1st November 2021
MSR = HAAG SAEZ Online Lodging/Virtual Travel Package
Dreams of intercontinental travel have been stripped away by the hassle caused by cotton swabs and complex QR codes. Can we still dream about a place you have never visited while embracing unforeseeable situations? It takes more imagination than simply digitalizing things: repurposing familiarity with your own face or conceiving in-between hybrid landscapes might possibly be an answer.
In MSR = HAAG SAEZ, two artists took up summer-autumn residencies to produce a new kind of travel experience. It resulted in a PACKAGE (or a kit) with a QR CODE attached to it.
Minamisanriku AIR presents MSR = HAAG SAEZ Online Lodging/Virtual Travel Package.
Minaving – Piet Verkleij
You wake up in a warm sauna, the smells of pinewood and glowing embers fill the air. On the left of you stands a small heater and on the right you can make out a map on a wall. Through the glass in front of you, you can see a bridge while rainy grey weather fills the sky. You have entered ‘Minaving’. A place where some things seem familiar but out of place and other things seem strange but fitting. Time moves slow here, so relax, listen, look around and let the scenery slowly wash over you.
Make sure to keep a Wi-Fi connection while using the app since it’s necessary for playing videos within the app.
Now it’s time to go, open the app, place your smartphone in the cardboard holder, plug in some headphones or earplugs and dive in!
Happy exploring!
Piet Verkleij (born in Rotterdam, raised in Breda/Tilburg, based in Scheveningen)
Piet Verkleij is an interdisciplinary artist working in the field of sound, performances and visuals. His work walks on the border between reality and fiction questioning the viewer’s perspective on the world. According to Piet, imagination helps him cope with reality. “It shapes the complex world into something that I can understand and that feels personal to me”, says Piet. “Imagination can add another dimension to the world; it allows you to see beyond what is already there.”
“I merge stories and worlds inside my head with the tangible space around me, creating experiences for people, showing a glimpse of my inner world. I express and create these experiences through music, spoken and written stories, soundscapes and audio-visual installations.”
After a short period in design at the Design Academy Eindhoven, Piet switched to interdisciplinary arts during his study in ArtScience at the Royal Academy of Arts and the Royal Conservatory in the Hague, of which he graduated in 2021.
Holiday glimpse – Aydee Derix
When looking for activities to do in the Netherlands, you will frequently come across the Zaanse Schans. Ranked as the 12th place of Things to Do in the Netherlands on Tripadvisor, the Zaanse Schans is mostly known for its windmills.
‘Holiday glimpse’ is a virtual tour that reflects the alienation in/of the Zaanse Schans caused by tourism.
Tourism has a very double effect, on one side it is an experience and exploration that can help you relax, make you happy and show you different sides of life and on the other side it is a destructive and alienating force that changes the places it goes to.
After entering the app installation, you will find yourself in the Zaanse Schans, while being surrounded by Japanese elements that will alienate and change the way you view the the place.
Open the app and let yourself become a tourist once again.
Aydee Derix (born in Freiburg im Breisgau, raised in Aruba, based in Arnhem)
“In my art practice I see that the world is on fire but can’t put it out because I’m too short to be a fire fighter. This feeling of impotence makes me hang up party flags instead.”
Aruba raised multimedia artist, Aydee Derix, playfully researches and explores the enchanting absurdities of existence and the world around her. Derix consciously challenges and confronts various problems that concern her, such as tourism, high performance culture, identity, ecology and people’s hypocrisy towards animal welfare. Whilst confronting these problematics she also shows how enchanting this alienating and absurd world is.
Ironically, Derix tries to embrace the impossibility of improving the world. By emphasizing the uselessness of art, something interesting might happen. “Useful in its absolute uselessness.” As Adorno would say.
Saving the world with bath ducks
How to obtain the package
The apps and headset are still in production! We are planning to launch the package on 1st December 2021.
7th August 2021
Online Lodging + Virtual Travel Experiences
Inspired by the London Marathon, which has been virtualised for 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, and British science fiction writer China Miéville's "The City and The City", which is set in a world where two vastly different city-states occupy a unique mosaic of geographically identical territories, two Dutch artists attempt to create an unprecedented online lodging and virtual travel experiences!
The resulting materials will be brought to an actual travel agency for scrutiny as to whether it can be sold as a package tour.
The project will be revealed in Autumn 2021.
Participating artists
Aydee Derix (Arnhem, the Netherlands)
"In my art practice I see that the world is on fire but can't put it out because I'm too short to be a fire fighter. This feeling of impotence makes me hang up party flags instead."
