Started constructing a small door-in-door to my atelier space at AWK. Meant to finish it yesterday, but due to some small problems in getting the right colour of plywood my construction partner has had to go back to AWK this morning to finish things. Later: just had a text message: mission accomplished. Cool!

Never knew that wood, like yarn, comes in batches & that one has to buy all in one go or else have wood of different colours. It’s logical, once you know. I have become so perfectionistic about this kind of detail. The thing just didn’t look right – so we went hunting for the exact right color of plywood for the last small pieces that will finish the construction.

Anyway, the door-in-door construction promises to do what I want it to do: make people that are outside curious, make people that are inside feel sheltered, standing apart, being  in a closed space. This, of course, represents the famous ‘magic circle’  that is shorthand for a separate play space ever since  Johan Huizinga coined the term.

I like it that the space will look like an experimental play space but will still look like a room as well. All the ‘room’ elements that are there (window, door in the other wall, plinths, a fireplace, a radiator) I have highlighted instead of  hidden. I have done this in most of my experiments:  I compose  them of  everyday elements but give these a twist. For example, in experiment no 003 it was a microphone and a hair drier that looked like their normal selves but functioned in an unusual way. In experiment no 005 it is ordinary tv screens that are used as a play table. The outdoor games of experiment no 007 offer games at unusual places  like bus stops, bridges  and transit area’s.

I like the  effect of combining the e mundane and the unexpected. I want people to get another take on something they thought they already knew, something that they thought they had figured out completely.

Carste Höller said the same thing when interviewed for ‘Divided Divided’ at Boijmans in Rotterdam (2010):

“You feel it right away: something is wrong, something is different. And I like this moment, when something that you take for given is somehow losing its ground. And it’s like having to find out again what it really is. Something that you thought for a long time was already solved. Your habit is shifted. These things which are really the foundations of how you behave in a social context, but also how you think about yourself. If that is shaken again, then I am really happy.”