Category Archives: Enjoy

Petervan Studios – Update Nov 2020 – Intervals of Possibility

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Petervan memories from the 70ies – First artistic performances

It’s almost one year (!) since my previous Dec 2019 update. And what a year it was/still is! I basically stayed home for the whole period and had zero travel since Oct 2019.

I am publishing this on the day Belgium is entering its second Covid-19 lockdown. A forced pause-marathon starting on my 63th birthday on 1 Nov till at least mid-Dec 2020. But I am afraid the effort will have to run until deep into 2021 and I am preparing for it as an “interval of possibility”.

An interval of possibility is a temporal framing to see better what is and what can emerge. There is indeed still so much to read, to learn, to experiment, to play with. So many contexts to be architected. So many interesting people to (re)connect with (at least virtually). So much opportunity for spiritual, moral, and aesthetical advancement! Expect me to be quite generative in the coming weeks and months.

The Artschool Project

The Artschool academy year started again in Sep 2020, and I subscribed for a two-year curriculum labeled “specialization”.

“Professionalization” is probably a better title for what it is: a focus on getting the (art)work done, commitment, and ambition. We’ll learn to discover our own visual language starting from our personal frames and themes with the ambition to develop our own artistic maturity and identity. This is about personal reflection, self- and group-critique, evaluation, and research. About creative identity and creative disposition. And about how to create a portfolio, develop contacts with galleries, presenting your own work, setting up your own expo, etc.

From an artistic medium point of view, my main focus will remain painting on canvas, but I will keep experimenting with other (mainly digital) media.

I shared most of my recent work via my Facebook page, or on this blog under the heading “Sine Parole”. I also started selecting more straightforward subjects, such as vases, landscapes, cows, fruit, and everyday objects. In many cases the obvious and what is in front of you is interesting enough. Here is an example of some apples from our mini orchard:

Petervan Artwork © 2020 – Apples – Acryl on Canvas – 50x50cm

The upcoming Cow project

I have something with cows (pun intended). I met many during my summer bike tours. It feels it is going to become yet another a thematic series, like the prison windows, or the birds, or the boxers.

Petervan Artworks @ 2020 – Cow Project – Digital Try-out
Petervan Artworks @ 2020 – Cow Project – Sketch of the Intervals of Possibility

One option is to create a cow-sign-language and typography, or maybe see how I can get them generated through in-the-cloud AI neural networks.

Via Mario Klingeman (@quasimodo) -AI generated shapes

Exhibitions

Last year, I visited some art exhibitions, including:

  • There is no Planet B – S.M.A.K., Ghent, Dec 2019
  • Inge Decuypere – Ronse, Feb 2020
  • Dali-Magritte – Museum Fine Arts, Brussels, Feb 2020
  • Love-Hate – ING Gallery, Brussels, Feb 2020
  • Keith Haring – BOZAR, Brussels, Feb 2020
  • Van Eyck – Museum Schone Kunsten, Ghent, Feb 2020
  • Stephan VanFleteren – FOMU, Antwerp, July 2020
  • Writing Beyong – Axel Vervoordt, Wijnegem, July 2020
  • Dechamps, Panamarenko and Co – Deweer Gallery, Zwevegem, Oct 2020

There were many more, but due to Covid-19, many musea were closed or had restrictions.

Stephan VanFleteren – FOMU, Antwerp, July 2020

My own exhibition

I ran my first solo (100% virtual) exhibition during summer. Some unexpected fans actually bought some of my works. Thank you: this is very encouraging. For those who don’t know: I also do commissioned work. If interested – in buying or commissions – please send me a private message.

Some vernissage impressions here.

Outdoors

We had a great summer in Flanders. Since the start of the first lockdown on 13 March 2020 we had good to excellent weather till mid-September 2020. Plenty of opportunity for being outdoors, with the occasional bike tour or walk.

Freelance

Covid-19 is not kind to freelancers, especially if you target what some people call the “event industry”. With the exception of a small gig in 2020, I basically got no work since October 2019. Contact me in private if you’d like to hire me for “interesting” work.

BANI

Already in 2018, Jamais Cascio coined the term BANI. See my post from Aug 2019 and Jamais’ update from April 2020. As mentioned before, I am working with some partners on a virtual multimedia workshop based on this framework, with a specific focus on possible responses. We have an amazing cast on-board, and it looks that we’ll be able to make some announcements soon.

