Tangible Nothingness

It is difficult to express or photograph the nothingness that surrounds us as we drive through the country. The absence of anything giving us a sense of scale of the landscape is stunning just as the infinite details we see for miles, in the soil and rocks, the colours of the plants, the changes in light, wind and water.

Click on the images to enlarge them and use the back button to get back to the gallery overview.

On our way from Reykjavik to Siglufjordur we stopped – among other places – at Hofsos, a village with a natural harbour which made it one of Iceland’s oldest trading posts. We strolled along the basalt column coastline until our bus driver picked us up again. He drove along at lightning speed, only slowing down for sheep or when a police 4×4 was in sight. Apart from ferrying passengers up north our driver doubled as postman, delivering everything from food for petrol station shops and spare parts for garages to fish for friends in the villages along the way.

This is Herhusid, our home for the next four weeks. The residency centre, an old prayer house and former Salvation Army post, sits right in the centre of Siglufjordur. The town on the northern coast of Iceland was the country’s herring capital until its heyday ended with the world economic depression of 1929 and the decline of fish stocks. Siglufjordur is set on a small peninsula in a fjord with blueberry-loaded hillsides, grazing sheep, ptarmigan and small waterfalls. We’ll explore and will keep you posted.

Checking out the online weather forecast in our flat above the studio.

Design can be understood as adding value – it is employed to add value to materials and objects to generate a commercial profit and functional, emotional benefit in the process.

Based on the rules of a popular German children’s game, the students take this notion to the extreme and create their design piece or design inspiration from and apple and an egg.

The rules of the game:

At the beginning of the project the students split in groups of two to three people and each group will be given an apple and an egg. This is their capital for this project. Now it is up to each team to make the most of their capital by finding people who will trade with them.

The following days we create design proposals and projects from the inspiration and the objects traded on day one.

How could anyone resist trading with Magali and Juliette?

...but what to make of it all?

Projects emerge from the trade -by Clara, Nina & Yuan

development of the ideas - by Nina & Pierre

…and on to the final presentation tomorrow, with our ‘external examiner’ David Dubois…

So how does Ainu fish-leather-making work? The salmon skins are rolled up and laid in a groove cut into a massive wooden block. Under constant turning, they are then hammered with a large wooden mallet until they are soft. They are then ‘broken’ further in another wooden contraption before the scales can be removed with tweezers or pliers. Et voila – salmon skin leather.

Normally, it takes two days of relentless pummeling before the salmon skins are supple enough to be used for clothing. I think everyone who took part will remember the favourite words of our otherwise monosyllabic instructor for a long long time: “mada mada” [phonetic spelling, probably quite wrong], which translates as “Not yet, not yet” – or more to the point: “Get on with it!”.

To reward everyone for their hard labour we concluded the workshop with drinks and a feast of European and Japanese salmon dishes, followed by a screening of German short films from the Sapporo Short Film Festival showreel.

Our instructor shows how it is done.

Salmon skin about to be pummeled into submission

Mada mada!

Get on with it!

Top: unprocessed salmon skin; bottom left: softened skin, scales partially removed; bottom right: the finished salmon skin leather.

Detail of softened salmon skin, scales partially removed.

The workshop participants tuck into a well-earned dinner.

Sponsored and organised by the British Council in Athens and the Vakalo School of Design the workshop brought together students and practitioners from a wide range of disciplines. Graphic designers, architects, interiour designers and artists all looked at the hidden lives of objects and the stories they tell. The outcomes will be presented in an exhibition at Vakalo School of Design.