That's what I didn't have a lot of this past week. And that's eventually also the reason for my scarce blogging the past days. So here's a quick update:

It took me most of Sunday to get rid of my headache from the new contact lenses. In the afternoon I managed to make a two hour trip to another big park here in Den Haag called Haagse Parken. Again it was more of a forest than a park – lots pf trees and bushes, almost no grass or free areas. The cool thing though: the whole thing isn't flat like the rest of the area here, in fact it's made up of lots of small hills and banks. And the second, even better thing: besides the big pedestrian walkways there are hundreds of small trails and dirt tracks cutting right through the woods. It's perfect for riding a dirt bike through it! Of course there aren't any big drops or steep ramps but it's still fun to speed through the brush.

Well, and the rest of the week was basically spent on working on school projects. Monday and Tuesday for the big 'Demonstration Manual', Wednesday for Type Design, Thursday for Calligraphy. All went well, I'm getting a lot of good feedback from my teachers (remember, it's all teachers on the same project now) who seem to like my ideas and I actually really enjoy working on it. The talk with Michel Hoogevorst was very productive, the one with Gert Dumbar quite entertaining – the school group meeting with him was accompanied by the consumption of three bottles of wine and several more beers, Prof. Dumbar probably drank the most... Afterwards a couple of the students went to city and brought the evening to an end in two nice bars – The Fiddler and Silly's. The Type Design class last week was canceled, so no feedback on my font experiments. Friday was kinda unfruitful – although Frank Blokland is really nice to me, I think when it comes to Calligraphy he still regards me as worthless scum. Oh well. Below are some examples of my 'progress'. At least I had that amazingly cool night out afterwards ;)

Yesterday night I met with a couple of people from my class and we went to the Zeebelt Theater to see one of the design lectures that are held there once every month, organized by Zefir7. Last nights guest lecturer was Amsterdam-based graphic designer Hans Gremmen. Very mellow guy who had a lot of cool stuff to show in his portfolio – swiss, typographic, minimalistic yet conceptual. Most of it was for magazines. He also showed a couple of big screen-prints which he didn't even make himself but just collected from big print places. They use these sheets as test papers, printing on them over and over again making some beautiful compositions by pure coincidence.

After the lecture – which by the way was held completely in dutch, but I still managed to get the basic stuff (I think...) – we had a couple of drinks at the theater bar. Although short lived, I guess you could call that my 'first night out' in The Hague. About time! And finally: reasonable prices – beer for 2 Euros (yes, I think I'm getting used to it...) and wine for 3! Hooray! Anyways, even one of my Typography teachers, Chantal Hendriksen, as well as my Type Design teacher Peter Verheul joined in the fun and drank and chatted with us to the bitter end, almost. All in all a very nice evening, especially for getting to know some of my classmates better.

Oh and by the way, Monday I went to the beach with Kate and a couple of the others – sooo nice! Way too warm for the time of year and no wind, perfect day. I think I now know what made Alex' stay in Valencia so enjoyable :) Ok, enough name-dropping for today, I'm hitting the sheets.

I love my room.

Yesterday I took a half an hour train ride and made my way to Rotterdam. Actually with the intention to go to the Art Rotterdam, an international art fair with over 70 renowned galleries representing a huge amount of artists, which acts as exhibition as well as a sales event. Hey, you could even have gotten Damien Hirst original prints for 6500€! If that ain't a bargain... But anyways, beforehand I wanted to check in on the Project(or)Art Fair, which has basically the same concept as the Art Rotterdam, with the difference that it is a much smaller event that focuses on young and upstart galleries/artists. After planning my trip too late, strolling through the city for too long and in the end staying over three hours at Project(or)Art I skipped the Art Rotterdam and saved the 15€ entrance fee which I could then spend on a nice little booklet called 'Food Chain' by Geneviève Gauckler. I was told, that it's basically the same event every year anyways, so maybe I'll just come back next winter.