Design Unbound

I am blown away and intrigued by the insights in Design Unbound: Designing for Emergence in a White Water World. This is about having agency in a world that is constantly shifting under you. It is so refreshing after all those business-, management-, leadership-, and self-help-books. It has become a healthy addiction: I am basically reading and re-reading and deeply internalizing everything that Ann Pendleton has written in the last couple of years.

We are building a team to design and deliver a corporate curriculum on this topic. Stay tuned on the “we” and the “curriculum”.

Pirate TV

Most online events and conferences suck. I have some ideas on how to be more ambitious. See my earlier post on the ambition cube for virtual events.

Still from Pirate TV Trailer – Petervan Studios © 2020

I got the chance to do a commission for a client on this concept and we – the client, the team, myself – learned a lot on what works and what not.

There are now two Pirate TV channels in the pipeline: one more business focused and one more “artsy”.

New toys

For Pirate TV, I wanted to become more fluent in video and sound creation. As there was nothing else to do due to Covid-19, I followed some online courses on Ableton Live, Final Cut Pro, and Logic Pro X.

These are such rich software environments. Also, their user interfaces make me think differently: thinking in layers, connections, patterns, and harmonies.

Studio Oxygen project

An idea that has been hanging around since 2018, actually.

People are exhausted. Tired of online meetings. Tired of being locked up in their houses. Tired of all the negative news. People crave for oxygen. People crave for small safe groups where they can share, critique, ideate, play.

With a small on-line collective, we plan to come together regularly online to have slow-paced conversations on a topic/seed that I plant.  The seed can be the chapter of a book, an object, a poem, a job well done, or a failing forward.

With a no-frills focus on quality content, we hope these sparks of inspiration will give you “oxygen for the mind”.

Traveling Without Moving project

This will be a series of posts documenting my mental and philosophical journey in 2020.

Some spoiler keywords: silence, pause, play, anxiety, unbound, truth, inappropriateness, genre, and yellow.

Traveling Without Moving (TMW) is also somewhat related to Studio Oxygen and Pirate TV

Books

Check out my GoodReads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/3085594-peter-auwera

Some highlights:

Also don’t forget Robert Poynton’s “Do Pause”. Together with Josie Gibson we made 8 podcast episodes, one for each chapter in this book. The last episode is here.

Petervan Rides

Since July 2019, I publish every month a Spotify List with new releases combined with some oldies from the 60ies, 70ies, and beyond. Search for “Petervan Ride” and select “playlists”. Subjective selection of course, as driven only by my personal taste (or lack thereof).

Petervan Rides on Spotify

So, what’s next?

I will officially retire from corporate life as from 1 Dec 2020. Not that I plan to stay idle, on the contrary. Within limits, I will stay available for interesting freelance work – I call it “paid play” –  and plan to stay very focused on my artwork.

The plan for the coming months is to work/play on (random order):

  • “Interesting” freelance work
  • Artwork
  • Studio Oxygen
  • Traveling Without Moving
  • Pickup Time Capsules again

So, that’s it for this edition. If there is something worth reporting, next update is for Apr 2021.

#STAYSAFE

#STAYCONNECTED

Warmest,

The Search for Meaninglessness

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Byrne

Byrne, left, and fellow members of the 12-person, gray-suited cast.
Photo Credit: Bryan Derballa for The New York Times

It was Robert Fritz who pointed me at the meaninglessness of glorifying terms like “deep”, “meaningful”, “sustainable”, etc. especially in combination with corporate common blahs like “innovation”, “disruption”, “ecosystem”, and “change”

Simon

Simon Wardley's Common Blahs

Just try it: meaningful change, deep change, sustainable learning organization, etc. Utterly nonsense. But what if we would embrace another form of nonsense, another form of meaninglessness? Another form of plainness, elegance, pure joy from form?

It was this article about David Byrne’s Utopia Tour in the NYT, that lead me into the wormhole of Dada poetry, and later into the other art movement Cobra and its related Cobra Manifesto (Cobra is for a subsequent post).

“I thought plain but elegant suits would unify us and help reveal us as a tribe, a community,” 

 What was that song with the nonsense lyrics?The lyrics for “I Zimbra” were derived from “Gadji beri bimba,” a 1916 phonetic poem by Hugo Ball, the German author-poet and co-founder of Dada. More than a half-century after Ball strove to stop making sense, he got a writing credit for the opening track on the Talking Heads album “Fear of Music.”

