ISArC student HENRIQUE CALISTO OPENS EXHIBITION
Henrique listening to good words about himself from the director of the cultural center and on the left the exhibition organizer
Henrique Calisto is of the first group of students to attend ISArC and he is also a teacher in ENAV art school. Henrique has been painting for years and yesterday he opened a 10 year retrospective exhibition in the Franco-Mozambican Culture Center in Maputo. The fellow students and colleagues, and of course his students from the art school attended the opening. I have to return during the day to see again in proper daylight. It is great to follow all the activity that that is linked to ISArC, almost every week there is something happening in town.
The crowd entering the exhibition
October 12, 2010
Tags: academy, art, maputo, mozambique Posted in: ISAC - KHiO 
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OCTOBER CAMPUS IN MAKING IN ISArC
The newspapers are informing the public about the first biennale in ISArC. This is from the newspaper Scorpion
October 10, 2010
Tags: academy, biennal, maputo, mozambique Posted in: ISAC - KHiO Comments Closed
FIRST BIENNAL IN ISArC IN MAPUTO
ISArC was formally opened just over a year ago. Here is a little blog about that moment. Now the school is in full process, lots of activity on campus and the next milestone will be the first Biennial held by the school, named Bienal 2010, Campus de Outubro. This will become a milestone in the development of creative and cultural industries in Mozambique. I think this is a very good strategy by the director of the school, Filimone Meigos because ISArC is not only a new and first national academy in Mozambique, but also the only one, and the only one in the Portugese African countries. Therefore it is the responsibility of ISArC and its people to drive the dialogue about art, culture and creative industries in the country and the Portugese speaking community in Africa. Such bennial events (plus various other activites in between) will pull together artists and cultural critics regularly to meet and evaluate and hopefully motivate more activity.
The Campus de Outubro starts in the Joaquim Chissano Conference Center in Maputo at 9h on the 27th and then it will continue in the ISArC campus on the 28th and 29th, ending on the 30th in the Matalana Cultural Center.
Many international guests will participate in the campus in addition to the national participants and all the ISArC students and staff. I am looking forward to the activity and the following results.
Design students in drawing class in ISArC first year. This time making self portraits.
October 7, 2010
Tags: academy, art, biennal, creative industries, DESIGN, maputo, mozambique Posted in: ISAC - KHiO Comments Closed
Celeste Rodrigues Cambaza is a Fashion Designer in Mozambique
Celeste Rodrigues Cambaza has been active in Maputo, but has now shifted to Sweden and intends to develop her skills there while also basing her work in the traditions and inspirations from her home country. I helped her put up a simple portal about her work. I hope she will be able to develop this over the coming months. Here it is, a simple freeware.
I wish her well!
October 6, 2010
Tags: DESIGN, fashion, mozambique, sweden Posted in: DESIGN, FASHION Comments Closed
PURE OIL FOR BABIES IN MAPUTO
Video of the oil making
ISArC, the art academy in Mozambique has run its first year and the second intake of students will take place over the Christmas break, which here in the Southern hemisphere is summer holiday. Next March the school will start its second year of full program. But the lower level high school ENAV is 30 years old and graduates ‘finalistas’ and some of them are eager to apply into ISArC for further education. The Icelandic graphic design teacher, Sóley Stefánsdóttir was responsible for the finalistas in graphic design in Maputo this year and her students did various projects. Alice decided to do a packaging project for the oil that her mother makes. Here is a short video showing the beautiful mother and daughter and a bit of the process in the oil making.
The label on the bottle that Alice designed under the supervision of Sóley. For her final she also had to design a poster and general profile material.
In my opinion this is very appropriate design for such a product, has the slight medical look while also being fresh. The logo has a leaf as should be obvious from the materials that are in the oil.
It is great to follow the development of the Mozambican students and to realize the potential from cooperation between a teacher from Europe and a student in Maputo. Their cooperation went very well as with all the students in the school.
October 2, 2010
Tags: academy, DESIGN, maputo, mozambique, oil Posted in: DESIGN, ISAC - KHiO Comments Closed
VISUAL STUDY IN NUUK, GREENLAND
Conversation in the meeting room in the Nordic Institute. The group explaining the project. Katja Nyborg from Napa on the far left.
Our project: VISUAL GREENLAND is one of a number of design strategic projects that I am participating in. It was a course run by our Cirrusnetwork, a network of the schools of design and art in the Nordic Region. This one was specifically enjoyable since we all were in Nuuk for the first time, meeting a culture that is both very close and from far afar. I decided that we should only look at the visual aspects to the Nuuk culture and make a kind of a synchronic study, meaning seeing today as it looks like (of course through the eyes of the foreign voyeur. To go for only visual aspects narrowed the study and made it possible in the short time we had for the visit. I would really like to visit the town again with product and clothing designers to look at other design and production factors.
