Rietveld 3

to Coen, to Paula

Confirm once more there's a lot of material to work with. I'll just take the drafts of the letters you'd send me as a starting point. (We might post the drafts, the corrections and the final letter on the blog) In the letter addressed to Paula you attempted to quickly and in general terms describe our approach to Rietveld: "How one can make, transform and live in and with space" and very much connected with your interest in the Schroeder house: "how one can delineate a self-initiated space to work in through working with it". However my corrections -"His far reaching influence and how his ideals are being transformed/altered in the present day context... or... how different social, economical, psychological conditions influence perception of his designs."- aren't really clear either. This and the remark about claiming Rietveld as a space of personal design opposed to "the transpiring effect of Modernist mass production ethic where any particularity is reduced to simple and repeatable forms that we can all have access to" pushed my thinking about Rietveld a step further. Some time ago you told me that it was about time for you to make an aesthetic object that the beholder of it desires. This is exactly how I see our interest develop in the direction of Rietveld's designs; it has very much to do with a kind of instant statisfaction, partly due to it's recognizability and openness. As you said our interest in him is seductive. But the real quality we or at least many others like to claim is the specific 'aura' (the attitude of Rietveld, the ideal to change society) of these objects, emerged in their perception, gained through their history. This is also a lost (absent) quality, something that cannot be retrieved again, because society has changed tremendously. He is also an interesting figure to me because he worked form the early 20's till the 60's both very important decades, where from two major economical shifts, new attitudes within art and design towards society evolved. (1. I don't like to speak in these general terms, this is just to offer another point of view on the whole matter) (2. I have the idea that Rietveld in the 60's, bu now a celebrated architect, built a few cultural institutions) To get back to the proposal; how to work with/treat these pieces of Rietveld furniture owned by Coen and Paula? Articulating the personal experiences related to these objects, claiming Rietveld as a space for personal design, is completely in line with the present mode of value creation. This is actually quite strong statement/potential, in the setting of the museum, where we will choreograph our own space with his pieces. The Rietveld furnitures do not deny any of the viewer expectations, even more it advances these expectations, it makes them even more desirable. This is why I think the drawers or doors of Coen's bureau should remain closed and have only the literal surface to project on. Then it doesn't give anything away of it's content (the bureau's interiority, let's say). Then it does become an 'open' surface. It becomes an open surface because we choose to project on it, which highlights the surface as a surface. Then, I also understand what we could call a kind of aggressive attention (twist) to the content (the story) If I would think of an 'open surface' as such, it would be a non-specific, functional support. The kind that I felt was missing in the Piet Zwart exhibition. Hope you can still follow me here. It does help that Coen's bureau is not painted, I really hope it doesn't have any kind of finishing at all, just plain wood.

Objectification

Just thinking a little more about the objectification of our subject allowing us to become detached viewers, and that also the subject becomes the object to apprehend...

This is from the book I'm reading now

"If anything, the every day function between people and things, reminds writers both of the literary potential of objects and the material limits of subjects...Contemporary inquiry on the subject/object dialectic then to theroize subjects and to historisize objects. I have elected to follow the lead of the writers themselves [Keller,Dickinson, Freud and Proust], treating objects as viable philosophical subjects and subjects as tenable material objects" pg 16.

"Still the question remains , what connects the interior furniture of houses to the interior furniture of minds?"

From 'A Sense of an Interior- Four Writers and the Rooms that Shaped Them', Diana Fuss, 2004

This above text also reminded me of an engraving I saw once when St Francis of Assisi (the engraving was 16th Century I think) and he is at a table with animals, like he is conversing with them...well obviously, but it's a really lovely image.

Is how we could describe the provider/user relation, the public/private relation in the project?

Interior Design

Ricostruzione- Disertori/Libera-the video Towards a Historical Fable about Modernist Architecture and
Psychology,by Tom Holert, with Claudia Honecker for Manifesta 7.
quite alot of crossovers for us here..

www.ricostruzione.isvc.org/video

Abstract

The material describes space and by that evokes the imagination of a bodily object

MODEL 2-COULD BE INTENSIFIED COULD BE CAUGHT ON FIRE

After visiting the Design store to look at the Gipsen globe lamps. The store was very special, you had to ring a bell to get in which I liked immediately. The woman lives above the store with her husband, the building used to be a bakery so they have lot of room, former kitchens, former store front, and upstairs. There is a show room whne you enter but she took me to the "other rooms", which there were 4 of, and each of these rooms are more blurring with the distinction of storage/display. She does painting restoration as well. The globe lamps can be specificed, we can choose which length to have them hanging from the ceiling. She has read all of Janet Frames books, I sort of offered to lend her 'Towards Another Summer', I really wanted her to invite me into her private home space. I have no boundaries they are all gone.