 

Gadji beri bimba clandridi
Lauli lonni cadori gadjam
A bim beri glassala glandride
E glassala tuffm I zimbra

Bim blassa galassasa zimbrabim
Blassa glallassasa zimbrabim

A bim beri glassala grandrid
E glassala tuffm I zimbra

Gadji…

And then I found this in Peter Sloterdijk’s book “The Aesthetic Imperative”:

sloter aesthetics

I éja

Alo

Myu

Ssírio

Ssa

Schuá

Ará

Niíja

Stuáz

Brorr

Schjatt

Ui ai laéla – oía ssísialu

To trésa trésa trésa mischnumi

Ia lon schtazúmato

Ango laína la

Lu liálo lu léiula

Lu léja léja hioleíolu

A túalo mýo

Myo túalo

My ángo Ina

Ango gádse la

Schia séngu ína

Séngu ína la

My ángo séngu

Séngu ángola

Mengádse

Séngu

Iná

Leíola

Kbaó

Sagór

Kadó

Kadó? Cadeau? Maybe it’s a matter of learning to be better at the art of accepting presents or pure gifts. The text above is the last ‘movement’ of the Ango laïna by Rudolf Blümner, a kind of phonetic cantata for two voices from the year 1921. Blümner described it as an ‘absolute poem’. The Ango laïna demonstrates what poetry can be after it is emancipated from the vocabulary, grammar, rhetoric, and phonetics of the German language.

It made me think about what makes me happy and unhappy. Unhappiness caused by dullness, not making the most of it, chatter, irrelevance, not being in the moment, Being distracted from what you are supposed to be, to do,…

This is not about boredom. I can be perfectly happy in full boredom. I can be perfectly happy in full silence. I can be perfectly happy in full nothingness

Happiness is about being in the perfect “bubble” or “sphere” of belonging and relevance. This is beyond Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It is getting closer to Nitin Nohria’s four drivers of motivation (see also my 2011 post on Lipstick on Pigs):

  • The drive to acquire,
  • The drive to defend,
  • The drive to bond, and
  • The drive to learn

Without stress, fatigue, and unhappiness. These happen when:

  • You cannot decide the pace of viewing (credit to my art teacher Fiorella Stinders)
  • You cannot decide the pace of creating (credit to Geert Lovink)

Happiness, in essence, is about not being withheld. Withheld by tempo. Withheld by form. Withheld by meaning.

This form of meaningless joy is what attracts me to the Dada movement.

In my next post, we’ll get into the Cobra movement, and why their ideas of playfulness are relevant in today’s thinking about society.

petervan-signature

 

Côte d’Azur

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The Tour de France 2019 started in Brussels this year and the route to the south passed by a village at about 20km from where I live. So, I took my bike on that super sunny day to watch the circus passing by, including the publicity caravan 3 hours in advance of the cyclists.

cholet-tour-de-france-2018-caravane-publicitaire-11-1024x683

It all feels like a big summer feast, with all folks – of all ages, gender, race, poor and rich – coming out of their alcoves to enjoy this popular almost festivalesque party. It inspired me to write these couple of lines of somewhat nostalgic reflection:

Lovely girls with red-red lips and short-short shorts waving and smiling at the crowds.

A flashback to the Côte d’Azur, the French Riviera, Saint-Tropez, Claude François, Serge Gainsbourg, and dub reggae. A throwback to the seafood restaurant along the promenade in Nice during a Gartner conference.

Being a flaneur, voyeur, a little bit tipsy, just enough to feel happy with a cold glass of white-white wine and some delicious white-white fish-au-citron, freshly steamed potatoes, and a drip of fine-fine olive oil on a terrace on the beach.

The taste of summer. The taste of vacation.

sttfinal

 

 

Petervan update March 2018 – Prison Window

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Main liberty post

Petervan Artwork © 2018 – Liberty in Prison – Digital Mix

 

Spoiler: there is nothing in this post that is business, FinTech, Blockchain or AI related.

General

It has been a quiet couple of weeks since my previous update of Jan 2018. I am getting used to the post-employee rhythm of the day: art, garden, chickens, biking. My day schedule is getting close to “the perfect day” as described in Freed From Desire.

The Artschool project

Most of my artwork is related to the Hot Dogs Tonight (HDT) project. If you want an intro on HDT, check out my previous post.

As the HDT is at times so geometrical and becoming a real obsession – and to assure you and myself that I am not completely flipping – I sometimes alternate with more organic work like this:

Main messing

Petervan Artwork © 2018 – Messin’ – Acryl on canvas – 120x100cm

But back to HDT: Marie-Ange, one of my teachers at academy, introduced me to PVL, who had been experimenting a lot with painting on canvasses that themselves where prints on canvas.

