Projects

This absurd drama talks about discipline. Maurice, the protagonist, is the perfect ‘white sheep’ who pursues the ideal way of life: love, job and money. In the context which we all generally hope to achieve, Maurice engages in an absurd discipline process. This begins as a fantasy , but it will transform him into a black sheep.

White Sheep Black Dream

It’s been a year that Louis XV and Marie-Antoinette haven’t discuss. 
Let’s talk about her new haircut.

The film premiered at Musée Cognacq-Jay during Paris Design Week 2016.

Le Coiffeur

Studio Brynjar & Veronika reflect on the value of 'creating'. The designers show how enjoyable and important it is to create something by hand, bringing together materials and techniques from the Zuiderzee Museum to form collections that make us look differently at these everyday items. A piece of rope takes on its own beauty; the same is true of a carpentry or knotting technique. Exhibited with pictures, sketches and small assignments for the artisans, they form what is almost a poem.

This film was made within the context of the exhibition Studio ZZM from 1 April 2017 to 6 May 2018 in Zuiderzee Museum.

A net of Scenarios

Researching new values for local wetland bio-materials, the project explores the potential of growing micro-algae locally. These algae are then converted into biopolymers that can replace non-biodegradable, fossil oil-based plastics. 

Algae Lab

Atelier Luma invited artist Eric van Hove to imagine, in the context of Arles, a prototype based on his Morocco-based Mahjouba Initiative: a reinvented, decentralized, and relational production model for manufacturing electric mopeds, made by craftsmen and 3D printers, for the local Moroccan consumer good market. 

Arles Mahjouba Prototype

For designers Noam Toran and Marloes ten Bhömer, a craft is not limited to a set of technical skills – there are also social, political and personal aspects, and these feature in pre-industrial work songs. Work songs brings rhythm to monotonous tasks and make hard work easier. By singing about their shared hardships and joys, workers strengthened their feeling of solidarity. 

This film was made within the context of the exhibition Studio ZZM from 1 April 2017 to 6 May 2018 in Zuiderzee Museum.

Beats Working

In days gone by, the artisans of the Zuiderzee region worked together very naturally. But collaboration is a skill that has largely been lost, now that so much is produced by anonymous workers in huge factories. Maki Suzuki of designers' collective Åbäke challenged the artisans of the Zuiderzee Museum to make a boat, which meant they needed to work together. 

This film was made within the context of the exhibition Studio ZZM from 1 April 2017 to 6 May 2018 in Zuiderzee Museum.

Everywhere is within floating distance if you have the time

« I’m with her » is a holiday film twisted in a criminal documentary, shot during a vacation trip to California in October 2016. It shows that with any innocent images taken from say a holiday film you have the power to tell a whole different story depending on the way you look at it, listen to it or feel it. The tension between the two genres allows you to see two films in one . It’s up to you to see the sweet holiday film or the dark documentary.

I'm with her

Object Interview is a collection of one-minute videos about design objects in conversation, investigating how objects exist on their own. Launched in 2017 at Palazzo Clerici during Salone, the project ended in 2019 and involved 103 contributors  including designers, cultural institutions, writers, curators from all over Europe.

Object Interview 1-8

"We are surrounded by billions of objects, we know some of them as we deal with them everyday, we go to appreciate others when we visit museums, galleries, shops, we fantasise at the one that are unaffordable, untouchable, unthinkable." A manifesto film about Object Interview project launched in 2017

Object Interview Preface

ROYAL is a short film that explores the royalty subject from the perspectives of young designers within the context of two major Dutch institutions: Design Academy of Eindhoven and Paleis Het Loo. It focuses on the influence of old traditional behavior with contemporary ways of thinking, living and creating. 

Royal

Designer Martino Gamper has a background as a furniture maker. In collaboration with the Zuiderzee Museum’s artisans, he created a chair that showcases everything associated with the Zuiderzee Museum. Gamper chose materials that the artisans work with every day, such as wood, sailcloth, rope and rattan. During their exchange of technical knowledge and the shared search for solutions, the trio explored the boundaries of the craft.

This film was made within the context of the exhibition Studio ZZM from 1 April 2017 to 6 May 2018 in Zuiderzee Museum.