Presentation in the seminar room of the Nordic Institute. From left: Dori, Katja Nyborg, Boas Møller, Maya, Sarah, Joane, Mats, Leise, Heikki and Arnor.
We were warmly supported by the leader of NAPA (the Nordic Institute in Greenland) Leise Johnsen and all her staff. We got seminar facilities and internet where we held the meetings between our individual voyages into the visual world. We discussed classifications and delegated tasks like: BUILDINGS – SIGNS AND LOGOS – GRAFFITI – LETTERS AND DRAWINGS – TYPOGRAPHY – PLAY – and many more things that we have collected on the website. We were also so lucky to be in Nuuk during the Nuuk Rock Festival and managed to see a few of the bands there.
On the penultimate day we had a meeting with the staff in NAPA to explain our intention with the project, how we are looking and what might come out of it. We have also made our first links to this very large part of the Nordic community and the Cirrus Network that I am the leader of wants to create stronger links there. Now we are planning a small booklet that presents our findings and hopefully generates more interesting projects in design.
The Nordic Institute is a very good building for lots of cultural activity. This image shows the entrance space that is used for exhibitions and various gatherings
October 1, 2010
Tags: architecture, art, DESIGN, greenland, nordic, scandinavian, visual communication Posted in: DESIGN Comments Closed
Jürg Nanni in the Blue Factory
Goddur sitting, Jurg on the left and Dori (action man) on the right.
During the summer weeks in Seyðisfjörður (Iceland) many guest come to town. The small village is actually located in the fjord where the international ferry from Norway, Smyril Line, ports. But the majority of those that linger in town are in one way or other linked to art and design. The town is where the internationally active artist and graphic designer Dieter Roth spent part of his time when he was interested in the naivity of the Icelandic people. Today there are a number of people staying in town living on his legacy – but that is an other story.
This arts orientation in Seyðisfjorður is one of the reasons that there has been established a centre for visual arts in the East of Iceland named SKAFTFELL. Seyðisfjörður also hosts the summer school/art festival LUNGA where over 100 young people come for a large week in July and do workshops with renown artists/designers/teachers.
I spent time in Seyðisfjorður this summer in the Blue Factory, a disbanded herring factory that landed under a snow avalance in the 70’s. It is not permitted to stay there during the snowy winter months because of further avalance fears, but there is great opportunity to use it to house a simple art/design workshop during the summer. Todat there is a clearing process going on to realize this. Here are some images from our time there last July.
PHOTO ALBUM FROM BLUE FACTORY AND LUNGA
But during our stay there we (me and Goddur, professor of graphic design in the Iceland Academy of Art) had many visitors. One of them was Jürg Nänni, a mathematician and physicist that participates in various projects from THE VISUAL PERCEPTION LAB in Switcherland. He was assisting the Check artist Monica Frycova for her performance piece. He had come to solve some technical issues with the Swiss artist Roman Signer.
We had great time with Jürg, somehow there met similar minds in us two and Jurg. Here is a small video of his sound experiments.
September 20, 2010
Tags: art, DESIGN, experimental, iceland, music, seydisfjordur Posted in: DESIGN, PONDERINGS Comments Closed
DANCE AND FROZEN MOVEMENTS
Dancer and light express movement so beautifully. Alison Jaques in Oslo.
Dance is movement, expressing emotions, telling stories, creating moments and images. Photography is photography of frozen moments not of the dance itself. Photography can never express dance. Dance is something that I have started enjoying more every day – as a photographer and spectator – and like to work with dancers or people and movement. In Maputo I never have seen a foreign person dance the local Marabenta dance like the locals do and I prefer to shake to the rythm in my way with that in mind.
Dance on the unfinished stage in Dance Artes, Matola
I am doing some photography these days for a dance group in Oslo to develop material for their website and projects. I also really loved going with the Dance-Jam group in Maputo to the markets to see their interaction with the community through their dance. And I did really enjoy working with Maria Helena Pinto, who is developing the Dance Artes complex in Matola just outside Maputo. Here is a collection of photoshoots that I have made recently.
DANCE AND THE PUBLIC IN MAPUTO, MOZAMBIQUE
September 19, 2010
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ANTI-DESIGN
I must admit that I have long time ago got completely sick of Design as understood by most. It is the development of products and services that nobody needs, the high streets full of far too cheap stuff, produced in underdeveloped communities in factories run by global conglomerates like H+M. 2-3 years ago there was an interview with me in a magazine in Norway and the title of the article was ‘Fuck Design!’
