Volume 3, Issue 43 WEEKOF 2 NOVEMBER FREE EVERY TO 8 NOVEMBER 2006 Inside: Music, WEDNESDAY Film, Art and Events PAGE 6 ART versus Plug into our Museumnacht pull-out NATURE PEACE VERSUS PEACE PAGE 4 / INUIT THROAT SINGING BINGO BONANZA PAGE 4 SMART TOILETS OF THE FUTURE PAGE 5 / CRAZY CARTOON WORLD PAGE 8 GOING, GONG AND BACK AGAIN PAGE 13 / CRAZY JAPANESE WORLD PAGE 22 YVO SPREY YVO 6 Amsterdam Weekly 2-8 November 2006 When art is nature A new exhibition highlights the blurring lines between nature, culture and technology. BY KELLY ATKINSON lthough Amsterdam has 28 mastermind behind nextnature.net Koert composing a dreamy merging of pho- E-volver. Breeding natural images? parks within the greater van Mensvoort explains how he began tographs taken in the park of the same city area, it’s often easy to thinking about the topic. ‘[It] started with a name. Driessens and Verstappen took one feel disconnected from story about a young girl who grew up in the photo each week for 12 months, taking that was more than 200 years ago. Today, nature as you go about city. She washed her hair regularly with care to place their camera in exactly the the park mostly seems to consist of rich Ayour daily life. Even in some of the green- pine-scented shampoo. Then one day, same position each time at the various green lawns, as smooth and flat as only est parts of our city—the Vondelpark, when she went for a walk in the woods locations they chose around the park. Lat- reclaimed Dutch land can be. If we could Oosterpark, Rembrandtpark, Park Frank- with her father, she said, “Daddy, the er, using self-designed software, they somehow turn the sound off perhaps it endael—the plants grow on land that has woods smell of shampoo!”’ merged the pictures to give a slowly chang- would be relaxing, but the noise of the traf- been cultivated for centuries. As trees are The Next Nature movement is based ing view of the transformation of the fic seems to be even louder against the felled on streets like Singel and—per- on the idea that nature need not be some- landscape throughout the year. The result peaceful appearance of the surroundings. haps—Bilderdijkstraat in the name of thing that is pre-formed and static; instead, is a subtle, barely perceptible journey Over the treetops, the unmistakable shapes widening roads, and as increasingly effi- like culture, it can also be something that through the seasons. Just as in nature, if of the RAI and the Delta Lloyd building are cient building techniques mean that develops and changes along with society. you stare closely it doesn’t seem like any- visible in the distance. On the far edge of indigenous birds lose their traditional nest- Van Mensvoort continues: ‘Nowadays thing much is happening—but look away the park, the Klein Dantzig volkstuinen ing places in open gutters and crumbling the average child recognises more logos to look back later and the changes are provide locals with a little piece of nature walls, even the smallest signs of the natural and brands than bird or tree species. In the obvious and dramatic. to call their own, as long as they follow the world are being removed from the city Netherlands, prehistoric woods are being Driessens and Verstappen say that one rules: all paths must be kept clean and tidy, landscape and pushed within the bound- laid out at locations designated by politi- of the big problems they had with making about 20% of the garden space must be aries of the parks. This has produced a cians; our image of nature is being carefully the Frankendael works was that the land- used for ornamental plants and shrubs, the strange series of cultivated nature reserves constructed as a recreational simulation. I scape changed so much in some of their rest must be kept free of weeds. Through to which city-dwellers can go to experi- started wondering: do we still have genuine chosen locations that they turned out to be the window of one of the little allotment ence the ‘natural’ environment. This experiences of nature? Or are we living in a inappropriate for the films. ‘We started in houses I catch sight of a man pouring a cup modern paradox of the borders, bound- picture of it?’ These thoughts led Van winter,’ Verstappen says, ‘so the trees were of tea. Getting back to nature, city style. aries and overlaps of nature, culture and Mensvoort and Mieke Gerritzen to launch quite bare and the grass was brown.’ But technology is the subject of Natural Habi- the ‘Biggest Visual Power Show’ at Par- by the time summer came, some of the On the other side of the volkstuinen we see tat, the newest exhibition at the adiso last year, with various artists and areas were so overgrown that the camera the Insectenkring, a series of small curved Netherlands media arts institute Montev- other creative types giving presentations on saw nothing but green. The changes had brick walls nestled between two larger ideo/Time Based Arts. ‘culturally emerged nature’ and the increas- been so striking that they rendered this semi-circles. It turns out that not all bees Set to launch just a few hours before ingly blurred lines between nature and reproduction of the supposedly ‘gentle’ are social insects—who’d have thought the official beginning of Museumn8, the culture. The Next Nature movement organ- changes in nature implausible. it?—according to Van haecke; instead, exhibition gathers together works from ise events, make movies and write texts many of them live alone and raise only their more than 10 different artists and art examining the topic. I make my own trip to Park Frankendael in own young rather than taking care of a groups, from countries as varied as Russia, Watergraafsmeer, along with agricultural hive. These solitary insects used to live in Iceland, the UK, France and the Nether- Alongside a collection of Next Nature engineer Willem Van haecke, to see the the rough places on tree bark or brickwork. lands. The wide variety of works all have images, the artistic team of Erwin city’s ‘nature’ for myself. In the 18th centu- But trees are getting few and far between in one thing in common: they examine Driessens and Maria Verstappen will pre- ry, this was a remote area where the town, and the nooks and crannies in mortar nature. But the question, of course, is how sent two contrasting works. Frankendael wealthy built country houses and got away are not nearly as common as they used to do we define ‘nature’? Artist, scientist and is a collection of nine short films, each from the hustle and bustle of town. But be, due to the modern building products. 2-8 November 2006 Amsterdam Weekly 7 and nature is art ‘There are some kinds of flowers that algorithms and processes, and we used the nature like rural places... but to be con- Frankendael. An unnatural park.? are only pollinated by solitary bees, not by computer to create virtual processes,’ fronted with things you cannot really social bees,’ Van haecke tells me, ‘so when explains Verstappen. Tiny creatures on the control, that’s nature. the solitary bees disappear from the urban screen travel around interacting with the The biomes are quite addictive, and environment, so do some of the plants we pixels, which are each pre-programmed to If that is true, then many of the works at Isley reports that they often see viewers have as well.’ Artist Agnes van Genderen react in various ways according to their Natural Habitat are in fact ‘nature’. Like walking away from the screens and then designed the piece to serve the purpose of surroundings. The viewer selects a number Driessens and Verstappen, the UK duo checking back to see what else might be artwork and environmental aid in one. of variables, such as colour and basic pat- Vicky Isley and Paul Smith, collaborating coming into view. ‘[W]e’re keen to develop As we head back through the main tern, and the result is an unpredictable, as Boredom Research, have produced a works that are rewarding to just watch and park we approach the former stadskweker- uncontrollable image that is constantly and computer-based work that in a sense is therefore you don’t have to read a manual ij, a building left over from the days the rapidly changing. able to take on a life of its own, uncon- to understand how they work,’ she says. property was owned by Gemeente Amster- When the work is in action, it’s uncan- trolled by its creator. Their 2005 project, Isley hopes that exhibitions like Natu- dam and used as the breeding ground for ny how much some of the resulting images ‘Biomes’, consists of six ‘computational ral Habitat are not going to be the only all the seedlings needed for the city’s parks resemble patterns that occur in nature. artworks’ each using a small screen that way that city-dwellers will interact with and gardens. One output looks exactly like spores of can be either wall or table mounted. The nature in the future, although she admits Van haecke says that there is nothing mould, growing so fast it’s as though they screens, only about the size of a television, that even though she lives in south-west new about human growing and harvesting are seen under time-lapse photography. provide the windows to six different virtual England’s New Forest, she often finds her- of plants.