24 gifts for you!

Over at the website of a secret club we're throwing a little gift your way every day until Christmas eve. Previous days' gifts will not be available, so you best check in 24 times if you want them all.



So far we've given away the crown of King Winter, some delicious gift wrap, a magical landscape and today you'll get a classic collage challenge, unless you read this tomorrow...

Reviving a blog
OK, this blog is on the verge of death. I've written it many times before, but since I started out kennmunk.com my focus has shifted, I mostly design through a secret club.

At the moment I'm teaching and I'm focussing my teaching on the importance of the sketchbook, yet sketchbook pages have all but vanished from my website. Sketchbooks aren't made to be showcased, but if I'm trying to inspire the creatives of the future to use this tool, I should put my jpgs where my mouth is, so here's the first of a series of sketchbooky entries.

Gysinge
In 2009 a secret club went to Sweden. Mostly to get stung by wasps and mosquitoes, but also to just sketch, think, experiment without having a project. This is a sample page from that trip:



It shows various random stuff, research and ideas all mingled and mangled, but that's my mind for you. On the left hand page, right in the middle, you see G Y S I N G though. What it actually says is Gysinge.



When you walk up the path to Gysinge, this is what you see.



If you walk round the back, this is what you see - a side of a house painted in different traditional Swedish colour combinations. You see, Gysinge is a hardware store, but not your standard B&Q. Gysinge is for people who really love their old homes, people who restore and it's the sexiest hardware store I've ever seen. It's a mix of reclaimed materials and new, but the true beauty of this place is that it itself functions as inspiration and DIY guide, take the slightly blurry pic below, it shows a ceiling in the state you'd find it in an old house, stripped, primed and painted. It's beautiful. It's not just about flogging your primer and brushes, this place cares.



This excites me. Without my sketchbook, I'd forgotten its name and contrary to what Shakespeare thinks, a lot is in a name - if you have the name you can find it, dead easy. Use your sketchbooks, kids. You'll save so much time later if you don't have to google "Cool Swedish Hardware Store"

Calling all Animators!

A secret club is planning a Celebration of Animation at the amazing art cinema Øst for Paradis in Aarhus, Denmark and we're looking for interesting animation work to screen there.

Please go here for full information in English or here if you prefer Danish.

It'll be stellar.

This may all be happening in Aarhus, Denmark 2nd June. Sign up for newsmail at a secret club or go to our facebook page for more. It's soon time to play again. Sponsored by Hama Supported by Børnekulturhuset

Jenova Chen I just gave a short talk on collaborative play, torytelling and Jenova Chen's approach to computer game design. I might go into deeper detail in some future post, but for a bit of procrastination/research, have a go at Flow

New website for a secret club It's been a long way coming, but now it's finally here: The brand new schhh.org All that's missing is the English half, right now that bit is a disappointment that comes just as you want to press that little button. (For the defiant of you, something will happen if you do press the button, just goes to show that "Nothing here to see" isn't always true.) It's been a pleasure to get this all sorted, all our previous events have a home now, we have a nice little place for gifts, exhibitions and a Filmograf for showing you films whenever they come into existence. There's still lots to be done, but it's a home. At the same time, we've decided to get ourselves on the book of face and on Twitter Twitter will mostly be for things we've seen and like as well as updates. keep them peeled, more will come over the next centuries. Thank you.

Why Don't You?

Back in January I was asked to contribute a task to Digital Arts' "Why Don't You?" article. (Funny, it's not the first project named Why Don't You that we've taken part in.)

We made it a project for a secret club as that made sense, sadly it's credited to me solely and I am described as an illustrator and the brain behind a secret club, while I form part of the brain, I am not an illustrator, that describes the other part of the brain, Annabelle Nielsen, far better.

Our task was to send people on an adventure and coming up with this little micro-project reminded me of a student days dreams: To constantly travel the world, live out of hotel rooms and just design like hell with whatever was at hand. This was in 1998 and traveling the world, chatting to clients on your Iridium phone while surfing the net with the other hand sounded damn cool and totally possible.



Years down the line reality is - thank God - different, but this project was cooked up sitting on a hotel room floor, the photo taken in a photo booth, so this sending people off on an adventure was made while being off on an adventure.

The adventure is about halfway down the page. and if you scroll a few more people down, you get to good friend Chris Ratcliffe of Garudio Studiage who will prompt you to build a zoo.

There are a lot of good, little project there to pick from if you need a bit of inspiration, it's funny to see the ones that are overly self promotional, but aside from that, there's plenty to choose from.

Robots, Aliens and Rocketships


Posterdesign by the fabulous Annabelle Nielsen


We're ramping up for a space and science fiction themed event at a 101-year old observatory in Aarhus, Denmark.


