Petervan Studios – Update March 2023

Petervan Artworks © 2023 – New New Babylon – Generated with MidJourney

Here is the latest update on Petervan Studios. The previous update already goes back to September 2022

As most of you know, Petervan Studios is the melting pot of three studios: The Art Studio, The Interventions Studio, and The Scaffold Studio

The Art Studio

My latest artworks are on the artworks section of the Petervan Studios site. Here is my cousin Joost standing in front of one of
my recent paintings: 4 panels together measuring 240cm x 200cm.

I am also working on a VR implementation of the New New Babylon (NNB) Project: a network of urban youth city districts that are connected through standard interfaces. 

We are working with Spectracities to launch a design challenge by April 2023. I am doing an intro talk on this project during the Spectracities meet-up on 9 March 2023.

And here is the recording: starts at minute 7:32

NNB will also have a number of virtual Art White Rooms that will host my latest artworks.

NNB will also host a New New Babylon TOWER, and I plan to make a physical model of that tower as an example of materializing my metaphors.

A new “Performance Lecture” will consolidate all of the above in a compelling multimedia narrative and performance.

Target date for the performance and the supporting NBB material is 1 Nov 2023

The Interventions Studio

Two interesting experiences with the Zen Bricks Project

One client asked me to run a 30 min online session, where all the participants are drawing little bricks in complete silence. I was very surprised to learn how this zen moment unleashed quite emotional reactions among the participants.

Another client invited me to do something similar in real life, as part of their corporate event that was organized around the theme of mental wellness and the importance of calm moments.

The Scaffold Studio

The Scaffold is a transdisciplinary learning studio for the never-normal.

We are working on two interesting leads.

Lead #1 is a services company that owns a beautiful physical building/campus with meeting rooms, study rooms, a library, auditoria, lush gardens, etc. They run it as a private infrastructure for the public good. We look at it as an imagination infrastructure. The hardware. What The Scaffold offers is the software: the expertise, network, and practice to curate and design a series of learning studios and expeditions. The study topics are non-hierarchical organizations and new democracies.

Lead #2 is a globally operating organization trying to get its head around the topic of corporate governance. Like the first lead, they own world-class real estate, including an auditorium and a museum. We are also looking to design a physical journey between cities leading toward a major event in 2024.

We have a great coalition of advisors. Last month, Lene Rachel Andersen joined our advisor’s group as the twelfth apostle. She specialises in Bildung, Metamodernity, and Libertism. Give Lene a warm welcome.

So, that’s it for this edition.  If there is something worth reporting, the next update is for Sep 2023.

Warmest,

Petervan’s Ride – February 2023

Petervan’s Music Ride February 2023 > 75 songs, most new releases > very eclectic edition > Tony Allen, Gabrielle Roth, Orbital, but also Jonathan Richman, Blondie, etc > play in shuffle mode to increase the surprise factor. Enjoy!

Petervan’s Ride – January 2023

Petervan’s Music Ride January 2023 > 57 songs, most new releases > multiple genres > and some artists who left us this month: David Crosby, Tom Verlaine, Jeff Beck > play in shuffle mode to increase the surprise factor. Enjoy!

Petervan’s Ride – December 2022

Petervan’s Music Ride December 2022 > a short list this time of 30 songs only, most new releases, but also some classics > multiple genres > play in shuffle mode to increase the surprise factor. Enjoy!

Invisible – Poem

Petervan Studios © 2022 – Generated by DALL-E

Ik wil onzichtbaar worden

een doorzichtige ballon

in glijvlucht door het heelal

heel-al en vol-ledig

de stilte van de klok

opgelost in oneindigheid

Google translation

I want to become invisible

a transparent balloon

gliding through the universe

whole-whole and full-empty

the silence of the clock

dissolved in infinity

Petervan’s Ride – November 2022

Petervan’s Music Ride November 2022 > 70+ songs this time, most new releases, but also some classics > Urban Brussels Rap, Flamenco, SAULT, Bowie, Ambient, World > play in shuffle mode to increase the surprise factor. Enjoy!

Sine Parole – 27 Nov 2022

© Petervan Artwork 2022 – Swimming Torsos – AI generated with Midjourney

Corporate Radicalism

As mentioned in my recent inspiration post, this is the book that Nick Ervinck suggested to get me going on professionalizing my art practice. But it clearly also had an effect on my other practices.

Michael Craig-Martin is often described as the godfather of the Young British Artists (YBA) of the 1980s and 1990s. Shame on me that I knew little about YBA and even less about Michael Craig-Martin. That ignorance was also an advantage, as I could read the book without prejudice. 

The book is a series of short stories and episodes on the many ideas, events, and people that have influenced Craig-Martin during his rich artistic life. 

