HL

Selected projects
The Quest for the Herz
Expo 2020 Gbadolite
Datawarehouse Chapter 7
Who pulls the strings?
The Architecture of Knowledge (ongoing)
From Money to Ashes
What Is The Real Value?
Repple Depple (ongoing)
One Sentence A Day Keeps Me Away
Who Watches The Watchers
Onbegrensde Regelgeving
Het Zit 'M In De Kleine Dingen

Upcoming projects
Sandberg@mediafonds 2011 masterclass
Repple Depple continuation
The Architecture of Knowledge continuation
Kontraste Krems Festival website development
Rob Schroder website development
Research project: The shiny mirrored box
Derik-Baegert-Gesellschaft Break exhibition book
Expo 2020 Gbadolite continuation

Contact
CV
Texts
Connections
Colofon

The Quest for the Herz
A Society Run by Network Protocol
Sandberg Institute
The Next Big Thing exhibition
Installation, publication and research
2010

The internet as single dominant network is growing, the need to have access to the internet is becoming increasingly important.
More and more aspects of life are routed through the internet, on which new information technologies as unlimited bandwith, smart phones and social networking seem to be determining society. In this development the mobile network revolution is said to become twice as big as the laptop revolution.
With the introduction of new mobile and wireless standards everything and everybody can connect to the internet anywhere and always. With this explosive growth of a wireless society, the radio frequencies over which to access this wireless society has to be made can eventually run out to create serious connection problems. The frequency scarcity creates the perception of value, the radio frequency could become a highly exclusive commodity in certain areas. Already these wireless frequencies are bought by investment companies as valuable assets to be traded and monitized.
Could this coming wireless revolution create privileged live within protected and connected centers, while all others live in hostile, disconnected outsides?

World Expo 2020 Gbadolite
Ubangi commission
Research, installation, website and publication
2010

A proposition for a world expo in Gbadolite, DRC in the year 2020.

"The impact of global climate change is upsetting the balance of the world in a multitude of ways. Seasonal weather patterns have become erratic and animal migratory patterns confused. Vast areas land and entire islands have disappeared into the rising oceans. Displaced people are compounding economic and political pressures on the world's governments as they try to accomodate these so-called climate refugees. Some states have fallen all together in the process and we are also beginning to see organized masses of displaced people operating as nomadic states. It is in this context that many of our conventional markers of certainty have vanished, and we are forced to reevaluate the meaning of where we are now and where we are going. Next to this dark picture however are the governments and corporations of the world who are trying to outrun this tragic scenario by boldy stepping out towards a future that sets humanity on the right path again. The Expo 2020's Finding Your Place in the World theme is all about this journey. Through the pavilions being presented here, visitors will discover the unprecedented way in which they operate as an interconnected web of service and infrastructure to convert one of the most remote and empoverished areas of the globe into a model for the future of sustainable human habitation.
Expo 2020 Gbadolite will exist within a network of pavilions with Gbadolite in its heart. Pavilions is almost a symbolic title for projects that range from power plants and icebergs to temples and traditional medicine."

www.expo2020.co.cc

Expo 2020 is a project by Femke Herregraven, Katja Novitskova, Matthias Schreiber, Chris Lee, Henrik van Leeuwen and Mikko Oustamanolakis.

Datawarehouse Chapter 7
Graphic Design Museum
Installation and research
2010

On first view in the glass gallery of the graphic design museum there is a wild collection of bright colored boxes in all kinds of sizes and shapes. But behind this colorfull facade datawarehouse chapter 7 shows the world behind the data, the data economy. The installation is a visualization of the merger of the global trade in data and the financial world. The speculative and predictive character of the data economy has played a big role in the financial world and the current economic crisis.
Since november 2009, 1 in 8 Americans and 1 op 4 American childeren use food stamps of the Food Stamp Program of the US government. This grows with 20.000 each day and to recieve food stamps their income and expenses has to be almost at the poverty level. On Twitter it is vissible how these food stamps become a kind of virtual money and takes a live of its own.

