Werker ABC (2009) is a self-produced publication that was distributed among the students of the Gerrit Rietveld Academy during the ‘End-exam Show’-exhibition. It relates imagery of young men at work assembled from many different sources on Internet with contemporary left-wing theory about labour also derived from Internet.
In collaboration with Marc Roig Blesa / Printed: black & white copied from laser print / Edition: 500 copies / Format: A5 / Paper: 80 gram copypaper
Rietveld in de Oude Kerk (2011) is a annual curated exhibition of Gerrit Rietveld Academie students from all years. For this exhibition I created an announcement poster which at the same time functions as a map for the exhibition. This year the exhibition had no specific theme and therefore references to the building of the Oude Kerk and the heritage of modern Gerrit Rietveld are represented in the design.
Printed: SSP Offset Amsterdam / Edition: 1000 copies / Format: 700×1000 / Paper: 115 grms Cyclus Offset / Special thanks to Maarten Rots & Paul van de Berg
Next Time I’m Here, I’ll Really Be There (2010) was an exhibition initiated by a group of fellow artists, celibrating their temporary but enormous studio space. All artists presented a work somehow linking to space, location and architecture. Following this subject the design of the invitation poster represents location / dislocation.
Printed: silkscreen by Kees Maas / Edition: 100 copies / Format: A2 / Paper: 120 gram posterpaper / Image on back by Derk Alberts
werker 7 — the language of revolution (2012) is meant to be read and discussed collectively. display its pages on a wall at home, at school or on the floor of a public square… what is a revolutionary image? which aesthetic elements are involved in the making of a revolution? does revolution have a global language? what role does photography and the mass-media play in all this?
this issue of werker takes its title from ‘the language of revolution — tidings from the east’, a 2011 lecture given by ariella azoulay, at the museu d’art contemporani de barcelona. her analysis of egypt’s revolution, through images from the internet, became the inspiration of this work. highly recommended: www.macba.cat/es/ariella-azoulay. all images in werker 7 have been collected from the internet between 2011 and 2012. the words accompanying these images are taken from azoulay’s essay.
presented in l’espai cultural caja madrid, which is situated on plaça catalunya, barcelona’s main square and meeting point of the 15m movement. werker 7 — the language of revolution is on view from the 26th of september until the 18th of november, 2012. it makes part of composició de lloc 3, a series of site-specific projects curated by amanda cuesta.
specifications: format: 39×58cm, 48 folded posters + index / offset printed on newspaper by indugraf, constantí (tarragona). / in collaboration with marc roig blesa.
Missed Opportunity (2010) is a transcription / translation hand-out for Jort van der Laan to accompany his video by the same name. The video shows an encounter with Dutch writer J.M.A. Biesheuvel reading one of his own stories called Missed Opportunity. This videowork —together with this hand-out— was shown at Wyspa Art Institute in Poland.
Printed: mimeograph at Extrapool Nijmegen / Format: A3 / Paper: 100 gram biotop / In collaboration with Jort van der Laan
Designlab Graduation Show — Not in My Backyard is the title of the 2010 designlab graduation show. For this event I designed a poster which is foldable so one can read all the information of the students in magazine form but it functions as a public poster at the same time. The image on the poster side (which shows all the end exam products) was shot by the students. The same typography I’ve created for the poster was applied to the glass-house behind the rietveld building where the designlab students had their end-exam show.
Edition: 2000 copies / Format: 70×100, folded to 25×35 / Paper: 100 gram recycle offset paper / Special thanks to Rosa te Velde
Werker 5 — Photography Lesson 1 (2011) is the first issue from a series of photography lessons that Werker Magazine will sporadically distribute integrated in other publications in affinity.
This issue presents unconscious ‘worker photography’ made by amateurs on their first photography lessons. Photography is commonly teached focusing purely on its technicality. This conception of the medium, impulsed by the industries of the sector, fetishes the camera and promotes a ridiculous set of stereotyped imagery. Although photography has a greater capacity that often goes beyond our intentions: it both reveals where we stand and where we place the other.
