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Together with Franka I spent some time in Dikaia in April 2023, a small village in Greece on the border with Turkey and Bulgaria. Here our friends Eleni & Eleni, who are from Dikia, started a residency project called Cotranspose.

During our time at Cotranspose we researched the power of taking breaks and the fear that can hold us to do so. The fear of being lazy, the fear of underachieving, the fear of missing out. But taking breaks can also be a form of self care and of resistance, and gives space to unexpected encounters, thoughts and ideas. What does it mean to take a break in Dikia, how do the people in Dikia take breaks, and are they experiencing the same fears? With our findings we made a publication, email me if you would like one.

April 2023

During a residency in Porto I worked a lot in Estúdio PLATA, a ceramic studio in Porto run by Joao Garcia. Here I experimented with making ceramics, learning new techniques and making spoons and cups together with Valeria Lehner for our magazine (more about that on the publishing page).

Februari-March 2023

traces - a zine by Lola and me, made for the zine exhibition at Drawing Centre Diepenheim.
It invites the reader to trace every day encounters in different ways.

Stitch and Chat is an embroidery table where, together with Lola Diaz Cantoni, we invite people who pass by to sit with us and join the collective embroidery piece. By doing embroidery together, something that almost everyone can learn and do within a minute, we open up a space to talk open and freely. When you are doing something with your hands, not having to look each other in the eye, it is much easier to talk. You can not say anything and focus on your embroidery, just listen, take part in the conversation or share your deepest secrets.

At SUPERMARKET art fair in Stockholm we presented Vrijplaats Voor Verbeelding in the form of a newsbar. A bar with typewriters were visitors were invited to collect news from the fair and to write about it at the typewriter. From that I made a newspaper.

What's new(s)?

(May 2022)

During September 2020 you could see 34 works of Louwrien Wijers behind residents window throughout Groningen. Each work is a quote from 'when science meets science and spirituality in a changing economy', a symposium organised by Louwrien 30 years earlier in the Stedelijk museum in Amsterdam. Together with ARTisBOOK, Lola and I curated this exhibition; found the windows, hung the posters, made an information centre in ARTisBOOK and organised five different tours by five local artists. Because windows were selected on size many different people got involved in this project.

Summer 2020

On a windy day in the town of Bierum, the Collective Wandering took place. A walk in the fields, over the dike, along the sea and through the village where visitors encountered 11 performances along the way. It aimed to perform a re-enchantment of the Groningen landscape through the use of a form of psychogeographical technique. The performances offered new perspectives, experiences and memories of places. The landscape is no longer a background for the performative life, but an essential part and must therefore be approached in that way.

Flag for the imagination; what do you see through the hole?

Made together with Lola Diaz Cantoni, along with a publication with instructions for ways of looking. 15 flags were spread throughout Bierum, and hanging in flagpoles during February.

Part of Vrijplaats Voor Verbeelding.

Vrijplaats Voor Verbeelding is a one year project in Bierum at the Bierumer School, an artist in residence place. During the year we traveled around with a kiosk (on the left), and have developed methods, tools and situations to look at and experience our own environment in different ways. Such as walks, installations, workshops and happenings. Every month I made a newspaper, to reach in pandemic times people at home through the mailbox. During the year I worked together with many artists, both in doing things as in making installations and newspapers.

Supported by the Mondriaan Fund, Kunstraad Groningen, Stichting Stokroos.

(Februari 2021 - Februari 2022)

Part of Vrijplaats Voor Verbeelding.

During autumn I did a residency with No Discipline Limited at HKICC creative school in Hong Kong. Here I did collective printmaking sessions using different techniques. I was making ceramics, and closing off the residency with a dinner using the ceramics made. I also made a publication where you can read about my experiences and research on Hong Kong and moving by foot through the city (more about this on the publishing page).

October-November 2023

Tea Mobile is a pink cart that carries around six blue stools, a teapot, a thermos with hot water, tea from Azerbeijan and some snacks. This cart traveled in the summer of 2019 around the city of Groningen, and became a tea stall in different public spaces in the city. Once installed we invited people to come and join us for a cup of tea and a conversation. This conversation started with the question: “how was your day?”. Some people would stay for fifteen minutes talking about their day, others would spend two hours with us talking about their life.

