LABORAL - CENTRO DE ARTE Y CREACIÓN INDUSTRIAL

ASSEMBLAGE / ABSORB / DIALOGUES / SUBVERT

DANIEL EATOCK

Transitions, 2007

After viewing Transitions, I remembered a Quicktime video I had seen on an avant-garde art website. The film was Hans Richter’s Rhythms 21, from 1921. The two films are quite similar at times, as both feature wipes from white to black and black to white. But Transitions is composed of reductions. Content, duration and sequence are reduced to their simplest form by using the structure of the PowerPoint software. On the other hand, Rhythms 21 is about expansion. Previous to the creation of Richter’s movie, the art of film had been pictorial, almost classical, compared to what was happening in the other arts. When Richter removed the actors and scenes that ordinarily dominate film he expanded the notions of film, painting and, generally, visual art. Transitions reduces the visual overload we now live with to its most basic elements. In my opinion, both films make a clear statement on their respective time periods. They are like two points travelling on the same spiral—
one inwards and one outwards.

Alarm Dance, 2007

Daniel Eatock spent two months in 2007 living and working in Vilnius (Lithuania). He noticed that car alarms were constantly interrupting the peace. The alarms were so sensitive that even a whisper would set them off. One day, out of sheer frustration, Eatock left his desk, found the car whose alarm had been interrupting his peace every five minutes, and waited patiently for the siren to switch on. When the siren sounded, he started dancing like a madman. He made videos of several of his car alarm dances, never touching the car, only dancing to the sound pollutants.

By Derek Maxwell

Chair Balance, 2008

Designers, painters, and photographers often refer to an image, page, or form as looking “balanced”, a subjective description suggesting that the image, page, or form appears comfortable and harmonious. Everybody remembers being a child and leaning back on only two legs of a chair. A special sensation is created when the body is suspended momentarily, neither falling forward nor backward. The moment the chair inches back, the body reacts by throwing legs and arms forward to counterbalance, resulting in a feeling of butterflies in your stomach.

www.eatock.com

SANTIAGO CIRUGEDA Recetas Urbanas, 2007

For the last decade Santiago Cirugeda has been developing subversive projects in different areas of urban reality which help him to tolerate our complicated social life. His projects range from systematic occupations of public spaces with containers to prosthetics specially built for façades, courtyards, roofs and even vacant lots. And all this happening somewhere between the legality and illegality which reminds us of the huge control we are constantly under. For that purpose, he has generated protocols of action appearing in several mass-media,
websites and publications. The author only warns us as follows: “All urban recipes are for public use, and any citizen wishing to, can use them for their strategic and legal development. A comprehensive study of the different locations and urban situations citizens wish to intervene in is strongly recommended. Any physical or intellectual risk as a result of using such recipes is the responsibility of the citizen.”

www.recetasurbanas.net

THE STUDIO OF FERNANDO GUTIÉRREZ Identidad de la Exposición y diseño del catálogo

The identity for Nowhere/Now/Here is inspired by the immediacy of the Exhibition elements and items. For the typographical spirit, The Studio of Fernando Gutiérrez has drawn inspiration from a conventional mundane ticket print out typeface called Checkout Condensed. You don’t normally see this font used so large. Throughout the Exhibition tape is used for navigation as a form of creating a guiding route or area, identifying the different concepts, and this has been echoed within the catalogue. Although the catalogue looks conventionally bound when closed, once opened the binding is revealed showing what looks like unfinished binding. Thus, the physical process of the catalogue as a product is highlighted. This is something The Studio of Fernando Gutiérrez wanted to celebrate, as we don’t normally see or are not aware of the binding process.

www.fernandogutierrez.co.uk

MAUD TRAON Post Apocalyptical Series, 2006-2007

“Grass grows from the middle. How can we create uniqueness, develop sense from this chaotic mass of objects, of proper names and references that account for our everyday life?” (Gilles Deleuze). In her work, Maud Traon tries to understand the new network of signs and symbols we are living and moving in. The output is a cross-over of references, techniques and aesthetics which aim to erase the usual codifications and social landmarks we used to hold on to. A world of quick sands where one has to look for one’s self in order to build and rebuild the new real values it seems we all are looking for.

AMIDOV Parkenlicht, 2008

Today, headlights are designed as integral to automobile morphology, positioned on the sides of the front–like eyes, a testimonial memory of the lanterns used to define the width of a horse drawn carriage on a dark road. An intriguing object in its own right, it embodies achievements of design and engineering; incorporating mechanics, electronics and optics with multiple materials and colours and infinite shapes and surfaces. Amidov’s fascination with the headlight began when holding such an object, with no car to distract, its complexity and volume reviled like an iceberg out of water. When transferring the headlight from its rich natural surroundings to the indoors, Amidov felt compelled to let its personal characteristics lead to a new stand-alone object. The components were reworked with an eye on typologies from the Lighting Design field. The works are part of a series of objects that emerged from a “studio study” process, reflecting on and generated from disembodied automobile headlights.

