Renny Ramakers
Sunday, September 13, 2009
3:00 p.m.
Governors Island
This event is sold out.
Co-founder and director of Droog Renny Ramakers will lead a tour of Pioneers of Change, a festival of Dutch design, fashion, and architecture on New York’s Governors Island, which she both conceived and curated. As part of the celebrations of the 400-year Dutch-American friendship, the show highlights a more responsible and sustainable approach to living by celebrating the blurring of low- and high-brow, establishing new collaborations, encouraging involvement, emphasizing sustainability, and valuing handcraft and the local context.
Over the course of two long weekends from September 11 through September 20, Pioneers of Change will showcase a modern interpretation on Dutch art and design. The exhibit will utilize several former officers’ houses in Nolan Park on Governors Island, where visitors can listen and debate, watch and participate, relax and think, eat and drink, play music, be inspired, connect and, simply, enjoy. Revelers can also shop at the pop-up store of affordable Dutch designware (all under $100).
“I am honored to share my vision of what I see as a new movement in design and architecture, a different design based on a more critical attitude toward global mass consumption and with an open eye to participation from the public,” says Renny Ramakers.
In Pioneers of Change, people will not encounter the usual design, fashion, and architecture presentation. So there will be no high-style artifacts, models, drawings, and catwalk shows. The three-dimensional exhibit will showcase repair vs. recycling; knitting a carpet with six-foot long needles using wool from three species of Dutch sheep; elderly people slowly but attentively serving meals with smaller portions of foods from faraway places and larger portions of those from nearby gardens; Dutch fashion designers and New York masters specialized in beads and lace working together with students from Parsons The New School for Design; designers digging in local grounds to reveal differences in color and texture; movies about urban farming focused on New York; and left-over building materials collected in New York available for creative re-use.
Pioneers of Change will include the participation of leading designers from fashion, design, and architecture, such as: 2012 Architecten, Atelier NL, Maarten Baas, Franck Bragigand, Droog with Marije Vogelzang, Herman Verkerk, Rianne Makkink and Hansje van Halem, Experimental Jetset, Pascale Gatzen, Christien Meindertsma, MVRDV and The Why Factory with Work Architecture Company, Painted, Erwin Driessens and Maria Verstappen, Parsons The New School for Design, Platform 21, Marcel Schmalgemeijer, NL Architects and Michael Schoner, Richard Hutten, Atelier van Lieschout, and Chris Kabel.
Pioneers of Change was initiated by Han Bakker under the authority of NY400, the result of an initiative by the Dutch Government in close co-operation with Dutch local and provincial authorities, with New York City and New York State, and with active participation of a great number of organizations from the private, cultural, and not-for-profit sectors.
Please email anderson@archleague.org for more information.
This program was made possible in part by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
Image Credit: Experimental Jetset