When he heard about one of the sub-projects of HDT, he suggested me to go fully digital and print on canvas instead of painting on printed canvas. He sounded like a perfectionist: nothing below 750 dpi, always use high quality print shops, only use Adobe Photoshop, etc

So I “perfected” the prison window to this reference shape (all formats, colours, line weights, etc are now documented for different sizes…)

Main reference

Petervan Artwork © 2018 – Reference Prison Window – Digital Mix

I also tried a bigger painting (120x100cm), with 720 little prison windows. The yellow went fine, but for some reason the purple paint started creeping under the mask tape, and I lost the precision of the preparatory work. I tried to hide the imperfections with carbon black acryl markers, but made it worse (although some disagree).

I should have tested these new markers a couple of times on test surfaces before applying it to the 720 HDT canvas. Also the canvas started undulating after applying and re-applying so much tape. Again, some good lessons learned in addition of having become some semi-expert in mask taping.

Main big one

Petervan Artwork © 2018 – 720 Windows – Acryl on canvas – 120x100cm

I also started to prefer the shape without the prison bars: hoping less is really becoming more. I experimented with different settings, formats, colours, with/without lines, taped lines, acryl marker lines, etc.

This time using very cheap 20x20cm canvasses from the local Action-store (discounter)

main 2 small windows

Petervan Artwork © 2018 – Small windows – Acryl on canvas – 20x20cm

Main 20 experiments

Petervan Artwork © 2018 – 20 experiments for essence – Acryl on Canvas – 20x20cm

People seem to be intrigued by the HDT work, and it can serve many different (post-fact confabulated) narratives. Some narratives that seem to tick/stick:

Golden Cage: the life of employees with all the perks and stocked fridges, but still living and operating as self imposed inmates, loosing all sense of agency, and keeping quiet and obeying whatever real or imaginary authority. I can imagine HDT full-size installations with different insides/outsides to let the visitor experience what they missed by staying inside the cage.

Main 4 city views

Petervan Artwork © 2018 – NYC/SFO/LON/SYD – Prints on Canvas – 20x20cm

The whole theme of surveillance, sous-veillance and the prison guard’s option to open the window at will, or worse overlooking all the prisoners in Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, so well put into the social media context in Andrew Keen’s Digital Vertigo. Keen has btw a new book out “How to fix the future”. The look from within the prison cell, seeing the sunshine outside. The look from outside, seeing the cheap light bulb inside.

Main inside outside

Petervan Artwork © 2018 – Inside/Outside – Print on Canvas – 20x20cm

Trumpism: Americans seem to be frustrated with it. There seems to be a sort of complacency that leads to statements like “As long as it does not burn in my house”. Your own house has become a prison cell and/or refuge. “Liberty in Prison” seems to appeal to that, as well as the baseball hat referring to some other possibilities than America First. Same for all the shootings in schools, schools being experienced as danger zones: Schools behind bars.

main liberty and schools

Petervan Artwork © 2018 – Liberty/School behind bars – Digital Mixes

The HDT shape can also be seen as some sort of code, a symbol, an icon, a tag, a font, a sign-of-the-times. I have used it as part of the design of the world clock installation, or contrast experiences in Green/Red/Blue. For the world clock, I also have a more complex design with gyroscopes and smartphone holders, and a smartphone app to take pictures/selfies from behind the prison window.

Petervan Artwork © 2018 – World Clock - Installation 6 acryl canvasses – 20x20cm

Main 3 colors V2

Petervan Artwork © 2018 – Green/Red/Blue – Acryl on Canvas – 50x50cm

The algorithms of the online print shops pointed me to cross-sell offerings for all sorts of merchandise. I have now received designs for T-shirts, baseball caps, notebooks, mugs, pencils, stickers, etc

I could not resist and ordered the black T-shirt, and it did arrive nicely in my mailbox two days after uploading my JPEG file to the print shop. The caps are not ordered yet. Still hesitating for white caps, or red caps to make the link with “Make America Great Again” and to find some alternative tagline. Could be something with “resist” or “released” or ???

main t shirt

main white capmain red cap

Petervan Artwork © 2018 – Merchandising – The T-shirt exists 😉

main stencils

main mono print

main etch

Petervan Artwork © 2018 – Stencils/Templates/Etches/Monoprints

The HDT project unleashes many other ideas. Some folks refer to the Blue Dog Phenomenon by George Rodrigue or the OBEY memes of Shepard Fairey, who recently even started covering huge apartment blocks with his memes. I have no idea where HDT will lead me. It just happened to me. There is no plan. Let’s celebrate happenstance.

