Produced as part of Robert's residency at Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart between September 2018 and February 2019. Limited edition of 30 copies. I contributed a modular Lovecraft-meets-Computer Music Journal-style short story about ancient civilizations, enormous beasts and n-dimensional sound synthesis.
A performer finds time distorting inside a mysterious cube.
This is the video version of a work which exists in several different versions: video version; live flute, metronome and audio playback version; and live flute, video, audio playback (4 channels), cube installation, furniture-mover, chair, table and metronome version.
A site-specific piece for audience on a beach at night, digging sirens and lights out of the sand. A performative installation involving natural and electronic sounds merged with participative aspects of labour. Digging Piece takes place on a deserted beach at night. The public is given shovels, told to walk in a direction across the beach and to start digging when they hear a sound coming from under the sand. Over the course of half an hour they gradually unearth seven sets of lights and sirens buried underneath the beach, gradually filling the air with light and sound.
Organized by iii (instrument inventors initiative
Many thanks to iii for their support. The work was developed as part of their residency program: http://instrumentinventors.org/residency/adam-basanta-david-pocknee-maya-verlaak/
"Sand Songs was a program specifically conceived for the Zandmotor by an international group of interdisciplinary artists and students that were invited to imagine this location in the terms of a musical instrument that is performed by human activity as much as by the natural elements.
With works by: Marije Baalman, Lars Kynde, Tobias Lukassen, Christian Liljedahl, Ana Lemnaru, Grzegorz Marcinak, Maya Verlaak, Adam Basanta, David Pocknee, Tena Lazarevic, Jesse Smits, Kay Churcher, Cecile Gentili, Sophie Rust.
presented in cooperation with ArtScience Interfaculty, Satellietgroep and TodaysArt on June 18th 2016
The Zandmotor is an artificial peninsula with a surface of around 1 km2 located on the coast of South Holland between the towns of Kijkduin and Monster. Based on the concept of “building with nature”, the Zandmotor was created in 2011 as a defense against coastal erosion. This experimental solution uses the natural movement of the tides to replenish the beaches in the surrounding region. Almost as an ephemeral land art intervention, the Zandmotor is expected to disappear within 20 years.
Sand Songs presented several new works originating in iii’s guest residency program: Wind Instrument by Marije Baalman, in which flying a kite is turned into a new way to make electronic music, Pulse Jet Symphony by Lars Kynde, Tobias Lukassen and Christian Liljedahl, in which the technology of jet engines developed for V1 rockets during WWII is employed to compose music articulating the speed of sound on a geographical scale, and Digging Piece, by Adam Basanta, David Pocknee, Maya Verlaak, Ana Lemnaru and Grzegorz Marcinak, inviting the audience to take part in a musical treasure hunt, searching for sounding objects buried in the sand. These works were presented in combination with projects of students originating in the Elements Lab directed by Cocky Eek at the ArtScience Interfaculty."
- from http://instrumentinventors.org/production/sand-songs/
photos: Pieter Kers | beeld.nu
"Between April and June 2013, The New Fordist Organization was artist-in-residence at the GEMAK gallery in The Hague. Over the course of their residency and exhibition, Robert Blatt, Andy Ingamells, Ana Smaragda Lemnaru, Miguel Peres dos Santos, David Pocknee, Jeremiah Runnels and Leo Svirsky created 93 new works, often with the help of audience participation. New Fordist techniques were applied to orchestral composition, painting, choreography, sculpture, performance and video.
The New Fordist Organization presents the results of its residency at GEMAK, Den Haag. Over the course of this residency, techniques have been developed for the mass-production of music, choreography, painting, film and sculpture in order to explore the economic, political and aesthetic nature of Fordist and Taylorist models of efficiency when applied to the arts.
New Fordism attempts to face the economic realities of contemporary art production by engaging in a radical re-reading of Gramsci and a re-appropriation of Fordist, Taylorist and Pavlovian theories and working methods. This theoretical assemblage is then articulated through the research-led methodology of The Institute Of ACES. The result is an affirmation of historiography as a creative discipline and a set of works which silently ponder on the nature of the creative act, cultural economics, and labor."
For more information, go to: http://nfo.ricercata.org/web/gemakexhibition/gemakoverview
In 2012, I founded the New Fordist Organization artist collective.
"The New Fordist Organization is part of the The Institute of Applied Cultural Economics and Sociology and is a collective of composers, visual artists and performance artists, set up to apply the principles of mass-production, industrialization and mechanized creation, pioneered by the American industrialist Henry Ford, to the visual and performing arts. The collective was founded in 2012 and has exhibited in The Hague and Delft in The Netherlands."
In 2012, I founded The Institute of ACES.
"The Institute of Applied Cultural Economics and Sociology is an independent research organization designed to provide a platform for the use of cultural economics and cultural sociology as the basis for strategic interventions into the art markets. The organization acts as an umbrella group for a set of smaller autonomous organizations, the most notable of which is The New Fordist Organization.
The Institute of Applied Cultural Economics and Sociology believes that the world of the arts is not a meritocracy but instead, due to its integration with capitalism, operates on market principles – the same principles that the fields of economic and sociology are adept at describing. The Institute seeks to use these fields, not as analytic tools, but as creative instruments to enable the transformation of the art markets themselves."
Between 2010 and 2012 I was part of the Acid Police Noise Ensemble collective.
"Acid Police Noise Ensemble is an international collective of composers, visual artists, and performers based in The Hague, Netherlands. Their activities come from a mix of performance art, composition and improvisation, and involve an exploration of "noise" with all of the vague, multi-faceted beauty that it implies.
They have been active since 2010 and perform their multidisciplinary projects throughout Europe. These have included their hour-long, "One-Act Aktionist Chamber Opera" Potlatch, which was first seen at an evening of Neoist art in Worm, Rotterdam; and their three-hour 9/11 concert: Stockhausen Serves Terrorism: 10 Years Of Sodom And Gomorrah, held on 11 September 2011 - a collaboration with the political-art collective Anonynmous Stateless Immigrants. The event coincided with the physical release of their first record Extraordinary Renditions and the publication of the journal Much Too Much Noise.
Their performances have include collaborations with the composer Joseph Kudirka in the Delta Centre for Contemporary Art; the sound art exhibition Eavesdropping, curated by Matteo Marangoni at Villa Kabila; Stations and Tearjerker, two 45 minute sound/performance art events in Rotterdam."