Sandbergh Wednesday Lectures poster by Anja Groten
Eurovision 3000 report spread by Anja Groten and Janneke de Rooij
It was such a pleasure to meet these brilliant ladies from the Sandbergh Institute last week in Nijmegen. Check out Anja and Janneke’s work and prepare to be amazed by Dutch design goodness!
If you’re in Amsterdam next month, their diploma show The Future’s so Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades promises to be something special.
The Oddstream festival in Nijmegen brought together an eclectic mix of music, art and education under the loose theme of love and conflict. I’m honoured to have been invited to participate in the festival, helping out with the Memefest workshop and the International Media Training. I met many people during a very intensive week, and have made many new friends. So, first off, many thanks to all those that helped to bring me there, specifically Oliver Vodeb, Doeko Pinxt, and Carola Stahl.
Taking off the rose-tinted glasses for a bit (which is not an easy thing to do considering how much fun I had), it was very unfortunate that more people didn’t turn out. Over the course of the weekend, in front of the stages and on the festival grounds, there was a palpable sense of emptiness. In part this can be attributed to the massive scale of the site, or the electronic music festival that was happening at the same time in Arnhem. As a first festival, this is to be expected I suppose, but it also raises some critical questions, as Sandy Kaltenborn brought up during the Inspiration day. What does this area of “cultural transformation” mean to the city, and what is the festival’s relationship to city marketing and gentrification more generally. Who stays and who goes? It will be an interesting question to ask a few years down the line, if the bills get payed.
Produced by the international media crew here at Oddstream, including remixes of my work. I’m very honoured. Paulo and I pushed the idea of abstract documentary and holding the shot too long, and I think the end result works really well!
de Vasim, the site for Oddstream
I’ve been in the beautiful city of Nijmegen for four days now, and the Oddstream festival is getting underway. It’s been an exciting and busy time as I’ve been jumping between mentoring an amazing group of international media students and activists while also participating in Memefest‘s Mapping Socially Responsive Communication workshop. The evenings have been spent reaquainting myself (ie. drinking and drinking some more) with some old friends and collaborators (from declarations days!) and meeting many new ones. My head is swimming, and though genuine insight has yet to set in, I wanted to get some words and images out nonetheless.