Sail Rope Square Chair

Studio Brynjar & Veronika created in 2016 The Circle Flute, a circular flute played by four flutists for one listener at a time standing in the centre. The circle has a diametre of 2.5 m and consists of four interconnected c-flutes that are linked to each other by tube connectors. Documented at Musée des Archives nationales in Paris on September 9th 2017.

The Circle Flute

Artisans have their own backgrounds and stories, all of which enrich their craft. That's what designer Alexis Gautier discovered when he talked to the museum's blacksmith and gardener. Both told him a story about cross-pollination between the Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies: about how a small exotic animal (the shipworm) became a disaster for the Zuiderzee’s dyke posts, and how a Dutch cabbage (Roem van Enkhuizen) came back home again after a long journey to the Far East.

This film was made within the context of the exhibition Studio ZZM from 1 April 2017 to 6 May 2018 in Zuiderzee Museum.

The Shipworm and the Glory of Enkhuizen

Intrigued by the historical Van der Kamp Washhouse at the Zuiderzee Museum, master students of Design Academy Eindhoven developed a washing service for white linen. 

This film was made within the context of the exhibition Studio ZZM from 1 April 2017 to 6 May 2018 in Zuiderzee Museum.

Vanderkamp Laundry

"100 years old" is an installation displaying the paradox of what is perceived as the "right" environment and lifestyle to help us achieve a century of life in health, and what based on recent researches is actually the environment that has allowed people of our time to age significantly more than others. All over the world, different communities with different heritage have managed to create a life that allowed them to age well over a hundred. Although these communities live far away from each other, they all share certain values and a lifestyle that apparently helped them flourish to this honorable age. In our project, these shared values become the guidelines for building "the perfect environment to become 100 years" through it we invite the public to contemplate on how we live today- is it possible that in spite of technology and health advances we are actually causing harm to our future wellbeing?

100 Years old

In 1972, Jacques Kalisz designed the Administrative Center of Pantin, nowadays used as the National Center for Dance.  Considered a major work of brutalism, the building is structured around a central staircase. "Faux Raccord" is a short film that explores the possibility of mistakes as a source for creating new architectures. The film focuses on the central staircase of the building, and changes its perspective. By observing these returned images, the viewer discovers a place that seems familiar but just as unknown; in which the stairs reveal new spaces. A voice, the one of the staircase, tells us his story.

The film premiered during Biennale Emergences (11-14 Oct 2018) at National Center for Dance in Pantin, FR.

Faux Raccord

For the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial – A School of Schools, conceptual designer and director Alexandre Humbert has directed a series of films that build upon the idea of lifelong learning. Humbert uses the medium of the smartphone – a learning instrument carried at all times by many of us in our pocket – as a conveyor of information that is updated regularly, and which we can follow throughout various weeks, updating our knowledge. 

Lifelong Learning

A short film investigating the opportunity that water could offer for the next generation of designers, architects, curators, artists and also the emotions, the fear, the fiction, the threat, the beauty, the lifestyle that it could generate. The film was premiere within the context of LUMA Days #2 at atelier LUMA in Arles on May 14th, 2018.

Living with rising water

Object Interview 9-17

MacGuffin Magazine presents the installation One and Three Cabinet by Alexandre Humbert. With this collaboration, Humbert, the founder of Object Interview, gives a tribute to Joseph Kosuth’s 1965 iconic work One and Three Chairs, exploring the Object Interview-process and relating it to the layered construction of the magazine. The object’s representations, in this case, a cabinet, a film of this cabinet and a fictional story told by the cabinet are combined to create new object narratives.

One and Three Cabinets

The Door is a film installation commissioned by MUDAM Luxembourg, Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, in response to the Sanatorium Paimio – Mobilier d’une Chambre installation by Alvar & Aino Aalto. The viewer’s eye is led into the room from the frame of the door (the same size as the original door). Through the camera, the viewer looks around the room of a tuberculosis patient and zooms in on the outstanding details of the furniture. Positioning and lighting enable the same elements to continuously tell a new story about the life and the state of mind of the objects who temporarily occupied the room.

The Door

For the 6th Guangzhou Triennial, MacGuffin joined forces with filmmaker Alexandre Humbert and local students to collect objects that represent the resourcefulness and “life hacks” of different cultures in Guangzhou. Their union is celebrated in a Guangzhou wedding of things.

