Remote Material of Implication

Contribution to Instatements, an exhibition on the future of the post-industrial city.

When our studio was asked by the Van Abbemuseum to present our position on how cities should address the evacuation of the former industrial sites in their centres, we soon found that it is not only the industry that is retreating from the city but, more generally, all various trades of manual—“manipulative”—character. Our daily paths are most likely to oscillate between two poles of city life—areas for dwelling and areas for shopping and leisure (with work succumbing to the interplay of both). While production becomes increasingly obscure and products hermetic, we rarely find a workshop to fix electronic devices or a woodworker to repair broken furniture. This binary construction, which has to do with proprietary strategies of production as much as with visibility, is the urban rendering of the consumer model.

To install the idea of a city in which production and manipulation have equal place beside dwelling and commerce, we chose to appropriate and produce by hand a piece of heraldry of the real-estate industry and erect it in a heavily contested brown field in Eindhoven. The construction billboard, a structure that usually announces the end of a decision making process based on capital grounds, was in this way confronted with a new kind of work—a thinking work less inclined to (re)produce than to manipulate, to question and to know of, in a sense that appears important if the citizen is not to degrade into a user.

Support structure and billboard (W 7m × H 5m × 4m) with silk screen print in seven colors, accompanying documents.

Instatements program curated by Clare Butcher/Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven and Uri Ben-Ari. Presented on occasion of the Dutch Day of Architecture 2010. Exhibition catalogue published by
Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. With Pierre Tectin, Garance Echazarreta, François Dumas, Gero Asmuth, Erasmus Scherjon. 2010

Kraken heeft Nederland vormgegeven

Initiative to advocate the continuity of Dutch legal squatting.

The Dutch Kraakwet was a unique expression of famed Dutch liberalism. Ruling that citizens may appropriate any real-estate standing vacant for a minimum period, it helped mitigate the stress on an utterly overcrowded housing market. Particularly beneficial to creatives in search of production space, it also played a vital role in facilitating the large-scale manual research that characterises the Dutch creative output of the last decades.

When the law was put up for debate in 2009, public discussion focused on instances of misuse while no due was paid to its place in the biographies of the designers, artists and architects with whose success the country has been priding and strategically promoting itself since the 1990’s.

Since I had been fortunate myself to find my workspace through the conditions set in and around the law, it felt incongruous to me that this dimension be omitted. I therefore launched Kraaken heeft Nederland vormgegeven to lift into view the perspective of creatives working in Holland.

The initiative instantly received strong support from many of Holland’s most prominent creators and institutions. It produced various exhibitions and worked with the media to demonstrate how large a portion of Holland’s creative scene indeed had found the framework to begin their careers in the disputed law. A book of collected statements by the supporters on their experience with the law as part of their work biographies was given to the Dutch Senate.

The Kraakwet was eventually sacked by the center-right government in 2010.

KHNLV was shown at the NAi Rotterdam as part of the Architecture Biennale 2009. It was publicised on in Dutch and international news media and specialised press and has since featured in Dutch urbanist discourse.

Kraaken heeft Nederland vormgegeven, lit.: “Squatting designed the Netherlands”. Various public and press activities, posters, book (silk screen print). See http://mborn.com/kraakinfo/ for a collection of documents. 2009

Coalition of Amateurs

Contribution to Coalition of Amateurs by Jerszy Seymour.

With Travis Cole Broussard, Erasmus Scherjon, François Dumas, Pierre Tectin, Gero Asmuth. 2009

Atelier Voorterweg

Construction of the atelier building at Voorterweg 136 in Eindhoven.

With François Dumas, Garance Echazarreta, Erasmus Scherjon, Gero Asmuth, Max Lipsey, Jakob Hohmann. 2009-11

Pitkämies/Huuda Huuda display furniture

Counter, book and record shelves for Jelle Cugaert’s Pitkämies comic store in Helsinki, also housing the Finnish Comic Society’s gallery and the studio of comic drawers’ collective Kuti Kuti. Designs made to honor the hand as the main force in this building.

2008