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![Skinning]( "Skinning")
infoSkinning looks at the skin as a subject through the story of a mink farmer who has been skinning mink his entire life. It asks how his skin, the most extensive human organ, can record the suffering, the pain, the hard work, has the capacity of empathy, and later becomes an archive that holds memories and traces that can confront him and teach him during his mental breakdown. The story has been written as a musical composition for two performers. We have produced an extensive archive of drone footage of 12 different abandoned Dutch mink farms to speculate on the spatiality of the vanishing of the mink farm industry. How the farm as a wound on the skin of the Earth should be preserved as a monument to remember what once existed and how we learn from that.
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![I have always been with you (1)]( "I have always been with you (1)")
infoHow do we turn two vibrating strings that can make and unmake worlds into a concern of the Anthropocene? How can we remind people that our bio-physical instrument that makes the human voice possible is as fragile and exposed as our planet? How has the human language fixated on representation and abstraction and forgotten its biological roots in favor of the virtual and metaphysical? How can the focus on the vocal cords be a reminder of the chasm between matter and meaning, body and mind? How do we accept the ethical contradiction between the signified and the signifier? How the wound, the chasm, and the separation between nature and culture can be represented through the exposure of the vocal cord? We have been busy responding to these questions for the last two months with our new work: I have always been with you, a ceramic sonic sculpture pair. The artwork's physicality was a significant conceptual aspect, so we materialized it in space instead of remaining on-screen with CG methods. (This is the first time we sculpted with clay and experimented with glazing. It also made us in contact with the matter that matters and taught us constantly in a bodily manner.)
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![I have always been with you (2)]( "I have always been with you (2)")
infoHow do we turn two vibrating strings that can make and unmake worlds into a concern of the Anthropocene? How can we remind people that our bio-physical instrument that makes the human voice possible is as fragile and exposed as our planet? How has the human language fixated on representation and abstraction and forgotten its biological roots in favor of the virtual and metaphysical? How can the focus on the vocal cords be a reminder of the chasm between matter and meaning, body and mind? How do we accept the ethical contradiction between the signified and the signifier? How the wound, the chasm, and the separation between nature and culture can be represented through the exposure of the vocal cord? We have been busy responding to these questions for the last two months with our new work: I have always been with you, a ceramic sonic sculpture pair. The artwork's physicality was a significant conceptual aspect, so we materialized it in space instead of remaining on-screen with CG methods. (This is the first time we sculpted with clay and experimented with glazing. It also made us in contact with the matter that matters and taught us constantly in a bodily manner.)
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![Oudemian (live act)]( "Oudemian (live act)")
infoCommission by Mari Mako
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![Redpilled (commission)]( "Redpilled (commission)")
infoCommissioned by Ganslmeier & Ana Zibelnik
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![Post-Mink: Farm or Non-Farm]( "Post-Mink: Farm or Non-Farm")
infoHow can gaming the end of Dutch mink farming help us shape the spaces that are left behind? On August 28th 2020, the Dutch government expedited a ban on mink fur farming from 2024 to March 2021. The ban was accelerated not because of changes in consumer desires or changes in societal ethics, but as a direct consequence of the coronavirus detected in mink. The rapid pace of infections among mink and the transmission to humans lead Minister Schouten to order an immediate culling of 2.4 million minks from 120 mink fur farms. The cabinet reserved 150 millions euros to help mink fur farmers, a compensation based on how many mother minks each farm owned. It remains uncertain what will happen to the abandoned former mink farms. During US: Shaping Time, Oddkin will speculate on different scenarios for spaces of abandoned former mink farms in the form of a scripted game. Post-Mink: Farm or Non-Farm will highlight how these empty former mink farms can become intensive spaces for a radically egalitarian, caring society, or remain exploited by commercial, profit oriented interests. Through the interactive live role play of a speculative mink farmer, with the help of the online audience, Oddkin will confront us with the ethical dilemma of how a series of individual decisions could invoke a collective planetary change.
