People meet in different ways now, even in the strangest of manners. Imagine flying over a city and witnessing all the things that are taking place there. Connect to Google Earth and find Eindhoven, a small city in the Netherlands. As you get closer, a number of YouTube videos appear on top of the city. Did you know about the man that juggles? That there is a flying saucer in a park? A young couple are moving into their new apartment? The people who like to dance tango or the person who is an aspiring singer? People broadcast their experiences. What if somebody tried to contact them back?
As an outsider to the city of Eindhoven, I found myself in a surprising situation of gaining access to three enormous and abandoned factory buildings, called De Hoge Rug, located within the Strijp-S area and former headquarters of the Philips company. After spending some time exploring on my own and sometimes frightening myself by getting lost in the bowels of the buildings, I decided that I wanted to take some people in with me so they could also have this experience. I found some people in Eindhoven via YouTube who displayed a tendency for exploration, exhibitionism, absurdity and adventure and asked if they would like to visit a place in the city that is hidden and inaccessible. I asked them if they wanted to make a new video based on a video they had already made, using the empty offices, hallways, and factory spaces as their playground and inspiration. I was pleasantly surprised that many responded.
Bad Boy Emily performs in one of the empty Philips offices
‘The City is Creative’ explores the daily creative acts taking place throughout Eindhoven that are often overlooked. Different people in the city, who published videos on YouTube, were contacted and invited to do a remake one of their videos within the abandoned factory buildings at Strijp-S, the former Philips industrial terrain and future site of urban development project ‘The Creative City’. These reinterpretations are experienced through an exploratory interactive installation within the building site where videos were made. This creates a double facade. The video makers never imagined that their works would be exhibited beyond the realms of YouTube, and the public is exposed to the untapped creativity of the city.
In addition, a series of documents from conversations and interviews between the artist and creators brings together biographical information, observations and comments about the past, present and future state of The Creative City of Strijp-S as well as personal reflections on what it means to create, document and broadcast.
Background
The Strijp-S area is the former home of Philips headquarters, also referred to as the ‘Forbidden City’ because of a restrictive entrance policy into the area. In the mid 90s, Philips moved a majority of its operations out of Eindhoven. The Strijp-S area is currently targeted for an urban development project called ‘The Creative City’ which intends to transform the area into a centre for culture, business and living in ways that merge together technological innovation and economic development with the creative class. Estimated date for completion is in the year 2018. ‘The Creative City’, as it is currently and globally described, brings the economic into the creative domain, where culture becomes the key to urban revitalization and economic growth. Another type of ‘Creative City’ was first evoked by Dutch avant-garde artist Constant Nieuwenhuys who in 1952 started a 20 year project ‘New Babylon’. ‘The New Babylon’ is a utopic city inhabited by Homo Ludens, or ‘man the player’. Within this ludic society, each citizen, now freed from productive work, starts to to explore his or her own creativity through free-form, non-utilitarian acts of play.
While the future results of the Strijp-S’ ‘The Creative City’ remain to be seen, ‘The City is Creative’ focuses on the city’s current creative undercurrent which borders on the playful and sometimes absurd.
from Strijp-S ‘The Creative City’ brochure
Constant Nieuwenhuy’s ‘New Babylon’