Featured in: ‘Scapegoat: Architecture, landscape, political economy. Issue 02: Materialism’ / Edition: 1000 copies / Format: Newspaper middle-spread / In collaboration with: Marc Roig Blesa / To order a copy visit: scapegoatjournal.org
Ninetofive Contemporary Art Productions (2010) owes its name to labour in its most common form, the nine-to-five job. Inspired on the aestetics of conceptual art, combined with the functionality of Modernism, the housestyle focuses on the fact that an art production company has to be able to deal with different art works, people and situations at all times. The stamps with each a different logo created for all the paperwork, show this diversity but also make a clear reference back to labour. The website’s visuals link back to the use of the stamp, with the digital Ninetofive logo changing each half an hour, 16 times per work-day.
Check www.ninetofive.es.
Note → For now only the website is available to view, more images of the housestyle coming soon.
Utolab (2010) is a collaborative effort of a group of young artists that all share a fascination with utopian strategies. It took form in an installation that invited the audience to wander and explore the current possibilities of formulating a better world. This document presents images and contextual information on the first UtoLab that was conceived by curators Lotte van Gelder, Merel Noorlander and Valentijn Rambonnet. They worked on this special commission for the ITS Festival 2010.
Printed: Stencilkelder Amsterdam / Edition: 250 copies / Format: 25×35,5 / Paper: 90 grms Caxton Romandruk / Special thanks to Lotte van Gelder, Merel Noorlander & Valentijn Rambonnet.
The Rietveld Magazine — Fear of Theory (2009) contains three selected essays written by grad-students of the Jewelery departement 2008. The grad-students of 2009 gave feedback on the essays in whatever way befitting their message. The essays are each printed on its own sheet — folded into a magazine form. On the inside the folded sheets are all the responses gathered. The preface and the headline (transparent silkscreen) are printed on a seperated blue sheet and all is held together with shrink-foil.
Printed: offset, silkscreen, Padruma Hattem / Edition: 1000 copies / Format: 70×100, folded to 36,5×25 / Paper: 100 gram recycle offset paper / Special thanks to Julia Born and René Put
Our Work is Never Over (2012), is a group exhibition curated by Yael Messer that takes place within the context of PHotoEspaña 2012: From here. Context and internationalization. Yael Messer (b. 1982 in Israel, lives and works in Amsterdam) held a curatorial research fellowship at Matadero Madrid in November 2011, a period during which she shaped the concept of this show.
The urgency represented in Mladen Stilinović series of self-documented photographs called Artist At Work (1978) is the point of departure for the exhibition Our Work is Never Over, which features works from artists who are constantly exploring where art, labor, and everyday existence overlap in contemporary society. This group of artists reflects on the immateriality of the artistic process, the role of labor in designating social life, and the complexity of representing invisible work.
The artists participating in the exhibition choose to reflect on the totality of their bio-political existence from within and through life itself: some document their everyday life and use this documentation as an artistic work, others frame their artistic acts as identical to any other form of labor, and a few make the gray area between artistic process and immaterial labor part of their own life.
Featured artists: Mounira Al Solh, Joana Bastos, C.A.S.I.T.A, Guy Ben Ner, Tehching Hsieh, David Levine, Ahmet Ogut, Levi Orta, Mladen Stilinovic, Pilvi Takala, Werker Magazine (Marc Roig Blesa & Rogier Delfos).
Catalogue specifications: Printed offset at Brizzolis Madrid, Spain. edition: 1000 copies / format: 25×19cm / special thanks to Yael Messer & Gilad Reich. In collaboration with Marc Roig Blesa
Werker 3 & the Grand Domestic Revolution — User’s Manual (GDR) (2011–ongoing) is a call for students, artists, domestic workers, housewives and husbands, designers, cleaners, architects, au pairs, researchers, gardeners, theorists, pool-boys, historians, employers, interns, curators and handypeople to take part in the collective gathering of materials. Werker Magazine appropriates its name from the worker photographer movement; the first group of amateur photographers to use the camera as a tool to fight class-struggle. This third issue of werker magazine will be a ‘political kitchen calendar’ developed within The Grand Domestic Revolution — User’s Manual, a long-term living research initiated by Casco Office for Art, Design and Theory in utrecht. Also in conjunction with werker 3 and gdr is the development of a public action & performance in support of the recognition of value of domestic work and care, and workers’ rights for domestic labourers in the netherlands. more information coming soon!