Collaboration of Femke Herregraven and Henrik van Leeuwen

Datawarehouse Chapter 7
Graphic Design Museum
Installation and research
2010

On first view in the glass gallery of the graphic design museum there is a wild collection of bright colored boxes in all kinds of sizes and shapes. But behind this colorfull facade datawarehouse chapter 7 shows the world behind the data, the data economy. The installation is a visualization of the merger of the global trade in data and the financial world. The speculative and predictive character of the data economy has played a big role in the financial world and the current economic crisis.
Since november 2009, 1 in 8 Americans and 1 op 4 American childeren use food stamps of the Food Stamp Program of the US government. This grows with 20.000 each day and to recieve food stamps their income and expenses has to be almost at the poverty level. On Twitter it is vissible how these food stamps become a kind of virtual money and takes a live of its own.

Credit default swap
A credit default swap is a financial product by which the publisher of the 'swap' insures the owner of a debt by a loan that a company can repay the debt.

Collaboration of Femke Herregraven and Henrik van Leeuwen

Datawarehouse Chapter 7
Graphic Design Museum
Installation and research
2010

On first view in the glass gallery of the graphic design museum there is a wild collection of bright colored boxes in all kinds of sizes and shapes. But behind this colorfull facade datawarehouse chapter 7 shows the world behind the data, the data economy. The installation is a visualization of the merger of the global trade in data and the financial world. The speculative and predictive character of the data economy has played a big role in the financial world and the current economic crisis.
Since november 2009, 1 in 8 Americans and 1 op 4 American childeren use food stamps of the Food Stamp Program of the US government. This grows with 20.000 each day and to recieve food stamps their income and expenses has to be almost at the poverty level. On Twitter it is vissible how these food stamps become a kind of virtual money and takes a live of its own.

Bear market
A constant period of dropping stockmarkets. A bear market is usually accuring when investors anticipate on a declining economical activity. The bear pulls the attacker down, to the ground. A bull does the opposite and throws the opponent up. The opposite of the bear market is called a bull market.

Collaboration of Femke Herregraven and Henrik van Leeuwen

Datawarehouse Chapter 7
Graphic Design Museum
Installation and research
2010

On first view in the glass gallery of the graphic design museum there is a wild collection of bright colored boxes in all kinds of sizes and shapes. But behind this colorfull facade datawarehouse chapter 7 shows the world behind the data, the data economy. The installation is a visualization of the merger of the global trade in data and the financial world. The speculative and predictive character of the data economy has played a big role in the financial world and the current economic crisis.
Since november 2009, 1 in 8 Americans and 1 op 4 American childeren use food stamps of the Food Stamp Program of the US government. This grows with 20.000 each day and to recieve food stamps their income and expenses has to be almost at the poverty level. On Twitter it is vissible how these food stamps become a kind of virtual money and takes a live of its own.

Bankster
A combination of gangster and banker. Came into existence during the crisis of the 1930s but came into popular culture since the current crisis.

Collaboration of Femke Herregraven and Henrik van Leeuwen

Who Pulls the Strings?
Stifo@Sandberg: Follow the Money conference
Have we met: Sandberg curators day
Installation
2010

'Who pulls the strings?' is an installation in which through wires, servo motors and the internet a 5 euro bill is connected to the financial stock exchange euronext. If the stock of a bank (i.e. ING) is to active or rises to much the 5 euro bill will be ripped apart. The installation plays with the following questions among others: Who controls the money? How much speculation and profit can the system endure? Is the current (capitalistic) system self destructing?

From the 'Follow the Money' conference:
'At the beginning of the twenty-first century, our lives play out in a succession of databases and spreadsheets. Not only do we spend all day rummaging through countless data streams like Google and Facebook; everything we do leaves traces behind in other databases, through public transport chip cards, supermarket club cards and electronic medical files. The influence of databases, Excel sheets and algorithms has never been as clearly visible as it became during the credit crisis. The crisis cast a cold light on the fact that the global financial system had been built on the basis of mathematical models that attempted to quantify human behaviour. Blinded by the beauty of impressive mathematical systems, people thought they could precisely understand the risks of investments. Meanwhile it has become clear how risky it is to be dependent on these.'

