summ( )n

Summ()n does not necessarily need a rep office at the moment, but we are increasingly often think of a creative studio of sort, where we would be able to place our installation, and we could host our creative sessions with people (so far they always run at various temporary places). Using a very kind invitation by Yelena Kharitonova, from CaravanCultura, we had a chance to sneak into the premises of the Klokgebouw (or Clock Building), the main building of the Strijp-S complex in Eindhoven.

Strijp-S is a former manufacturing stronghold of Philips, the company that until very recently was the key business forces in Eindhoven, who first moved its headquarters from Eindhoven to Amsterdam, and then gradually relocated most of its factories from the city to various other places in the world. What was left is a giant area that could either become yet another decaying urban ruin or reborn itself as a new place. The city administration together with a few business partners apparently prefer the second way, and already for few years invest into a redevelopment of the area and its transformation into a modern creative and inspiring space.

We knew that Strijp-S traditionally hosts an annual Dutch Design Week and also the STRP festival of electronic media art (and since last year also a new festival of the new urban art, Flux-S). But I was not aware that there is also quite a large community of creative studios, small and not so small business that already lives in the building on a permanent base. One of the members is Jean-Paul Marsman (whom I briefly met earlier, and who, as far as I know, is a designers of the CaravanCultura‘s visual identity).

This time we had a chance to visit his art studio ‘for real’, a total retinal delight. But this was not the only studio, in fact we managed to look at three or four, (ab)using the hospitality of people. To all my surprise, I was recognized by Maarten Hendriks, CEO of the Little Mountain, who apparently was my students in TU/e when I was teaching there few years ago! The world is still small. Being there, one can immediately feel the creative buzz from all the corners, and it was a very inspiring and rewarding experience (and hopefully not the last one).