Kees de Klein
Wezenstraat 5
6811 CR Arnhem
The Netherlands
Go to: Prospectus, New Ordos (Preview),
Gratitude (Another Library), Internship Report, Zwarte huid, Oranje hart, In the waste of the Uebermensch, Quilts, World Space Week,
Obama Brand, I've Probably Been There Once Already, Curran Prospect, Le Contour, The paper machine, Confidential, Centrum Imperium, Idioterne, ArtEZ Library Index, Lost and Found, Intervention, Obama Today, NYC/Arnhem Postcards, Studiegids, Swift, A Room of one's Own, Coffee Breaks, Cab Rides, Green Rooms, Meinke ten Have or City Trip Magazine
— Currently working at Metahaven, Amsterdam
— City Trip Magazine (first issue: New Ordos)
Inner-Mongolia has a new city: New Ordos,
graduation publication. June 2010
From 2001 to 2005, China worked on New Ordos to make it a huge city, with everything one can possibly think of. Museums which might be even
more appealing than Bilbao’s Guggenheim, huge purple and yellow living area’s which remind us of the expensive and elitist American ones and streets, happier than the ones in Shanghai. Mr. Cai, a self-made billionaire who earned his money with coal and dairy, funded half of the city with leading
Chinese artist and architect Ai Wei Wei as a ‘curator’. And the result? Aniconic, good looking and peaceful place for over a million people.
The Inner-Mongolian city is known for the greenest grass in the world during summertime, and the whitest snow every turn of the year. And the
architecture? Herzog and de Meuron picked a 100 friends from Jacques’ rolodesk and asked them to build 100 fantastic buildings. The futuristic sight of the hundred sharply dressed architects in the desert in 2001 became a preview of the city, which is extraordinary in its design.
Just a few miles away is the old Ordos, which is actually only seventy years old as well. It’s a ‘funky’ city with outdoor meat and fish markets, crowded traffic and damaged architecture. The city is almost forgotten by now, because the attention traveled the single road to the Newer Ordos. Many people are considering to move there, and a lot of brands are confronted with the decision of opening another store in the New City. But they better be quick, before they are too late.
With the pressure of other cities being creative capitals or having biannuals, games or even taller buildings, New Ordos still is one of a kind. Same as New Ordos invited architects from over the whole world to come to their city, I would like to do the same in this first issue of City Trip Magazine. Explore with us the many things this city has to offer. Our editors lookout for the nicest art, design, history, literature and architecture in New Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China.
Good reading.
Little publication and website showing two series,
but also not exhibited work of fine arts photographer Meinke ten Have. For graduation exhibition,
ArtEZ 2010, June 2010
— Prospectus
Dissertation about the vague area between
politics and design, in form of an undated
prospectus, 4th year
— Coffee Breaks, Cab Rides, Green Rooms (with Rozemarijn Koopmans)
Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces – what Dr. Seuss calls “the waiting place.” Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference – the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals – but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations. (Graphic Design Festival Breda), April 2010
— New Ordos (Preview)
A poster as a preview for the result of my
graduation. It will be used for the graduation
catalog which will be designed by Nick Topp
and Dianne Rijnbende, 4th year
— Gratitude (Another Library)
East Timor, also known as Timor-Leste (officially
the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste) is a coun-try in Southeast Asia. A brief civil war occurred in 1975. Indonesia alleged that the East Timorese FRETILIN party, which received some vocal
support from the People's Republic of China,
was communist.
The UN Security Council had a unanimous vote
for Indonesia to stop its invasion and to withdraw immediately from East Timor’s borders, and was blocked by the United States from imposing any economic sanctions or other means of enforcing
this mandate.
Following a UN-sponsored agreement between Indonesia, Portugal and the United States and a surprise decision by the Indonesian President B.J. Habibie, a UN-supervised popular referendum was held on August 30, 1999 to choose between Special Autonomy within Indonesia and independence. 78.5% of voters chose independence, but violent clashes, instigated primarily by elements within
the Indonesian military and aided by Timorese pro-Indonesia militias led by Eurico Guterres, broke out soon afterwards. A peacekeeping force (INTERFET, led by Australia) intervened to restore order.
