TM-City
Chapelle des Jésuites, Chaumont, FR [18th International poster and graphic arts festival of Chaumont]
May 12 – June 24, 2007 (+ other venues and dates / traveling exhibitions)
Graphic designers: Richard Niessen and Esther de Vries
Statement: «Typographic-Masonry: name under which Richard Niessen worked from 2002 – 2007; this name describes his way of designing: building with type. The exhibition TM-City is constructed based on this working method.
Mapping: the exhibition TM-City maps the work of Richard Niessen in a city landscape with over 150 of his works presented as architecture; in La Chapelle, Chaumont (F).
City-Quarters: TM-City consists of eight city-quarters, each with their own type of works; in ‘Calligraphic Quarter’ for instance, the typography echoes seamless integration of calligraphy, imagery and text found in Byzantine and Medieval illuminated manuscripts. The other quarters are: Structures Citadel; Alphabet Block; Flows and Ruptures; Patternville; Sugarcraft Hill; The Collaboration; and Toolkits Treasure.
Textile: Esther de Vries designed a special textile with a pattern of the streets of TM-City, which was woven at the textile museum in Tilburg; bags were made from this fabric to protect the works during transport.
Buildings: the designer Raf Snippe designed a system of wooden constructions; each type of work got their own type of building, resembling skyscrapers, houses, squares, parks, flats, factories et cetera.
Travelling: the exhibition is designed as a travelling exhibition; after Chaumont it went to Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and KOP in Breda, and in 2009 it will be shown in Vilnius and Sofia. TM-City can be taken apart and transformed into eight crates.
Streets: the exhibition is organized along streets named after various inspiration sources, like Lego, Aldo van Eyk, Wiener Werkstatte and Tanadori Yokoo; the most influential sources got the longest streets.
Noise: each city-quarter has its own music box with samples of music from the ‘Howtoplays’ and digitalized by’Yens & Yens’; when walking through the city these samples create a city-noise.»