Project(Or)Art was a very cool event/exhibition with lots of young people, friendly curators, talkative artists and a somewhat international flair. I had some nice chats with David Keating, Rob Zimmermann, two girls from Kop Art and John De Weerd, who himself just finished at KABK two years ago and now works for the MAMA. Those chats were, besides the exhibited art of course, pretty much the reason I ended up staying so long. The galleries that impressed me the most were Vegas Gallery from London (check out Shane Bradford, Ryan McCelland, James Unsworth), Immanence from Paris and Tag from The Hague. In the evening there was also one hour of short lectures by some of the curators. Due to some problems with the projector it was somewhat chaotic but still interesting. And I learned that art people from Vienna gotta be the most stuck up, arrogant and rude of their kind.

By the way, Rotterdam itself is basically just as ugly as The Hague just with more modern architecture skyscrapers and more water. Still I somehow liked the 'flair' better, maybe because due to all these art events there was a constant feeling of 'creativity' in the air...

Dang. Sorry for the somewhat long delay. But if this keeps going on, I think weekends are gonna be the only days on which I'll be able to blog. The reasons: school, school, school and a fucked up day/night rhythm. My courses and projects at KABK are running on full steam now and keeping my quite busy. Here's why...

Monday:
Typography – Business Card and Type Specimen in form of a poster

Tuesday:
Spacial Design – create an exhibition/installation in one of the main halls of the school on the topic 'Private/Public'
Poster Design – design a poster for the exhibition
(both courses already finished, but will restart in April)

Wednesday:
nothing (thank god)

Thursday:
Concept Design – make a 'Demonstration Manual', search for a thing you want to demonstrate against/for and make a manual on how to do it in a unique and creative way (big ass project)
Type Design – create your own Font

Friday:
Web Design – create your own website with CSS
Calligraphy – learn how to create beautiful letters by hand

All the courses start early in the morning at 9 or 10 which means getting up at around 8. Horrible! My lazy ass is still used to the laid back Copenhagen come-and-work-when-you-want attitude and adapting very slowly. The fact that we're organized in classes, with even our own classroom, doesn't make it easier – absences are noticed quickly, in Calligraphy we even have to sign a list. When I get home I'm usually so trashed from having to get up so early + school, that I fall asleep for a couple of hours. Then I get up, do some chores (dishes, groceries etc.) and start doing homework. At about 2 or 3 I hit the sheets, if times allows it, with a movie beforehand. So far I haven't been out a single night. Even if I wanted to, I either don't have the time or I'm too tired. Clau, I think I'm feeling now, what you went through last semester. This is gonna be one busy semester. But you know... I think I like it :)

Below some calligraphy: what it should look like – from my teacher Frank Blokland – and my crummy results of two hours straight work. God I feel unworthy.

Today I visited internationally acclaimed artist and – how he calls himself – kinetic sculptor Theo Jansen, who had an Open Day at his atelier in the suburbs of Den Haag – I didn't know this guy before, one of the other exchange students gave me the tip. 20 minutes on my bike and I reached his little studio atop a grassy embankment. From far away I could already see heaps and piles of long plastic tubes somehow screwed together, lying around carelessly. On top of the hill though, was this huge monster of a construction and it was moving in a weird sideways motion...

Apparently Jansen has the vision of making 'animals', so-called 'strandbeests', that can – only powered by wind and made of the simplest materials, plastic tubes and ropes, nothing else – move on their own on beaches and survive there for several years (if not eternity). Just like real animals. You can read more about this project with has been going on for over 17 years on Strandbeest. Also a very nice guy who took the time to explain his vision and answer questions to every visitor who wanted to. I think he was slightly offended when I asked him, if he could make a living out of this, but hey, I didn't know that he was that big!

You can watch a nice presentation which gives a good overview over Jansen's work and how his creations function here, as well as a BMW TV spot featuring him here. In the video I shot and which is posted below, he uses a generator to create the air pressure that is normally provided by the wind to make the beasts move.