The Guangzhou wedding of things

The Design museum Gent, which originates from a private initiative by a group of industrials and art lovers formed in 1903, turned into a museum managing a collection of approximately 22,000 objects that will be transferred to the new central heritage storage facilities of the city in the Ghelamco arena in 2018. At Object Stories, the Design museum Gent featured the film by designer and filmmaker Alexandre Humbert on this spectacular relocation of the collection, enabling visitors to catch a glimpse behind the scenes of a collection and its stories.

The Unchosen

In White Horse / Twin Horse, Revital Cohen & Tuur Van Balen make use of De Brakke Grond’s theatre infrastructure to rehearse forms of exhibition in which research, process and outcome cannot be meaningfully distinguished. The result is a collaborative exhibition in five acts that is constantly in flux.

The exhibition was on view from 9th Dec 2017 until 28th Jan 2018 at De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam 

White Horse Twin Horse

Over the past years, Schloss Hollenegg for Design has collected a number of objects, which also means it has collected a number of stories. “20:00, Dinner.” is an installation, presented during Ad Mensam 2019 exhibition, that bring to life those collected objects through the stories they are willing to share. During a dinner, 3 chosen objects are in conversation, reflecting on the time they have spent there and questioning the reasons for their own existence. This permanent dinner stages the ability of objects to generate innumerable stories, that we should invest time to listen to, investigate and relate to.

20h00, Dinner.

Object Interview 18-19

Alexandre Humbert creates an immersive film of the speculative Sleeping Beauties tour entertainment resort inside the Disney-like Burj Al Babas housing development. Begun in 2014, Burj Al Babas was designed to attract wealthy golf tourists to Mudurnu in Turkey. But after five years the project was abandoned, resulting in a huge waste of finances and materials and hundreds of unsold houses that litter the landscape. Sleeping Beauties turns this ghost town into a resort that could generate a new source of income for a UNESCO World Heritage region. In Humbert's vision, visitors pay €10 to walk around and photograph the 732 three-storey royal villas, inventing their own fables to fill the empty rooms. 

Sleeping Beauties premiered as part of GeoDesign: Junk exhibition during Dutch Design Week 2019

Sleeping Beauties

Designers Alexandre Humbert and Lucas Maassen have made a series of photo collages of established creatives impersonating furniture and household items. Called The Living Room, Maassen and Humbert conceived the project and took pictures of the 187 architects, designers and curators involved during Dutch Design Week 2019.

The project took place at MU Art Space as part of The Object is Absent critical exhibition. 

The Living Room

The Object is Absent is a radical experiment. It is a theatre, a concert, a cinema, a gym and an exhibition in one. It is a playful gathering to learn and do, by designers and everyone. The Object is Absent is a manifesto to dematerialize design by optimizing optimistic human behaviour. The Object is Absent is a transmedia project constructed as an ever-evolving play, an action against the Action, a designers statement against materialist cheap abundance by creating value out of nothing. Especially in the context of Dutch Design Week The Object is Absent strives to avoid the physicality of the square meter stand, to give space back to people. 

The exhibition took place at MU Art Space during Dutch Design Week from 19th to 27th October 2019

The Object is absent

In A Combmaker’s Tale we follow the story of two passionate makers and wonder what we can learn from them. Antun Penezić, 82, is Croatia’s last living combmaker and he will retire this year without a successor. Franka, a brand-new robot, is dedicated to follow in his footsteps and learn as much as it can from Antun in order to preserve this age-old craft from disappearing.The two are the protagonists in a tale that questions humankind’s relation with both crafts and technology, a tale that challenges its audience to reconsider their assumptions.

A Combmaker's Tale

The chapel of the former Monastère des Clarisses, listed as a historic monument, is the venue for talks by guest designers. It's a place where you go through cold winters and scorching summers, but it's also deeply marked by its architecture - which you may want to take advantage of at times, while forgetting about it at others. In response to these contradictions, Rotor's intervention proposes an easily heatable sub-space made of spinnaker cloth. This intervention is based on an economy of means: the quantity of material used to create this sub-space is minimal (around 90 kilos in total). It is also completely reversible.

Déconstruction, Démécanisation.

When it's still dark in the museum, a green light is installed, protecting the textile works from possible damage. This film, which takes us into the reconstruction of Jeanne Lanvin's bedroom in 1925, challenges our reality, that of a museum that is always closed.

This film was made within the context of Humbert's residency at MAD Paris that took place during the 2020/21 season.