My academy teachers told me there are enough ideas now, and it’s time to “execute” and make some of the existing work “presentable”:

  • Most of my canvasses are stitched on wooden panels. After a while, especially with a lot of tape-work, they start undulating. I need to get some of them properly framed (or do it myself) so they look somewhat “neat”.
  • I have load of digital work and try-outs. My teachers say that that work is worth seeing as well. This could include printing some of my digital designs on high quality paper and presenting them in some kind of gift box that people can browse through

New tools

I completed my studio with the following new tools:

Co-creation: Prison-Window-as-a-platform

I am playing with the idea of making available the Prison Window in different formats (PSD, JPEG, etc) and inviting other creative folks to have a go with it and sharing their results with the community. I will probably do a separate post with invitations and assignments for that.

I will probably start simple with some Google-Doc folders, but wondering if any cloud platform already exists to do just that. Also interested on any models for licensing and compensation models for collaborating artists. You never know somebody wants to buy this stuff. Just ping me if you know of any platform or models that can serve my needs. I will be eternally grateful 😉

The Pigs & Chickens Project

Just a moniker for my garden project. And for this edition just some pictures will do.

Main moestuin

Petervan Industrial Constructions © 2018 – Self made vegetable box

main chickens

Petervan Chicken diversity/inclusion/#metoo 2018

Interesting quotes/random ideas/reflections

  • About Trump: “As long as it is not burning in my house” and “The destruction of complacency”
  • About time: “Future Memories”
  • About employees: “Self imposed inmates”

Social media disconnect

As in “the perfect day”, I am now almost completely disconnected. I have unsubscribed from almost all mailing lists. I am down to about 2 emails per day and of course an empty email box. My mobile can only take calls and text messages. 3G is disabled. I have stopped tweeting, FB-ing, etc. I put a blocker on my browser (https://blocksite.co/) on my laptop and mobile and it does what you’d expect it to do. I feel I have more agency with my time. I am enjoying the physical and emotional silence.

What’s next?

During Apr – June 2018, the plan is to work on:

  • Hot Dogs Tonight, with a focus on wooden 3D objects, and more rough and bigger scale projects
  • Pigs & Chickens Project
  • Studio Oxygen (see previous post)
  • Lots of biking (it’s spring and summer after all)
  • Whatever feels interesting (A.F.E.A.R.) and comes naturally into my flow: a couple of leads developed after my latest post, we’ll see how that goes.

main green

Petervan Artwork © 2018 – Green – Acryl on canvas – 50x50cm

That’s it for this edition. If there is something worth reporting, next update is for June 2018.

Warmest,

petervan-signature

 

Playing tight: A non-natural show

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Yesterday, there was a news item on Flemish Television on the upcoming opera performance of Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly”, that will be performed at the Brussels Federal Opera House De Munt / La Monnaie (31 Jan – 14 Feb 2017).

What touched me was that Madame Butterfly was played by a puppet, directed by three puppet players (visible in black). The effect is mystical. Check out the end of this video (comments in Dutch, but that should not spoil the experience).

puccini-madame-butterfly

Opera Madame Butterfly - De Munt - As from 31 Jan 2017

It made me think about a passage in David Byrne’s wonderful book “How music works” (Amazon Affiliates link). I am reading it in the context of my performance for Petervan Productions.

how-music-works

At a certain moment, David Byrne describes how his thinking about a show – a performance – was influenced by traditional Japanese theater forms such as Kabuki, Noh, and Bunraku.

Example of Japanese Kabuki theatre

 

“The tour eventually took us to Japan, where I went to see their traditional theater forms: Kabuki, Noh, and Bunraku. These were, compared to Western theater, highly stylized; presentational is the word that is sometimes used, as opposed to the pseudo-naturalistic theater we in the west are more used to.” 

“The character had in effect been so fragmented that the words they spoke didn’t come from close to or even behind that puppet. You had to reassemble the character in your head.”

“As in Japanese theater, the performers often wore masks and extreme makeup; their movements, too, were stylized and “unnatural.” It began to sink in that this kind of “presentational” theater had more in common with certain kinds of pop-music performance than traditional Western theater.”

“There was no attempt to formally separate the ritual and the show from the audience. I quickly absorbed that it was all right to make a show that didn’t pretend to be “natural.” To further complicate matters, I decided to make the show completely transparent. I would show how everything was done and how it had been put together.”

Check out the video footage of the resulting “Stop making sense” Tour. The show starts with a heavenly version of the song “Heaven” on an empty stage. At minute 2:30 you will see the first elements of the stage being rolled in.

