Museumpark 25, 3015 CB Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
1 March - 4 May 2008
For two months the NAI will organise happenings in and around an installation that the architect Wiel Arets has specially designed for the NAI: concerts, theatre performances, interactive video projections, debates, dinners and performances. In this architectural construction, compositions of light, sound and video projection enable you to experience the influence that buildings, squares and streets have on your emotions and on how you perceive. The happenings make you aware of the role that you yourself play in experiencing and imagining the city, as well as of the difference that you as a citizen can make.
Imagine a city
Just as architecture is more than just (designing) buildings, a city is more than an ensemble of buildings. How you imagine a city and how you experience that city are determined not just by the buildings which are there, by the infrastructure and the layout of the public space, such as squares and parks. How people in a city behave, which is connected with their identity and the group to which they (would like to) belong, also plays a role in how you perceive that city. And you yourself can influence how you and others experience the city: do you greet people in the street or do you deliberately avoid contact, do you listen to the street musician or do you just walk on, do you put a tag on a bare wall, or is a tag a source of irritation to you?
Wiel Arets
The Dutch architect Wiel Arets (Heerlen, 1955) designed an installation specially for Gallery I of the NAI. Arets rose to international fame with his designs for the Academy of Art in Maastricht (the Netherlands) and the University Library on the Uithof university campus in Utrecht (the Netherlands), as well as his industrial designs in collaboration with such leading companies as Alessi, Quinze & Milan, and Lensvelt. He is currently working on a characteristic, 150-metre tall A' Tower in Amsterdam.
Installation
Thanks to the use of hypermodern glass, which becomes transparent or opaque depending on the lighting conditions, as well as to the light, sound and video compositions that alternate every fifteen minutes, as a visitor to the space you experience it in constantly changing ways. Composers Gosse de Kort and Jochem van Tol, light designers Tom Verheijen, and the designers of ]NI[, under the supervision of Powerboat, subtly manipulate the emotions of visitors to the installation. No space is like it is, but it is constantly changing in mood.
Happening
During the hours that the museum is open, the compositions in and around the installation will be the focus of attention in Gallery I, but in the evenings the light and sound compositions will be turned off and the installation will become the place for a disco, classical concert, or a debate in which the public can influence the discussion via mobile phone and laptop. the Netherlands Architecture Institute is collaborating with clubs, concert venues and cinemas such as ConClub, de Doelen, Worm and Lantaren/Venster to organise happenings for young and old every week from Thursday to Sunday.
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