Third day of school today (Wednesdays are always off) – Type Design and Concept Design. The latter with Gert Dumbar, founder of Studio Dumbar, who was introduced to me as being 'strange', 'funny' and 'a bit full of himself' but nonetheless also as 'one of the greatest Dutch designers of all time'. And indeed, my first impression: though a bit chaotic, a very nice, enthusiastic and lovable character, who doesn't hesitate to tell you, your work is crap, when it really is. I'm curious what I'll be able to learn from. In the picture you see him discussing the project – Manual for Demonstrations – with the internationals and a couple of the Dutch students.

KABK or Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten Den Haag – the school I'll be spending my summer semester '08 at, had an 'Open House Day' yesterday. Basically information event, self-representation and exhibition all in one. Good chance for me to check out what I'm gonna have to deal with for the next couple of months.

From the outside, the school doesn't look much like anything, it's even uglier than our beloved H_DA. For all I know, it could've also been some sort of factory. Inside it didn't look much better first, but at some point you cross into an old building with high ceilings and huge windows. Now that's more how I like it :) The halls and ateliers were crowded like hell as half of The Hague seemed to wanna have a look at the school. But somehow I still managed to walk around for two hours without getting stressed out. There were lectures, workshops, informations stands, weird music playing (one-man keyboard show + live experimental electro / sound creation) and of course lot's of exhibited work.

The shown projects were on an exceptionally high level – amongst them a photo series about waiting rooms...hehe – especially from the Graphics and Type departments (there's also Fashion, Digital Media, Architecture and Fine Arts). Gonna be quite a challenge to keep up the pace, but to be honest I'm just burning to start working and take in as much as possible. I'm already kinda pissed that I missed out on the first three weeks. But tomorrow I'm gonna clear the paperwork at the International Office, get introduced to the profs / courses and finally get started! Whoohoo!



By the way: I didn't follow an invitation by Ruiter to go clubbing at one of The Hagues biggest venues last night, because my brain is just bursting with old and new input, impressions and images. My bike is still useless, as I can't find a friggin' bicycle pump anywhere (there was one on every street corner in CPH). And I met a very pretty blond dutch girl today in the apartment building, who just happens to live on the same floor as I and guess what, also studies Graphic Design at KABK... :)

With one hour delay we took off, I slept like a baby the whole trip and at 8 o'clock I was in Amsterdam. Called Ruiter (the guy who I'm renting the room from), searched a while for my bike, found it and went to the quite easily accessible train station. At about 9 I was on the train to The Hague, where arrived completely exhausted a quarter to ten. Since they didn't have trolleys at the train station I had to carry my stuff in stages: backpack, bike and one bag for 100m, drop them, get the other bag and do the whole thing over again. At the entrance Ruiter was already waiting and helped me carry the stuff the rest of the way. Luckily the apartment building is only 5 minutes walk away from the train station – and it has an elevator.

At ten o'clock Standard Western European Time I had finally arrived. Ruiter – who by the way is a very nice graphic design student in Rotterdam – showed me the room (see below), put some life back into me by handing me a Red Bull and explained the building to me. After that we chilled a bit at his friend Ringo's place (just one floor below), Ruiter went home to his parents, I started to unpack some stuff and finally hit the sheets at about 1.

The next day I woke up to find out that I'm living in the wrong part of The Hague: right on the border to the ghetto, the good neighborhoods being on the completely other end of town, and only 100m away from the red light district, where – as I checked today – the girls are just way too pretty to be working as prostitutes. On the other hand I'm only 5 minutes away from city center and hey, look at the view :)

Tada! And here it is. My new home, a one room apartment in a super-modern-high-tech skyscraper in The Hague. I'll write a bit more about the building on another occasion, just this much – no keys but chip cards instead, own fitness center, fully automatic post boxes and washing machines, 24h security. The pictures are as follows: room, room, the tower at night, view from my room during day, view at night.