Berend Strik - Glass Works
Introduction
Berend Strik, born in the Netherlands in 1960, is a Fine Artist who has worked with a broad range of media including Film, Architecture, Embroidery, and Glass. He has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions. This exhibition focuses on his use of Glass and in particular on two collaborative projects: 'The Tourette House' with One Architecture and stained glass widows on 'Modern Morality' for the Paradiso concert hall in Amsterdam, a collaboration with Hans van Houwelingen.
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Modern Morality in Stained-Glass
Berend Strik and Hans van Houwelingen describe their innovative design approach for the 'Paradiso', concert hall, a former church in Amsterdam, 1995/1996.
The commission to create 12 stained-glass windows has taken a long time. There are difficulties both in content and technically. Designing windows that function as decorative facilities and also represent an arrangement visualizing the parameters of human existence, according to the commissioner, requires a reorientation of existential facts and constants in human conduct. Besides, the virtually vanished old trade requires the greatest possible wariness and therefore demands a technical reorientation.
Due to the end of ideology and faith and the lack of collective awareness, the formulation of existential truths for a public is an impossible affair. Individualism entails that any choice for a representation of modern morality is checked by the numerous possibilities to make alternative choices that are equally valid. The arbitrariness thus resulting has played tricks on us for a long time. In everything that can be thought up the question presents itself to what extent this personal thought could represent a universal value. Although we can never completely avoid it, the designs should be as little as possible a statement of two persons, but - as formulated by the commissioner - an arrangement which is of all times and places. Moreover, the quest for and representation of a modern morality practically turns us into competitors of the Bible. But who are we to propose any truth what so ever? We are not able to nor do we wish to write another Bible. Consequently, it was important to us to look for a working method legitimizing the fact that particular representations were opted for. Time is a difficult story, too. The world is too fast for stained glass. We should beware of lapsing into representations that can no longer be recognized because of their lack of topicality.
We took the view that the representation should not be an arbitrary choice, but the result of a thought tested in reality. Representations of themes such as love, nature, money or death could be legitimized and withdrawn from arbitrariness by seeking out the thoughts around these themes in reality and actually experiencing them. In comparison with the Biblical representation the closest approach to 'truth' can be achieved if the inevitable personal interpretation is backed up by reality. We do not make a photograph until our subject has been found and tested in reality. It is our intention to study 22 themes and subsequently to look for situations in reality in which these thoughts present themselves as real ones. We are looking for extreme situations in modern reality that raise moral questions.
We concluded that the first window should represent the Mother. A nun told us that the essence of Mother Mary is to be found in her perfection, because she had the wisdom, after having been Christ's tutor for a while, to subject herself to his teachings. In that respect she is the most complete and perfect woman. The nun told us that many people adore her because she is so human. Her transparency made so clear by the heavenly light, indicates that in this time, too, spiritual transference is essential in every life. That is why we wanted a heavily pregnant career woman. Not a virgin, but a modern woman who can make essential and existential choices. A woman who in very paradoxical circumstances is capable of penetrating existence.
We received a few responses on an advertisement in the newspaper NRC in which we asked for a heavily pregnant career woman who could fit into our project. After selecting the responses and after a few unsuccessful meetings with Maries who did not comply with the image we had of her, we ended up in Prague where at that moment heavily pregnant Dorethée Leijenaar is at the head of a company in which the positive Western spirit of commerce can be heard to resound in the former Communist East bloc. She is managing director of the service company 'POSITIVE'. After some correspondence she decided that she could sympathize with our thoughts and offered her cooperation. With a Czech photographer we made a photo of her in her office in Prague. This photo is to be applied to the first trial window by means of an experimental technique in combination with staining.
We have interpreted the draft design as a possibility for the development of a concept and its being tested by making the first window. Concept, process, technique and result will be directly and clearly open to assessment by the commissioner. If the commission is approved this would therefore imply approval of the procedure proposed. This does not mean that all the windows are to be designed and placed at the same time, but that there is to be a history of development for each window. Each design will be another story. These stories are to be documented on video and can be shown as a record within the contours of visual art. Our manner of working is time-consuming but in our opinion the best to achieve a meaningful work of art.
Our next window will be on the theme of 'death'. Here, too, the question is which direction your thoughts should take. What can you do with death? Do you end up in AMC-hospital, in an old-people's home, in Bosnia or Bangladesh? What should our window be about and where will we land up? Medical practice, euthanasia and abortion have put death in a completely different light. The modern extensions granted to death as a result of medical development and ethical 'progress' made us decide, after serious consideration, to photograph an Aids patient who at the moment of switching off his life also presses the button of the camera. Meanwhile we have found a man willing to do this. We had not foreseen that he would start to consider this photograph an important part of the ritual of his dying, but according to us it emphatically stresses the significance of the method used by us.
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Title: 'Sketch for Maria, |
Title: 'Sketch for Love, |
Title: 'Sketch for Labour, |
Title: 'Sketch for Dolly, |
Title: 'Marriage, first gay |
Title: 'Ananova, the first |
Berend Strik: Tourette House Project
Claudia and Carla Huntey are identical twins. They both suffer from a severe case of the syndrome of Gilles de la Tourette, a neurological disorder often associated with involuntary cursing. In general, people with Tourette's develop compulsive 'tics'. Tourette's (GTS) expresses itself as the contradiction between the thought and the act: most of the time the action is expressed as the opposite of the intention. This fact creates singular situations because as they wish to act correctly they end up doing the reverse. This occurs with some awareness of the fact: just before a tic or action they feel the need to release them. In that fraction of time they have conscience of what is about to happen.
