Thursday 14 February 2013

Black Maria - Richard Wentworth and GRUPPE










Black Maria, by Richard Wentworth and Swiss architecture practice GRUPPE, is part of RELAY, a nine-year arts programme that is enlivening the new public spaces at King’s Cross and turning the area into a destination for discovering international contemporary art that a celebrate the area’s heritage and its future. The second commission in the King’s Cross series, Black Maria, is a structure that acts as a place of meeting, based around discussion, performance and moving images.
Launching on 12 February 2013 for an initial 28 days, with the potential to be brought back at a later date, the Black Maria comprises a collection of spatial elements of varying sizes that recall an early film studio of the same name. The structure will be installed in The Crossing, in the Granary Building, the new home of Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. The Crossing brings together several departments of the art school, new commercial tenants at the development, a restaurant and the public, which Wentworth and GRUPPE see as the ideal conditions to create a place of exchange.
The emphasis is on flexibility and happenstance, both in terms of the construction’s physicality and in the programming being arranged around it. Black Maria sits at one end of The Crossing, facing the larger part of the hall as a kind of inhabitable billboard with a staircase auditorium behind it. The talks happen “within” the billboard, allowing for different kinds of audience on either side of it: a more intimate audience within the structure; and another potentially much larger audience outside the structure. The billboard makes use of a large door to allow events to be either closed and private, or open to the hall and public. Black Maria recalls the vital but forgotten timber scaffolds used to build King’s Cross’ industrial past, and building site hoardings used today. In a related sense the Black Maria is a support structure for the community activities in the hall today
“You have to magnetise some venues more than others so that people who feel that they are there ‘by accident’ are mixed with people who have a clear ‘sense of purpose’. This is an obvious condition of metropolitan space”, says Wentworth.
Richard, who has lived near King’s Cross since the 1970's, has witnessed and chronicled the transformation of the area through projects such as 'An Area of Outstanding Unnatural Beauty', created for Artangel in 2002. Much like Black Maria, the Artangel work was an experiential one, encouraging visitors to walk into apparently unremarkable shops and alleyways around King’s Cross and see them from a fresh perspective...

Link To Site 

Link To GRUPPE 

Wednesday 13 February 2013

Kiwie - Duke Of Lancaster












Link To Site

Duke of Lancaster - DuDug

(16th August 2012)

DuDug [du-dug] real noun ~ Black Duke

Maurice> Check this ship out.
****> Holy shit it’s Huge! Can you send that photo again though, parts are corrupt.
Maurice> The photo’s not corrupt, the ship’s covered in rust.
****> Yeah? well it looks like shit then.
Maurice> Apparently it’s been sat there 30 odd years.
****> why?
Maurice> I don’t know exactly. But look at the thing. I can get you in.
****> Where is the ship?


Maurice> Llanerch-y-Mor.
****> Where???
Maurice> North Wales. Can you get here?
****> Maurice, this baby is mine!!
Maurice> Where are you now?
****> Near enough, just give me the paint!

Maurice> I’ve left the ladders near the fence. 

****> Fak jē, būs tik labs! 






 Link To Site

Tuesday 12 February 2013

Monday 11 February 2013

Francesco Morackini - Prohibition Kit













Distilling alcohol without a license is illegal in most countries in the world. However, many countries allow for the non-commercial brewing of a limited quantity of beer, wine, and mead in a process commonly known as homebrewing. While homebrewing is a hobby for many people across the globe, it is primarily carried out by poor people in developing nations as a cheap alternative to buying commercial alcohol, not to mention it is often stronger.







I wanted to redesign a Tool with a long tradition, and use copper not for a decoration purpose but for its inner quality. This material has always been used for the construction of stills since ancient times. With the evolution of time and technologies new materials have been introduced such as stainless steel. However, old Europe will by no means exchange their copper stills.

Because of its legislative issue, the Prohibition kit is deliberately a provocative project. I want to question the people about the value and purpose of everyday products surrounding us. I propose another point of view to observe them. When are innocent products becoming illegal? What can those products do for us, or what do they do to us?



The Prohibition kit is composed of 4 fully functional products, that you can find in almost every dwelling:
1 / watering can 2 / fondue stove 3 / cooking pot 4 / fruit bowl.

But once those four products are plugged together, you create your own still (Alcohol distiller) to produce your own homemade schnaps. This kit is a "Camouflage kit", all parts can be used during schnaps production process, but are also fully functional for their normal (legal) use... 


Link To Site