Tickets still on sale

Tickets for July 25 are sold out. But their are still a few available for July 26 and 27. We trip lasts 6 hours and the price is 475 sek/person and includes starter, main course and desert along with drinks. To book your ticket contact Rudi Heinrichsen on info (at) visionforum.eu.

Ready for Departure

The dates for the trip has been set. Make sure that you keep your agendas open August 25-27, 2013. A magical journey through the Stockholm archipelago awaits you! More info here.

Lanzarote!

INSPIRATION 

Rasmus Spanggaard Troelsen
Onderzoeker ontwerpen / Researcher Design
01.01.11 – 31.12.11
info@rasmustroelsen.dk
rasmustroelsen.dk

My research focuses on the design of the Canary Island Lanzarote by César Manrique.

See here some of his here!!

The poet John Donne wrote that “No man is an island”. However, the argument could be made that one man is Lanzarote; or rather that one man alone has shaped the image of Lanzarote. César Manrique (1919–1992) has designed everything on the island – from the road network to the uniforms worn by all museum personnel; from the regulations regarding the colour of window frames to the island’s logo.

Afraid of the effects that the growing global tourist industry might have on the island and its environment, but realising its economical potential, Manrique emerged in the late 60s with ideas of control and conservation. As a counterpoint to free-market hotel tower blocks for what he called the ‘avalanche of tourists approaching Lanzarote’, he proposed a combination of highly commercial elements and preservation of the natural milieu – a strong homogeneous image of an authentic (unspoiled) Lanzarote. This meant an architecture that emphasised the volcanic environment of the island, heavy restrictions on town planning, a uniform visual language and a narrow aesthetic field based on an invented folk tradition. This image of Lanzarote is still maintained today.

I plan to map out the history of design and César Manrique on Lanzarote, looking at both socio-political transformations and specific designed objects, in order to examine the relationship between power and form. The aim is to describe how the impenetrable image of Lanzarote functions; to draw parallels to a world that generally seems to become more and more designed as image; and to investigate how/if/where resistance to such ‘total design’ is possible.
The outcome will be an extended tour of the island.

More here http://www.janvaneyck.nl/post/13402891962/rasmus-spanggaard-troelsen-onderzoeker-ontwerpen

Ö - 3rd Workshop in Stockholm

Welcome to our third meeting. Our residency will be a little bit different this time. We will be staying in the city, visiting our boat, and doing activities around Stockholm - the archipelago city. 

The intention this time is to work together on the final concept and get into the details of how we will "choreograph" the experience into the 5 hour trip. Knowing what the boat is like will make it easier for us to finally model our work against a more real scenario. It will also be a great opportunity to discuss your proposals and further refine them into a plan we can work with for the final production next summer!

One of our activities will entail being outside for one afternoon. Please bring warm clothes, raingear, and hiking shoes/boots  - Temperatures during the day are around 12ºC but it drops at night to about 6ºC. Therefore, bring a good jacket and caps/gloves - you will need it!! We are almost in the North Pole, remember?

Second Workshop - The Island version 2.0

Since we last met in Sandhamn last autumn and defined the general shape of the trip and of the experience, Per and I have developed the concept so that it becomes even tighter and gives us a main concept to work through during our mini-residency.

Per and I came to the conclusion that both we, the artists, and the audience need to somehow share a common goal, a common 'quest' so that the odyssey can come into full bloom. Everyone on the boat will embark on trying to find the point where the island was, and that point lies in the fold of the Moebius strip which is what shapes our trajectory.

Benjamin from Attica

Following Isabel's exquisite map, I will give you some relevant quotes from Benjamin from his amazing text about Kafka. (It is available in Illuminations, that you can read here.) I am re-reading this text with my feet in the Aegean Sea, surrounded by a beautiful archipelago. So you can see that I am hard at research.

What Benjamin is looking for is deafness rather than blindness, or maybe just silence? Either way we are close to 4'33" and our experiments in Stockholm.

So remember, whatever you are doing this summer and wherever you are, to use the gods as shields and become silent Sirens. I round this off with another image of my search for Poseidon in the Pyrenées. We never found him, but created three new Ambassadors.


Enough enigmas for today?

-Per

This map is an illustration in ‘The Hunting of the Snark (An Agony in 8 Fits)’, a nonsensical and somewhat grim poem by Lewis Carroll, who is better known for ‘Alice in Wonderland’. All the illustrations in ‘Snark’, first published in 1876, are by Henry Holiday, whom I therefore suppose to also be the author of this map.

 The map is an Ocean Chart owned by the Bellman, one of the main characters in the book. It helps the Bellman and his fellow adventurers, who are hunting for a legendary beast called the Snark, to cross the ocean and arrive at a strange land. The absurdity of the map is that it only shows ocean, literally illustrating nothing, and therefore cannot be a very helpful navigating tool.

Here’s an extract from ‘Snark’ relating to said map:

 He had bought a large map representing the sea,
Without the least vestige of land:
And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be
A map they could all understand.

 “What’s the good of Mercator’s North Poles and Equators,
Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?” 
So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply
“They are merely conventional signs!

 “Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and capes!
But we’ve got our brave Captain to thank: 
(So the crew would protest) “that he’s bought us the best—
A perfect and absolute blank!”