The whole show is super enjoyable, and if you want to know what “playing tight” means, check this awesome version of “Breaking down the house”, which does exactly what you would expect.

 

Sometimes I think I have to stop trying to “make sense”. Better would be to “make meaning”.

All these reflections are related to my upcoming performance “Tin Drum is Back” (subtitle: “what is/what could be”): the performance design is evolving well, with detailed script being written as we speak.

Part of the story is looking back into ones youth (5-10 years old), look at what was forbidden then: for some people that is an area of talent they have neglected to develop. In my case, it was a tin drum I got when I was 6 years old, and the story of rhythms in my life and in my work. As the script develops, the narrative arc seems to be about evolving archetypes and levels of maturity.

Scripting is not “only” the storyline, but also the staging, transition, props, lighting, etc… And all visuals, sounds, and word are self-composed, self-created. Should be ready around March, although I may pick up some delay.

It starts feeling like theatre by an amateur 😉 So, performing “tight”, in some theatrical form, with costumes, masks, props, and stage being build-up as the show moves along, is certainly inspirational.

I see “Tin Drum…” as a teaser for a bigger story on multi-media corporate narratives, where – who knows – I create commissioned performances on less tangible topics (less tangible than “what problem are you trying to solve?”). I indeed think that a lot of the work I am preparing is steering away from the problem-solving orientation, and give more room to the creative orientation of “what do I want?”

What do you think? BS? Did I smoke too much ? 😉 Please don’t hesitate to share resources and serendipities that this post may generate.

More general Jan 2017 update here:  https://petervan.wordpress.com/2017/01/08/petervan-productions-jan-2017-update/

Rebelliously yours,

 

petervan-signature_transparent_black_version2

Right spaces for humans

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As many of you know, since begin November I am trying to create my own thing called “Petervan Productions”.

The scaffolding is already in the works for many years, and I am still hesitating whether I will once publish the 100+ page reflections on the intentions of all this, what I think this enables, and then working down the tactics such as outcomes and deliverables.

Besides the artwork and the research bit of my activities, I spent quite some time in re-thinking what “events” could be like. And thinking of my customers as “guest”, not consumers. What I am trying to offer is a one-stop-shop for unique immersive learning expeditions in emotionally and physically right spaces for humans.

So anything that gets me back to my architectural roots of “right” spaces for human beings makes me a bit poetic. In this case this very nice article in Aeon about the French architect Jean Nouvel, all about light, geometry and symbolism to re-imagine culture.

The core of the article is a very nice video. As usual, I made the transcript of the video, and added some poetic highlights and typographic reflections by myself. I have stopped adding comments and trying to explain. My guests are smart enough to make up their own minds. Explaining would be an insult.

jean-nouvel1

 

Each project is an adventure, a passion

The biggest temptation

Is to jump into it

There are solutions that come to you

There are images that spontaneously appear

My method is rather to hold back as long as possible

To really imagine it spatially

So, to be sure that I have something to say

These moments where you understand somebody cared about something

That’s when you feel

 like “oh yes,

this is a human thing,

not some robot that

put something together”

Simply living there is a cultural act

Combine big bold shapes with intricacy and delicacy

The ability to be bold and delicate at the same time

jean-nouvel2

The relation between time and light

The sphere above,

the cupola

As spiritual space

“Perhaps we have to keep dust”

jean-nouvel3

Create a space, no inside, no outside…

jean-nouvel4

“We have principles, and these principles we have to nurture.

We nurture them.

We deepen them.

And with them,

we invent…

something else”

Crafting Beautiful Businesses

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IMG_0384

Collection of artworks from my fellow students of the 2016 Art class

My good friend Alan Moore (@alansmlxl) from the flatlands of Cambridge recently published a great book on “Why beauty is key to everything” (Amazon Affiliates link).

Alan Moore book

It’s a great book, and as a teaser, here are some of my highlights out of the book:

Harmony, symmetry and maths all point to this atomic elegance.

A job well done is not based upon watching the clock or fighting time – but in giving oneself to the task

Their work transformed common objects into works of uncommon grace

I believe great work comes from a place of stillness where one’s focus is total on the action in hand, directed fully by the heart.

We need to open our senses to all that surrounds us

To be and to remain deeply intensely curious about our world is vital to original thinking, whereas the incurious face a rather dim future. To have a hungry heart and mind determines what it is we create

The interface with design is humanity

I don’t need to draw conclusions, I am happy for the thoughts to be half-formed but present

Do not work with people who don’t want beautiful, who wish to cut corners to increase profitability. Who, more dangerously, bring neither elegance nor grace to their work and their working environment, but the opposite.