The Australian Tom Nicholson works with the project Another Library on a program of books, education and vademecums for East-Timor. The project can
be seen as charity, but also a layer of arrogance
is noticeable. After several After Action for Another Library a publication on Nicholson himself seem to be apropriate.
The publication is a gratitude to everyone who
made possible his Another Library projects. It
forms an endless list of generated and real names and photos of curators, critics, artists, but also
politicians, INTERFET soldiers and East-
Timorese citizens. The folding refers to the
flag of East-Timor, 3rd year
— Internship Report
Internship at Åbäke, (sept-nov, 2009) There I
made the Benoit typeface, as shown below, 4th year
— Zwarte huid, Oranje hart (with
Rozemarijn Koopmans)
In the KNIL-army serves also African soldiers,
which is not something a lot of people know. Journalist Griselda Molemans and photographer Armando Ello traced descendants of these African KNIL-soldiers. Zwarte huid, Oranje hart is a collection of interviews, stories and portraits, 4th year
— In the waste of the Uebermensch
Jake Chapman (born 1966) and Dinos Chapman (born 1962) are brothers and English conceptual artists, known as the Chapman Brothers, who
work almost exclusively in collaboration with
each other. They came to prominence as part of
the Young British Artists movement promoted by Charles Saatchi.
Behind the shocking appearance on the surface, however, there is an intense engagement with themes of humanity and moral behaviour like humankind's capacity for violence, barbarism
and war, 2nd year
— Quilts
For the publication A Rapper Rapping About How
Good He Can Rap by Namik Schwarz I made four works about quilts, 3rd year
— World Space Week
World Space Week is an annual observance held from October 4 to October 10 established by the United Nations General Assembly to be an inter-national celebration of science and technology and their contribution to the betterment of the human condition. World Space Week is coordinated by the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs with the support of World Space Week Association, a non-government organization.
In 2008, the theme for World Space Week was Exploring the Universe. In 2009, the theme will
be Space for Education.
A Fragment of Russian documentary about inter-planetary emigration and human expansion. video
is part of the series 'survival of the fittest – science and society' of the Educational Video Programme
of the United Nations in collaboration with World Space Week.
It shows an amazing Russian new plan in which
they not only think of claiming parts of our home planet Earth (like the North Pole), but also inter-galactic spheres, to divide the universe politically, even before we are able to live in space, 3rd year
— Obama Brand
A thunderstorm of positivity has showered the
world with optimism since Obama’s election for president, and thankfully he realizes that this is
an ideal opportunity to further extend that good publicity. Suddenly government seems a lot more interested in finding ways to help people and connect with their needs. Obama’s support of Change.org is a perfect example of that. It contains news on issues, ways to organize around causes, and enables visitors to send in their ideas on imple-menting change.
This pair of videos (posted on YouTube) try to use the downsides of web2.0 within publicity. Faked video mistakes create a new message, with an existing video. First video doesn't show Obama at all, because it stagnates. Second mirrors the debate between Biden and Palin, so that they discuss with themselves, 3rd year
— I've Probably Been There Once Already
After working on themes like globalization, quilts
and travelling (see Quilts) I wanted to rethink these subjects on a more personal level. This resulted in
a zine on modern travelling. What this is, I tried to discover in this small publication by comparing it to globalization, migration, trade and culture. It starts with an interview with the 19 year old model Virginia Slaghekke, and contains furthermore only letters in different kind of forms from and to the model, who
is a close friend of mine, 3rd year
— Curran Prospect
We’re running out of oil. Oil scarcity will soon become a worldwide problem. In a future with
green cars oil turns into a product of luxury. Oil cars will be expensive, not suitable for everyone, and therefore elitist. French luxury cars brands like the Peugeot 407 and Citroën 6 are not available to for instance U.S. buyers because of a simple reason: they produce diesel-engine vehicles, which haven’t caught on with U.S. car buyers. Norway has had only 8 brands of cars, of which only two still exist, producing small electric automobiles. In november 2008, The Petroleum Safety Authority of Norway has given StatoilHydro the go-ahead to conduct exploration drilling on the North Pole. The site
could contain between 3.1 and 15.7 million barrels, according the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate. In addition StatoilHydro, which holds 50%, the project includes the Norwegian Petoro (40%) and French Total (10%).The new deposit is located on the prospect Curran, 7 km south of the one already
in operation, Tune, which should reduce develop-ment costs.