The Architecture of Knowledge - Bookscraping
Netherlands Architecture Institute, Commissioned by the Dutch Association of Public Libraries
Publication
2009

By way of a dogma, during a July 2009 workshop, we agreed for two weeks not to use the library as a way to find information nor to acquire knowledge. In this way we could for the time being suspend the structures and systems attached to the library as an institution.
In our scenario public knowledge is accessible through the Netbook. Netbooks are not physical books nor are they e-books as read on the Amazon Kindle device, nor are they the small size budget laptops computers. A Netbook is a description of how a single book exists on the net; distributed and fragmented in various partial incarnations. Netbooks are decentralized sets of knowledge which, when assembled, become the more or less coherent approximation of a book. The frequently lamented-but equally praised-Google Books initiative for example, is centered on digitizing books through major corporate agreements, often involving libraries. Google offers its web visitors access to large parts of the scanned books for free but the availability of pages is still constrained. The online availability of large volumes of scanned books undeniably presents something of a library condition without the physical building being present.
As a case study, we have tried to construct a netbook out of Manuel Castells's seminal volume, The Rise of the Network Society (2000). Without having to purchase the book or even register to a service, we have 'scraped' content from publicly available sources so as to make the Netbook physically exist. The Netbook may provide an architecture of knowledge for the have-nots.

Collaboration of Metahaven/Daniel van der Velden (initiator), Henrik van Leeuwen, Femke Herregraven, Nina St�ttrup Larsen, Rozemarijn Koopmans and Kees de Klein

From Money to Ashes
Stedelijk Museum Visibly Absent exhibition
World Trade Center, Zuid As Amsterdam
Installation
2009

The "Zuid-As", the business district to the south of Amsterdam where many large multinationals are based, is an area where the natural and human scale sometimes seems lacking. The prints on the igloo are copies from iconic economical philosophy books. I regard these books as a metaphor for the Zuid-As, the financial heart of the Netherlands, where important financial decisions are made and views on our economic future presented.
Sprayed on the A4 prints are the numbers of the Fibonacci series. Each new number is calculated by adding the previous two. Mario Merz, the artit whose work forms the starting point for this work of art, was fascinated by the Fibonacci series, a magical series that helps explain the growth of plants and animals also provides a basis for architecture and is at the heart of the Golden Ratio.
The igloo as a Temporary Autonomous Zone at the heart of the Zuid-As, a zone for reflection and amazement. As presented now, the igloo is not only a re-interpretation on and a reflection of the work "From Honey to Ashes" from the collection of the "Stedelijk Museum", but especially of the complete works of Mario Merz. This piece of work plays with subjects such as the nomadic and human scale, mortality, pliability and transience. the Visibility Absent is a project that Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam launched in January 2009.
The top works in the Stedelijk's permanent collection have been away and out of sight since the closure of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam CS building. Visibly Absent was organised by the Stedelijk Museum in collaboration with the Rietveld Academy and the Sandberg Institute to explore ways in which their collection can be out of sight and yet be a visible and occasionally surprisingly tangible presence in the city.

What is the real value?
Sandberg Institute
Video and research
2009

A reflection on the financial en economical sphere by transforming old 'worthless' papermoney into a 'valueable' creditcard. This research project poses questions about new local and global currencies. And the trust involved in economics, financial institutions, currency and the creation of these.

The installation is created from used home electronics (i.e. blenders, mixers) and through a combination of events a creditcard is created from papermoney.

Repple Depple
Sandberg Institute
Installation and research
2009

Design and security are a great couple. During the War on Terror security turned out to be an extremely powerful marketing tool. Fear of bad scenario's can give an immense boost to irrational and paranoiac behavior in people. The security industry see it's own boost. To maintain a society which is focussed on security, a culture of fear is very important. Yes, fear is real, it's an emotional response to threat. But threats can be created and that's where design steps in.
Not only is design offering solutions when the desire for security highly increases, design also plays an important role in creating the illusion of threat. Threats in turn, always bring along new safety measures restricting individual freedom.

