Years ago, way back in 1998 when I just moved to Amsterdam, I used to receive post for the previous tenants who seemed to know everyone there was to know in the local art scene (or so it seemed to us newcomers). Among others, they received invitations for events in HEDAH, a centre for contemporary art in Maastricht.
I collected them at the time, and just found them again recently. These invitations are so weird, and kind of freaky, but they somehow work. I wonder how the designer pitched it to the client though… futuristic men, a baby and a toddler.

HEDAH’s current website, by the way, is beyond boring. I guess whoever commissioned those invitations would have never approve them today…

The invitations do not credit the designer, and I couldn’t find any other information about it (obviously they were distributed at an ancient time when internet was hardly in use), but if anyone out there knows the name of the person who created these images, I would love to set history straight and credit him/ her here…

In the Siberian city Barnaul, following repeated rejections of the authorities to hold a sanctioned demonstration to protest the parliamentary elections results and Vladimir Putin’s expected return to the presidency, Russian activists have started a surreal trend of toys protests- hundreds of toys arranged on the snow, holding signs reading “I’m for clean elections” and “A thief should sit in jail, not in the Kremlin”.

The city’s deputy police chief was quoted at a press conference: “Political opposition forces are using new technologies to carry out public events – using toys with placards at mini-protests. In our opinion, this is still an unsanctioned public event.”
Police has asked prosecutors to investigate the toys protest’s legality. Apparently, since then the number of people wanting to take part in the toys protest has risen.

A petition to hold another protest featuring 100 Kinder Surprise toys, 100 Lego people, 20 model soldiers, 15 soft toys and 10 toy cars has been rejected because the toys are not “citizens of Russia… As you understand, toys, especially imported toys, are not only not citizens of Russia but they are not even people,” a spokesman for Barnaul told local media.

New and sophisticated technologies indeed…




Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/ Photographs: Sergey Teplyakov/Vkontakte

If you walk along the Van Diemenstraat in Amsterdam, you will encounter four beautiful wall paintings. The wall paintings are based on historic sea maps and drawings from the collection of the Scheepvaartmuseum (The National Maritime Museum), as reference to the street’s location near the old port.
The project has been commissioned by Stadsdeel Westerpark and realized by Bont & Bruyn in 2007.

I have designed the banners for the new retrospective exhibition for Jacques Lipchitz at the Beelden aan zee museum, Den Haag.
The beautiful exhibition design is by designer and curator Ronit Eden.