Oil and car companies together can prepare for
a luxury oil car market. France, which has proved influential concerning it’s replenishing luxury and industry markets – but is in need for luxury petro-leum cars – must cooperate with Norway, which has a lack of car industry, but a great amount of oil, 3rd year
— Le Contour
Social networking site A Small World (ASW)
calls itself an international community of cultural
important people. ASW offers its members a platform for shearing information, making part
of dialogue, and looking for social chances and business partners.
In fact, the website is a high-class community for which people can only be invited. The American
website shows mostly European cultural events and arts, but offers no profundity. Despite the desription earlier, the website is generally used for describing favorite hotels, restaurants and favorite VIP friends.
Le Contour is a publication, with only contents
of ASW itself. It's a proposal for an American nationalistic magazine with generally Eurpeon influences. The magazine only shows itself, and offers mostly useless information. Le Contour is
the physique equivalent of the website, to show
the marginal comments, 3rd year
— The paper machine
Jacques Derrida (15 July 1930 – 8 October 2004) was a French philosopher born in Algeria, who
is known as the founder of deconstruction. His voluminous work had a profound impact upon
literary theory and continental philosophy, 3rd year
The book The Paper Machine questions the book itself, archivization, machines for writing, and the mecha-nicity inherent in language, the media, and intel-lectuals. Derrida questions what takes place be-tween the paper and the machine inscribing it. He examines what becomes of the archive when the world of paper is subsumed in new machines for virtualization, and whether there can be a virtual event or a virtual archive.
Derrida continues his long-standing investigation of these issues, and ties them into the new themes that governed his teaching and thinking in the past few years: the secret, pardon, perjury, state sovereignty, hospitality, the university, animal rights, capital punishment, the question of what sort of mediatized world is replacing the print epoch, and the question of the “wholly other.” Derrida is remarkable at making seemingly occasional pieces into part of a complexly interconnected trajectory of thought.
Since Derrida questions what happens between
the machine and the paper, this publication is based on transfer, cession, and delivery between us, eight designers. There was formed a chain of designers in which every one had only one chance to to with it what he of she wanted. After finishing working on it for one day, the design was passed trough. This chain can be considered the machine. Every designer tries to interpret the text in its own way, and shows that by adding the layout of the text, but also the content. It results in eight texts, which are all very different to read.
— Confidential
An advance-fee fraud is a confidence trick in which the target is persuaded to advance sums of money in the hope of realizing a significantly larger gain. Among the variations on this type of scam, are the Nigerian Letters (also called the 419 fraud, Nigerian scam, Nigerian bank scam, or Nigerian money offer), the Spanish Prisoner, the Black money scam as well as Russian/Ukrainian scam (also extremely widespread, though far less popular than the for-mer). Both the so-called Russian and Nigerian scams stand for wholly dissimilar organised crime traditions, they therefore tend to use altogether different breeds of approaches, 3rd year
— Centrum Imperium
A little publication on the Colosseum, Rome. What can be associated with this huge theatre? What is its meaning? 3rd year
— Idioterne
The Idiots (Danish: Idioterne) is a 1998 Danish film directed by Lars von Trier. It is his first film made in compliance with the Dogme '95 Manifesto, and is also known as Dogme #2. Dogme '95 is an avant-garde filmmaking movement started in 1995.
