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
At the beginning of 2015, the artist organization Stroom (one of the main funders of the New Fordist Organization GEMAK residency) invited us to put together a small exhibition of the work from our exhibition to display in their offices at Hogewal 1-9 in The Hague for 7-8 weeks. It included video, audio and visual documentation of the GEMAK residency, and paper versions of "The New Fordist Manifesto Residency Report" available to view.
The New Fordist Organization took part in a group show at Kadmium in Delft entitled "TIME BODY VIEWER", along with The Holls Collective, Sara Campos, and Thomas van Linge.
Our contribution was a film and performance, entitled "Part One", created using our New Fordist Acting Technique along with some new filming and audio techniques developed specifically for the project.
Residency Report (full documentation)
"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."
