#jonasohlsson

FATFORM, 2010-2012

in collaboration with Daniela Bershan and Jonas Ohlsson

FATFORM was an art project (2010-2012), initiated by Daniela Bershan, Kaleb de Groot and Jonas Ohlsson, that challenged the idea of a traditional platform and its basic functionality. Local and international artists met, exchanged, exhibited and performed together until the apocalypse in 2012 at one of the best underground locations in Amsterdam: the rooftop parking garage Klieverink in Amsterdam-Zuidoost. With an experimental cross-programming, different audiences were attracted from various fields such as contemporary art, biology, hip hop, new media, philosophy, performance and reggae and are encouraged (or basically forced) to at least have a peek at the other.

This project was an experiment to find a form that is open enough to have space for diverse and often non-compatible networks. By not trying to minimize these incompatibilities but rather to propose a form that is FAT enough to contain all radicals.

THE ISLAND, 2012 exhibition curated by Irene de Craen and Jonas Ohlsson 
for FATFORM

In the past, distant islands represented gaps in the map of human exploration. Besides being a refuge from regulations for humans, the isolation of islands such as Galapagos, Madagascar and Australia, allowed animals and plants to find their own shapes and behaviours, creating something wild and unique which would not be possible anywhere else. Suburbs, such as the Bijlmer, are islands in their own right, with distinct structures, rules and regulations. Geographically, and in many ways culturally too, the Bijlmer is cut off from the rest of Amsterdam, and 
hidden within this island lies FATFORM, our own little free state: our own island in a concrete, urban sea.

Curators Irene de Craen and Jonas Ohlsson have asked artists with their own exotic visual language to reflect on the idea of the island and relatic topics such as utopia, anarchy, autonomy, isolation and evolution.