JUDY VAN BLARICON
COINCIDENTAL REALM
I live on the top floor of a former factory. My neighbour, below, is practically deaf and only a wooden floor is separating us. Recently some kids visited him. I heard them singing, playing and becoming quiet, apparently he had turned on his TV too. The following reconstructed conversation took place between two TV’s.
TV1: Hey cheer up. I have decided to give you another chance. With a great teacher like me, anything is possible.
TV2: It’s impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means.
Horror has a face. And you must make a friend of horror.
TV1: I can’t.
TV2: I was with Special Forces. Seems a
thousand centuries ago. We’d left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio. And this old man came running after us, and he was crying. He couldn’t say. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. They, they were, in a pile.
A pile of little arms.
TV1: Wait, I know this. Oh, wait, I think I got it.
First, an artist must concentrate
and visualize his concept. I’ve gotta embrace the marble, I’ve gotta sniff the marble, I’ve gotta lick the marble, I’ve gotta wash the marble, I’ve gotta date the marble, I’ve gotta be the marble, I’ve got it!
I have seen the sculpture within.
TV2: My God, the genius of that! The genius.
The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized, they were stronger than we. Because they could stand it. These were not monsters. These were men, strained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who have families, who have children, who are filled with love…that they had the strength, the strength to do that.
TV1: But, one more thing.
Now it’s art. Well, what do you think?
Manel Esparbé i Gasca
Head of DOGtime Bachelor programme
Tutor DOGtime5 Fine Arts
FA
Fine Arts
STUDIO STUDY
Whenever I enter my studio, I hear the objects hum and whisper: ‘Are you going to take care of us today, Boss?’ ‘Boss, Boss, are you going to use us in one of your new works?’
I plump down in my chair trying to ignore the choir surrounding me: the textile sausages, the golden coffee
beans, the plastic pigs, dinosaurs, soldiers and horses, the wooden eggs, Australian nuts, the paper boxes, the paint, the pencils, the chewing gum, the stuffed pyjama pants,
the clay, the needles, the ropes, spikes, tutti frutti and aluminium strips all exactly one metre in length. My books feel ashamed: once they had all of my attention, but never asked for anything in return.
I cannot start working without buying groceries. I write down the grocery list for that day. Every morning, I have to go to Albert Heijn to buy my groceries. No art, not without buying the groceries.
When I am back I close the blinds of my studio and put on the lights. It is time to work on my email correspondence.
It takes me hours to answer my emails. Some objects in
my studio are staring at me, others have fallen asleep, and some are still awake.
When the emails are done, it is time for my regular nap. My nap takes half an hour. Then it is time for a strong black coffee. It is almost 4.30 p.m. I take a piece of wood and insert a pin vertically into it. I collect several objects: a ball of clay, a box of matches, a stack of post-its, another piece of clay, a transparent tube, a small silvered toy fence, imitation moss, threads, a plastic cupboard with paint on it, more threads, a postcard of Marilyn Monroe with tippex-painted snowflakes on it, a plastic orange funnel, a note with a quote by George Orwell (‘to see what is in front of one’s nose, needs a constant struggle’), plastic wrap, a strip of blue foam, a plastic apple with a small human model on top of it. I put it all onto the pin on the wooden pedestal, one after another, trying to balance the accumulation and support it with a rectangular piece of cardboard covered with Styrofoam.
It is time to start cooking. Whilst I am preparing the lamb chops in the kitchen above the studio, a title pops up: Walzer für Niemand (Study for a monument).
The work is never the object itself, but always the silly feints surrounding the object. This is what art means: to encircle things you do not yet know and will never know. Or as Samuel Beckett once stated: ‘Try again. Fail again.
Fail better.’
QS Serafijn
Thesis tutor DOGtime5 Fine Arts
SPEED LIMIT
How can pieces of plastic, some concrete, dabs of paint, asphalt, confetti, lemons, a door, cardboard boxes, an alter ego, some medals, some dust, Russia, refugees, a piece of glass or some bleeps get promoted?
Chardin to a colleague : “Do you paint with colours?”
Colleague: “Yes, how else?”
Chardin: “With feeling”
It is a fantastic experience to see so much feeling and passion become a reality; different realities, to be able to touch it, to look at it, to daydream about it.
The people who made this possible, I suppose, don’t keep to the maximum speed limit.
Pieter Kusters
Tutor DOGtime5 Fine Arts
15 BEGINNINGS
It was love at first sight… I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story… You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement
of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings… It was a diamond all right, shining in the grass half a dozen feet from the blue brick wall… What’s
it going to be then, eh? A screaming comes across the sky… Where now? Who now? When now? If I am out of my mind, it’s all right with me… ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE is scrawled in blood red lettering on the side of the Chemical Bank… I will not drink more than fourteen units of alcohol a week… I write this sitting in the kitchen sink… For a long time, I went to bed early… In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth… It was a pleasure to burn… A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back on or from which to look ahead… To Be Continued…
Ken Zeph
Tutor DOGtime5 Fine Arts
JUDY VAN BLARICON
COINCIDENTAL REALM
I live on the top floor of a former factory. My neighbour, below, is practically deaf and only a wooden floor is separating us. Recently some kids visited him. I heard them singing, playing and becoming quiet, apparently he had turned on his TV too. The following reconstructed conversation took place between two TV’s.
