Slightly Surreal

What to do on a (rainy) Sunday after one of the best nights out you ever experienced in your life?? That was exactly my question the day after the Warehouse Project in Manchester...

Well, after a sturdy breakfast of scrambled eggs, coffee and freshly squeezed OJ my boyfriend and I decided to drag ourselves to the Manchester Art Gallery for the exhibition Angels of Anarchy - Women Artists and Surrealism. They had great works on display by a.o. Francesca Woodman, Frida Kahlo and Meret Oppenheim. But my heart truly skipped a beat when I saw some collaborative pieces. They were made along the same principle as our drawings for the Freikörperkult t-shirts! I had never seen these before.

Y. Tanguy, Joan Miro, Max Morix and Man Ray (1927).

Andre Breton, Jacqueline Lamba and Yves Tanguy (1938).

Andre Breton, Paul Eluard, Nusch Eluard and Valentine Hugo (ca. 1930).

Andre Breton, Valentine Hugo, Greta Knutson and Tristan Tzara (ca. 1933).

I didn't know this 'game' had a name. It's called EXQUISITE CORPSE. The Surrealists used to play it with words as well, and exquisite corpse is taken from the first sentence that was produced this way: "Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau.", which translates to "The exquisite corpse will drink the new wine."

The title of our t-shirts was sort of randomly picked after one of our favourite German words: Freikörperkultur, roughly translated as Free Body Movement, which advocates a naturistic/nudist way of life. We encountered the Freikörperkultur up close and personal at the swimming pool in Berlin this summer. The word suited our drawings perfectly, especially when we shortened it to -kult.

Anyways, I just thought it was so cool to see these drawings that I wanted to share them with you. I now know our drawings aren't just weird, no, they are Surreal!

Kuduro Riddims

Woohoooo, tomorrow morning I'll be off to Manchester for what might well be THE best party of the year. Annie Mac invited the creme de la creme of DJs and artists around to play at the Warehouse project, a temporary club under Piccadilly Station. It's going to be an exhausting night with live performances by Major Lazer and Buraka Som Sistema, and Toddla T, Fakeblood, Skream, Boy 8-Bit and DJ Zinc behind the decks!!!!! More exclamation marks: !!!!!!!!!

I think this is a very exciting time for dance music, with rhythms and musical elements from all over the world seeping into mainstream club music, entering the dance floor and making us shake our booties. Take tomorrow's artists for example. Diplo, the guy who played an important role in bringing baile funk out of the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, has now turned to dancehall with his latest project Major Lazer, in collaboration with Switch. With great success. Also Toddla T has a taste for Jamaican riddims (as well as for club house and garage). Buraka Som Sistema brings us kuduro, a genre which originated in Angola and was later transported to Portugal (its colonizer). And apparently kuduro is now huge in France, thanks to the substantial Cape Verde community. I stumbled on a selection of some excellent kuduro tracks at the Masala blog (a great blog BTW, even though I can only read half of it - they're from Montreal, so most is written in French). I pass two of those tracks on over here, both by Angolian artists. It's raw. Very raw. But that's how I like it!

Dog Murras - Midexa. Get it here (YSI).

Noite E Dia - Tiramakossa. Get it here (YSI).

Taken off the compilation Akwaaba Sem Transporte.

R'n'Balkan

I still have to thank my friend Peter *. Thank him for introducing me to Miss Platnum!

Miss Platnum was born in Romania, but moved with her parents to Berlin when she was a kid. She used to work as a background singer until she started working on her own music for her debut album Chefa. I think her style is truly unique: Balkan-flavoured R'n'B. So lots of brass, rolling R's and songs about food and Mercedes Benz. She takes the piss out of the (Western) ideal beauty and the stereotypes of Eastern Europeans in a very funny and clever way. To be honest the R'n'B songs are a bit too mushy for my taste, but I absolutely LOVE her uptempo work.

For some strange reason I just assumed that for her latest album she had tipped over to the R'n'B side, maybe because a sophomore album is usually more 'mature'. So even though The Sweetest Hangover had been released in September I didn't give it a listen until yesterday. Silly me! The songs might not be as catchy as some of her older ones, but it is a great record with plenty of uptempo songs and still heavily Balkan influenced. Have a listen to Come Marry Me, a duet with German hip hop superstar Peter Fox, from her first album and She Moved in!, taken off her latest release.

Miss Platnum - Come Marry Me (feat. Peter Fox). Get it here.

Miss Platnum - She Moved In! Get it here.

* If you can read Dutch, do check out Peter 'Teps' de Koning's blog!! He wittily writes about all sorts of interesting stuff, like music from around the globe, politics, soccer and personal memories. I think he is one of the best storytellers in the Lowlands!

Ladies first, then Staedtlers.

This blogpost is not about informing you that I have an exhibition coming up in Amsterdam on november 27th, with some very cool ladies.. Nono, it's about my love for the Staedtler 0.1 and 0.05mm.

I don't know if any of you ever experienced this, but personally I'm very VERY supersticious when it comes to drawing, and my pen of choice. Besides the music that should exactly fit my mood of that moment, I am absolutely convinced that some pens or pencils have a wrong vibe. They make my drawing come out all ugly. Which is of course frustrating, but also good, I can always blame the pen. Recently I go hand-in-hand with my Staedtlers. They are THE pens of the moment. I think everybody should get one.

Not convinced? Come to our capital city next friday the 27th and see what my Staedtlers can do. Besides my drawings, I think this exhibition will be awesome considering the coolness of the other participants. Ephameron, Bitches in Control, Moama, Lil'Shy, Ovni and Minivila will definately bring some streetwise visual spectacle.
Check out the flyer for details.

Puberty rocked the cardboard!

Eleven weeks, 700 students, 9 teachers, an empty gym (not so empty now), 600 cardboards, miles and miles of tape makes a huge piece of art!

As you may have read in the blogpost of 30 september, I was part of an artist collective that was responsable for writing and teaching an educational program for 700 adolescent students. The program was part of Blurrr in exhibition space for contemporary art TENT. Together with Judith Vorwerk, S.P.A.M. van Griensven, Maartje Aben, Ivo Vrouwe en Olivier Otten, we came up with the idea of Wildgroei. Which basicly means; out of control stuff!

The assignment was for the students to leave themselves behind in the former gym of the building, using only cardboard and tape. Explaining this, they would look at you as if something green was dripping out of your mouth. But then the ideas would start to come, and evolve and boy did we have fun with it! I have seen kings, racecars, lots of dreadlocks, a big booty, a black cat with very suspicious looks, a huge hamburger, loads and loads of cellphones, lots of Iceberg clothes out of paper (?), uggs, a DJ booth, skateboarders, punkers and whatnot?! Today was the last day of Wildgroei and I think that we succeeded! The gym is packed, and by the hugeness, you can tell that a large amount of kids were part of it! Below you can check out some of the highlights of the project and here you can watch a timelapsemovie of the whole thing, made by Olivier Otten. Well done all of you!