But this does not mean that I do not support the development of design and designers because there are actually other forces that drive designers. The underlying reason for design is
a) to make life easier and simpler
b) to make the world more beautiful
c) to help develop human survival in more harmony with the environment
It is interesting to observe how the design community in general is sick of the direction that design has taken, – - or maybe better to say how design has been taken over by uncontrolled business that has invisible owners and drivers. I am not going to pretend we designers are not responsible for this, we have participated often and for a long time in developing innovation that has none of the three statements as a basis. More often it has maybe been one looked out for but not all. Designers and architects are responsible for many of the disasters that have happened during the last decades. But we can develop and we can change our mind.
The Anti Design Festival is taking place in London these days and I put here some interesting links to the activity. I like the statement about the festival, it says:
“The name, Anti Design Festival (ADF), is not about being against design (or anti-design). It is about challenging the creative threshold of what has become socially correct and acceptable. It is about examining the industry as a whole and challenging the standards that have made us stagnant.”
“Directed by graphic designer Neville Brody, the Anti Design Festival is a spin-off in response to the over commercialized London Design Festival. Instead of being traditional and formal, the Anti Design Festival seeks to be bold and experimental, promoting the unhindered freedom of creative opportunity, which can lead to a true cultural revolution.”
September 19, 2010
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HENRIK VIBSKOV IN LUNGA ARTS FESTIVAL, ICELAND
In the Lunga Arts Festival last summer we met up with fashion designer Henrik Vibskov. He was working with one of the student groups there, named the fashion group. It was fun to follow their progress during the week, develop concept and then adjust to availability of materials and location. The group created a strong performance piece using strong electro music with costumes that played on geometry and pure monochrome colour. This video shows bits of the performance that lasted over two hours.
September 17, 2010
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STARTUPKIDS – A DOCUMENTARY
The office of Matador Media in Reykjavik is located in the University Innovation Facility, a collective space for small aspiring companies
The StartupKids is a working title of a documentary-slash-research work by two enterprising young Icelanders. These are two young ladies that both lost their ‘stable’ job after the crisis in 2008. One of them is an engineer and the other has education in business. When they lost their job, or even before, they had enterprising ideas about projects that they wanted to do, I guess to make profit and at the same time have some influence in Iceland. The are both quite competitive characters and they started their own ‘startup’ company MATADOR MEDIA EHF in Reykjavik, Iceland. They conceived a board game named HEILASPUNI, employed designers and produced it in China. The game became quite a success in Iceland and sold out very fast. I think they are now producing the ‘mark-II’ version for the Christmas market. I have also heard of various other projects that they are planning or working on, like iphone apps for games, teaching board game and other that I am maybe not allowed to tell about at this stage.
The website for the research documentary www.thestartupkids.com
Since they are young entrepreneurs they have become quite interested in the conditions for startups, how it comes about, what types are those that do startups and what are the conditions for such things. So, they have started a simple research into this, travelled around to take interviews with well known startup people on both sides of the Atlantic. The text about their documentary is following:
“The Startup Kids is a documentary about young entrepreneurs who have founded web and media startups in the US and Europe. It contains interviews with tech-leaders of today and tomorrow. The founders of Dropbox, Vimeo, Flickr, WordPress, Posterous and many others talk about how they started their company and their lives as an entrepreneur.”
“Two Icelanders wanted to meet the people who are shaping the Internet. They traveled around the US and Europe and interviewed young web entrepreneurs. The documentary compares differences between environments for young entrepreneurs on both sides of the Atlantic. The objective of the documentary is to motivate young people to take the leap and become entrepreneurs.”
September 16, 2010
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REYKJABYGGÐ, MOSFELLSBÆ
The house seen from below. It is very close to the Varmá river, a river that was previously warm but now the hot springs have been tamed by the local authority district heating system.
Although I work as a facilitator for design and creative people (job description: professor of design strategy) I do actually love to do design myself. It is rather haphazard how that happens, I design shirts, furniture and various other things I like myself. But I am also from the beginning an architect and these days I have mostly had two projects under construction. Last week in Iceland I visited the site of the private house that is being built, and the main frame of the house is just rising. The concept of the house is that it is a traditional house out of timber standing on a pedestal basement that deals with the change in levels etc. I did actually tilt slightly the upper timber part and this form is appearing now. These images show the progress.
The ‘front’ showing the timber construction on the concrete pedestal.
The upper floor will house the bedrooms and bath, kind of private quarters, while the half level houses the living room and kitchen etc.
September 15, 2010
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NUUK, BABYLON, GREENLAND
A block perched on a hill-top flying over the land, no landscaping, no gardening. It is like an alien space ship from ‘Denmark’
Indigenous building is the type of settlement where the accommodation is an integral part of nature and climate. Indigenous peoples are people, communities, and nations who claim a historical continuity and cultural affinity with societies endemic to their original territories that developed prior to exposure to the larger connected civilization associated with Western Culture that is driven by globalization, profit and efficiency measured in consumption. Historically architecture has always been indigenous, wherever on earth. The settlements are part of nature and when the people move away, the building becomes again part of the environment. This is common in Iceland where the old farm-houses are but a little grass hill in the landscape when the people have moved away. The same goes for the log cabins in Norway that become part of the forest floor when they are left.
The typical Corbusien Machine: Villa Savoye (1929), the machine for living in. Celebrating nature but not participating in it. Standing free from the land and indineousity.
Nuuk is a different town. It is a kind of a New Babylon, many examples of which exist in Modern Architecture. There the theory is that the building is a machine for living in (Corbusier), where the building comes from the machine production philosophy, often stands like an alien object in the landscape and enjoys nature from the ‘removed’ distance, almost like looking through a television screen. The Situationist Constant wrote a concept art/architecture philosophy about one of his projects named New Babylon. There the architecture stands in the Dutch landscape, floating over and not participating in nature or climate, but making its own climate: the urban one. Constant writes of the New Nomads, in my mind the ‘other nomads’ as opposed to the ‘real’ nomads. There is no more available an existential space for ‘real’ nomads, they do not exist, the colonized Western world has taken over everywhere.
From the art piece New Babylon by Constant. Tere the architecture is free from land and creates its own nomadic space in urbanism.
Nuuk is a ‘Nuuk Babylon’ where the architecture is non-indigenous, in some cases not touching the land, alien from the land, imported and in opposition to the local (whatever that is) indigenous settlements. The Greenlanders in Nuuk are ‘New-Nomads’ connected to the internet (I am sitting writing this in Nuuk, on internet, fetching references on Google and Wikipedia etc.), the people here (especially the teenagers) are fashionable like in any other town and the supermarket supplies avocadoes and whatever I need for my ‘cultured’ lifestyle.
I have been looking out for this ‘visiting’ element in the built environment, how the houses are here in a kind of a temporary state, looking like they just arrived and might leave soon. The colours are great and remind of the palette of multi produced cars brought into any land. The colours are from the palette of the factory not from the land itself. Even the name Greenland is a propaganda exercise, made up by Icelandic Viking Eric the Red, who settled here first of Western people and wanted more people to come from the ‘Old World’ to the ‘New World’ of the Inuit.
September 5, 2010
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WORKSHOP IN NUUK GREENLAND
It is really interesting to see how the architecture is ‘removed’ from the landscape. It is colourful and stands on legs in many places.
These days we are a small group of people from CIRRUS spending a short time in the capital of Greenland, Nuuk looking at the visual culture. We make decisions about what to look out for while we observe and meet people. Here is a link to a small website that communicates our findings and thoughts.
August 31, 2010
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OSLO NATIONAL ACADEMY MOVES IN NEW BUILDINGS
In Memoriam photo display of the great building that the school has been in for over 100 years.
Here is a link to a photo album from the Academy, old, new and opening party
My school is moving. The National Academy of Art is finally being assembled in one location. My understanding is that this has taken decades to realize and I have been involved in the building process since I arrived here early in the year 2005. I can not reflect on the history before my arrival, but only say that it has been a long and tiresome process to develop the campus that we are now moving into.
The Academy is located in Seilduksfabrikken, an old industrial textile complex on the Akerselva River and the name means: ‘The Factory that Makes Sails’. A stronghold in Norwegian tradition that has existed all from the Viking era actually being fundamental for the Vikings sailing and finding my homeland Iceland in the 9th century and little later America. The urban plan in Oslo has located various institutions of the creative industries along the Akerselva River. This river that runs through the city is the reason for the town developing actually as an industrial mill town 300 years ago.
I have assembled a few photos from the process of moving out of the really great old building on Ullevalsvei, a place of large history and with a soul. Here are also some images from the new premises, a place that has a historical soul from making sails and housing various Oslo creative companies, but now it is our time to create a new soul in the place. We look forward to the day when the students arrive in end of August and at least I intend to concentrate on the positive issues rather than noticing the small problems that are part of moving in.
Happy staff outside the entrance to the new complex in Seilduken
August 22, 2010
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