, he describes the world outside as he sees or imagines it, in a madly rush on the inside walls of his box. In a style reminiscent of Kafka, Abe conveys the story of the man by following what he writes down as life comes to him, as if in a dream, via the mediation of the box. The box grants him a life and an identity : he becomes the box man, and he becomes the interpreter of the effects that the box has on him, as it changes his relationship with the world outside of the box. The box becomes the interface of his choice to live his life, as he becomes the ardent scribbler of the effects that this choice exert upon him.

What is the difference between a box we put over our head and that we use as a canvas for our writing or a little black box we carry around all time and with which we explore the world, by tapping on it, talking to it, scribbling on it? In both cases we are dealing with an interfaced reality, and a deep acknowledgement that life is fundamentally ‘out of the box’. Yet, we are trapped, by our free choice to live inside that box or via that box.

At IDUM we are not interested in the box as object per se, but more in the effects it has on you when you put it over your head. Subjectivity is not something that resides cosy and statically behind your artistic eyes, but is actively produced by a world around you and by the way you react upon that world.

Our graduation candidates of this year each have found a box to put over their heads in order to explore the effects they exert upon them and what those effects tell us about boxing and living inside a box, and what can be perceived of a life outside of that box. Ans has put the box of her own memory over her head to explore what memory does to the live of a person that once was part of her life, but resides only as an effect of the past. Carlos has used the box of Thinspo, he found on the internet over his head, to try to come close to what these tiny little girls online experience in their radical disappearance act. Jelmer has chosen to use language as a box, or container of subjectivities in order to investigate how language becomes a infinitesimal small film or tissue that mediates intensities, but that can evaporate into even thinner air.

In order to be able to ‘live and think outside of the box’ you have to create a catalogue of effects of what it is to live in a box.

Willem van Weelden
Thesis Lecturer DOGtime IDUM 5
WHAT BOX?
In order to prepare the candidates for their graduation I arranged for individual sessions of 45 minutes about every other week. I believe in individual coaching, which is of course a luxury. Unlike Art, which is a necessity.
If you think instead that art is a commodity, we are likely to have a semantic misunderstanding.
When talking about art, you might think I mean the stuff you see in galleries, the stuff that gets commissioned and the stuff that involves matter & technology. We can actually do without all of that. (However, it would make life financially unbearable for me.) But we can’t do without a poetic dimension of what culture presents to us as ‘real’ or ‘truth’.
So when I mention art I mean activities and/or artefacts which are articulating, exploring and creating this poetic dimension of ‘the real’. This art defies the notion of art as a commodity. It even defies the notion of art as contemporary art, but we should not completely rule out the possibility that contemporary art touches upon a poetic quality that makes life worthwhile, as that would be truly cynical.
The ‘why’ we want to travel from A to B can never be explained, but it might be possible to share the experience of traveling? In a world without poetry we just move from A to B, we start and graduate, maybe, we learn to think out of the box. But in the world of these DOGTIME graduates, we learn to shape and share the experience of the journey, defying the notion of a box.

Geert Mul 2014
Lecturer DOGtime IDUM 5

PS:
In order to drill my students to become great artists, I had them standing up and when I shouted questions, I made them shout back answers to me over and over again until they finally stopped thinking and just listened.

This is the drill:

Why Art?
I’m creative!

What is the core of the creative practice?
To create!

What does the creative strive for?
Leaving traces!

What are its means?
Disagreement!

What is untrue?
Contradictions!

What is the core of artistic practice?
Practice!

What does art strive for?
Mind over matter!

What do you strive for?
Consciousness!

What is artistic knowledge?
Speculative!

What is art’s biggest enemy?
Artistic consensus!

What is a medium?
Embodied consensus!

What is meaning?
Context!

What is context?
Meaning!

What does art consists of?
Language!

What is knowledge?
Poetry!

What does Poetry learn us?
The impossibility of notation!

CARLOS SILVA PINTO
kadusilva@hotmail.com

Title thesis:
The Demented Blow-Up
Production of Subjectivity in Modern Imagery

Link to intro thesis (PDF)

My ongoing visual projects involve the use of images that populate the internet landscape and its hysterical transformation.

These projects are partially driven by my research on algorithms, computer-generated imagery and how they could relate to the viewer, establishing a new dialogue between these images and the viewer.

I explore and use as material selected medias relevant to the current online imagery eco system and its impact on the viewer.

