De Nederlandse graecus, schrijver en poëet Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer wordt hier en daar hartgrondig gehaat, of minstens blauw beërgerd. Omwille van zijn uitdagende blik, zijn ‘kom maar op, ik ben gek op duels’, zijn vervaarlijk wapperende haren, zijn schijnbare immuniteit voor frustraties, zijn intelligentie. Hij haalt gevestigde waarden als Harry Mulisch en Rutger Kopland grinnikend onderuit, maar geen krabbekat die inziet dat hij het allemaal niet zo genadeloos bedoelt. Sterker nog, Pfeijffer is de gemoedelijkheid zelve. Uit zijn ‘omarmen van strijdmakkers’ klinkt genegenheid. Pfeijffer kraakt andere dichters niet willekeurig af omdat hij een pesterig jongetje is dat zonodig wil opvallen (kwade conculega’s schilderen hem graag zo af), hij speelt een spel (met een serieuze inzet, dat wel). Maar het is uit liefde. Uit liefde voor een potje stevige neuronale catch-as-catch-can, uit liefde voor de poëzie.
Een interview met hem kan je hier lezen en bekijken.
(illustratie: Gini Rose Choupay)
Currently, a big army of craftsmen, contractors and plumbers are working diligently on a new office for the three girls. In other words, this site will get a new homepage (sooner or later). Already some sketches..
Drawings by Gini Rose, Suzy and Julia
When I saw this image of Pablo Picasso and Lee Miller (taken just after World War II), I was inspired.
Especially the word ‘battledress’ got me drawing.
After searching for some battle shapes in my moodboard..
…the font ‘Battledress’ was born.
Battledress in the field:
…
I took these images in 2005 while doing the research for a documentary on the demolition of an old cokes factory in Seabruges. Although heavily polluted, the site was very beautiful. It seemed as if the rigid industrial installations finally had admitted that nature, after all, has got the last word. Seeing the wheat and sea-gulls overtaking the site with the old buildings silently giving in to it, ‘Carcoke Zeebrugge’ turned into a darling grandpa with darkbrown teeth and polluted lungs. Heavily polluted lungs, that is. This is also the reason why the whole site had to be demolished urgently (the heavy metals and petrochemicals were contaminating the surrounding water aquifers), and cautiously (in order not to release even more soot and asbestos into the surrounding atmosphere). A great documentary topic..
I also visited Sidmar, a working cokes factory in the industrial zone of Ghent, Belgium. Pretty impressive. And don’t start phoning the greenies now, the heavy clouds are just water vapour. Also, soot filters (on some installations) are compulsory nowadays. We needed a couple of decades to become aware of that, but hey.
More images here.
About the documentary..
During the first half of the 20th century, Carcoke Zeebrugge used to be the nerve centre of the Belgian steel industry. Tons of coal were imported to produce cokes, the ideal fuel for the production of steel. At that time, nobody worried. Business went fine, workers got good wages, neighbours didn’t complain.
But in the eighties, environmentalists raised the alarm. Sootfilters didn’t work properly anymore, neighbours had to stay in because of the black smoke and the factory site’s soil got heavily polluted. The cokes glory faded. Carcoke Zeebrugge closed its fences in 1996.
In 2005, the factory still exists. Looking peaceful and idyllic, with flowers and sea gulls taking over the site. But the buildings, machines and soil are dangerous sources of toxic chemicals like cyanide, benzene and asbestos. The pollution seeps through the soil and threatens water supplies of neighbouring villages. The factory urgently needs to be killed.
Gently though. Brutely using powerful cranes and angry caterpillars isn’t really the way to demolish a chemical factory. Every single component needs to be isolated with care to avoid extra pollution of surrounding air, soil and water. And a lot can go wrong, like the demolition of the Brussels Marly factory showed in 2003. The heavily polluted towers caught fire and burnt for days, polluting the air hundreds of kilometers away. So a lot of engineering skills and a big plan (A and B) are needed to kill a factory gently, and with success.
