Requiem for a city hall (1994)
The Requiem was a broadly remembered urban ritual in the shape of a multimedia performance to mark the occasion of the demolition of Groningen’s former city hall. The requiem was a collage of image and music, performed by 80 musicians from out the windows of the dismantled skeleton of the building. A group of drummers, a string orchestra, a free jazz band, a brass band, an opera singer, a pop singer and a screaming poet performed together. They were accompanied by the hypnotic movement of a demolition-ball that swung like a metronome. About 5000 passersby watched the performance. Commisioned by the Department of Urban Planning Groningen.
Mobile (2001)
Mobile was a very successful urban expedition for the international architecture festival Blue Moon in Groningen. The theme of the festival was the exploration of new urban territories and the new functionality of cities. Participants went on a tour through private spaces of the unknown city: through bedrooms and kitchens, over rooftops, through gardens and hollow bridges, underneath a cinema screen…The urban exploration also involved the virtual domain as the tours were accompanied by a live broadcast of tapped mobile phone conversations and reports from participants all over the city. The expedition was rounded off with the worlds’ first ‘SMS ringtone concert’ by 250 mobile phones. During 6 evenings about 1500 people took part in the expedition. Commisioned by the Blue Moon festival.
In collaboration with KPN research. Teams: Mark Bain, Eddie d, Debra Solomon.
Lowlands on a pedestal (2001)
A technical collaboration with artist Anne Hilderink projecting slowly panning wide-screen landscapes of the Groningen country side on the outer walls of the Groningen City hall.
Making Martians Earthwise (2002)
Short film that ironically tries to explain mankind to aliens as a social commentary on immigrant assimilation programs and human haughtiness in general. The movie is split into two parts. The first part is a mockumentary of scientists studying earlier serious attempts of NASA to inform alliens about life on earth. The second part is the instruction video the so-called scientists in the first part came up with.
The video was screened in public space and on the Dutch National film festival in one-person assimilation capsules and was allegedly transmitted into space by Russian Scientists.
Actors: Remco de Haan, Maria Tuni, Peter de Kan, Niek Schutter, Alicia Ziff.
Camera Gerad Harens, Animation: Mo Stoebe, Script, Edit, Music by Thuur Caris, Director: Nathalie Beekman
This is not Kings X (2002)
This is not Kings X was a ‘psychospheric measurement expedition’ by Pavlov’s heteronyme ‘The Society for the promotion of Urban Wellbeing’ as inspired by the ‘derive’ of the Situationist International (‘68’s). The expedition took place in the London borough of Kings Cross. Inhabitants were encouraged to get lost in their well known habitat by searching for alternative pathways. Since 1994 heeft Pavlov had done these psychospheric measurements, in collab with many other artists and inhabitants. The aim was to search for the non-functional qualities of cities; mapping the city as an adventure. The output was a mental map; a mish mash of ideas, dreams, memories of the inhabitants. Through playful manipulation, provocative questions and creative assignments they were encouraged to phantasize about the city and its unbridled possibilities.
Commissioned by Architecture Foundation London.
Music for Tongues (2003)
Composer/musician Jurgen Veenstra produced electronic music in collaboration with a chef de cuisine. Both music and food were “fed” to a blindfolded audience, creating a sensual interaction between the senses of ear and tongue.
City in a Room (2003)
City in a Room was an experimental 24 hour pressure cooker workshop inspired by the concept of evolutionary architecture of professor John Frazer. This concept holds that cities should be grown instead of built. In this experiment, a city was grown in one single room during 24 hours. In five shifts, each with a duration of about 5 hours, multidisciplinary teams consisting of 75 artists, architects, composers, musicians, philosophers, archeologists and project developers were challenged to reflect on, grow and change a city in a room. Without a master plan to guide the workshop, the shifts created a spontaneous action-reaction pattern; out of this dynamic something between a mini-civilization process and a social experiment evolved.
With participation of S333 Architecture + Urbanism, Onix Architects, Platform GRAS, What! Architecture, TU Delft, faculty of architecture.
Transit (2004)
Media Artist Nelleke Koop filmed the interiors of the premises paralel to a train track leading from Groningen to Leeuwarden. This video was projected in the interior of the commuter train during its otherwise routinely journey. Showing the invisible interiors and landscapes beyond normal visibility the video installation gave the passengers an telepresent travel experience.
Labyrinthos (2005)
Labyrinthos was a ‘country in residence’ project in which Estonian photographer Peeter Laurits, his work and his surroundings of the Estonian primordial forest, were present in the public space of Groningen. It involved a daily broadcast of a live internet videostream by private satellite from his hut in the forest. This was projected onto a huge warehouse wall in the city center of Groningen. The spectators were in the street but at the same time inside the artist’s hut in the primordial forest with its pagan rituals, dreams, myths and silence. As this was a project in public space, hundreds of citizens saw- and interacted with it.
In collaboration with Aasat Satellite Estonia.
Tomato Workshop/Masterclass (2005)
Led by Michael Horsham and Joel Baumann of the design group Tomato (UK) a class of Groningen based videographers produced live video projections accompanying the music of Harrison Birtwistle performed by the Northern Dutch Symphony Orchestra. None of the video footage was pre-recorded. All imagery was filmed live using models, maquettes and installations.
The Well (2006)
As a resident of the Pavlov Medialab Sjanet Bijker designed an interactive “Well” as a dispenser of personal stories in public space. Messages, musings or statements could be typed in on a dedicated website after which this text would be vocalised by a female speech computer and broadcasted from speakers hidden in a vibrating large basin that was placed on several public locations in Groningen City.
Do the Rooftophop! (2006)
This project consisted of a prototype building workshop for mobile rooftop dwellings, City on a Roof, and an urban expedition on the rooftops, Do the Rooftophop! Both projects were aimed at the exploration of the unused possibilities of ‘rooftop domains’ as to bring up a free and creative playground in a highly commercialized city center.
The building workshop City on a Roof took place on top of the creative hub of an old Pudding factory (Puddingfabriek). Nine teams of architects and artists worked together on prototypes of mobile shelters on the rooftop and the adjacent tree.
Architecture teams: S333 Architecture+Urbanism (Amsterdam/ London), What Architecture (London), Krijn Christiaanse and Kathalijne Montens (Rotterdam), Onix Architects (Groningen). Artist teams: Nora van der Ziel, Petra Koonstra, Reinder Huisman (Groningen), Team Zizi/ Spoetnik (Estonia/ Groningen). The expedition Do the Rooftophop! took place on different rooftops in the city center of Groningen and included music, projected animations and interactive installations. The Rooftophop teams included: artists Nika Offenbac and Devan Simunovic (CTRL Labs, New York), Mo Stoebe and Sophie Clements (London), DJ Foefur (Groningen) and composers Renger Koning (Soundbase, Groningen), Gerard Ammerlaan (Groningen) and Stephane Leonard (Berlin).
Planet Orange video (2006)
Videoclip for song Drip Drop Dripping of Groningen based underground band Planet Orange in which the band is overtaken by a gulf of paint.
Directors: Nathalie Beekman, Thuur Caris. Camera: Gerad Harens.
The city and the globe video (2007/08).
Documentary in which visionary thinkers philosophize about- still unseen- possibilities of future cities. Interviewees involved the likes of ‘green’ futurist and economic iconoclast Hazel Henderson (US), producer of public television series Ethical Markets. Sociologist Saskia Sassen (UK), who coined the term ‘Global Cities’. Management guru Leif Edvinsson (DK/S), who founded the successful innovation lab at Skandia. Architect Chris Moller (NZ) designer of the so called click rafts; clickable mobile sheds. Their perspectives on the city of the 21st century served as a source of inspiration for the concept of Creative Cities.
Director: Nathalie Beekman, Camera: Gerad Harens, Alex Pitstra, Mo Stoebe. Sound: Geert Gritter. Music: Soundbase.
Inside out (2008)
Inside Out was an intimate filmic walk through a creative city area. Inspired by The Invisible Cities of Calvino, we adopted the idea that a city exists through the stories of its inhabitants and searched for these stories behind the facades of buildings. Filmclips of several shop interiors, a wood workshop, a squatted factory space and a dance school were shown by inside out projections through the windows. The soundscape for this came from the potholes in the street.