Aruba raised multimedia artist, Aydee Derix, playfully researches and explores the enchanting absurdities of existence and the world around her. Derix consciously challenges and confronts various problems that concern her, such as tourism, high performance culture, identity, ecology and people’s hypocrisy towards animal welfare. Whilst confronting these problematics she also shows how enchanting this alienating and absurd world is.
Ironically, Derix tries to embrace the impossibility of improving the world. By emphasizing the uselessness of art, something interesting might happen. “Useful in its absolute uselessness.” As Adorno would say.
Saving the world with bath ducks
Piet Verkleij (The Hague, the Netherlands)
I am an interdisciplinary artist working in the field of sound, performances and visuals. My work walks on the border between reality and fiction questioning the viewer’s perspective on the world. Imagination helps me cope with reality. It shapes the complex world into something that I can understand and that feels personal to me. Imagination can add another dimension to the world. It allows you to see beyond what is already there.
I merge stories and worlds inside my head with the tangible space around me, creating experiences for people, showing a glimpse of my inner world. I express and create these experiences through music, spoken and written stories, soundscapes and audio-visual installations.
After a short period in design at the Design Academy Eindhoven, I switched to interdisciplinary arts during my study in ArtScience at the Royal Academy of Arts and the Royal Conservatory in the Hague, of which I graduated in 2021.
16th March 2021
Transporting Echoes
Mitsuru Tokisato + Mari Fukutome
The three-year "Minamisanriku = The Hague" project began with a virtual visit to Minamisanriku by Mitsuru Tokisato and Mari Fukudome, who live in Yamaguchi.
As we listened to various stories about the nature, life and beliefs of Minamisanriku and the Great East Japan Earthquake, we decided that the areas we would like to touch in the next three years of the project are
forests, mountains, islands, seas, life, trees and space,
time and circulation on different scales,
the connection between the divine and the scientific, between the festivals, dances and folk tales of the land, between the things that dwell on the land and the things that correspond to each other in distant lands,
real and virtual,
what connects them,
are some of the issues that emerged.
We will explore these issues through a series of exchanges and researches with local people, dialogues and exchanges of ideas with project members, observations, experiments and verifications, crossing the virtual and the real, listening to the changes in the world, and exploring the possibilities of production and output methods in the current era.
As a first step, the presentation in April will start with something familiar.
In Minamisanriku and Yamaguchi, two distant places, we will make a short video collage of our daily records and fragments of our research.
Mr Taiichi Sato, who will be working with us on the Minamisanriku side of the project, took us on a virtual tour of the mountain where he works and talked about the layers of time that have been carved into the annual rings.
Like an annual ring of information that becomes a trunk, the layers of time from two distant places are layered together as a single time, a single image.
16th March 2021, Mitsuru Tokisato + Mari Fukutome
Participating artists
時里充（Mitsuru Tokisato）
Mitsuru Tokisato (born in 1990, Hyogo) is a media artist. Mitsuru has been running experiments/observations around the display and camera, presenting artworks dealing with digital recognition and quantification. Some of the past exhibitions include: “emergencies!022” ‘Viewpoint Unit’ (ICC, Tokyo, 2014); “Counting Appearances” (SOBO, Tokyo, 2016); “ATHLETE” (21_21 DESIGN SIGHT, Tokyo, 2017); “Counting Appearances – Training #2” (gallery to plus, Tokyo, 2017); “Rapid Reading” (TABULAE, Tokyo, 2018). Mitsuru is also active as a musical unit “Shoujiki”with Muku Kobayashi. Mitsuru currently belongs to InterLab at Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media [YCAM]. He also technically assisted the online performance “5×5 Legged Stool” by Chiharu Shinoda, which involved multi-layered online/offline, and avatar/body representations.https://tokisato.info/
福留麻里（Mari Fukutome）
Mari Fukutome is a dancer/choreographer. Mari has been active as a duo “Ho Ho-Do” with Mika Arashiki since 2001, exploring her distinct dance practice. In 2014, Mari started as a solo dancer, giving performances and workshops not only in theaters and galleries, but also a riverside, a park, on the street, and even at somebody’s house. After actively working with artists in different disciplines, she now finds her interest in the collaborative feeling and where an idea or a motion begins. In 2019, Mari, with Satoru Kimura (BONUS) , started a project titled “Secret Body Recipe” where small instructions surrounding the body were transmitted via SNS. Mari was a Saison-fellow-l in 2020 and 2021. Some of her recent works include an online performance “5×5 Legged Stool”.