This documentary shows the story of the demolition of Carcoke Zeebrugge, from the start till the very end.
(‘Giftige sloop’ OverLeven CANVAS – 2005) (40min.)
More documentaries here.
Gini Rose doesn’t like battles (unless they are muddy). Drawing against fighting. Cheerio to all the hippies.
Drawing by Gini Rose C. (2008)
Between 2002 and 2007, I made 15 scientific documentaries for Canvas, the second chain of the Belgian national television. The main goal of the documentaries was not to serve viewers with all kinds of petty scientific facts. Rather, we tried to ‘translate’ what goes on in scientists’ brains and to tell the story behind scientific discoveries.
The programme was called ‘overleven’, and doesn’t exist anymore. Here you find some colourful intriguing scientific stories broadcast on Canvas in that period. I remember I loved reading New Scientist during that period. So if you’re after scientific articles which are well written and inspiring, give it a try, for the sake of science!
Julia B.
In 2004/5 Gini Rose travelled through Argentina.
She took these pictures in Buenos Aires, a city she’d always go back to.
More views here.
Portrait of Dan Perjovschi – Suzy C.
Dan Perjovschi grew up in red Romania, and that marks a human being for life. Often his drawings are a criticism on himself, on his country, and on all the smelly stuff Western, Eastern, capitalistic, democratic, dictatorial and other human civilizations leave lying around. Luckily, his cartoons are never cynical. Dan Perjovschi observes with empathy, not with anger.
He reminds me a bit of David Shrigley, although Shrigley’s cartoons are more poetic and less political. But the two have their unconstrained humoristic intelligence in common. During the Kunstenfestivaldesarts 08 in Brussels (april 2008), Dan Perjovschi drew on the walls of art centre Wiels.
I went to Wiels and had a nice chat with the charming Romanian warrior. What he told me..
“I am not interested in scandals, like the Mohammed cartoons. Sometimes, I even don’t touch some issues. I had to deal part of my life with censorship and I am used to tango around the limits. Here in Europe, I don’t care, it’s free expression here. But in Russia I asked what the problems were. They told me I could do whatever, except for touching ‘Orthodox church’. In that case, I try to find a different way to say things which aren’t allow to say.”
“I think an artist needs to have this responsability. It’s so easy to be an artist, you just throw the thing out and then ‘done’. That’s not my way, and maybe I have got this reflex because in Romania I’m working for the press, so I am always conscious about my brains going to somebody.”
“I don’t rate myself as a political artist, I’m an interpreter. I don’t do necessary judgements, like ‘this is good and this is wrong’. I just observe somehow. You could call my work ‘intellectual’ cartoons.”
“I criticize the market a lot, but I’m not against it. I do not believe that you can be a real radical critic if you’re out of the system. You have to see it from the inside.”
(This reminds me of the great ‘Yes men’)
“I’m coming from a certain context, surviving a switch of ideologies, so I can put a lot of critisism on myself and take some distance, even to myself. And humour is very important to me, with humour you can detach, you can use it as a distance to look at things. I think I learnt to use humour during my school period in Romania – which was a total disaster for me, mentally – but unconsciously the humour helped to detach from it, i guess”.
“My cartoons give me a platform. It is like a natural stage for me, this is it, living. And I am still very amazed that people invite me to do this, visualizing the world. And I enjoy it a lot, it is total freedom to me.”
Want to know more? Watch here..
Suzy C.
PS: I swapped drawings with Dan, he got the portrait, threegirls received a nice art gallery-bashing cartoon
We are Gini Rose, Julia and Suzy. We draw, take pictures, film, and write (in English or Dutch) about everything we are intrigued by. We are never bored. Our hobby is to search for that kind of reality which may be elusive until the right kind of imagination falls upon it. We like to go outside. We also like to party. Want to know more? About is your button. Or click here to read our mighty mission statement. This page is our magazine, or a cabinet of views, viewpoints and new work. Here you'll find the RSS feed to stay updated. For an overview of our portfolio, take a dive into the deepsea..