Is mass art produced by virtue of the fact it’s online and easily accessible. How has mass art changed because of this development of instantly reproducible imagery? Has it always been about mimicry and repetition? If so how has the process of mimicry and repetition smoothed itself out?

I reflect on the world today using contemporary digital media to not just talk about the media itself, but to regain understanding of its impact and systems around us.

Thinspiration

JELMER LUIJTING
jelmerluyting@hotmail.com, trns-thss.blogspot.nl, transthesis.blogspot.nl, infra-dun.blogspot.nl

Title thesis:
Trans-thesis van de gelijknamige thesis

Subject:
This thesis may give the impression that its focus lies on language. In fact there is no specific focus. It deals with matters outside the mechanisms of what this thesis seems to be about. A state of deposition is more applicable here. One might think “so that must be the topic, right?” Indeed, the topic of this thesis deals with a state of deposition that derives from the incompleteness theorem of Kurt Gödel, which states: "Something cannot be proven within the system of its own laws, it can only be proven outside its own system”. So therefore, besides the use of language as a medium in itself, this thesis can also being seen as a manual or an instrument designed for its interactive quality.

Investigative research can be based on a lack of skills, an inability or sheer incompetence. In other words, an investigation can spring forth from an ignorant approach. It does not necessarily have to stand for boundless naivety, yet it may well be the outcome of a conscious design choice. As a designer you have the ability to deliberately choose for such a specific strategy. Such a strategy supplies research with outcomes and insights that ordinarily will be left unnoticed.

What fascinates me are the abilities and inabilities of language. Language is a communication system that forms a representation of our proficiency (epistemological knowledge). Regarded in this sense, language then is the communicative expression of that what we know about what we know.

In the pragmatic use of language a consensus is easily met in regard to that epistemology (epistemological convention). Language is the medium of that convention.

However, this awareness or understanding is not a static given, but a dynamic, ever changing knowledge which everyone, in the course of the use of language itself can have their influence on. As designer I consider it my task to make people aware of this potential influence in their use of language. Thereby the designer casts its effect on knowledge itself. As long as we accept that we live in a self-created, fictional world of which many of the systems and regulations have gained their justification and legitimacy by means of (often unconsciously) applied conventions. With the help of imagination the consensual mechanism that determines 'that what we know we know', can be stretched and a conception can be made of a different logic or amendments can be accredited with an existing logic.

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Bij de kapper in Kaapstad: ‘Ze willen er superstrak uitzien’

KAAPSTAD – Het is druk bij de kapper tegenover ons hotel, een smal zaakje in Parliamentstreet. Als een van de kappers zegt dat ik aan de beurt ben, wordt de man naast me boos. Hij heeft haast, gebaart hij. Krijgt de enige blanke soms voorrang? Hij zegt het denk ik niet (ik kan hem niet verstaan), maar ik krijg het gevoel dat mijn huidskleur onuitgesproken een rol speelt in zijn tirade.

Ik kwam later binnen dan hij. Hij weet alleen niet dat ik eerder ook al in de zaak zat, en dat ik tussendoor even was teruggelopen om iets op te halen. Ik laat hem voorgaan, en blader door mijn foto’s.

Als toerist heb je nooit haast, dus voor mij is het makkelijk om de nobele blanke uit te hangen. Ik kan me bovendien niet voorstellen dat de kapper lang met de boze man bezig zal zijn. Het weinige haar op zijn glimmende lichtbruine hoofd is in mijn ogen al nagenoeg perfect in model.

Het is mijn laatste dag hier, met mijn klasgenoten en docenten van DOGtime op schoolreis in Zuid-Afrika. Op de versleten leren bank voor de wachtenden bekijk ik de briefjes in mijn portemonnee, sporen van een week Kaapstad. Nog maar een paar bankbiljetten met op de ene kant de dieren die de safari-ganger moet sparen als voetbalplaatjes (the Big Five) en op de andere kant de meest geportretteerde Zuid-Afrikaan: Nelson Mandela. Verder onder andere een kleurig visitekaartje van Kolekile Mhlana, die ons rondleidde in de gevangenis op Robbeneiland, waar hij als politieke gevangene vastzat met jonge en oude activisten, onder wie de grote Nelson. Toen de gids na een uur klaar was, zei een gezette toerist met een rood verbrande nek: ‘It was a long talk to freedom.’