More info here

The Expedition

Last night, on that impossible date, I went to the cinema Øst for Paradis for a secret club to introduce the film Extremely Close and Incredibly Loud

We had been asked to set the mood for the film, but that would probably have been a tad depressing, so instead we did what we do: We tried to get the audience to play. Not then and there, but some time in the not to distant future, we sent them on an expedition. This idea was developed further from at microbrief we'd set for the current issue of Digital Arts



With the audience in their seats, I made them make a little booklet out of the sheet of paper we'd laid out on for them, this would be their log book for the expedition, now all we can do is wait for their log books to return to us.

the Schhhop is full to the brim
The shop of a secret club, also known as the Schhhop now features most of the amazing collages made for the Super Duper Nova collage challenge show, including my own contribution.



Every penny dropped in the shop will help a secret club produce more creative events, so even if you don' like the art, buy some and be a better person.

There are only about 25 zines left, they're all ready to go to a new home.

Stykker af Stumper - Pieces of Bits

The first Denmark-based workshop for a secret club of the year is a mere week and two days away and I'm very, very proud of this one. We are presenting a miniature programme of films at a cinema to fuel imagination before playing. The programme consists of a surprise short by the Quay Brothers, followed by Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus - links to trailer, tickets and info on a secret club's website.


Image from schhh.org

When the house lights go up, our Automatic Collage Material Vending Machine will be purring like a kitten and ready to provide the punters with everything they need to make a collage of unimaginable beauty and cleverness.

If you're in Aarhus, and want to spend a Sunday morning like it's meant to be spent, buy your tickets here.

This one is more for the grown-ups as the films are, but if any kids want to drop in at around 12.30-1.00PM when the film is over, we're not known to stop you.

Super Duper Zine

The Super Duper Nova zine is now finished and shipping.


The cover


Elkeland


Xavi Garcia


Anna Walsh of Garudio Studiage


You can still pre order to be sure that you get your copy.

Happy Super Duper Nova New Year

This morning I finished my collage for a secret club's upcoming collage show Super Duper Nova using the materials sent to me by Garudio Youth. Garudio Youth is the intern "wing" of Garudio Studiage so what they sent was a collection of Peckham placemats, plasters and plastic coated stuff - all hideous, but good fun to try to turn it around.



The Super Duper Nova show opens on 18th January at the cinema Øst for Paradis in Aarhus, Denmark and runs until 29th January. We got more than 25 artists and designers to send random bits of paper to each other and then create a collage from what they received. For the show we're publishing a limited edition catalogue/zine (32 pages) which can be pre-ordered from the new schhhop of a secret club.

Here's a mock-up preview, not at all final layout:

offline online advent calender

Last year around this time a secret club created a little online experience or activity every day for our advent calender playing with the idea of taking an online activity and method of delivery out of the computer, there were paper kits, collage challenges and so on.



This year, our advent calendar is running on the four Sundays leading up to Christmas - this is major thing in continental Northern Europe and this time, it's even more removed from the internet that hosts it: It's a geographical game (we love geographical games) and by following the instructions posted on the website, you will find a creation of ours in the landscape in and around Aarhus.


This was the first one, now taken offline, so the directions to it are gone, but the little house is still out there for passers by to see.

24 hours in Svendborg, Denmark

About a month ago I spent exactly 24 hours in the small harbour town of Svendborg for a course development meeting for one of the places I teach, I say course development meeting, but it was way more than that, good food, good jokes and a lovely hotel room that was stripy:



When I looked out the window I could see a stripy building and when I took a walk on the harbourside, I saw a star surrounded by stripes. This town is all about sailing and shipping and the building of ships and it's all over town. This place is filled with drunk ghosts brawling and Gods trying to save their souls, its workmanship and its tall tales and sights you wouldn't believe.



This place holds its history dear, there's a part of the harbour reserved for tall ships, but they move on too - it's not a tacky tourist trick, this maritime back story, it's just part of what this place is, many a Danish town, including the one that's currently my home, could learn from this.



Something I've found in several of the smaller towns I've been to, is that developers are beautifully absent - developers are currently destroying the soul of my town, everything is made slick and pretty, so most things that are left alone gains a certain interestingness here - merely because there's so little of it. (Which is sad from a creative point of view.) I walked around the next morning to explore before heading home, chatted to the amazingly friendly people of this town and stumbled across this old-shop-turned-subconscious-artwork:



Two drunks approached me and told me that the guy who owns it made the door our of an old fireplace, but that he'd never really done any more work on it.



There are good shops too, possibly the most interesting bookstore I've seen in Denmark is here, it's called "Troels"and the geeky staff was throwing pop-cultural references at me as if they were Kevin Smith characters, there's heaps of ornamental architecture everywhere and there's a bakery with no less than three signs out for reasons that escape me.