Today we climbed up the side of the JVE building to look inside Koens office to see the Rietveld bureau, which is a replica of a very early replica of a bureau I saw at the Centraal Museum in Utrecht (the drawer pictured below was saved from the original cabinet itself, rumour has it, when the house it was in caught on fire it was saved because of the Albert Heijn zegels were inside it). The bureau in Koens studio is not painted.

COULD BE INTENSIFIED COULD BE CAUGHT ON FIRE
The red plexi glass is moveable and can be shifted but in keeping with your commentary ti should be having light form one direction
The plexi glass would work with a section of lowered ceiling
This would have the globe lamps hanging from it, at least 3 in different lenghths, all on timers
Below the lights the words "IF I EVER FILMED THIS TEXT" would be displayed
Near to this would be a monitor with Baldessari SINGS Le Witt
On the other side of the plexi would be the bureau from Koens office, the sliding doors would be open and it would become a projection screen for a video (which one?...at the workers cottage, the building site between Tilburg and Breda, the neighbours builidng their terrace, this sitll image of the housing saying NO Music, something we don't know about yet)
On the other side of the bureau would be Paula's Rietveld chiar with one of the t-shirts draped on it, like the proposal you made for the Job Square, the quote could be
"by saying ‘artistic agency’ I mean an ability to do or not to do. It’s about orienting oneself, I suppose everyone wants this”
The Hoffman table could be in a long line
The fan could blow the batik fabric hanging near to David's poster reading THIS SHOULD NOT BE PERFORMED

After suggesting this, there is alot to consider in relation to the earlier post about the JVE audotorium furniture. Just thinking with the space?

Passive Design-Agressive Generosity

1. There is a lot of material here already to work with-in reading over the comments so far and referring back to our originial proposal I think that we start to use the conceptual framework as a physical one which I find very appealing, in that short introduction where I mention Rietveld's relationship to writing as “ Rietveld never liked to write although he did it often, it was said that he was a better speaker than writer. Considering his relationship to space, this seems to make sense, that is, if we agree that the act of speaking is sculptural; each spoken word is placed in the space in the way one might place a wall/chair/lamp/table. It has also been said that when he wrote he repeated things, one could say that by writing in this way he was getting physical, one could see a movement, a winding, a layering, a building up.”
We start to do that with the way we are circling the conceptual framework, moving things out, bring things back again. That things start to look like the video you made where you use this very long brush to paint out the mirror, all the time the relationship between the action, the reflected action, the mediated gesture and what is really going on is blurring between each other. The relationships are not clear but they occupy space.
2. WRITER/READER
We blur this, and we blur the roles between provider and user, I find it liberating to feel that I can move between both. We blur these relations to make something that is neither and both. I think the way that we are deflecting from ourselves by working so much on the frame work of the project, and it is a good point that we obejctify it somehow to say that we participate like ad detached other. (is this where the relatiaonship with deisgn, especially something like pre-fab design from Hoffmann could come in?) But by deflecting I think we make a space that is open enough for us to enter again as that viewer, that reader, why we have the ability to work consequently work on our OWN frameowrk, by making a gesture that is passive design (maybe a very shaky term but I mean something like a recognizable, that acts a preface or introduction, it sends a signal out that is enough to make it open, and then somehow by using a symbol that is recognizable, like lets say a Gipsen globe lamp, a red plexi glass from a dark room, we close it down, the generous - or empty symbol- becomes aggression because it defies the expectation and speaks in its own key, poses in a way you don't expect it to. Does that make sense, could this be true, or is this the sexualized thing, denying the fantasy but staging the seduction.
This what makes these physical surfaces very important I think
3. CASE STUDY- potential example of passive design/aggressive generosity
In the work of Slovakian artist Julius Koller it has been descirbed that he 'did what was NOT needed in the tone of what was needed DESPARATELY- by passively creating/delineating a service that was not asked for he is designing a pose that is generous and agressive, one is always uncomfortable when you see something presented to you as if it is what you needed even though you didn't even know it was an option.
4. MOVING FURTHER- TRANSFERENCE OF SPACE ALLOCATIONS- STUDIOS, BEDROOMS, HILLOPS
So bringing it from this aggressive-generous space back to how usage is assigned, with the provider and user, the reader, writier, then this can be the way to introduce how to work with the format of the JVE furntirue form the auditorium and as well the extension of the invitations to the personal furntiture of Koen and Paula, how to invite them as participants into our space in ways they don't quite recognize, yet it uses the form of the invitation and also sincelery. I think we are reallocating values, somehow,or relations, I find this important (and brings us to the staged fight at the Rietveld workers cottage- .How do we get physcial with RELATIONASHIPS????

This photograph is under-exposed, please would you intensify it?

red plexiglass

Rietveld 2

View exhibition > reference to my interpretation of a Rietveld miniature/ model/ montage/ monument/ shelf

Rietveld

1.Detail add table

2.Small table

3.Drawer