I really liked the book, and I liked the cut-the-crap approach of all the things you are supposed to do or not do as an aspiring artist.

For this post, I picked the story ”On the three stages of twentieth-century art”, and gave it a twist that relates more to my Scaffold practice than to my art practice.

Craig-Marting described in that story the three stages of RADICALIZATION of art:

Radicalization of Form

Radicalization of Materials

Radicalization of Content

Together these three radicalizations lead to:

“A vast EXPANSION in the scope of what art can look like, be made of, and be about”

One could say this expansion formed the foundation for “contemporary” art.

I feel attracted to the words “contemporary” and “avant-garde”. 

Probably because they seem to suggest novelty, modernity, and some level of gentle subversive aesthetic, less prone to the temporalities of fashions or trends.

It seems that art movements could also be considered precursors of business movements, and how we can and have to recalibrate our insights (or lack thereof) in innovation in corporate environments.

The quote above smells a lot like what many spontaneous and enthusiastic people feel and experience when they want to enable positive change in the corporate environment. I have come across that resistance many times in my corporate career. And it breaks my heart to see how again today, many organizations smell a conservative ambiance and favor moderation rather than radicalism, caution rather than risk. 

How can we create an environment where these young, bright enthusiasts can thrive and not be suffocated in their endeavors by non-contemporary organizations and teams?

What would be the radicalizations that lead to a contemporary business, an avant-garde business, or some form of corporate radicalism?

Take a quote again from Craig-Martin’s book (my emphasis):

“Taking an interest in contemporary art, the art of one’s own time as it is being made, is quite different from having an interest in the past, even the recent past. It involves a sense of participation, a pleasure in uncertainty, a willingness to have one’s assumptions challenged, a desire to be unsettled. Art holds a unique and critically important place in modern life precisely because it has not been afraid to take on board all the diverse and dangerously unpredictable creative activities rejected by the other arts. In a world where everyone and everything has to be accounted for, isn’t it of immense intellectual, aesthetic, social, and political importance that art provides a context for those creative activities that do not easily fit the system?”

A DESIRE TO BE UNSETTLED! 

Imagine that!

I tried to re-write and adapt this paragraph for a contemporary corporate spring:

“Taking an interest in contemporary business, the business of one’s own time as it is being made, is quite different from having an interest in the past, even the recent past. It involves a sense of participation, a pleasure in uncertainty, a willingness to have one’s assumptions challenged, a desire to be unsettled. Radical organizations and teams hold a unique and critically important place in modern life precisely because they are not afraid to take on board all the diverse and dangerously unpredictable creative activities rejected by the conservative ambiance. In a world where everyone and everything has to be accounted for, isn’t it of immense intellectual, aesthetic, social, and political importance that organizations provide a context for those creative activities that do not easily fit the system?”

I believe corporate radicalism and corporate radicalists are something quite different than the romanticized and heroic take on misfits, dreamers, rebels, etc. We have to move way beyond corporate rebellion. 

We need corporate radicalism in:

Form

Materials

Content

What are the corporate forms, materials, and content that need expansion?

We need contemporary, avant-garde, radical businesses that account for the intended and unintended consequences ànd opportunities. Organizations that are inclusive in all aspects. Companies that desire to be unsettled. Institutions that desire societal, moral, and aesthetic advancement.

This will require a different type of learning, formation, education, or training. Not only exploring the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) and Production dimensions of their business, but also daring to (re)compose and live out loud new exciting and daring narratives, set high ethical and moral standards, and embrace new aesthetics.

That new type of learning must resemble what Michael Craig-Marting describes as an ideal art school. Just drop the word art, and you may get an idea of what 21st-century corporate education and formation may look like.

We need to radically rethink corporate business schools.

We need radical schools for radical times.

We need to train, form, and build radical organizations. 

How can we scaffold such a school? 

What is needed to take the leap of faith for being re-trained like that again?

Petervan’s Delicacies – 20 Nov 2022

As usual, an incoherent, irregular, unpredictable collection of interesting sparks. Handpicked, no robots. Minimalism in curation. Enjoy!

• About the role that art has always played in bringing complex, systemic ideas into an aesthetic experience, referring to the opening scene of Jean-Luc Godard’s absurd and irresistible science-fiction film “Alphaville”
• About a critical take on the futuristic designs for cities from Saudi Arabia to the American desert: they are seductive visions grounded in systems of control.
• About the mind-blowing new Adam Curtis documentary series about the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of Putin.

• About a new way of witnessing and documenting history with 3D models of bombed infrastructures.
• About memory, and more specifically memory by space. Imagine how we could improve memory in interactive virtual spaces. By Kei Kreutler.

If you can’t get enough of these and want more, you can hang on to the firehose, the extended version of Petervan’s Delicacies in REVUE with loads of videos. Subscribe here: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/petervan

Inspiration: Nick Ervinck

Some years ago, I discovered the magical art world of Flemish artist Nick Ervinck.

I subscribed to his newsletter and was inspired by his ongoing progress.

If you want to get a good sense of what drives Nick and what his artwork is all about, here is a great video:

Nick has a church (The Dutch word for church is “kerk”). 

Nick’s church is branded “K.E.R.K.” standing for Kunsthalle ERvickK” and is located in the tiny village of Sint-Pieters-Kapelle, a township part of Middelkerke, a mall town at the Belgian North Sea coast. Last summer, I combined a bike ride with a visit to K.E.R.K. on a very hot 10 July 2022. The exhibition “SKIN WORKS” displayed recent work by Nick Ervinck.

I was impressed and inspired. I wanted to meet Nick one day, and if possible visit his studio. At the reception, there was a young student, and I asked whether the artist was present in the church. He was not, but she gave me a business card with his email address and phone number, suggesting that I would ask for a studio visit.

Here is the mail that I wrote to Nick:

Hello Nick,

I’ve been following you for a while and I’m a fan. Yesterday I visited K.E.R.K. (GNI-RI JUL2022 SKIN WORKS) and the friendly young woman at the entrance said it was possible to visit your studio.

I do a number of artistic experiments myself, and I recently hired Kurt Vanbelleghem to help me professionalize my practice. Besides the art, I work on a project “The Scaffold”, where I bring artists, entrepreneurs, and engineers together in residencies for corporate clients.

I would love to have a conversation with you, preferably in your studio, or else in K.E.R.K. or any other location of your choice.

Interested?

Here is Nick’s answer:

Hey peter,

Nice to hear from you.

It is not possible to receive each person individually.

I normally only open the studio for group visits.

But your email has caught my interest. What you are doing is of course not clear to me.

Bringing artists, entrepreneurs, engineers, and companies together sounds like music to my ears.

I am someone who likes to work goal and result oriented. And many of these initiatives do not succeed in this.

I will be happy to receive you in my studio/atelier to exchange thoughts.

Fits for you possibly Tuesday evening August 9 or Wednesday evening August 10.

Or feel free to make some suggestions and I’ll check my agenda.

Artistic greetings

Nick

We settled for 9 August, also a very hot summer day. 

There I stood in front of his studio, with no agenda, but with a quite detailed concept of what The Scaffold had to become.

I did not know what to expect. Maybe he would kick me out after ½ hour? No worries: I got a really warm welcome. Nick was very approachable, and as would show quickly, a real professional in all senses. There was a click: we spent 4 hours together. 

Above the working desk was a huge library of more than a thousand artbooks. 

Nick is also a big fan of Henry Moore, a British artist mainly known for his sculptures. Moore can be said to have caused a British sculptural renaissance. Nick’s Henry Moore book collection encompasses more than 300 books! The biggest private collection in the world: the only place in the world where you can find more is in the Henry Moore Foundation itself!

Nick also built his own virtual museum “MOUSEION” and his own “NIKIPEDIA” landing page:

The visit and the conversation were super inspiring for me. His work and attitude influence me in many ways:

His Focus

He is an artist entrepreneur and focuses exclusively on that

His Professionalism

Both as an artist and as an entrepreneur. 

Everything exudes attention to detail and perfectionism in everything: 

Archiving and documenting

High-quality printing, framing, book printing

Business cards

Website

Respect for own work

Cleanness and order in the studio

His Sharing

Links to books, his own manuals for art photography, bookbinding, framing, transport boxes, software, high-quality art print shops, etc, etc

His Erudition

He is very well-read, has a pluralistic view of things, and is able to express himself very well orally and in writing

I invited Nick to be part of the non-conformist tribes I am curating for The Scaffold learning experiences.

When leaving the studio, he left me with some of his own art books as a present, a poster of his Henry Moore cabinet show (see the above picture, where Nick Ervinck and Henry Moore are interwoven), and a recommendation for the book “On Being An Artist” by Michael Craig-Martin.

He must have read my mind, as the book proved to be another big inspiration for my practice (and the subject of my next blog post).

When I walked towards my car in the warm evening sun, I felt like coming out of a movie.

This is the thank you letter I sent:

Dear Nick

Do you recognize the feeling when you’ve been to a good movie, and you come out, and the world feels different? That’s the feeling I had yesterday when I came out of your studio and on my ride back home.

Thank you very much for the generosity of time (more than three hours!) and the quality of your input and feedback. Thanks also for the MOUSEION book, the poster, the flyers, and the book suggestions. The poster is now right in front of me.

Thank you also for the confidence in showing your management software, the guided tour in your studio, and sharing successful projects, but also projects that just didn’t make it. 

Warm artistic greetings,