The danger for the leader comes if you cannot truly love yourself. If you are at war with yourself then you will be unable to lead others with empathy and compassion. You may pretend – but you will always be found out

If you want more of this, Alan is organising on 27 Sep 2016 a workshop in London around the idea of, what would your business look like were it to be more beautiful?

Why should you come? You might be stuck in working out what direction to go in. Or seeking a more inspiring vision. Or trying to find new ways to make money. Or working out what your new technology can truly give to the world. You might be launching a precious new business, or working to rebuild an old one. Or a thousand other things besides. We will help you to:

  • See your work through a new lens
  • Get to grips with beautiful ways of making your business work better
  • Understand the value of beauty in designing experiences
  • See how beauty and utility can work together for success
  • Understand how great design is about the quality of your thinking, not the size of your wallet.

The gathering in a beautiful old church in Bishopsgate, London.  A remarkable space in the centre of skyscrapers.

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I read the book, and if the workshop is as good as the book, I strongly recommend it. More info about the event here. Enjoy

Freed From Desire

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End February, i had the opportunity to attend the “Socratic Design Workshop” in Cadaqués, 1 hour drive north of Barcelona, Spain.

From the Socrates website:

Socratic Design is a new learning method, incubating the generation of the best human future narratives by realising collective wisdom through the art of dialogue.

The exponential technological revolution cannot be incorporated in the old narratives build on coal and steel ideas. Centrality, hierarchy, ownership, secret information and monopolies are no longer guarded in this new tech culture.

The exponential technology era challenges our human creativity in an unseen way. We can only approach this huge potential of power with next level humanity awareness.

We need to reflect profoundly on our values, on our strong and weak points and above all on our implicit and hidden dreams of a human good life; safeguarded in hundreds years of literature, philosophy, human experiences, religions and other narratives.

We can only perform this if we leave behind our old school atomic thinking, using the strength of intense socratic dialogue, using personal experiences, reaching collective intelligence to jump into new frontier of thinking: exponential humanity.

One of the first exercises was to describe your “perfect day” ten years from now. That exercise was more confronting than i thought at first sight. Here is what i came up with. I deleted the detailed daily hour-by-hour agenda of the perfect day, in order not to bother you with too much tactical detail.

 

In 10 years time…

I will almost be 70

My wife almost 60

My daughter almost 20

Our parents will be gone

 

I have become a full time artist – creator – sensemaker

I sell my art, creations, sense-makings, and curations

I curate, selectively, choose my clients/guests

I only select/accept commissions that meet my quality standards of intention and intensity and ethics

 

I am connecting with the experts, the musicians, and artists of all kinds, to bring out the very best in them. I love to work & live with them, to show personal intent and integrity, so that others want to join my projects too.

 

My work has given room to a Foundation for better work (essence of work and deep change)

My work leads to delight, enjoyment, joy, pleasance, elegance, and maybe epicurism.

 

Enjoying the silence of the house and the morning

Writing, researching, and sense-making

Creating, scripting, painting, making sound- and word-scapes

Performing, Architecting rythms and connections

Good food and wine

Family time

Reading and sleeping

 

I am completely disconnected

Only take mails if announced by phone

My mobile can only take calls and sms

I have stopped tweeting, FB-ing,

Enjoying the physical and emotional silence

 

What I do does not scale

I focus on uniqueness, excellence

The beauty is in the perfection

 

I live in another house, with plenty of space, and annex atelier, maybe art gallery

On the country side, the humid heavy earth of Flanders,

Or in Spain, Toledo, Sevilla, in the middle of the heat of the plain fields

The crack in me, Dries van Noten, the tones of a Spanish Guitar, the dry hot summer heat and the shadow and olive trees

 

I have become a hermit

Nothing should or must

There is no time pressure whatsoever

I am in flow

Nothing needs to be proven

 

I am freed from desire

Moments of Enchantment

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From time to time, I am invited to give a keynote presentation. More and more i am adding multimedia elements to that: video, audio, even silence. This transmedia approach is also something that keeps inspiring me when doing my day job, where i am architect and content curator of “events”. I always say that i am not in the “events” business but in the business of creating high quality feedback loops to enable immersive learning experiences. That’s quite a different ballgame.

Some fans believe that what I do with our flagship Innotribe@Sibos is where i put the bar. It is not.

It is my starting point.

I really would like to go much further in touching my audience at another, additional level than purely the cognitive level. That’s why i believe a multi-sensory, more intimate, even business romantic experience is needed.

