The Mobile Lounge

	The Mobile Lounge
	All Venues
	The De Geuzen Foundation (http://www.geuzen.org/) are an Amsterdam-based collective of artists who work on collaborative projects, have designed our "mobile lounge" - a reading, research and relaxation area which will accommodate the constantly accumulating archive of knowledge and materials generated by Tech_nicks. The Lounge will be constructed and available at all of our venues.

Comments: The De Geuzen Foundation's work is primarily concerned with designing spaces and social that encourage and facilitate individuals to research and discuss issues of culture and society. The mobile lounge materialised at the Lux on the day before Tech_nicks began in the form of three cardboard boxes delivered by DHL. The lounge was commissioned on the basis of the description above and with the instruction that, like everything else in Tech_nicks, it should be do-able yourself by anybody else who would like to try it. The exact contents of the boxes were a surprise to us on arrival. The main components were five inflateable armchairs, a collapseable cardboard archiving system, a set of analogue tools for note taking, collecting and archiving including stickers, rubber stamps, scissors, labels, paper and pencils. The Lounge construction manual contained some additional instructions, including: to obtain or create a blackboard at least 2 metres square, find a large coffee table or equivalent, acquire a VHS deck and player for tapes and negotiate the use of the host institution's photocopier. Tech_nicks team, friends and participants donated reading materials for the lounge so that in every venue there was always evidence of and access to analogue writing and documentation that manifests digital culture.

As a real functioning, comprehensive archive, the Lounge would have required a lot more time and commitment from the Tech_nicks team than that which was made available. However, as a strategy to create continuity between venues, to ensure that a critical dimension was always visible and to create an open space for people to drop new materials such as leaflets and publications of their own it was a great success. The mobile lounge ensured that there was always an opportunity for our visitors to undertake self-generated inquiry and this was very important for the functioning of Tech_nicks as a public space and open resource. It also provided a flexible and intimate space for some of the discussions, and contributed a lot to the dynamism and mobility of groups in our spaces.

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