www.amidov.com

MARTA BOTAS & GERMÁN R. BLANCO Rara de raro, 2006-actualidad

Rara de Raro is a joint project between the designer Marta Botas and the enologist Germán R. Blanco. This venture is the result of several collaborations in different projects and a friendship lasting many years, but above all this project came about thanks to the enthusiasm for working together in noncommissioned projects.
The first version of Rara de Raro was called R. Osadía. A wine emerging from the memory which insolently cries out to remind us about the past, which asserts that our ancestors already produced wines, and attempts to recover the tastes of those wines which are not so old and that were drunk in Spain before elegant wineglasses and fastidious formalities were introduced; when wine was drunk for pure pleasure in ordinary Duralex glasses.Rara de Raro # 2, El año del desastre, dates from 2007 as a result of a late year which devastated most of the vineyards at the Ribera del Duero. This wine is the outcome of frozen grapes taken from hundredyear- old stocks which any enologist would have rejected, becoming from its conception a different
work, created with not very noble materials according to the quality standards of today, but which, once concluded, becomes as a whole an incredibly special, unique and perhaps unrepeatable product.

 http://martabotas.com/

OLIVIA FLORE DECARIS & TIAGO DA FONSECA Imagine Footballs, 2008

The project was born from a collaboration with Imagine Leather Works, who produces shoes for exotic dancers. From the inspiring catalogue and the 15 minutes at their installations, the designers developed a method of randomness to create footballs with the leftovers from their production, footballs for grown-ups. A group of symbolic objects that bridges two distinct worlds who have walked hand in hand for decades: vigorous football players and exotic escorts.

http://tiagodafonseca.com/

Volume- Foam Filled Pattern Cut Chairs, 2007

The seats are made out of big sheets of pattern paper or wallpaper, filled with expanded polyurethane foam. The folded structure acts as a mould and as “upholstery”.

Cut Attachez, 2007

Simple runner attachments that allow a drawer to be added to any flat surface. “Two lines with 15 slants are cut into the surface and a sheet of metal is inserted into each in order to have the wooden drawer then simply wedged between them” (Anna Bates, Icon, October 2007).

Bin Bag Bear, 2006

A council bin-man had a peculiar imagination: he could see teddy bears in every object he observed. No one at work could stand his excited cries every time he shouted, “look at that bear...look at that one... don’t throw it into the garbage crusher… nooooo!” Of course he was fired from his job, and lost his family and friends. Yet even though many people thought he was strange, none of them would admit that they too saw the teddy bear bin bags dumped around the streets of London.

ALEJANDRO MAZUELAS This is not a Souvenir, 2008

How can we connect the local with the global? How can we adopt a contemporary creative language? And transmit all this from a local Asturian perspective... This region is full of traditions and contradictions, being highly industrial yet also located in stunning natural landscape. Pure chaos... but I love it! Anyhow, I want to represent the guerrilla attitude of the Asturian people, workers protests… We are a ballsy region, just think of all the battles we fight …. It’s absolutely incredible! Pitched battles in the cities, banners, megaphones… are part and parcel
of the image of Asturias. Metal sheets are another product of Asturias … Many products are made of metal sheets, because it is a durable, strong and virtually unbreakable material... which can be reused and recycled…
This project transforms these elements into representative objects of this region, a communication tool in the urban space.

- Alejandro Mazuelas. First Prize in the ESAPA /
DesignLAB Industrial Design Contest

TROIKA Gijón Magnética, 2008

The installation presents a chaotic assemblage of electric/electronic objects, commonly found in the houses of the 21st century. The inherent order behind this chaotic assemblage is revealed by the electroprobes. The various objects are arranged by their electromagnetic tunes in order to create a magnetic “orchestra” that the user is able to hear with the probes. Troika wanted to reveal their dreams and inaudible dialogues, while creating an alternative taxonomy of the objects in an apparently chaotic sound organ. Electronic objects have a wide range of electro-tunes: a fridge is bassy and warm, so is a TV screen. A LED display board sounds like medium rain. You can also find percussion in the electromagnetic realm: a wireless telephone will pulse hard bass beats, clocks with seconds will provide damp strokes, the soundscape created by this apparently chaotic sound organ is various, intriguing and ever-changing. 

www.troika.uk.com

ERNESTO OROZA Sofá Provisional, 1995

Ernesto Oroza designed this seat for the 1996 exhibition, Agua con Azúcar. The object shares its characteristics with the thousands of other objects that could be found in Cuba throughout the 1990s. Ernesto Oroza was interested in reconsidering the notion of raw material and swapping it for that of “object- material.” In other words, existing objects were treated as his raw material, a trait also found in the solutions and provisional objects of that characterize period. The “parts” that integrate these objects seem ready to return to their original functions. Along with providing a productive strategy, the alibi of “the provisional” projected the belief that Cubans shared in the transitory nature of the economic and political crisis that befell the Island with the disappearance of Socialist Europe. The Sofá provisional is a precursor to the Objetos de necesidad.

http://oroza.net/