That’s why i love so much the work of Tim Leberecht, here in a recent talk at TEDxIstanbul:

I strongly recommend you watch this talk for the full 18 minutes. And read the book it is based on.

Tim Leberecht, author of the book The Business Romantic and chief marketing officer of global design firm NBBJ and, worries that big data, algorithms, and self-tracking technologies are engineering the romance out of our lives. He argues that we can find and create more meaning, and even magic, by designing experiences that connect us with something greater than ourselves. He contends that we all long for moments that are powerful precisely because they are inexplicable, such as acts of collective generosity, random digressions, and exuberant passions, and even the beauty of losing control.

He is referring to “Unexpected moments of beauty, awe and wonders, the detours and digressions, the cracks of imperfection, that make a heart speed faster, adrenaline rush, moments in which we loose control, and fall in love with everything.”

When was the last moment in your professional life when you had an experience like that?

It seems that only the measured life is a good life. Optimized by algorithms. I don’t believe in that anymore. There must be something better, more intimate, more unique, more transient, less about scaling and optimizing.

There is another great new book by Matthew Crawford, called “The World Beyond Your Head: How to Flourish in an Age of Distraction”

World beyond your head

It’s not an easy read, but Oliver Burkeman from The Guardian reviews: “Crawford has a point … adverts are everywhere, so much so you have to pay to escape. There are real benefits to silence. No great book, or idea comes without a degree of silence. Independent thinking is not possible without it. Perhaps this is why so many corporations and institutions demand our attention – and why we should protect it Scotsman Incisive. It’s philosophy as an intervention in issues of the day.”

And The Chronicle of Higher Education raves: “The most cogent and incisive book of social criticism I’ve read in a long time: accessible, demanding, and rewarding. Reading it is like putting on a pair of perfectly suited prescription glasses after a long period of squinting one’s way through life”

The book describes the big disconnect between our agency (or the illusion of it, by seemingly being in control by clicking some buttons on an app) and the result of our agency, the work, the piece of craftsmanship, that piece of art.

That’s why i deeply refuse to see my work “as a job”. Work should equal meaning should equal passion should equal Art. The artist’s way…

That’s why i subscribed again to Art School last year, and i just registered again for the 2015-2016 season. Last year was about drawing, next year will be about painting.

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Own artwork @petervan 2015 - pencil on paper and some water diluted black chinese ink

That’s why i carved out some quality time for myself on Fridays, when i experiment with art, sound and poetry. And i installed a small studio in my atelier at home, with a MIDI keyboard attached to my Mac, running Garageband and Ableton Software. I also got myself a “Push”, a special hardware device to play music and create sound landscapes in Ableton.

Puch

So i started thinking about what it would take to evolve my presentations into some sort of performance, where i only use my own artwork, my own self-composed sound landscapes and my self-written poetry. And do it LIVE! Standing in full vulnerability.

And what would a trailer for such a live performance look like? Here is a little experiment… The trailer is just an existing iMovie template tweaked with my own artwork.

<p><a href=”https://vimeo.com/132009275″>The Spooky World of @Petervan</a> from <a href=”https://vimeo.com/user29570471″>Peter Vander Auwer</a> on <a href=”https://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a&gt;.</p>

I showed it to some friends, and i was surprised how much a little thingie like this can create emotional reactions. Somebody else wanted me to do some commissioned work to create an immersive learning performance for a marketing event in 2016. Yet somebody else wants me to completely re-invent their executive off-sites to move them away from the boring flipcharts, whiteboards, post-its, scribing, and gamification tricks. And move them into deep intimate and almost zen-like retreats with tailer made, unique and transient multi-sensory experiences to create high quality connections of human beings on a mission for genuine and positive impact.

All these formats create a new type of scarcity, experiences that we can’t fully posses, experiences that don’t last, experiences that we don’t fully comprehend. They restore friction and doubt in a world of certainty, knowledge, and seamlessness-ness.

Formats where it is not about rapid prototyping, nor about fast iteration tracks to find a solution for a problem. We have to get out of problem solving mode. We already do that the whole year long. I believe we are hungry for a higher quality of being truly present. What Tim Leberecht calls:

“Being Thickly Present”

Maybe i am onto something that may lead to another level of awareness and articulation of corporate narratives beyond the hollow mission statements. Entering a new age of enchantment, in search for something bigger and more valuable than all that what can be measured. The beauty of things that don’t scale. Beauty keeps on chasing me. I wrote about it in “Confused by Beauty” and “The Battle for Beauty” featuring once more The Business Romantic.

What do you think? Let’s have a conversation 😉