I would never call myself an Artist. I would much rather call myself a designer and find myself in the wrong place, or as it appeared later, suffer from the friction of being in the right place. I believe that design can never achieve the ultimately beautiful, and I have little interest in trying. I believe that true beauty lays in design that carries meaning. Good design adopts some of the qualities of good art; the way it can stimulate the undiscovered layers of our consciousness for example, or the way it can be transient, and only existing in a moment (that’s already gone). Can my design exist in a moment?
I like the tool / the instrument, and the machine as design products, they are non-judgemental. They don’t criticise the outcome. They are not contaminated by a fixed idea of beauty, because they don’t have to be beautiful. They just move, go, exist. Do their function tirelessly, with dignity and without question. Processes and techniques (the action of the making) explains my interest for Performance Design and my choice for platform 8.
CHAIN REACTION II
I collaborated on a Rowan Mersh on a Chain Reaction performance. (www.sarahvangameren.com) A domino timepiece lasting 12 hours, one match igniting the next one and so on. I wondered how I could simplify this principle and make it possible to charge 3d objects with this paste so I started made a flammable paste at home and collaborated with Lucy Bean from Imperial College to optimise the paste.The possibility I will hopefully gain by inventing this paste is that I can now create transient design; I can design the moment, bring my objects in motion, and give them a time-space. That the remains results burned in the object, means that the happening will be remembered. A latent tension and enticing activity. I would like to put an example of the remains in the Show as well as a registration of the happening itself. The before, the during, the after.
Milan could be a good first test case for this project on portable scale.
CANDELABRA DIPPER
This object has to in a similar way embrace transience. Ideally this would be a machine that slowly grows design objects, candelabras, dipping and dripping like stalagmites and stalactites grow in nature.
PROJECT UNKNOWN
At this moment I’m thinking of another product for my end-exams. Probably a tool or instrument that makes the triptych of projects complete.
ARTEMIDE
Not all objects designed without actually designing anything have to be made of ready-mades. Ready-mades can also be the medium, like a sketchbook or some paint.
For Artemide I made a working 3d sketch of a lamp constructed from a collection of objects to be found on and around my desk put under tension. A styled compilation of already proven to be highly functional and successful objects of everyday life are my guideline in the design of a producible Artemide task-light.
© Sarah van Gameren