→ Send in your contributions through Werker 3 website.
Invitation: Offset Calff & Meischke / Edition: 500 copies / In collaboration with: Marc Roig Blesa
Christoph Gielen (2012) specializes in video and photographic aerial studies of urban development in its relation to land use, exploring the intersection of art and environmental politics.
Gielen’s pictures and feature articles about him have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, Metropolis Magazine, Public, Forward architecture journal, and many more. His award-winning works are part of international collections, and have been exhibited at institutions and galleries both in the United States and in Europe.
For Gielen I’ve designed and build a website. Within the framework that refers to a compass — an element returning in the very technical approach of Gielen — one can browse through an overview of news, publications and view the work that Gielen’s created the last years.
Werker 4 — An Economical Portrait of the Young Artist (2011) is inspired by the first illustrated wall-newspapers edited in Russia in the 20′s, which could be read in factories, schools, hospitals, worker associations etc. this issue of Werker Magazine displays in the gallery walls of Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam an overview of the often unspoken and precarious living and working conditions of young artists.
Specifications: 9 silk-screened posters printed on different left-over papers from ‘Interbellum grafiek’ printing studio. / Edition: 10 / Dimensions: 120 x 85 cm (each) / Presented at: Informality. Art, economics, precarity. Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Werker 6 — Cinema Diary (2013) presents images and documents of Matthijs Diederiks (28, artist and curator, Amsterdam). It is photographed and collected during his work at cinema Pathé arena in Amsterdam, his side job from 2008 until 2010. Cinema Diary is the first issue of Werker 6, a collection of photo-books that reflect on the current working conditions of the youth through modes of self-representation and amateur photography.
Due to technical problems with the binding, this book is currently still not available for sale. Reprint will arrive in May 2013.
Technical specifications: photo-book / Dimensions: 100 pages, 15 x 22 cm, 500 copies / Diffusion: Our Work is Never Over Matadero Contemporary Art Center (PHotoEspaña). Madrid, Spain. / Sans Seriffe Amsterdam, May 2013.
Trajectory Studies (2010) is a project by Esmee Geerken about different trajectories one can follow when moving away from a spherical object and along the way, the decreasing angles towards the horizon. The poster was made to represent the drawings of Esmee. These drawings are part of her end-exam project called ‘Trajectory Studies’. At first glance these drawings seem scientific but when looking closer their rather poetic nature is revealed.
In collaboration with Esmee Geerken / Printed: silkscreen by Kees Maas / Format: 700x1000mm / Paper: 120 gram grey paper
for potatoes we’ve got potatoes (2010) is a collection of seven short stories and Jort’s contribution to Casco’s Grand Domestic Revolution. this publication is a gently ironic illustration of things encountered during the year-long project. The text is taken, translated, cut and rearranged from Een lief, verlegen vrouwtje by Dutch writer Maarten Biesheuvel.
In collaboration with Jort van der Laan / Print: mimeograph at Extrapool Nijmegen / Format: A4 folded to A5 / Edition: 100 copies / Paper: 100 gram Biotop
Werker 2 — a visual history of the young worker (2011) addresses the Museum by interrogating the relation of the ordinary man with History. From our collection of Worker Photographer publications and other documents depicting labour compiled in second-hand bookstores and antiquaries from Holland, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Spain and U.S.A, we articulate a visual History of Labour centered around the figure of the Young Worker.
Printed: Novoprint Spain / Edition: 500 copies / Format: 420×297 / Paper: Cyclus Offset & Martyr Gloss / In collaboration with Marc Roig Blesa. Exhibited at ‘1979. A Monument to Radical Instants’ La Virreina Centre de la Imatge. Barcelona, Spain. To order a copy visit Motto Distribution.
Werker 8 — A T-shirt Summary (2012) has been designed for Born in Flames — Resistance, an event based exhibition at Ellen de Bruijne Projects bringing together various artists connected by their shared fascination for resistance in every imaginable way. Werker 8 consists of 7 designs based on all previous werker magazines. Soon available through werkermagazine.org.
Specifications: 7 silkscreens on heavy cotton t-shirts, edition of 10. Presented at Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam.