Author: Ivar van Bekkum

Last Friday was the second of our Pole Photography workshops!  This time, we worked with a younger group of girls, and it was a very different experience.  The excitement was tangible.  It’s always interesting to see what our participants think is interesting and how they approach the project. ...

Yesterday was the opening of Fronting Motion at Esther Klein Gallery. It was really great to hear people’s reactions again. People like the work so much. They say it feels like being in more than one place at the same time. They feel like the world of data, that is surrounding us, now also can lead to a meditative experience. They really enjoyed the realism of the car sounds, as opposed to the abstract visualization. They say: the space you leave for us as an audience, to have our own interpretation of the experience is so great.  At the end of the evening, when the traffic on both sides became fairly quiet, people again enjoyed it as the landscape is mesmerizing and the expectation of something “going to happen” depending on the reality “out there” was very delightful and powerful. ...

As part of our research into Block 12 we paid a visit to Revolution Recovery.

Today I visited Austin Serapin again. I made him new maps, using the marker for tactile lines I described before. It was very fascinating to see him explore cartography, as he has hardly any experience with graphics. His mobility teacher once drew maps on his back explaining which routes to take. ...

A few weeks ago we went to the Barnes Foundation. Besides its collection, a special exhibition was on show: The World Is an Apple: The Still Lifes of Paul Cézanne ...

Using a special volume ink-marker, I made a tactile version of our map, to explain the project to Austin Seraphin. We invited him to participate in the project as we are interested in how his use of echolocation changed his experience and use of the city space. Can he consider himself an immigrant in a new layer of the city that has opened up for him using this new “tool” ? ...

Today we gave a car ears. By pasting a microphone on each side, we turned the car into a hearing body… I was sitting in the back seat of the car, wearing the headphones that were attached to the car’s temporary ears.  As it drove I was hearing what the car was hearing. Very exiting! I never knew how a car experiences the road, the curves, the crossings… but now I do…. ...

After dividing the city almost at random into 24 equal squares, which felt very ruthless, we have carefully added small notes to each square. The notes contain predictions of what we might find there based on our research…. Now if we travel to any block,  we know what to expect. ...