ART-PRESENTATION: Studio Drift-Coded Nature
Studio Drift (Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta) is a studio manipulating light and movement to explore existing and new relationships between nature, technology and mankind. At first glance their work seems to refer to familiar situations but on further investigation these references are brought into question. The viewer is manipulated into reshaping their relationship towards their environment and personal connections, stimulating open minded futuristic prospects where contradictions merge.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Stedelijk Museum Archive
Studio Drift’s focus is creating multi-disciplinary site-specific interactive installations, sculptures, objects and films, which propose a distinct mix between the latest science fiction inspired hi-tech developments and their poetic imagery. The exhibition “Coded Nature” features eight of Studio Drift’s room-filling installations, together with a selection of films. Especially for the exhibition the artist created the largest-ever installation of “Fragile Future”. At the core of the installation is “Fragile Future Chandelier 3.5” (2012) acquired by the Stedelijk Museum in 2015. Another highlight is “Drifter” (2017) a floating concrete monolith measuring 4 x 2 x 2 meters, that premiered at York’s Armory Show in 2017. Also on presentation are the film “Drifters” (2016) and the installation “Materialism” (2018). Their first project, “Fragile Future” over the years evolved into a system composed of modules, and can be combined in various configurations and offers a utopian glimpse into our future, in which the forces of two seemingly irreconcilable worlds unite in a bid to survive. Several recent works explore the paradoxical relationship between the real and the virtual world. In “Concrete Storm1” (2017) special glasses give the viewer an augmented reality of moving holograms – an accompaniment to an installation of concrete elements that exists in the physical world. It creates a new kind of reality, a “mixed reality”. The installation “Drifter” (2017) engages with a variety of themes: how does your perception of the world shift as you realize that what we take for granted now – a world composed of huge, immensely strong and stable structures – was once considered utopia? In the future, will a hovering concrete cuboid be as much a reality as today’s cities of concrete, as envisaged by Thomas More in 1516 in his book “Utopia”? Studio Drift first revealed a floating concrete monolith in the film “Drifters” (2016), which receives its première in this exhibition. “Drifters” is a twelve-minute film shot in the Scottish Highlands about an entity in search of its origin and purpose. But the film delves deeper, to ask: can the individual ever escape the group? “Materialism” confronts us on a very elementary level with the things we surround ourselves with and the materials that comprise them. The work calls for contemplation on how we deal with the raw materials at our disposal. Everyday products such as a vacuum cleaner, Volkswagen Beetle, pencil, or PET bottle have been reduced to the exact quantity of the specific raw materials from which they are made, shown in the form of rectangular blocks.
Info: Curator: Ingeborg de Roode, Stedelijk Museum, Museumplein 10, Amsterdam, Duration: 25/4-26/8/18, Days & Hours: Mon-Thu & Sat-Sun 10:00-18:00, Fri 10:00-22:00, www.stedelijk.nl
