I'm a Finnish-Dutch artist, educator and organiser living in Amsterdam-Noord. In my work I explore the revolutionary potential of collective creativity. As an autodidact DJ, filmmaker and anarchist, clubs are my art school and protests my phd.
I'm a Finnish-Dutch artist, educator and organiser living in Amsterdam-Noord. In my work I explore the revolutionary potential of collective creativity. As an autodidact DJ, filmmaker and anarchist, clubs are my art school and protests my phd.
2021, 2022, 2023, 2024
Collaborators: MR2 Architecture, Karl Klomp
Tags: architecture, art, club culture, film, music, Rotterdam
Designing the Social is an exhibition exploring 100 years of socially driven, idiosyncratic ideas about living together. Sometimes out of idealism, often out of pure necessity, alternative design strategies were developed in the pursuit of an equal society.
Designers, researchers and curators select and (re)interpret pieces from heritage collections and archives in order to tell an assortment of stories about a century of social design.
The exhibition explores the many-sided and sometimes radical interaction between design and society over the past 100 years. Long before the idea of ‘social design’ became popular, professionals, citizens and activists devised design strategies to bring about social change. Based on the work of different researchers, curators and designers, the installation takes the visitor through a series of these striking scenes from social history. The question is always the same: how has design contributed to new worldviews, new forms of living, working and communication, and to a society in which we can all shape our own ideas about the social?
The installation presents themes such as the ‘minimum home’, the socio-economic experiment of the De Ploeg textile mill, and the digital public domain introduced by De Digitale Stad. Case studies draw on the National Collection for Dutch Architecture and Urban Planning. Material also comes from the institutional and informal archives of other collections for design and digital culture. Such collections are a source for questioning and reconsideration. They prove that history is always written from a dominant perspective. The Design of the Social thus connects heritage collections and archives, while exploring new perspectives on the past, present and future of the design disciplines.
ROXY
On 21 June 1999, artist Peter Giele was transported by boat along the Amstel to his grave. A colourful floating parade accompanied the open coffin in which Giele lay, with a crowbar on his chest. Later that day, the legendary Roxy club was in flames.
Together with DJ Eddy De Clercq and publisher Arjen Schrama, Giele founded the Roxy at the end of the 1980s. The birthplace of house music in the Netherlands and a springboard for a new generation of musicians, artists and designers, it was a place where clubgoers delighted in transforming their appearance or gender identity. Freedom and imagination reigned supreme.
The infectious cocktail of music, dance, eroticism, theatre and design was part of a longer history. New generations of post-war artists had used the city as a creative space and so changed society. The Roxy has often been compared to the visionary project New Babylon by the artist Constant. From 1956, he had worked for years on the design for a city that spanned the entire earth and where machines would do the work. People would be free to roam and play.
The Provo anarchist protest movement was another forerunner. Playful artist resistance was linked to an outspoken political and social agenda - against consumerism and for an ecological way of life. Provo became an inspiration for the squatters' movement. Young artists saw how they could claim a place for their work, ideas, studios and encounters.
In an Amsterdam squat, Peter Giele initiated the galleries Amok and Aorta, both run by artists. They turned out to be try-outs for the Roxy, which opened a few years later and where there had to be room "for developing relationships, fantasies and ideas for encouraging and indulging the creative mind."