All posts filed under: Projects

Devoted

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At 15, considerably late in the game, I first picked up a skateboard and decided that this was the way I want to spend my time with, the way of exploring and making sense of the physical world around me. When I’m at my parents, my old room still has that skate rat feel to it. Broken boards here and there, some cut-out photos and ads of my favourite pros, some worn-out shoes crammed in the back of the wardrobe and of course, the huge pile of magazines collected along the way. A big chunk of my early skateboarding education, I owe to the videos I borrowed from friends on VHS or DVD and studied over and over and over again, yet my weapon of choice for inspiration were the print magazines released every month. Now, in times of the digital word, countless blogs, social media, digesting the news about literally anything – not just the subculture of skateboarding – has changed radically, not just compared to the early 2000’s, but the pre-internet times. And …

Opening Doors

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‘Opening Doors’ is a new feature for Counterpoint Magazine, a beautifully risograph-printed magazine bringing together independent journalism and illustration. For issue #12 ‘Spaces’ I talked to the organisers of Hidden Door, a DIY arts festival colonising Edinburgh’s abandoned spaces. Read the full piece on my portfolio here.

Paving Space

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Often times skateboarders look at public space in a way others cannot necessarily relate to. They see obstacles in the city architecture as something to explore, to interpret and to creatively push the boundaries of what’s possible once more. ‘Paving Space’, a collaboration between artist and skateboarder Raphaël Zarka, Carhartt WIP and Isle Skateboards, illustrates this curious, explorative spirit of street skateboarding beautifully. At the time, Raphaël was captivated by the works of 19th century mathematician Arthur Moritz Schoenflies and his groundbreaking three-dimensional geometric models. Seeing its sculptural potential and seemingly endless possibilities, he started reconstructing them into large-scale modules for a series of shows at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Singapore and Sainte-Croix Museum in Poitiers. But instead of exhibiting his geometric formations as static pieces of art, Raphaël invited a group of pro skateboarders to use the spaces as creative laboratories: By riding the wooden sculptures, exploring different assembly methods and thus informing its arrangement in the different spaces, the lines between obstacle and artwork started to blur. …

22nd Century Writing in the Making: The Future Library

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What will we read in 100 years? Probably nothing, if they don’t come up with a solution to the natural consequence of ageing. Of course there are these timeless classics that will endure the passing of time and people will revel forever, something that Homer, Shakespeare, Goethe, Dickens, Austen, Poe or Kafka can tell you a thing or two about. We don’t even know if picking up a book in its traditional form and paper shape is going to be a thing in the 22nd century, but at least there is a bunch of new works that will most certainly hit the bookshops (or whatever people go to these days). Two years ago, Scottish artist Katie Paterson launched her much-noticed project ‘Future Library’ that gives us a tiny glimpse into the future of reading: A forest of 1000 trees was planted in Oslo’s Nordmarka Forest to supply the paper for an anthology of 100 books, to be unveiled in 2114. With every passing year, an author is selected by Paterson to produce a work of …

Chasing Lyrical Natural Sciences: Katrina McHugh

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Last year, I dived head-first into quite a challenge. I vowed to tell a story through a photograph for 100 days straight. It was a tough, fun and quite frankly a liberating thing to do – you should all try it some day. And as I already said back then, the aspect that makes the #100dayproject so special is the communal spirit that ensued, learning about the daily struggles and inspirations of thousands of other participants, and eventually, finding out about the many supercool projects out there that otherwise might not’ve seen the light of day. #100daysoflyricalnaturalsciences was a quick favourite of mine. San Francisco-based graphic designer Katrina McHugh set out to create beautiful diagrams and infographics out of song lyrics that are rooted in the natural world: ‘I was and am interested in how often people rely on references to nature when attempting to bring shape to the intangible complexities involved in this “being alive” business. It’s no easy task to communicate our human experience so if a nature metaphor gets you a bit closer to whatever the …

