Platform 21 - Arne Hendriks

Pedro Manuel - What was the first impulse for Platform 21?
Arne Hendricks - Platform 21 is an incubator for a museum of design. A new area was developed here, with a lot of buildings and offices. In recent years, people became aware that you can't just put the buildings there or you will have a ghost town at night.

PM - Zuidas?
AH - Yes, Zuidas. From the start they communicated with cultural institutions to ask them to participate in this process, how art e culture can positively influence the relationships between people in this area, between architecture and environment. So, it was decided to have a design museum, and Platform 21 is, more or less in the last three to four years, researching what a design museum should be.

PM - But is it a museum of design representing Amsterdam or just this specific area, Zuidas?
AH - We don't really have a design museum in the Netherlands. It has always made part of an art museum. But this museum is exclusively dedicated to design, whatever that means. We try to investigate in a new way and quickly found out that people involved in this process are not interested in the product at the end of a long process of creativity and production, but more in the all process before. So the question becomes: how are you going to create a place where lots of people will come, will learn about design but, at the same time, what makes the creative process, the techniques, the brainstorming sessions? How do you involve, make it available to public? So, all the moments where we tried to involve the audience were a result of this question: how do we open the process? A product, you put on a pedestal, on the floor, and that's it, but the process is a string of different moments.

PM - Here you don't start with art works but with processes.
AH - Everything apart from the artwork is about process. The world of process is infinitely larger that the one of the product. So it's a huge field and we have to focus on what we want to pick up. It is much more easier to show a product, the stories are more attached to this product, there is a history that you can tell, certain uses, you can discuss it. It is a good place to start so we don't exclude him from our vision.

PM - It is symbolical of what you are saying that the final products of Platform 21 have this kind of mark of failure or death, in the way that, by being repaired, they have a second life.
AH - If you want to seduce people to work, to participate in this process then you cannot show the perfect end result. Perfection is a turn-off, "if it is perfect than I am not needed". Specially in the art world and in design even more, this striving for a perfect end result, it is so closed in itself that doesn't invite you at all, you can admire it but you can't destroy it, you cannot do anything with it anymore. The products that are repaired still have a place for you. It is not about failure. Often the place that people have taken in this products are the visible part of them. With Hacking Ikea what people did with it is very visible. it is not the chair, it is what has been done to the chair. It is quite transparent what happened there. Through this you have an entry. We have instructions on the website on how to do things but when you show things in the website is already a distilled moment. You need to have this inviting quality. So, in the space, with Hacking Ikea you could have a table that you could hack for yourself and a lot of objects that weren't hacked before. At the same time, there is inspiration around it, you see what other people have been doing, so there is an atmosphere for making. And in the space, people should be able to adjust to their own level of expertise. People are not triggered by the same questions, by the same products. A space should have this different levels, different triggers. Every professional is amateur in most fields of his life, and the other way around. We are looking for their amateur side, not just their professional side.

PM - Co-creation can be very ambiguous.
AH - You fail a lot. We can have a fantastic process, but if the end result sucks then someone will come and judge the process by the end result. One of the solutions we found is to have different speeches. With the Repairing Project and Hacking Ikea we already had some investigation, by designers. We had this beautiful objects. But we had to had them or it would be a fantastic amateur workshop. It's not just idealism but a need to have this different levels.

PM - The objects are not intended to be seen but to be touched, mended. So, this future museum is going to have objects or will it stimulate processes? And what kind of space will it be? a place to see or a working place?
AH - The next step will be a temporary space, and it will be like a docking station with a central station. It is a work place, a meeting place, some display space, partly a shop, but with all the things that you need to co-create things. From this central space there will be docks and each dock will have partners. Can be a company, an university, and each one as it's own space, its own container, but directed to this central space. They sometimes can go together, to the side. But the central thing will be co-creation. Co-creation is where everybody adds quality. What is sometimes hard to explain to people is that the spectacle of making can be as fantastic as the big pieces in museum. The spectacle of co-creating, building together, something really big, like building a village together, or something like a babylonical tower, or landscapes. It can be fantastic, on a visual level, on a level of technique, on content. Because when you are doing things, content arrives in a different way. Platform 21 always had this ideal that we are trying to positively influence the relationship between man and thing. For instance, in repairing.

PM - A table full of tools and things that are broken becomes the interface, instead of the usual distance between person and object displayed.
AH - That's a nice idea. We don't use the wall because most cultural institutions use a wall to present themselves. It is limited. If the wall is a metaphor for a museum, our metaphor is a table.

PM - I think repairing, in the way you developed it, addresses, in extreme, two different concepts: the aesthetic, brilliant side and the community side, like when you talk of "manifesto" on one side, and "laboratory" on other. How do you think repairing works in this two opposite ways?
AH - They work on both sides. If you use a word like "repairing" as a lens to look at what you would do, you can give it away, and give it to people to look at what they are doing, even if it is not design. The lens is neutral, only shows things, doesn't tell you how it is. I don't know if they are so extreme. That's why is so important to work with themes, so that you don't have things spread all over. We want a no-threshold situation, where people enter, like a brilliant scientist or a five-year old, extreme opposites, and somehow, within this space, there is a reason for both to be there. The manifest would speak for both of them because we use a language that is inclusive. We not use words that are from this group and not another. The choice of language is very important. Sometimes it is hard for you because you have words that are households in your profession background but you have to track back and find out how should you say. Not only make it simple, just as intelligent but with other words. Like artists look at drawings of children and scientists look at the fantasy worlds of the artists, there is an exchange between them.

PM - You have different projects, but underneath there is always this "repairing" concept.
AH - No, repairing is a project by itself, running since March. But because we had the lens of repair we started to look at previous projects through that lens, and started to reinterpreted. Sometimes you start to understand where you were going. Because you took a risk, and you can also fail, but at least you have to create the opportunity.

PM - So, "repair" is not going to continue in the new museum?
AH - Well, underneath Repair Project there is something else, like underneath Cooking Project and Constructing Project. You are looking at things, and processes, and you feel that you want to redefine them. Specially with Hacking Ikea, everybody has the same product, and you are not part of it.

PM - With Hacking Ikea there is a feeling that you can really do it in your home. You feel that your work is successful when people do it, privately?
AH - I think that it is what everybody wants. This need that people carry the exhibition with them. I think that the intention should be this, not just expressing but also communicating. If they want to find within our ideas someway to active themselves.

PM - Who would you say is the public of this museum, or now, of Platform 21?
AH - It is always hard to define an audience. You have a group which is now called creative consumers, and that's about a third of our audience. Also people that are very critical about the environment, that like to be involved. But I would like to think that also the people that are around us, that are on the way to become critical, creative. And then you have a challenge with people that don't want to have nothing to do with it.

PM - How does the project communicates with other places in Amsterdam?
AH - That is one of the reasons why we want to move to a more public area, because we are not happy with communication. One of the reasons that led us to exhibitions, writing the Manifesto, or with the contests, is that we know that we can't have people here. So we try to reach them by the internet, media. If you have a space where one thousand people passes daily by your door... We become more aware of using media, of becoming visible. We have an audience that is not physically here with us, but is in contact.






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