a project with Hinrich Sachs
October-December 2002

Processing available information, that one has chosen, that one feels a need for, or that one is forced to apprehend in order to assure one’s living, is something that we handle every day. But the quantity and speed of information have been growing considerably since broader digitalisation just a decade ago, and influence and force professionals in the cultural field to handle acceleration. The pace of Richard Long’s 1960s sculptor’s motto “do the right thing at the right place at the right time” has shifted towards “just do it“ and might read totally different again today. This project looked at personal strategies for timing in the production of meaning in the context of the information society.

Within the technology oriented cultural context that we live and work in, specific aesthetic devices have higher credibility for being a participant of an advanced cultural discourse than others. In architecture and design, not to speak of the much larger entertainment industries, computer aided designing and presenting has gained it’s broad place and shows results. Art discourse has somehow kept a distance or started fetishizing the technological means in new media breeding schools. The project involved an exploration of cultural acceleration as well as possibilities of dealing with it from an artistic perspective.

The project resulted in an Individual Speed seminar, held at Zaal De Unie in Rotterdam on November 21, 2002, with presentations by project participants and guests.

Project leader was artist Hinrich Sachs (Switzerland).

Claudia & Julia Mueller, Idylls, still from video drawing, 2002-03

Guests were graphic designer Felix Janssens (Netherlands) & architect Dennis Kaspori (Netherlands) and visual artists Carey Young (UK) and Claudia & Julia Mueller (Switzerland).

A reader was produced with texts by Dean Kuipers & Doug Aitken, Rem Koolhaas, Lars Spuybroeck, Slavoj Zizek and others.