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![Oudemian album cover]( "Oudemian album cover")
infoCommission by Mari Mako
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![iii flyer]( "iii flyer")
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![iii sticker]( "iii sticker")
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![HOLD]( "HOLD")
infosnapshot
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![HOLD]( "HOLD")
infoperformance
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![Poster for MAMA Showroom]( "Poster for MAMA Showroom")
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![Under pressure: The water and the city]( "Under pressure: The water and the city")
infoCommissioned by Tu-Delft & AMS Institute
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![The confession of the flesh (publication)]( "The confession of the flesh (publication)")
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![Today's Success is Tomorrows Disaster]( "Today's Success is Tomorrows Disaster")
infoToday’s Success Is Tomorrow’s Disaster is a board game that portrays a future scenario for the animal agriculture industry. Players learn about the cost of financial success, by being confronted with the possible moral and climatologic consequences of endless growth. Two capitalist players — an agriculture minister and a farm owner — strive to improve and maintain the economic growth of the livestock sector, while two activists — an animal rights activist and an environmental activist — endeavor to sabotage them by revealing evidence of their limitless capitalist exploitation
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![The confession of the flesh (snapshot)]( "The confession of the flesh (snapshot)")
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![The confession of the flesh (snapshot)]( "The confession of the flesh (snapshot)")
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![The confession of the flesh]( "The confession of the flesh")
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![White Standard]( "White Standard")
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![Requiem (snapshot)]( "Requiem (snapshot)")
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![Epilogue (snapshot)]( "Epilogue (snapshot)")
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How to manifest the significance of the flesh in times of change? The transformation of the human condition is certain as the ecological, political and social crises suggest. The current belief in human progress and exceptionalism has been questioned. We ought to exceed our anthropocentric view and remind ourselves that concepts, ideas are made out of flesh and bones. In my video installation, I try to confront the mind with the matter through the unconscious to embrace the disconnection between them. I attempt to remind what we have been forgetting and altering is not only the environment (outer) but our very self (inner). What we are taking for granted is eventually in a constant, ongoing change.
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We have to trigger new meaning what it means to be a human. This video is not an attempt, rather a propaganda, a call to be aware that we shouldn't be chained to our predefined world, that built on false hope.
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The video depicts the extinction of wildlife resulting from the expansion of human civilization, which is reflected in the increasingly paradoxical term - humanism. Through this portrayal, I aimed to highlight how we have lost our natural connection with animals, and subsequently with ourselves. My work intends to draw attention to the lack of concern for this issue and presents a dystopian vision of a world without animals.
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"One hundred keywords and concepts are listed in both their digital and paper incarnations. We end with this ‘conceptual slide show’ in an effort to temporarily ‘archive’ the current state of the research process initiated with this book, which is certain to be continued elsewhere – understanding fully well that print and pixel, cellulose and electricity are finally getting married (which is of course where the real problems begin), but also that their vital and dynamic relationship should above all be seen as an important historical opportunity for a new wave of meaningful, creative and independent publishing." Alessandro Ludovico
Collaboration
Websites
Oddkin was founded in 2018 by Márton Kabai and Natela Lemondzhava in The Hague, NL. Oddkin was formed with a shared desire to respond to the unique condition of the Anthropocene. Their subject matter often revolves around how design as a matter, as a body, maintains the divide between humans and animals, nature and culture. Writing, language and narratives are central in their practice and the aesthetics of 3D graphics and animation. Oddkin often collaborates with other artists and musicians. In addition, both Márton and Natela are involved in teaching.
oddkin.netMárton Kabai (HU) is a graphic designer, artist, researcher and educator and (father of two) based in The Hague, NL. He graduated from the Royal Academy of Arts, The Hague in 2017 as a graphic designer and holds an MA in Education in Arts. He has been freelancing and teaching design at St. Joost School of Art & Design. He aims to make impactful, expressive images or to build visual identity systems. He makes images, animations, visual identities and publications mainly for the creative and cultural sectors. Apart from the service industry, he is an artist at Oddkin duo and a researcher in the Nieuwe Economie Lectoraat at Avans. He aims to be an ethical designer, even though he admits there is no such thing under hyper-capitalism. Still, he values projects with a positive message for the world.