La Lumière Verte

As part of his residency at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, Alexandre Humbert reveals the life of the museum's roofs, which are also those of the Louvre palace. This film, made shortly before the new confinement, echoes the place of cultural institutions that only exist when they are visited.

Le soir sur le toit

Alexandre Humbert investigates in his short film Les Impatients the life and emptiness experienced during the quarantine of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. It closed to the public on March 15, like many other institutions around the world due to the quarantine following the health emergency of covid-19, a period during which “it was interesting to look at how museums have revolutionized the methodology of communication, to give online visitors the opportunity to stay in touch with the works on display.”

Les Impatients 

Designed as a usable workstation, the OpenStructures Work-Station makes a selection of parts from the OpenStructures digital database available to the public at the Maison POC via an accessible archive. This physical collection of interchangeable and compatible parts is complemented by a workspace where visitors can get their hands dirty in a practical assembly and prototyping workshop.

OpenStructures - Work Station

During the pandemic, all over the world, social distancing pushed governmental organizations, cultural institutions, medical centers, schools, theatres, restaurants, stadiums, transportation structures and private companies to urgently produce graphic signs in order for half of the seats on the planet not to be used. 1000 of this unprecedented intensive production is gathered in this film confronting us to this question: What should we do if sitting might just be what kills us? This film marks the beginning of a long-term research, focusing on the intimate relation existing between Humans and Seats that was abruptly disrupted in January 2020.

Sitting might just be what kills you

As part of Lille Métropole Capitale Mondiale du Design 2020 - Maison POC Economie Circulaire, Trace 0.0 is a film constructed as an inventory of the Monastère des Clarisses before any interventions. 

Left by the last nuns in 2008, preserved by the Friends of the Monastery, the site has been gradually reinvested by the Zerm collective since November 2019. This film evokes the passivity of a space emptied of its inhabitants and its function, which calls for transformation. Trace 0.0 is first and foremost an emotion about a precise and very particular moment, Monday 16 March 2020. It was shot on the eve of a week of 'boost' rehabilitation, which was abruptly cancelled at 8pm on that day, the announcement of the official confinement in France. 

Trace 0.0

Nadine Botha’s project is a participatory research proposal into public health, stigma, othering and viruses, by revisiting the most lucrative topical story in entertainment media: zombies. 

Ways of seeing Zombie

In 2020, the city of Lille has been designated World Design Capital. More than 350 models, objects, spaces, scenarios and services have been designed to animate and reanimate the city and its region. This film immerses viewers in a variety of contexts to highlight the need to design systems that are as visual as they are conceptual, with people as the primary beneficiaries. Objects and spaces, the film's main protagonists, highlight the importance of research in the creative process.

Il est possible que ça fonctionne

A short film based on Pinaffo Pluvinage research project: Jelly Safari.


Jelly Safari n°6

Sit in the "people's room" and listen to the birds singing in Moïse de Camondo's Buffon service.

This film was made within the context of Humbert's residency at MAD Paris that took place during the 2020/21 season.

La Volière

A library, books, lots of books, and objects too. Le Bureau immerses us in the intimate organisation of the workspace of Olivier Gabet, Director of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.

This film was made within the context of Humbert's residency at MAD Paris that took place during the 2020/21 season.

Le Bureau

On 1 and 2 September 2021, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs hosted a performance by Dutch designer Tejo Remy. In situ, in front of the public, he created a "Rag Chair" using linen panels from the set design of the "Luxes" exhibition, produced with the participation of the Confédération Européenne du Lin et du Chanvre / CELC.

Rag Chair

This project was a part of the Lithuanian Space Agency, representing Lithuania at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. The films ‘Standing’, ‘Falling’, ‘Levitating’ bring the head-turning artworks of the artist Julijonas Urbonas into the spotlight. The videos present selected projects based on Urbonas’ research into gravitational aesthetics, a name he has given to a genre of architecture, design and art. The three one-minute length films show the materials and design of the life-size and scale models of the projects. 

STANDING LEVITATING FALLING

Born from the meeting between Giovanna Massoni, curator, and Alexandre Humbert, designer and film director, this movie tells the story of Belgian design at a historical moment that determines an important turning point in its role. Shot between February and April 2021 across Belgium, the film accompanies us through the attitudes, words and gestures of nine protagonists of circular design, reuse, regeneration of resources, new models of organization and production. One story, nine practices: the stories blend together to create a unity of space and time, building a single voice common to all. The object (the design), assumed here as a starting point, has a variable, vulnerable identity and becomes a pretext for determining the locations in which the narrative is integrated. An agile artifact generated by individual and collective experience, it passes from one hand to another, it adapts, it is shared, it regenerates. The work is (again) open - as Umberto Eco wished. This film is an initiative of Belgium is Design, the project to promote Belgian design on the international scene.