Het ging eigenlijk al eerder mis, toen Mhlana zelf had gezegd dat wij na de rondleiding aan onze long walk to freedom konden beginnen, van de gevangenis terug naar de pont. Een grapje dat alle gidsen op hun repertoire hebben staan, ook de jongen die ons over het eiland had rondgereden had hem gemaakt. Het past in de sfeer van onooglijke Mandela-mousepads, mokken en T-shirts. En toch: ook mensen die sceptisch zijn over de Mandela-verering worden stil van deze plek en willen oog in oog met zijn cel de tralies even aanraken.

Ik blader door de foto’s op mijn telefoon en kijk nog eens naar het reusachtige fort waar Kaapstad halverwege de zeventiende eeuw mee begon. Op elke gevelsteen het logo van de VOC, de eerste multinational ter wereld. Binnen, op schilderijen en blauw beschilderde borden uit Azië de druk bevaren baai met de Tafelberg, vanaf zee herkenbaar voor elke schipper.

Vlakbij de burcht ligt de slave lodge. De Nederlandse gereformeerde kerk staat er pal naast. De plek waar de slaven verhandeld werden is nu een museum, nog niet eens zo lang. Er hangt een rekening, de balans van één levering per schip: ‘Lijst van doode negers’. Hoeveel negers er op welke dag gestorven zijn, hoeveel er dood of levend overboord zijn gegooid. Alles keurig geboekstaafd, in fraaie sierletters geschreven.

De slaven kregen Hollandse namen, ter vervanging van hun eigen namen, die vergeten moesten worden. Mamakousje van de Rio, Sander de Groot, Jonas van de Cust.

Ik ben aan de beurt. De kapper, een jongen van nog geen dertig, vindt het zonde dat ik alles eraf laat halen. ‘Met dit haar kan ik veel meer,’ zegt hij. ‘De meesten hier hebben stug haar.’

Hij komt uit een ander deel van Zuid Afrika, de naam van zijn stam bevat een klak. Ik probeer hem na te zeggen, maar geef het gauw op. Hij woont nu zeven jaar in Kaapstad. Hij heeft het goed, vindt hij. Hij heeft werk. Haar groeit altijd. Een campagne als ‘Kijk eens wat vaker in de spiegel van de kapper’ is hier niet nodig. ‘Zwarte mannen komen soms na drie dagen alweer terug,’ zegt hij. ‘Het liefst zouden ze elke dag komen. Ze willen er superstrak uitzien.’

Amsterdam kent hij niet. Nou ja, wel eens van gehoord. Hij zou ook verre reizen willen maken, maar daar heeft hij geen geld voor. En als hij binnen zijn eigen land reist, heeft hij al snel gezeik. Laatst was hij met twee vrienden aan het wandelen in Wellington, een van de mooie oude stadjes in de buurt van Kaapstad. Toen ze op een bankje zaten, werden ze vies aangekeken door een blanke man die daar woonde. Even later kwamen er twee agenten op ze af. ‘Die man had de politie gebeld. We werden gearresteerd en meegenomen naar het bureau. Waarvoor? We zaten daar alleen maar. Ik belde laatst mijn moeder en zei: de apartheid is hier nog steeds. Er is niks veranderd.’

'De jongeren doen het onderling beter, zegt hij. ‘Maar die oude garde? Soms zou ik willen dat ze allemaal dood waren.’

Vier eeuwen racisme, en nu amper twee decennia ‘regenboognatie’. Een woord van Desmond Tutu. Er moet nog heel wat gebeuren voordat die term net zo vrolijk en licht voelt als de lach van Tutu zelf, zoals wij hem zagen in de foyer van een theater. Zomaar, in het wild.

Er moet nog steeds tijd overheen. Veel tijd. Ik vraag de kapper of hij denkt dat het ooit echt anders zal zijn? ‘It’s all gonna be fine,’ zegt hij. Hij lijkt het te menen.

Ik reken af: dertig rand. Ongeveer twee euro. We schudden handen. Hij probeert me een coole hand shake te leren, maar ik bak er weinig van.

‘My name is Kia. Pleased to meet you, Marc.’

_{Dit verslag verscheen eerder in DOGTIME CAPE TIME, een krant over onze reis.
19-03-2014 © tekst: Marc van Dijk, foto: Steffen Vogelezang}