Exhibition of work by 40 photography students from Royal Academy of Arts, The Hague (KABK) around the theme of Transition
Located in the building formally the Ministry of Economic Affairs in The Hague, the KABK students have spent the last four months researching the meaning of ‘Transition’ in today’s world. Design.nl caught up with student Cleo Wachter who told us more about what we can expect to see.
Why did you decide to create this exhibition? “This exhibition is an annual event for all third year students of the academy. It's supposed to be a kind of debut: the first time we show our work to the outside world and the professionals working in the field. In the first two years of study we've mainly focused on the process, techniques and research. The goal of this exhibition is to gain experience in the presentation of our work: how do we communicate with the public? It can also be seen as a small dress rehearsal for the final exam in the fourth year.” Who chose the theme Transition? “Our lecturers choose the theme. Last year the theme was beauty, before that it was struggle. They always choose something that stands for our time - our times are changing now, our world itself is in transition. Speaking on behalf of most students, I think I can say we we're pretty happy with the theme. It is nice because it's open: it doesn't have a value judgement attached to it, so everyone could easily translate it in their own way. Cleo Wachter’s project is entitled Wunschraum: “which means 'wish place' in English. It is about my longing for a place elsewhere, my wanderlust: a physical transition. I didn't mean to create a personal project, it just kind of happened in my search for the right images to tell the story.” Hans Poel’s Dawn of the Drones is a striking image. Poel explains: “As the perfect example of a revolutionary technology in an age of exponential technological growth I became fascinated by drones. Flying robots that can fly (semi) autonomously are now in the transition from scary weapons of the US army into nifty civil machines that can work for us, play with us, amaze us. In the photographic part of this project I created a science-fiction world where drones evolved into autonomous creatures: living, evolving and thriving like free animals. This picture shows a swarm of drones flying over the beach at Scheveningen, where once a year large amounts of drones fly by in a dance of evolution, transmitting evolutionary data to each other. God is a God of repetition is an intriguing series by Jorieke de Vet whose project explores how far religion comes from habit and upbringing. “I grew up in a small Christian village where everyone visited the church on Sunday. I am an insider when it comes to religion, the Dutch traditional church and Christianity; but an insider with a lot of questions, which maybe makes me an outsider as well. These questions, the nice and bad experiences that I had, were my drive to research and explore my belief.” Acting Future by Annabel Miedema is sub-titled ‘an experimental journey with my family’ and concerns looking to the future by creating a family album set in the future. “What is the future like? Is it something I can influence myself, or is it something that will just happen to me? I often think about things that would be ideal for me. In this project I created and combined my predictions for the future with my ideals. My main sources of inspiration were old family albums. I took my pictures in the town I grew up in, this is because my family lives here and I needed them for my pictures but also because of the location I used. It had the right friction between old and new.” Charlotte Steunebrink’s eerie mannequins are to draw our attention to relying on technology for our memories – if we lose the ability to ‘memorise’ for ourselves –will we become empty shells? while Olivier Turpin’s series Limited Beings is inspired by the vulnerability and the ephemerality of life through a visually romanticised portrayal of the human body. Transition runs January 17-25 2014 at the Former Ministry of Economic Affairs, Bezuidenhoutseweg 30, The Hague http://www.kabk.nl http://expotransition.nl/ Images 1 – Transition poster 2 - Hans Poel, Dawn of the Drones 3 - Cleo Wachter, Wunschraum 4 - Jorieke de Vet, God is a God of repetition 5 - Acting Future, Annabel Miedema 6 - Charlotte Steunebrink, Mental Emptiness 7 - Olivier Turpin, Limited Beings