The object becomes.

"I was wondering, have you ever walked?" The Walk, a short film detailing Unfold's Fall 2020 collaboration with Hermès windows display in northern Europe countries.

The Walk

The "Wall of Salt" project team looks back on four years of exploration and collaboration, to enhance the value of the salt resource and the know-how surrounding it.

Wall of Salt

A blue thread, its warping, its de-construction, its reconstruction, its warping, its weaving and finally the final output of this Bleu à Tisser. Clivia Nobili and the artisans tell the story of the fabric and make it live.

The film premiered at Musée de l'Hospice Comptesse in Lille on January 2023.

Bleu à Tisser

When the dancers and choreographers Tatiana Julien and Anna Gaïotti first performed together at the Silencio, David Lynch’s club in Paris, they immediately found artistic common ground and a sense of sorority. In 2022, their collaboration led to a new production, An Entire Night, that had its premiere at the Espace des Arts in Chalon-sur-Saône. CN D Magazine followed the duo as they embarked on the final rehearsals, with an audience surrounding them for the first time.

Une nuit entière

"Union" is a film that guides us through a global reflection on the notion of Europe through the discourses of 4 artists whose works highlight emotions beyond their functions. The collective assemblage of works, at the heart of the European institutions in Brussels, as part of the French Presidency of the European Union, delivers a conceptual union of materials, images, forms and words.

"Union"

In a damaged world, should we rebuild or abandon everything? By meeting 35 artists from all over France, this story, assembled like a giant performance, an epic poem, takes an intimate look at the relevance of the artistic act today.

D'un moment à l'autre

From February 12th to August 27th, the CID - Grand-Hornu presents an exhibition of nearly 1200 m2 dedicated to the work of Michele De Lucchi and his multidisciplinary studio AMDL CIRCLE (aka Circle), internationally recognized for its humanistic approach to design. The 30-person transgenerational team is dedicated to architecture, interior and product design, graphic design and installations. This film is a conversation about his approach towards future.

Futuro Gentile

As a non-EU citizen, one of the conditions to get an artist resident permit in the Netherlands
is to be part of at least 2 exhibitions supported by Dutch cultural institutions in the year of the visa application.
Home Sweet Home is an installation by Vis-a Visa Collective & Lucas Maassen presented at MU Art space within the context of Hybrid Tales for Hybrid Times exhibition from May 5th to August 23rd 2023.

Home Sweet Home

The traces that remain of Christophe Gevers' work in 2023 are very small. Through the testimonies of close collaborators and collectors, this film goes in search of the physical and emotional traces left by his work, and examines the durability of the architectural gesture today.

The film premiered as part of Christophe Gevers, the architecture of the detail exhibition at Design Museum Brussels from 11 October 2023 to 10 March 2024.

Il ne reste pas grand chose

For 3 years, Alexandre Humbert followed the progress of the project to redevelop the Magasin Électrique in the Parc des Ateliers, in order to construct a narrative as close as possible to the experimental methodologies put in place by Atelier LUMA, BC architects & studies and Assemble. Through the materials, processes and challenges of building in the 21st century, this film takes an intimate look at a building that is constantly adapting.

Lot 8

An intimate look at Ronan Bouroullec's lithographic process at Idem Paris.

Ronan Bouroullex x IDÉE

On September 2nd, 2018, the National Museum of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro was damaged by a large fire, destroying approximately 18 millions archive pieces. 4 years later, a group of artist, designer, ceramist, researcher, archaeologist gathered in Amazonia, to work on the reproduction of those lost pieces, confronting ceramic traditional making to new technologies, historical wounds to ancestral divinity beliefs.

Apagada

Taking place at Centre Pompidou in Paris, Dialogue on Ceramics is a short film constructed as a conversation between frames, words, colours, objects between Ronan Bouroullec and Marie-Ange Brayer.


Dialogue on Ceramics

A look at the collection of CID Grand Hornu, 
a film installation that premiered at Collectible Brussels

Project–Index