Bulb, Bubble, Burst

All moving image works, unless stated, are looped and alternating on the TV screens scattered within the grandstands, with daily simultaneous screenings happening according to the film programme:

Two Originals (2024), 19’17”, Zhiyi Cao, Lucas de Montalembert, Robin Vandenbussche, Tal Stadler
Exit Exile (2024), 14’03”, Tal Stadler
Underneath the Brick Skin (2024), 12’50” Nina Blume
Transition to a non-extractive future (2024), 9’35”, Enno Pötschke
This is NDSM! (2024), 9’15”, Pavle Mijuca

A spatial curatorial project that brought into an empty warehouse two grandstands facing each other (each transported by a truck) and on top of this architecture, various site-specific works and performances played out throughout the length of the exhibition.

With the dramaturgic use of light, sound and adjustment of microclimate, as well as the choreographic movement of people throughout the space, the site becomes activated and communal - a narrative environment is created. The works no longer exist in a vacuum but in a context, and begin to speak to one another, while maintaining their autonomy.

Materialised in Door Open Space, NDSM Amsterdam, 2024

Documentation of space as seen from site entrance, unactivated vs activated by an opera performance, Hildur Elísa Jónsdóttir

28th of May, 2024
Subject: BULB BUBBLE BURST

Dear whom it may concern,

In 1637, a sailor presented himself at the counting house of a wealthy merchant of the Dutch East India Company in Amsterdam. The sailor was offered a breakfast of fine red herring. Noticing an onion—or so he thought—lying on the counter, he seized an opportunity, slipped it into his pocket as a relish for his herring, and garnished his breakfast. It was not an onion, however, but a rare Semper Augustus, the bulb of the flower that remains a Dutch national symbol and the first-ever catalyst for extreme value speculation: the tulip.

Taking the Royal FloraHolland auction hall as a structural reference, as well as the cycle of value generation and its inherently volatile nature as a point of departure, the site will witness and facilitate activations through various found objects, footage, documents and interludes. The auction site that was once the stage for the performance of value, and formerly the centre of flower trade in the Netherlands, is currently open to visitors but frozen and inactive. It returns as a relic, after the collapse of Tulip Mania and after its own obsolescence.

This series of works looks into how value is mediated, and all the processes that surround it—from its creation-extraction, fluctuations due to speculation and narrative-building, to its inevitable erosion and deliberate destruction. In an attempt to sync to cycles and timelines of different scales, we converse with Dutch speed and efficiency, filled with immense regret. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Kind regards,
Studio for Immediate Spaces
2nd Year 2022 – 2024

P.S. Studio for Immediate Spaces invites you to a collective 40.5-hour piece around cycles of value that manifests in the form of two mirrored tribunes, gazing into each other.

Responsible for content: Djina Bruine de Bruin, Enno Pötschke, Gabija Nedzinskaitė, Lucas de Montalembert, Nina Blume, Pavle Mijuca, Robin Vandenbussche, Tal Stadler, Vinzenz Leutenegger, Zhiyi Cao

De Klok

Galvanised Steel, Wood, Plexiglas, Metal wire, 512 LED grid matrix, 100 WS2812B mini PCB LEDs, ESP-32 microcontrollers, Raspberry Pi 3 B+ (Node.js server daemon service, IoT protocol MQTT broker), Raspberry Pi 4, 2.4 GHz WiFi router, 3V to 5V logic shifters

De Klok is a time-keeping device built based on the ultra-competitive Dutch flower auction system and its circular price-determination apparatus, that is running on a programme of our own design. Beyond the original device’s purpose in service of a ‘good deal’, De Klok also expresses times and values on various scales, and generates profound relations between seemingly unassociated processes. The question of control reveals itself - do we control the clock with our script, or are we controlled by another more powerful force? This intentional choice of working in intervalled, repeatable, scalable cycles of production and destruction… the chronographic desire is often abstracted and internalised within ourselves. Also see Crate 7004 (Dear Shareholder,)

When tulip mania dies down, all that remains are pretty flowers.¹ (Cohen, 2002)

Parrot tulip bulb, tulip perfume oil (sweet flower smell), Aroma diffuser, leftover flowers

Not For Your Eyes

115g/m2 banner textile, images taken at De Oeverlanden cruising area, latex with imprints of plants collected at Oeverlanden
Underneath the right grandstand

Detail of the left grandstand, also the back of the mobile truck used to bring it into the space, from Mobiele Tribune Netherlands

When tulip mania dies down, all that remains are pretty flowers.¹ (Cohen, 2002)

5’32” video not part of the film programme, screen embedded underneath the right grandstand

Documentation of Two Originals on screen (part of the film programme) and Archiving Bonds, Shares and Holdings in the back

Photography by Tom Philip Janssen, Zhiyi Cao and Lucas De Montalembert

Special Thanks to

⁠⁠Arie de Fijter
Ludwig Engel
Julian Schubert
Ana María Gómez López
María Mazzanti
Katía Truijen
Marissa Lee Benedict
Elisabeth Marie Mesnier Ioanna Mitza
Jan Kees van Kampen
⁠⁠Ineke Bakker
Sandra Roberts
Ariane Boogaard
Aaro Murphy
Lina Mittendorff
Lisa van Heyden
⁠⁠Héloïse Floc’h
Theo Colin Morrison
Jin Lee
Rob
Brent Dahl