martonkabai.comSocial media
Member of Artists’ Initiative/Collective/Incubator
Oddkin
Curriculum vitae
Education
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2022 - 2023Non-violent communication - Basic connecting2life
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2019 - 2024Master Education in Art & Design/ Educator Rotterdam, Piet Zwart diploma
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2013 - 2017Graphic design Den Haag, Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten diploma
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2010 - 2013Graphic design Hungarian University of Fine Arts, Hungary
exhibitions
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2023Who owns the economy Willem Twee Den Bosch, Netherlands During this festival we cordially invite everyone to come along and help us find answers to the questions: 'Who owns the economy?' and 'What kind of economy do you want?'. In this way we create a place for collective experiment to actually try out and shape this new economy together. For action and reaction, for meeting, arranging and disrupting, a workplace and making place, company, common, a collective experiment. For curious citizens, artists, designers, scientists, governments, organizations, companies and schools, and anyone who wants to think about the future of the economy. Exhibited artwork: I have always been with you futureofwork.nl/deelnemers/oddkin Group
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2021Uncertainty Seminar Stroom Den Haag The Hague, Netherlands A year in which the suppression of a global pandemic has been the first priority, has often felt like being back at square one. Pandemic time is hybrid: spending so much time at home can feel like being slowed down at the same time as being sped up, linear as well as perpetually cyclical. And although this time may feel never ending, it also provides opportunities to imagine radical alternatives to the way we organize our societies: mass gathering, policing, office work, low budget flying, and even democracy have all had their end proclaimed recently. Science Fiction author Kurt Vonnegut theorized that there is a shape to each story that can be diagrammed. Researchers working from Vonnegut’s theory determined in 2016 that virtually all fiction can be classified into six distinct types; the same linear stories are told over and over. US: Shaping Time seeks to challenge that idea, by presenting art that connects deep histories to future projections, long histories of labor to sudden accelerations, radical imaginations to lived transformations. Starting from the position that art has the agency to imagine and shape the future, seven artists, theorists, composers, coders, curators and filmmakers puncture the bubble of pandemic time. US: Shaping Time features a board game on the way the covid pandemic has accelerated political realities; a film that challenges the notion of time itself; a discussion on the international allyships needed to remake the art world from the principles of transformative justice; a visual essay that connects the lives of dinosaurs to the possibility of outer-space utopias; and an A/V performance that questions why the end of the day looks like the end of the world. uncertainty.stroom.nl/shaping-time Group
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2019HOLD iii instrument inventors The Hague, Netherlands Azimuth presents the premiere of Hold, an hour-long multidisciplinary performance initiated by Mári Mákó. She invited artists, Fazle Shairmahomed and Oddkin (Márton Kabai & Natela Lemondzhava) to explore together the notion of everlasting development of oneself and to reflect on the challenge of holding one’s ground in times of crisis. Together they will merge sound art, performance, visual storytelling, sensory dance and spatial (multichannel) electroacoustic music to create an expanding experience of ongoing existential change. instrumentinventors.org/event/azimuth-presents-mari-mako-with-oddkin-and-fazle-shairmahomed/ Group
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2018Fikra Graphic Design Biennial: Ministry of Graphic Design Bank of Sharjah, eLseed Building Sharjah, United Arab Emirates The Fikra Graphic Design Biennial will launch its inaugural edition with the title, “Fikra Graphic Design Biennial 01: Ministry of Graphic Design”. This wide-ranging exhibition and curatorial initiative explores graphic design’s influence in shaping the present and imagining potential futures. Set to open on November 9, 2018 and run until the end of the month in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, the Fikra Graphic Design Biennial 01 creates a departure point for dialogue, research, and thinking within the discipline. Anchored in Sharjah, but extending to the wider region and beyond, the Biennial will offer a global platform to shed light on the role of graphic design in the 21st century. fikrabiennial.com Group
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2018Op Zicht Stroom Den Haag The Hague, Netherlands OpZicht is a presentation space in the lobby of Stroom Den Haag for newly registered artists from The Hague. The wall unit functions as a stand or platform where the artist can share his or her work, passion or interest with the audience. Each presentation runs for approximately 7 weeks. www.stroom.nl/activiteiten/kleine_presentatie.php?kt_id=3011075 Solo
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2018Istanbul Design Biennial - School of schools Salt Galata Museum Istanbul, Turkey Invisible Film Program aschoolofschools.iksv.org/ Group
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2017Popcorn: Art,Design and Cinema Musée d’art moderne Saint-Etienne, France Postulating a filial relationship between cinema and design, two disciplines bred by modernity, the exhibition focuses on four close-ups that reveal the directions taken by designers in their relations with the 7th Art. The exhibition includes works of art and design, objects from the Museum's collections, films by designers, excerpts from previously unseen films, installations, photographs. This exhibition proposes an exploration of 4 highlights: "Cinéma - Usine", "Vers la Lune", "Leçon de cinéma" and "Design d'art et d'essai". www.biennale-design.com/saint-etienne/2017/en/programme/?ev=popcorn-art-design-et-cinema-92 Group
Commissions
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2023Redpilled Paradox Bergen-Belsen Memorial, Germany Redpilled is a story about the spread of alt-right ideology and its close correlation with the global rise of meme culture. Told from the perspective of Wojak (lit. soldier) — a hugely popular meme character known for its versatile ability to lend itself to a number of human stereotypes – the work delves into the dangerous humour and fascination with violence perpetuated by memes. Throughout the work, references are made to recent terror attacks, such as the Christchurch shooting, drawing a direct connection between the seemingly harmless online environment of nihilism and its violent ‘real-life’ consequences. www.paradox.nl/project/if-a-tree-fell-in-a-forest/#work finished
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2023What ever happened down Rio das Mortes? Flora Reznik Rotterdam, Netherlands New Worlders is an artistic research project where historical, field, scientific and testimonial research combine with speculation and fantasy. It takes the form of a dialogue between a young researcher and her dead explorer aunt, with the two protagonists 100 years apart and so speaking to each other from disparate times. The researcher sets out to retrace the steps of her great aunt, Maria Reznik, who in the 1940s left her job as a stenographer (a fast typing technology used to transcribe speech in shorthand, usually in court reports), and became one of the first white women to explore the Southern Amazon. She joined the Roncador-Xingu Expedition, a State initiative known for mapping the interior of Brazil and for “pacifying” the indigenous peoples, which led to decimation of the population and devastation of the environment. www.florareznik.com/#/what-ever-happened-down-rio-das-mortes/ finished
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2022Oudemian (live) Mari Mako Rotterdam, Netherlands Oudemian live is an audiovisual concert of Mári Mákó’s debut album. It is a sonic journey of finding inner strength through crisis and rebirth. The title Oudemian comes from two words. Ouroboros, which is a very old symbol of the serpent biting its tail referring to the cycle of life, and Demian, the title of a novel by Hermann Hesse whose main character seeks to be himself in an immoral world. By total coincidence, this combination happens to be a word in ancient Greek, meaning “none” or “not any.” The meeting of these concepts drives the narrative and musical evolution of the album, which moves from a place of fragility and mystery and arrives at a place of reflection. This album of experimental electronic music contrasts dark synthesizer drones, glitches, and beats with organic orchestrations of acoustic instruments and the emotive power of the human voice. worm.org/2022/04/13/oudemian-a-mari-mako-concert/ finished
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2021iii Identity iii - instrument inventors initiative The Hague, Netherlands Creating a series of 3D graphics for the new iii identity based on the works and projects of their residents. instrumentinventors.org/ finished
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2021Oudemian Mari Mako The Hague, Netherlands Mári contacted us to make an album cover for her debut album Oudemian. Since we worked together for her HOLD performance in 2018 at iii, we felt very confident continue our collaboration. She had only one request, that we incorporate her face in the cover. We wanted to challenge ourselves to make the entire cover in hyper-real 3D. We continued the same visual research that we developed for HOLD, keeping the main metaphor: rebirth and the phenomena of shedding skin what mostly snakes, lizards, scorpions, tarantulas do. We have created a 3D model of Mári’s head and a high definition human skin and snakeskin texture. The image is the moment when Mári is shedding her old ‘skin’ to come to light anew. The album is released on Spotify the 28th of May. The LP will be released in September 2021. marimako.com/WORKS finished
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2019HOLD Mari Mako The Hague, Netherlands Azimuth presents the premiere of Hold, an hour-long multidisciplinary performance initiated by Mári Mákó. She invited artists, Fazle Shairmahomed and Oddkin (Márton Kabai & Natela Lemondzhava) to explore together the notion of everlasting development of oneself and to reflect on the challenge of holding one’s ground in times of crisis. Together they will merge sound art, performance, visual storytelling, sensory dance and spatial (multichannel) electroacoustic music to create an expanding experience of ongoing existential change. instrumentinventors.org/event/azimuth-presents-mari-mako-with-oddkin-and-fazle-shairmahomed/ finished
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2018Under pressure: The water and the city TU-Delft & AMS Institute Delft, Netherlands In ''Under Pressure: Water and the City'' AMS Institute’s Research Fellow Laurence Henriquez and Scientific Director prof. dr. Arjan van Timmeren, map the relationship between H2O and civilization, past, present, and future. From water’s fundamental importance to life and the means by which it has been metabolized by cities throughout history, to its intimate connection to the ongoing crises of our age (economic inequality, climate change, Middle East Wars, unregulated global finance) and the (sometimes ancient) solutions that are used as positive drivers of change. And, perhaps most importantly of all, they try to address the oftentimes ignored link between water and the asymmetries in social and political power that exist in the Global North and South. Thankfully, although admittedly under distressing circumstances, it is these precise developments that have brought water back to the foreground of cultural consciousness. www.ams-institute.org/news/out-now-under-pressure-water-and-city/ finished
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2016
Publications
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2018The confession of the flesh / Intensive spaces of becomings have to be opened Book Self Published Marton Kabai The Hague, Netherlands I published this book during my Opzicht finissage. It features the script of The confession of the flesh incorporated with never seen footages of the elevator, the hand and the mouth as well as includes my thesis titled: Intensive spaces of becoming have to be opened, that gives a cry out on the state of fertile hopelessness between crisis and design.
reviews
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2020Stroom Invest interviews / artist Márton Kabai Blog/Vlog Cathleen Owens/ Jegens & Tevens The Hague, Netherlands jegensentevens.nl/2020/07/stroom-invest-interviews-artist-marton-kabai/ Interview
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2019Cardiac emergencies commonly occur at night Blog/Vlog Oddkin/ Jegens & Tevens The Hague, Netherlands jegensentevens.nl/2019/02/cardiac-emergencies-commonly-occur-at-night/ Report on the Fikra Biennial
Awards and grants
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2022Pro Kunstprojecten Stroom Den Haag The Hague Grant for the realization of Skinning, based on our lecture performance Post Mink.
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2020Pro Invest Subsidy Stroom Den Haag The Hague, Netherlands The Invest subsidy was partly created based on the realization that the contribution of young, creative, energetic and enthusiastic artists is indispensable for a flourishing art climate in The Hague.
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2018Spot Individuele tentoonstelling Stroom Den Haag The Hague, Netherlands I received the Spot Individuele tentoonstelling to realize and exhibit the installation of the work at Fikra Biennial, UAE.
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2018Stroom, Pro Onderzoek Stroom Den Haag The Hague, Netherlands I received a research grant to develop a workshop series called We are Compost. The We Are Compost research project begin with the question how to go beyond the anthropocentric ways of talking about the crisis of the Anthropocene. My starting point was the Camille Stories by Donna Haraway, that taught me a fascinating framework of speculative fabulation, where non-human social and environmental justice is the center of any struggle. One of the emerging counter-ideology discourse that arisen the recent years deals with commons, realtionality, care and shared co-evolution, that necessary mutual, however sometimes violent, frightening and deadly. Therefore I purposefully depart from the term Anthropocene and invite Symbiocene to help me give agency to the relations, the in-between, the force that renders all earth dwellers capable to cling together if it is necessary to resist oppressive regimes. I have been experimenting with concepts that sits around the forcefield of sympoiesis (making-with) to put it into an artistic- pedagogical practice in a form of three constitutive workshops: (Community of Compost (2018), Communities of Composts (2019), Sympoiesis as synthesis (2019). I planned to do two more in 2020, however due to the Covid19 crisis, all physical endeavors left unresolved. I begin to assess both the immaterial and material evidence of these workshops that gave me the idea to transform the framework it into a card-game proposal, - as a portable, covid19 proof version of the workshop- now called under the working title Making Oddkin.
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2018Voucher Grant Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie The Hague, Netherlands We received the financial help to be able to travel to Sharjah, UAE, and to install our artwork: Today's Success is Tomorrow's Disaster
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2017Graphic Design Department Award Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (KABK) The Hague, Netherlands During the graduation ceremony in 2017, I was awarded the department award.
Secondary art-related activities
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2019 - --Practice Tutor at St Joost Master Institute of Visual Culture On-going
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2019 - --Researcher at AVANS Economy in Common On-going
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2018 - 2018The Defiant Maker, Studium Generale program at AKV|St.Joost, Breda
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2018 - 2018We are Compost, workshop at ArtScience, Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
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2018 - 2018Guest teacher at IMD Orientation year, Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
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2018 - 2018Design design us back, workshop at École supérieure d’art des Pyréné, Pau, France
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2018 - 2018Thesis design class at ThesisLab, Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
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2018 - 2018Thesis lecture at Master Institute of Visual Cultures - AKV|St.Joost, Den Bosch
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2017 - 2017Complications occurred, workshop at ArtScience, Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
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2017 - 2017Dutch Design Weeks Talks: Design and disaster, Eindhoven
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2016 - 2016Intersectional Perspectives on Design, Politics and Power, Malmö, SE