ART SOUVENIRS MENTIONED IN DUTCH PRESS!

Our project has been featured in the Dutch newspaper, the Telegraaf, as well as in the Metropolis M online magazine. In these articles, the Politician Paperdolls, "With love from Murcia" postcards and Curator Saint portraits are mentioned. To read the article on Metropolis M's website about Manifesta 8, click here.

TAS IS HEADING BACK TO HOLLAND!

We have come to the end of Temporary Art Souvenirs project at Manifesta 8. We will still be posting news on our website, and feel free to contact us if you would like to buy or exchange some of your goods for ours.

Much love, until next time!

ITS A SELL-OUT!

Its coming to the end of our temporary mobile shop tour in Murcia and Cartagena. Some of our products have almost sold out! Eva Olthof's personalised maps of Murcia and Cartagena, "Guess who?" Manifesta Biennial games by Anna Hoetjes and "Smells like art" air fresheners by Patricia Sousa have been very popular. We have made up special offer packages from all of our remaining souvenirs- you can be the proud owner of a package- unique to Temporary Art Souvenirs at Manifesta 8 for only 60 euros!

JULIO PASTOR: EMPLOYEE OF THE DAY!

Part of the TEMPORARY ART SOUVENIRS project was to see how we could communicate with people living in Murcia, who are not related to the Manifesta 8 event. How do they relate to Manifesta - do they know it is taking place at all? How do they react to our souvenirs? Many items in our shop refer to local issues, like water shortage, immigration, tourism and politics. We want to hear the opinion of different local citizens. The local media already gave us an amazing amount of attention, but still it is not always easy to reach people on the street. One of the reasons for this is that most of our knowledge of the Spanish language is very limited. What would we have done without our Julio Pastor!? The only native speaker in our group, and a natural communicator and salesman too!

Yesterday was a great day standing on the pedestrian bridge in the afternoon and evening. Many local passers by reacted to our shop and souvenirs. Without Julio's animated explanation this would not have happened.

MISSION: MOVING THE TENT

We thought we would move the TEMPORARY ART SOUVENIRS tent from one spot in Murcia to the other, without taking it apart. The result was a comical journey through a quiet part of the city that caught the eyes of the few passers by. Have a look at the video!

RIETVELD ACADEMY STUDENTS @ TEMPORARY ART SOUVENIR SHOP

After having had a lecture on TEMPORARY ART SOUVENIRS as part of their preparation for an excursion to Manifesta 8, approximately 150 first year students of the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam visited our shop yesterday morning. Many questions were asked and answered about the souvenirs and the set-up. Not all 150 students made it into the shop, we are still too small for that. But it was great to see them in Murcia!

OUR TRAVELLING SHOP: BACK IN MURCIA!

Our travelling shop has been open for one week, and has traveled to a different location each day. From 13 until 16 October we will be based in Murcia, but when traveling with our bikes and enitre portable shop back to Murcia from Cartagena- we discovered that we needed to disguise our goods as cardboard boxes in order to carry them on the bus, here you can see come of the art works which we created during our trip...

CULTURE AND TOURISM COUNCILLOR IS PRESENTED WITH HIS OWN DOLL!

The Murcian Councillor for Culture and Tourism, Pedro Alberto Cruz Sánchez, appeared near the townhall in Cartagena today. We presented him with a cardboard dressing doll of himself. Look at his reaction in the video! It was great to see him walk to his town meeting with a 'RECUERDOS DE ARTE TEMPORALES' bag.

MANIFESTA'S DIRECTOR HEDWIG FIJEN AT OUR SHOP!

Yesterday Hedwig Fijen visited our shop, and shreeked with enthusiasm when seeing our Saint Card of curator Boris Ondreička (Boris was enthusiastic himself, see the post about our first day). She was impressed with our appearance in the newspaper the day before (see previous post). Of course the Golden Coffee table Busts of Hedwig Fijen were the main eye catcher - Hedwig's family particularly liked them.

TEMPORARY ART SOUVENIRS MADE THE NEWSPAPERS AND TV!

The interest and media attention from our first days open, became especially visible the day after, when TEMPORARY ART SOUVENIRS made the Spanish newspaper. LA VERDAD published an article about Manifesta, in which our project is described in detail. The 'Dressing Dolls of Local Politicians from our shop were printed especially big in this article. We seem to be the hit of MANIFESTA 8!

Apart from appearing in the newspaper, we were also on La Verdad TV! (see below)

SECOND DAY: CARTAGENA

The second 'press and professionals' opening day brought the TEMPORARY ART SOUVENIRS SHOP to two different spots in Cartagena: the second city Manifesta 8 takes place in.
The interest and enthusiasm from the first day continued. A professional Manifesta crowd browsed, asked questions and bought our clever, funny, critical and accessible art souvenirs.
Sun, sea and palm trees make beautiful pictures, so have a look:

OPENING DAY OF THE TEMPORARY ART SOUVENIRS SHOP!

Souvenirs were flying of the shelves on our first day at the 'press and professionals' opening in Murcia.

'Meet the city through the eyes of an inhabitant: Series of city maps','Scented 'smells like art' cards','Cardboard dressing dolls of local politicians' and many other objects were met with a lot of enthousiasm.

The curators posed with saint cards depicting themselves and the press showed a special interest in our group of international artists based in Holland, suddenly setting up shop on the square in front of the Manifesta main venue: Antiguo Cuartel del Artillería.

FIRST SALES! TO ARTIST ERICK BELTRAN

Erick came to the DAI to give us a lecture earlier this year. He got a special presale presentation, and was the first to buy souvenirs last night!

ART SOUVENIR SHOP IN THE MAKING!

We are in Murcia preparing our Temporary Art Souvenir shop. A mobile shop- consisting of shop- bicycles, building a shop-tent and finishing final touches to our souvenirs. Our custom made art souvenirs will be on sale during Manifesta 8 -opening this week! check out our updated "souvenir" page.

WE ARE SELLING PROMOTION SHARES!

Do you want to have the unique chance to promote your institute, magazine, gallery, museum or cultural happening in our shop during Manifesta 8?

You can now buy one of the 10 special 'Promotion Shares' for only 150 euros! In exchange for your investment, we will distribute your promotional material for free to our audience. How often can you reach such an international art crowd for so little money?

Buy now, because they are running out quick!

For more information on how to buy a share, look under Shares

RESEARCH TRIP IN APRIL

To prepare the TEMPORARY ART SOUVENIR SHOP we went on a fieldtrip in April 2010, as part of our DAI programme.

Not only did we get some insight into the preparations that were happening on site from the Manifesta 8 team, we also got to speak (with whatever mutual Spanish or English words we found) to local artists, shopowners, street vendors, beggars, people working in the tourist industry, social workers, immigrants, students, and many more inhabitants of the cities where Manifesta 8 will take place.

How would this idea we had for a mobile shop work in practice? The streets and squares, the neighbourhoods and the Manifesta 8 venues all communicate different messages that cannot be taken into account from a distance.

This trip was the moment when things started to get a shape. We met some amazing people that told us all about the hidden histories, the economy, the local media, political structures and natural resources. Each of us found their interest in a different topic, working on it in a different way, but under the umbrella of the same experimental and adventurous structure of a mobile, critical souvenirshop.