From this place you can sail to a number of small Islands and I'm very tempted to take a secret club around them, but we'll need a bigger boat, or just any boat.

make medals - fake medals - part II

We are breaking out the old medal faking kit that last saw action about a year ago at Port Eliot Festival but this time in Aarhus, Denmark as part of Aarhus Festuge.

We'll be in Tivoli Friheden on Sunday 4th September from 12.00 and the last fake medal will be started at 17.00 so drop by to get the honour and glory you deserve!



We'll be bringing a lie generator this time and new and improved medal faking materials, so drop by and brings your wits, the lie generator feeds of wits.

Studio tour: The stuff around us
We have finished (well, we still need to make a movie) our "Spirits of the Forest" project, school's out, so no more teaching and most clients are away on holiday so let me use the time to show you round the place, you see, we moved about 4-5 months ago and sadly the new place didn't allow for a separate studio so we've engaged in a strict Not-too-much-stuff regime as the boundary between work and living has been blurred. This doesn't mean minimalist Scandinavian living like in the mags - objects feed our brains, so here are some objects that made the cut:



Don't be fooled, the clipboard look neat here, but the truth is that the photo was taken RIGHT after they got up in that old magazine rack. Also, we have more than one magazine but one is allowed in the rack at a time - at the time it was an issue of the always mind blowing Raw Vision. Right now, there are two issues of It's Nice That (3+4), Latest issue of CUT, an old Lodown, a print sample of a parenting mag and The Guardian from June 11th (We miss The Guardian so Chris of Garudio Studiage with whom I used to teach at Central Saint Martins sent us a copy back in June - If you want to send us a copy of The Guardian in exchange for anything bar our souls, please get in touch.

The candle was Mr. Mio's christening candle - a German tradition. The standard ones were pretty awful in that religious way so we made our own.

The glasses were from an optician that closed shop, they're carved in wood and the hands are from an old glove factory, someone I shared studio with once got them for a project.



Ah, the odd mix of light switches and plug sockets from different eras , the fake Pikachu one and the feather one are pretty random, the tache one was in our old studio too.



Art we like.
Some from friends, some from former students, some from former versions of ourselves, some are just nice, like the Letraset sheet there are a few things that ought to be there that aren't.



Wallpaper archeology.
I stripped of some of the newer layers of wallpaper - probably in impulse stemming from my childhood. On that wall are a couple of jumping jacks Annabelle made and a big green F that I found in a town called Ebeltoft which sounds a bit like someone the Moomins might know.



A mirror that still hasn't been put up reflects Annabelle working on something by the window that hosted The Sage, The Basil, The Rosemaries, Helen's Tomato, Pale Dill, Father Thyme, Dead Hot Chili Papas and a toner cartridge waiting to be sent to the recycling place.

That's it, I need to design some stickers for a secret club now. And you need to scoot over to that same club to join the mailing list, we have good things coming. Including stickers.

stadig et par pladser til Skovens Ånder

Der er stadig et par pladser til vores "Skovens Ånder" eventyr på lørdag.
AOA har et lille stykke om det her.


De rå masker er landet fra trykkeriet og siden billedet blev taget er de blevet maskificeret.
The raw masks have arrived from the printers and since the taking of this picture, they have been maskified further."

- kommer gratis i biografen

Den 16. juli inviterer en hemmelig klub alle børn over 7 år til at blive forvandlet til skov-ånder og gå på et magisk eventyr. Samtidig rydder ånderne, iført masker og nysgerrighed, lidt op efter menneskene og møder nogle af de andre åndevæsener der bor i skoven. Dagen efter er alle ånderne inviteret i biografen til at se den Japanske tegnefilm Chihiro og heksene.

Det er gratis at være med, men man skal tilmelde sig på www.schhh.org og der er kun begrænsede pladser.



English translation:

The forest spirits go to the cinema for free

On 16th July, a secret club invites all children over the age of 7 to be transformed into forest spirits and embark on a magical adventure.
At the same time the spirits, showing masked faces and curiosity, clean up a little after the humans and meet some of the other spirits of the forest. The day after, all are invited to the cinema to watch the beautiful Japanese animation 'Spirited Away'.

It is free to take part, but you must sign up early at www.schhh.org as there are only limited spaces available.

a secret clubhouse pop up/et hemmeligt klubhus pop up


It's with great joy I can announce that a secret club have its very own popup (work)shop in Aarhus, Denmark in June. We'll be playing games, building things and telling stories and when I say "we" I mean both you and us.
Spread the word, more info on schhh.org

Det er min udsøgte og håndplukkede glæde at fortælle at en hemmelig klub har sin helt egen popup (work)shop i Aarhus i juni. Vi vil lege lege, bygge ting og fortælle historier og med "vi" mener jeg både jer og os.
Spred ordet, der er flere oplysninger på schhh.org