The concept of Tea Mobile is inspired by the tea shops in the streets in Vietnam, as in the teashops in Vietnam, Tea Mobile is a space to meet, share and drink tea. The design of Tea Mobile is inspired by T-Mobile, the telephone company, but instead of offering an online platform to connect, we offer an offline platform to connect. A collaboration between Giang Nguyen, Rafiq Bassova and me.

Art as a tool is the graduation work of Collective Constructs, a collective by Lola and me, and fluctuating other members. The installation invites people who visited the graduation show to sit down for a coffee or tea, have a conversation, read, relax and maybe leave something behind. With this we made a daily zine, representing the views, ideas, thoughts and visuals of the visitors. We also had different friends going around the exhibition interacting with visitors and asking them about the works they were seeing.

Together with Floor van Meeuwen we went into the Tarwewijk in Rotterdam with a mobile clay studio and invited passers by to clay something for the neighborhood. After firing and glazing we made a public sculpture route with them. Floor also made a small publication with a map to find all the sculptures.

August 2023

One of the walks during Vrijplaats Voor Verbeelding

Drawing by Laureen Langkamp

drawing by Floor van Meeuwen

During the same time I worked on the project 'we see us', in which I invited passers by on the street to paint a word or sentence on a tile that expressed their thoughts about the use of public space. In Portugal many buildings are decorated with hand painted tiles. In the city centre of Porto there are a lot of abandoned buildings, that often miss tiles. The tiles painted by passers by would be placed on abandoned buildings at the places where a tile was missing; reclaiming public space. I've documented all tiles and made into a small publicaton.

Homescreen is an online platform presenting artists and musicians in time of lockdown. Every Friday night 9 artists and musicians present works, and there is an artist talk they participate in. After lockdown Homescreen continued as Homezeen, publishing zines with contributions of various artists. A collective with Kamile Cesnaviciute, Lola Diaz Cantoni, Radina Kordova en Thomas Scholing.

(March 2020 - ongoing)

Mahalas is Greek for hanging out. It's when older ladies go for a walk together and at some point decide to put their chair somewhere in public space to hang out, chat and enjoy the sun. Together with Laureen Langkamp we took over a small cafe in Dilofos in Greece during our Cotranspose residency. In the months towards the residency we made ceramics to serve coffee in at the cafe, made a screen to print aprons, tablecloths, and the tshirts of our guests. During the two week take over of the cafe we hosted workshops, gatehrings and a birthday party. (spring 2024)

𝓂𝓊𝓁-𝓉𝒽𝑒𝑒-𝒻𝓊𝒽𝓃𝑔𝓀-𝓈𝒽𝓊𝒽-𝓃𝓁 is an interactive and dynamic meeting space that evolved with every interaction. You could read publications from our collections, work on a growing ceramic 𝓈𝑒𝓇𝓋𝒾𝑒𝓈 by making objects from clay, and enjoy tea or coffee and sometimes a workshop or happening. In the fresh clayed objects people were invited to write with vermicelli letters words or sentences from the exhibition, from your thoughts or based on whatever letters you find. During the exhibition clay pieces that were made were fired and glazed by us, and put back in the space to be used by the next visitors. At the end of the exhibition we hosted a food gathering using the ceramics, after which everyone could take theirs home!

Part of the program were several workshops by us working with clay, screenprinting and making a rice zine. In the last weekend Family Dinner Rotterdam gave a workshop making ink from food scraps.

This is a project together with Floor van Meeuwen and everyone who joined, and was part of the beautiful exhibition 𝓊𝓃𝒹𝑒𝓇𝒹𝑒𝓋𝑒𝓁𝑜𝓅𝑒𝒹 curated by reinaart van hoe and Reza in Garage rotterdam.

Together with Floor van Meeuwen we gave a clay workshop making candle holders to have a delicious dinner by candle light at co^event organised by Cotranspose and Radiometrics in De Tanker in Amsterdam.

After this project Floor and me continue to work as the collective mul-thee-fuhngk-shuh-nl (phonetically for multifunctional). We research the multifunctionality of creating spaces for making together and presenting art, research, gathering, eating, and working with clay