Current Obsession: Can you describe your work for the Work Group?
Kelly van Gemert: I’m mainly responsible for the opening and closing events, which I’m very excited about. I like using worldbuilding and storytelling as an anchor in my practice. The theme of the festival is glow up, so I was thinking about how you could connect these events as a beginning and an end into this theme, and how you can also make it memorable, something people can reflect on and relate to. So the concepts for these two events are ‘pre-glow and afterglow’.
I think the concept of ‘glow up’ is interesting, because the moment you decide I’m going to work on this’…you already are glowing up. I would really hate a party where the theme is glow up and you kind of reflect , ‘Okay, so I’m shit right now, but in 10 days’… or ‘Before I was I was no one, and now I’m here, and I have a nice dress on’. So it’s the idea is: What is already there, and what do you bring to the table? And that can be your starting point.
CO: How does your location or community inform your thinking and art practice?
KVG: Eindhoven is special because it’s a bit of an underdog. It’s a hub for creativity and technology because of the city’s history with Philips being one of the tech trailblazers of the century. Design Academy Eindhoven (DAE), established in 1947 was the first university in the Netherlands to focus on industrial design. Next to that you have Sint Lucas, TUe, Rockcity and Metal Factory which are music schools, so it’s a big melting pot of different disciplines. Yet it still feels like a small town because a lot of people work and operate in the nooks and crannies of the city. For outsiders it might be more difficult (yet also more fun) to explore, but if you look closely there are a lot of cool initiatives. I think it might be a bit harder to find your way around than in Amsterdam. There is definitely more nightlife [in Amsterdam], where a lot of cross pollination of disciplines happens. Still, in Eindhoven a lot of new initiatives sprout each year. Yet people tend to move out right after their studies, because they want more opportunity and maybe community. But I’m thinking…what if we all would stay here? What would happen then? What would happen if people would think, you know what: This is not maybe everything we wished for, but maybe we can make it together?
`Still, in Eindhoven a lot of new initiatives sprout each year. Yet people tend to move out right after their studies, because they want more opportunity and maybe community. But I’m thinking…what if we all would stay here?´
CO: What do you most want to contribute with your addition to the festival?
KVG: I feel like things are accelerating. And I think the discovery of self is accelerating with it. Because we can get up in the morning and decide ‘I want to discover who I am today’. That is something I think we should really explore: What does it mean? You can choose who you want to be every day, over and over again, and you can also let go of things easily. And what you wear on your body represents that too. I think reflecting on what you do and wear ties closely to the theme of glow up. So to come full circle, the afterglow effect is the last moment before sunset. But also an afterglow of the moment, when you had a really nice time, you think of that moment, and you reflect on it… to me this is super beautiful. So that’s kind of the whole storyline that I’ve been exploring.
KVG: The Eindhoven scene feels a bit nomadic. To get to know it, stay in the loop with the likes of Club Symbiose and N.E.P. (before it was named Stroomhuis, a DIY concert venue + artist hub that unfortunately burned down in 2024) to see where they are hanging out next. They’re both mainly rooted in music, but they organise many multidisciplinary events, workshops & happenings, working together with the many artists, designers & musicians from all the nooks and crannies (and gutters) of the city.