Focusing on the city, we argue that the implementation of military strategies in the urban landscape relies heavily on design and the act of designing. Consumers, citizens and politicians accept new restrictions in their lives more easily, when these restrictions have been designed.

Collaboration of Femke Herregraven and Henrik van Leeuwen.

One Sentence A Day Keeps Me Away
No Academy
Video, publication and research
2008

'One Sentence A Day Keeps Me Away' makes part of the first No Academy publication. This publication was created together with Femke Herregraven and Tunc Topcuoglu

One Sentence A Day Keeps Me Away is a proposal that plays with and reacts on different levels of language, identity and integration. During my research and stay in Amsterdam Geuzenveld-Slotermeer I noticed that many problems and tensions have a link with language. On one hand there is a pressure to learn to speak dutch to fully take part in the dutch society but on the other hand there is absolutely no necessity to speak dutch if your neighbors speak your own language, your colleagues speak your own language, the cashier speaks your own language; than why should you? If there is a will, there is a way, says the Dutch proverb. If you want to, you can. If you want to learn a foreign language, you can. I am trying to learn the sentence Ik moet Nederlands spreken (I must speak Dutch) in main languages as used by the Dutch government; Dutch, English, Arabic, Turkish and Chinese.

The sentence "Ik Moet Nederlands Spreken" (I Must Speak Dutch) reflects and criticises current immigrant integration policies in the Netherlands as a movement towards a forced one-way assimilation by a dominating but difficult to define culture. This movement will cause even more closeness of the different minority groups than ever. As a Dutch artist in Amsterdam Geuzenveld-Slotermeer, I am an outsider and always will be an outsider, the 17th 'social designer' that comes in and snoops around never to be seen again.

Who Watches The Watches
No Academy
Photos and research
2008

The saying 'Who watches the watchers' has �been used since the romans to explore the question of where ultimate power should reside, or alternately, the problem of ultimate power. Some forms of government attempt to solve this problem through separation of powers. As long as the "watchers" are a small and potentially corruptible group, the question asked is a sort of paradox, and perhaps an example of infinite regress.

This questions I posed myself about the municipality during a public art residence in Geuzenveld/Slotermeer, Amsterdam. As an awnser I created a small publication and workshop about creating from off the shelf materials spying equipment.

Part of the publication was for example a wok and PC-microphone combined into a powerfull aiming microphone, a sodacan and babyphone combined in a listening device, a smoke detector and webcam combined in a infrared spy cam.

(On)begrensde regelgeving
Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht
Publication and research
2007

We leven in een overgereguleerde en gedicteerde samenleving. Al onze grenzen zijn aangegeven, alles is gezoneerd. Deze uitgave is een overzicht van de vele (onzichtbare) administratieve en bureaucratische eenheden waar ik onder val.

Deze uitgave is te bestellen door een e-mail te sturen naar henrik@henrikvanleeuwen.nl

Last examples for sale! - 5 euro (excluding shipping)

Het Zit 'M In De Kleine Dingen
Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht
Publication and research
2007

Een kaart, ter grootte van de standaard VVV kaart, waarbij elementen zichtbaar zijn die burgers zelf hebben toegevoegd zonder toestemming of medeweten van autoriteiten of andere instanties. Dit is in kaart gebracht door middel van de offici�le gemeente kaart, waarbij alle iconen, bomen, lantarenpalen, verkeersborden, brievenbussen, etc. zijn vervangen door beschrijvende woorden. Deze kaart is weken als leidraad gebruikt en al lopend en fietsend te ontdekken wat door de burger zelf is toegevoegd. Hieruit kwamen zelftoegevoegde bankjes, bloempotten, paaltjes en lantarenpalen. Uiteindelijk een verborgen overzicht over de kleine burgerlijke ongehoorzaamheid.

Last examples for sale! - 5 euro (excluding shipping)
Only available in Dutch