The goal of the Dogme collective is to purify
filmmaking by refusing expensive and spec-
tacular special effects, postproduction modifica-
tions and other gimmicks. One of the rules was
that the camera must be a hand-held camera.
Any movement or immobility attainable in the
hand is permitted, 2nd year
— ArtEZ Library Index
Since libraries are threatened by new media and digital information, I wanted to research the fysical contents of a library.
It resulted in an index of the most used themes of the ArtEZ Academy for Arts and Design Media-theque of the past six decades. It shows the main interests of the library of a certain time, 3rd year
— Lost and Found
The lost and found project is composed of two ele-ments: an experiment and a reader. The experiment was a 350 page book containing unfinished work from fellow students. The work was gathered from the copy machines, printers, intranet, lost usb-sticks, photos from social networking websites etc. The book was displayed in the hallway of school, and page were able to be easily removed.
The reader deals with the results of the experiment, and other writing about losts and finds, 3rd year
— Intervention
The Spijkerkwartier in Arnhem originally was a al-luring part of the city. Most buildings have an eclec-tic or neo-classicistic character. The quarter – which became a red light district in the last decades – was cleared recently, and tries to upgrade itself by means of gentrification.
This intervention takes place on the facade of a building which used to be a brothel. The boards, which refer to the ones opf real estate agents, say “love” at one side, and “for sale” on the other side. This relate to the brothels, but to the gentrification
as well, 2nd year
— Obama Today
Everybody is analyzing Barack Obama’s historic
win over John McCain and a lot of smart people have come to the conclusion that Obama’s use of new media was key to his win.
Twice a week Barack Obama, or someone else of his campaign staff, sends an email to subscribers. The contents of these emails are not that important, but the reminder of gratitude, responsibility, “the team,” change and missions are very present and obvious. These are sketches for a calendar and an agenda in which the dates are replaced by sen-tences of his emails. This way a new way of ex-periencing time and rythm is created. All texts, images, and colours are generated by a self
written managing system, 3rd year
— NYC/Arnhem Postcards
A set of two riso-printed postcards to be
sent between Arnhem and New York City, 3rd year
— Studiegids (with Kim Lagerweij)
Every year ArtEZ Academy for Arts and Design publishes a study guide/agenda for all of its students and employees. This publication is always designed by one of the graphic design students. My proposal for the publication was based of the student protests that were held a few weeks before the design. This protest was against the total merge of three large Art and Design academies in the Netherlands, which were already working together on some things. I wanted to creat one structure which could be used in three ways, referring to the merge. I drew two lines on every page, which splits the spread in three pieces. These lines create the columns of the reading text, the division in the three academies in the photogallery, and a structure for the agenda, which should also be incorporated in the design. The publication is bilingual. Titles of works of students (in red) disturb the structures. The images show work of students, referring to protests by the way it is photographed. The guide appears in three colours, also the images. Together they make a (distorted) full colour image as shown, 3rd year
— Swift
A pile of tests of Gerard Unger's Swift on paper. He said he designed the typeface to survive on rough, gray surfaces, 2nd year
— A Room of one's Own (Virginia Woolf)
A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf. First published during 24 October 1929, it was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University in 1928. The essay examines whether women were capable of producing work of the quality of William Shakespeare, amongst other topics. In one section, Woolf invented a fictional character Judith “Shakespeare's Sister”, to illustrate that a woman with Shakespeare's gifts would have been denied
the same opportunities to develop them because
of the doors that were closed to women. Woolf also examines the careers of several female authors, including Aphra Behn, Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters and George Eliot. The author subtly refers
to several of the most prominent intellectuals of
the time.
The essay is set in two default mac letters, referring to conditions of a designer, as Woolf talks about conditions of a woman in her time. The cover shows a black triangle, which is the symbol of feminism. The middle page shows a portrait of George Elliot, one of Woolfs examples. Together they make the initials V.W, Virginia Woolf, 3rd year
