The Rijksakademie is famous for the extensive technical coaching it offers to residents. This afternoon technical advisor Stephan Kuderna gave a tour and talked with visitors about the wonderful things he and his colleague Kees Reedijk develop.
"In first instance we thought, let’s use plastic somehow. Come take a closer look. You see, it’s not coloured or painted, it’s a two component plastic which you mold with your hands. While you mold it you can shape it for a maximum of 30 minutes." The use of plastic made it also possible to install the little knives at the ends of the ribs. The ribs were attached with thread wire and a special glue to a back bone kind of structure in the shape of Goeun’s own back bone. Stephan: "They had to be fixed one by one and you had to be very careful because of the knives that were already in there." Finally a backpack-like belt was added to wear the construction as well as a stand so that Goeun could take it on and off again. Yet it is still very unpleasant to wear, as are the additional thumb rings, but that’s exactly the point."
The technical background of Dusan Rodic (1975, SR/NL) was equally interesting however quite different. This involved a lot of mechanical and metal work. Dusan’s desire to build a self-sufficient system stems from the wish to preserve and promote freedom of expression and intellectual critique. He wants to contribute to artistic autonomy by offering artists a device to sustain themselves. However he wanted to foreground the aesthetic and playful elements instead of the usually dominant technical aspects. He created a solar panel that spatially reacts to light; it seeks the light spots that are unblocked. Visitors can create a dialogue between their own movements and those of the solar panels by covering and uncovering the light spots with their bodies. The machine is feeding its battery through the light and the battery feeds the motor, the sensors detect the unblocked light. It is not plugged in any way. Stephan: "People often say the Rijksakademie costs a lot of money but this we made with mostly second-hand materials, for example the motor that normally is around 600 euro I bought for a fraction of the price on eBay. It is very sustainable and solid. Here it is the challenge to get your artwork to the point that it works well – and it keeps working well. We want to get away from the idea that you just make an artwork without thinking through how long it will last. You see the consequences of that problem often in museums." Also the panels are recycled. One of the visitors remarked that the graphics on the panels were really nice, Stephan responded: "They actually look that way but you never see them. Dusan is definitely playing with the beauty of this. Solar panels are quite pretty, showing them makes the machine sexy. Now it is something you maybe want to have, like jewelry."
In a workshop Stephan showed us a flat metal construction that was partly covering a ball. The ball could turn around with the metal harness on it, the metal followed the form of the ball. Stephan: "It is a very special metal construction. The manner of cutting allows the material to shift into each other. You can compress it but you can also stretch it out, exactly because of the unique form how it is punched. You won’t find this in a DIY-market, it comes from a specific company. We use it widely instead of glass fibre." The workshops looked essentially technical, Stephan explained: "The idea really is to facilitate people on a flexible basis – so to not ever say “this is not possible” but always to foresee if you can make it possible. Of course we cannot do everything, the workshops are made for experiments. This is quite special because as an artist when you approach a workshop you always have the problem that is costs money. Here we collaborate. We always try to find ways to do things as cheap yet simultaneously as sustainable as possible. We prefer to teach and advice residents what to do and help them, and not do it ourselves."
