Wednesday 25 February 2009

Sunday brunch with contributions by the artists

We gathered in the studio space for a nice meal and via Skype Jonas Ohlsson and Daniela Bershan joined us at the table.
At the moment they are celebrating Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro and told a bit about the bailafunk parties in the ‘favelas’ and the drumbands on the street, which I actually spotted one on the street in the Bijlmer, the day before...of course Carnaval is celebrated in the Netherlands as well.
Luckily the Brazilian / Latin American traditions have found their way to the Bijlmer, instead of the Catholic Carnaval traditions from the South of the Netherlands…

Bailafunk is a very popular sort of music mainly produced in Rio de Janeiro. Jonas and Daniela combined the influence of living in the Bijlmer with the characteristics of this music and presented their record.

All the artists prepared a short presentation of their inspiration or working method.
Marcel showed parts of a Dutch documentary on the downfall and revival of the Bijlmer architecture. He talked about his interest in Utopian architecture, which is also the fragile funding of the Bijlmer.

Maurice showed us on the internet all the webcams in the Bijlmer, which were mainly cameras in computer server spaces. He used one of these online webcams to create a scale model of the space that was watched and create a narrative/story on the developments within the confinements of this space.
On the website you can see two live videos placed next to each other on the page. These videos show recordings of the original webcam and the recordings of his scale model.

The source material for the ‘alternative’ google map of the Bijlmer was presented by Regina. She showed amazing photographs of the weirdness of the surroundings and told a bit about her fascination with these kinds of images. She will create a ‘zoom in and out’ map of the Bijlmer based on her photographs.

Pilvi presented her working method for this project. The last few weeks she visited several religious services in the Bijlmer and asked these people to pray for her. She collected websites and phone services for prayers on request, most of the Dutch phone numbers are based in the Bijlmer…
She made several audio recordings, which she will present at Flatstation in the Bijlmer and she’s preparing her performance this Thursday (26 February). Come to the Florijn 42!

Marktplaats.nl (Dutch Ebay) provided the main characters for the project by Constant Dullaart. He researched the services offered in the surroundings of Florijn 42 and he will invite some people who provide very different services to the Florijn to create a ‘bonte avond’: join us at Florijn 42 this Friday!
This group of people create the basis for the work he’s developing on the internet, see posting: Ghetto Princess...

Stay in touch and keep a close eye on our website: www.mihan.flatstation.nl

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