The vernissage
My oh my do we enjoy a good render. Perfect lighting striking the product from its most photogenic angle, enhancing the magnificently detailed surface finishes, making us question the boundaries of beauty. Although, after a while of mainly posting renders on our instagram, we started to feel that our way of communicating was becoming a bit too digital, and more importantly, too much of a monologue. After all, we make physical products which are designed to be experienced in person, to be touched and interacted with. Assembly_one only exists for online purchasing at the moment. How could we best create a scenario where non-owners would be able to interact with Assembly_one?
During a lunch break at my summer job trying to find a suitable spot to collapse into deep slumber for 10 minutes, I stumbled upon a ruin in Tivoliparken. Imagine a big roofless room with savagely sprouting greenery. The walls were covered in graffiti and there were old spray cans laying around - typical signs of mischievous youths. No bench to take a nap on, but even better, it fueled the idea of hosting some sort of event. We wouldn’t have to pay any renting fees, and as long as the weather was good - no roof no problems. We had previously discussed the possibilities of collaborating with an artist, having them do whatever they wanted with the Assembly_one. Finding this ruin inspired the idea of taking it even further, of hosting some sort of vernissage together with an artist. We could exhibit some posters along with some lamps, and the artist could exhibit their art of choice along with their version of Assembly_One. Celebrating the relationship between art and consumer electronics in this context felt exciting. But who would possibly agree to this?
Last fall, I had the pleasure of co-writing the music for a stage production of Kristina Lugns Nattorienterarna. The set design was nothing short of sick. The scene was filled with hand-made paper flowers, which were being moved around inch by inch for hours on end by the ever so focused artist, Maja Sondén, until perfection was reached. Even though we knew it was a stretch, we figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask. After sending her a message explaining the sketchy ass idea and a short video of the sketchy ass location, we crossed our fingers. Gosh were we excited when she said she was on board!
We spent the following few weeks planning, inviting people, creating material to exhibit and questioning what the hell we were doing.
The last three days before the event were quite mad. First of all, the stress of printing the posters. We raced all across the city on the last possible day and brought our stress to the lovely personnel at Crimson who must have seen the fear in our eyes, since they miraculously handed the posters over to us a few minutes before closing time, still warm from the printer. On the other side of town, