Life in cities is the theme of the work of the German philosopher Michael Wolf. He photographs how people live in anonymous massive cities such as Tokyo and Hong Kong. He now has an exhibition in the Fotomuseum of The Hague. Dutch journalist Tracy Metz visited together with Wolf the exhibition and interviewed him on the works ‘Architecture of Density’, ‘Bastard Chairs’ and ‘The Real Toy Story’.
This week I show you three design and architecture projects. I took a look behind the scenes at the winter studio of Sarah van Sonsbeeck. She designs ‘mental architecture’ and asked students of the Academy of Architecture to design silence for the city of Amsterdam. The Window Show displays art in the shop windows of the Haarlermmerstraat. And I was at the yearly presentation of landscape artist Bruno Doedens where he showed a preview of his new work.
This week, I spoke to futurologist Jeroen van Mastigt about how technology help us to find true love. And is having virtual sex for example considered as adultery? I went to fashion designer Anne de Grijff to have my first piece of custom clothing made, exciting! In the weekend, I went to the gallery Zone 2 Source in the Glazen Huis in the Amstelpark and spoke to director Alice Smits and artist Antii Tenetz about the latest exhibition about carthograpy. It show how in our current representations of earth we distance ourselves very much from the actual earth.
Last week I was back in Barcelona to experience the election day. I went to Catalan voting stations and talked to the people there. Unfortunately, there was no clear majority so to form a government will be a difficult proces. Also, I celebrated Christmas in Barcelona with a lot of great decorations and a delicious and enormous fish in salt crust. And we worked hard on a video to celebrate 30 years of the John Adams Institute.
As director of the John Adams Institute, I’m also a member of the American Women’s Club. I met them at the Hyatt Regency Hotel with its very stylish interior. In the evening I spoke at the meeting ‘Het temmen van de Stijl’, about if the once radical artistic movement has now become an empty vessel, nothing more than a marketing tool. Thursday was a very fun evening with my own talkshow Stadsleven about the theme Obsessively Healthy. Later in the week, I was at Sexyland for a debate about the cultural free zone of the NDSM-warf.