Say Hello to Boom Saloon

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Having freelanced quite a bit in the wonderful magic world of indie magazines, keeping ad-free photography and adventure magazine Wildland Mag afloat, I was genuinely excited when I was let in on a new project idea. About a year ago, I met (then) twitter acquaintance Rachel Arthur for a chat and it felt like two magazine minds instantly clicked. We talked about the way media, journalism and the publishing industry shifted in the past years, old powerhouses falling by the wayside and how indie magazines have taken over bigger and bigger chunks of traditional readerships with exciting new content and financing models. And so we spoke about boom saloon, a new adventure she was scheming with friend and designer Jamie Smail.  At its core sits a beautifully printed magazine full of inspiring stories by a collective of international contributors, seeking to spur a movement, a wave to democratise creativity for good. As part of every issue, boom saloon selects a social project to support and champion creativity in underprivileged areas. It’s about taking young creatives by the hand, nurturing their raw talent …

And Here We Harvest the Fog

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Ingenuity exists in so many ways, it’s mind-boggling what’s possible when people just pursue their dreams and harness their creativity to the fullest. That’s where the passion of the people behind Makeshift stems from. Known for a kaleidoscope of beautifully crafted content that seeks to uncover creative solutions from the economic fringe, it’s no wonder why the magazine quickly snatched a hot spot on my bookmarks list. Just take features about Barcelona’s pickpocketing school, Palestine’s lone brewery, building DIY limbs in Thailand or the Chinese copy painters of Dafen as a benchmark and you’ll get a good impression of what I mean with innovative stories. And their Power Hackers short film series is no exception, visiting unexpected makers and designers who are developing creative climate solutions. I especially loved this one on the Cloud Catchers of Peru. By using nylon nets, lo-tech ingenuity and an abundant local resource, the locals of Lima’s arid hill villages developed a hack to maintain the supply of water in the surrounding areas. With nature’s future on the razor’s edge, it’s always great to see …

From the Visible to the Tangible : Unseen Art

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Imagine you wouldn’t be able to read what I’m writing right now. Unable to see what I’m seeing before me. Head to a museum or art gallery and not being able to marvel at this famous painting, this striking photograph, this stunning sculpture and sense the same excitement for the artist’s spark of ingenuity. The need to rely on other people’s description, perception and appreciation for an artwork rather than connecting the dots yourself. For some of us this might be hard to grasp, but for others this is just daily routine. Marc Dillon tries to change that, at least temporarily. His project Unseen Art strives to give blind and visually impaired people a chance to enjoy, experience and interact with art in a different way. Similar to Didu, an exciting new relief printing technique by Spanish designers Estudios Durero that adds palpable layers to paintings and photographs, the Finnish software programmer turns the visible into the tangible and recreates old and new masterpieces in 3D. He is currently raising funds to kickstart Unseen Art as a global …

Wrap up time: #100DaysOfTales

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So yeah, I did it! Last friday, well, 3 days behind the big schedule, I launched my final photo story on instagram. Time to wrap up & look back on the crazy amazing journey that left me inspired, exhausted and above all proud. Weeks earlier I decided to be part of a movement, a self-experiment, a challenge to see if I’d keep up or quit the whole thing. For #100DaysOfTales I captured 100 moments, big and small, meaningful and abstract, and brought them to life in 100 stories. Some were fictional stories that just felt right in the visual context, some were drawn from memories and experiences, some served as an emotional release, some actually happened right in front of me, while others were just mere thoughts and ideas that popped up and I tried to bring into a narrative order. Sounds easy peasy, but it was a struggle sometimes. There were days when I had no creativity at all, story-wise and visually. Then there were days when my brain was brimming over with ideas and had 2, 3, 4 things ready in my head, just no photo to go along with. …

Sweeney's Bothy #1 © The Bothy Project

The Artist and the Solitude: The Bothy Project

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‘I am not an artist, but can I just live here, please?’ That was probably my first disbelieving thought, when I saw the beautiful images of these remote huts scattered around a pristine landscape. You could easily sneak them into collections of architecture appreciators like #cabinporn without revealing their true purpose – besides looking outrageously cosy. The Bothy Project, initiated by artist Bobby Niven and architect Iain MacLeod in 2011, is a network of intimate, small-scale and off-grid art residency spaces in distinct locations around Scotland and beyond. While offering a platform for artists from various disciplines and practices to journey and explore the peculiarities of the history, mythology, landscape and people in the areas surrounding the bothies, the team behind TBP is committed to use only sustainable, innovative materials to create simple, modern designs. So far, there’s three lovely bothies to marvel at: Inshriach Bothy was built as a part of RSA Residencies for Scotland and fabricated in residence at the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop in 2011, before getting nestled in a sparse hilltop wood …