The sisters and their mother have to change residence every six months because their neighbours would complain about the noises that they make; moreover the public housing they live in is not resistant to their compulsive behavior.
Berend Strik and One Architecture, an artists/architects collaboration, are designing, fundraising, and, eventually, building a house for the twins, as a gift.
The project is filled with paradox: since Tourette involves doing the opposite of the intention, all architecture's control mechanisms malfunction. The upside of this impossibility for control is that building a house that suppresses 'tics' will never be possible; the downside is that developing this un-architecture is damn difficult.
The schematic design for Huntey sisters house in Denver, Co., proposes an experimental way of dealing with Tourettic tics. Rather than suppressing the tics, as chemical therapy does, it investigates how an environment can be created that allows for the release of tics and for the redirection of tics.
The design for the houses finds its analogy in the following case: a woman with GTS developed a tic when riding her bike over bumps in the road, which caused her breasts to shake. Since the shaking breasts tic is socially awkward, she, with help of her therapist, redirected the tic to her large toe, shaking which is much more socially acceptable.
In the eyes of the medical doctors and GTS specialists One Architecture and Berend Strik work with, the external environment becomes, through the design, a new domain for dealing with the syndrome, after neurology and psychiatry.
Symmetry
At this time, the Huntey twins do not live together. Seeing GTS in the other exacerbates their tics, in very much the same way that made Lowell Handler tic and drop his camera when he first met them, but then on a more or less continuous basis. At times, they drive each other crazy. They also have a deep desire to live with each other again, if possible in Denver, where Claudia now lives.
In the initial design, we have decided on a house for the two sisters, living-apart together. The two units, which each contain a living room, a dining room/den, a bedroom and the necessary additional functions, can function independently.
The two units share a guest unit, primarily to have their mother stay over, which also serves as a meeting space for the sisters.
While the suppression of tics is not an architectural goal per se, the symmetry of the living arrangement needs to take GTS into account. Claudia's and Carla's tics mirror and generate Carla's and Claudia's tics. The desired symmetry of their lives as sisters is sometimes accompanied by the less desired symmetry of their GTS.
Interesting in this respect is Carla and Claudia's tic to alternately jump up and down together, like pistons.
House of Hearts
The symmetrical layout of the house has an asymmetrical circulation scheme. Doors often open to one side only. Sometimes the direction in which they open is linked to the position of other doors. Modeled on the one-directional flows in human heart, the different rooms of chambers allow proximity, make interaction possible when it is desired by both and prevent it when not.
The use of the heart as a flow-diagram has led to obsessive thinking about hearts. Conversations with Claudia and Carla made it clear that they love direct and simple visual elements. Since 'love is a killer app', the heart scheme manifests itself more visually. Claudia and Carla love candy. The entryway has the iconography of a 'sweets shop', with intricately woven hearts made by flowers and façade.
A visual side-effect of the use of hearts in the façade is that they fractalize the front of the house, making it both one, two and three and four distinct elements, as a reflection of the simultaneous need for individuality and togetherness. The hearts recompose themselves to the 'batman' logo, where the middle of the house becomes an infinite point, belonging to both Carla's and Claudia's side.
Normality
Claudia is sweet, caring, maintains a relationship, and has lived and worked outside of the family. She is more socially adept, yet suffers from harsh, loud, abrasive vocal and physical tics. She is able to handle herself in a long term relationship, combining medicine and therapy.
Carla has a thorough sense of humour, even concerning her own affliction. Intelligent, manipulative, anorexic, bulimic, and not as comfortable as Claudia in a social context, she struggles to lead a mostly happy life. Her vocal tics are dramatic, more in choice of language than in volume. She has never worked or had love-relationships because of her psychiatric problems. Despite the use of medicine and therapy, she is dependent on the other people to take care of her.
The whole idea of having a conventional lifestyle with a husband, a house, kids and a car, slowly faded from their reality. Carla and Claudia have, however, a great desire for normality. Given the nature of GTS, the more they desire normality, the more their tics intensify.
Therefore, the house balances normality and specificity in relation to their tics. The Benthamian hypothesis is that the knowledge that there is a possibility for escape makes tics manageable.
That is why the 'sweet-shop'-cum-'Batman' façade looks, from certain perspectives, like the straightforward California Style house of Claudia and Carla's dreams. That is why the simple housing unit is initially materialized and organized as if there is no GTS at all, albeit for the subtle ways in which kitchen equipment and fireplace can be used in a safe and playful manner (play is used as a way to channel compulsive behavior). And that is why the normal units are accompanied by a 'release space' in the central part of the house.
Punching Bag
The functional program of the central space is, beside a guest unit for Mom, that of a garden. Claudia and Carla want to enjoy nature but have problems with bugs and flies.
The central back window in the space frames a 'Miesian' view of the Rockies. The interior is light and breezy. It has a gently abstracted organic structure with membranes of varying opacity stretched between. Together, they form an arabesque space with textile qualities.
At times, the membranes form pockets that can be pressurized, forming a literal 'punching bag' for the sisters. Inflating and deflating the Teflon pockets also makes passage and circulation possible or not. Here, the diagrammatic heart's valve system becomes absurdly real.
Architecture as an icon or a brand, architecture as an idea, architecture as a type, architecture as a behaviorist machine, architecture as medicine, architecture as a haptic or sensual environment, architecture as a purely affective thing; all these aspects of or possibilities for architecture are constantly and dynamically put forward and broken down and made impossible and built up again in this initial design phase.
The next phase consists of consultations with Claudia and Carla, as well as our medical consultants in the Netherlands and the US. From this, we hope to finish this phase in the fall of 2002.
Berend Strik
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Tourette House |
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