TV1: Hey cheer up. I have decided to give you another chance. With a great teacher like me, anything is possible.
TV2: It’s impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means.
Horror has a face. And you must make a friend of horror.
TV1: I can’t.
TV2: I was with Special Forces. Seems a
thousand centuries ago. We’d left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio. And this old man came running after us, and he was crying. He couldn’t say. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. They, they were, in a pile.
A pile of little arms.
TV1: Wait, I know this. Oh, wait, I think I got it.
First, an artist must concentrate
and visualize his concept. I’ve gotta embrace the marble, I’ve gotta sniff the marble, I’ve gotta lick the marble, I’ve gotta wash the marble, I’ve gotta date the marble, I’ve gotta be the marble, I’ve got it!
I have seen the sculpture within.
TV2: My God, the genius of that! The genius.
The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized, they were stronger than we. Because they could stand it. These were not monsters. These were men, strained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who have families, who have children, who are filled with love…that they had the strength, the strength to do that.
TV1: But, one more thing.
Now it’s art. Well, what do you think?
Manel Esparbé i Gasca
Head of DOGtime Bachelor programme
Tutor DOGtime5 Fine Arts
FA
Fine Arts
STUDIO STUDY
Whenever I enter my studio, I hear the objects hum and whisper: ‘Are you going to take care of us today, Boss?’ ‘Boss, Boss, are you going to use us in one of your new works?’
I plump down in my chair trying to ignore the choir surrounding me: the textile sausages, the golden coffee
beans, the plastic pigs, dinosaurs, soldiers and horses, the wooden eggs, Australian nuts, the paper boxes, the paint, the pencils, the chewing gum, the stuffed pyjama pants,
the clay, the needles, the ropes, spikes, tutti frutti and aluminium strips all exactly one metre in length. My books feel ashamed: once they had all of my attention, but never asked for anything in return.
I cannot start working without buying groceries. I write down the grocery list for that day. Every morning, I have to go to Albert Heijn to buy my groceries. No art, not without buying the groceries.
When I am back I close the blinds of my studio and put on the lights. It is time to work on my email correspondence.
It takes me hours to answer my emails. Some objects in
my studio are staring at me, others have fallen asleep, and some are still awake.
When the emails are done, it is time for my regular nap. My nap takes half an hour. Then it is time for a strong black coffee. It is almost 4.30 p.m. I take a piece of wood and insert a pin vertically into it. I collect several objects: a ball of clay, a box of matches, a stack of post-its, another piece of clay, a transparent tube, a small silvered toy fence, imitation moss, threads, a plastic cupboard with paint on it, more threads, a postcard of Marilyn Monroe with tippex-painted snowflakes on it, a plastic orange funnel, a note with a quote by George Orwell (‘to see what is in front of one’s nose, needs a constant struggle’), plastic wrap, a strip of blue foam, a plastic apple with a small human model on top of it. I put it all onto the pin on the wooden pedestal, one after another, trying to balance the accumulation and support it with a rectangular piece of cardboard covered with Styrofoam.
It is time to start cooking. Whilst I am preparing the lamb chops in the kitchen above the studio, a title pops up: Walzer für Niemand (Study for a monument).
The work is never the object itself, but always the silly feints surrounding the object. This is what art means: to encircle things you do not yet know and will never know. Or as Samuel Beckett once stated: ‘Try again. Fail again.
Fail better.’
QS Serafijn
Thesis tutor DOGtime5 Fine Arts
SPEED LIMIT
How can pieces of plastic, some concrete, dabs of paint, asphalt, confetti, lemons, a door, cardboard boxes, an alter ego, some medals, some dust, Russia, refugees, a piece of glass or some bleeps get promoted?
Chardin to a colleague : “Do you paint with colours?”
Colleague: “Yes, how else?”
Chardin: “With feeling”
It is a fantastic experience to see so much feeling and passion become a reality; different realities, to be able to touch it, to look at it, to daydream about it.
The people who made this possible, I suppose, don’t keep to the maximum speed limit.
Pieter Kusters
Tutor DOGtime5 Fine Arts
15 BEGINNINGS
It was love at first sight… I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story… You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement
of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings… It was a diamond all right, shining in the grass half a dozen feet from the blue brick wall… What’s
it going to be then, eh? A screaming comes across the sky… Where now? Who now? When now? If I am out of my mind, it’s all right with me… ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE is scrawled in blood red lettering on the side of the Chemical Bank… I will not drink more than fourteen units of alcohol a week… I write this sitting in the kitchen sink… For a long time, I went to bed early… In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth… It was a pleasure to burn… A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back on or from which to look ahead… To Be Continued…
Ken Zeph
Tutor DOGtime5 Fine Arts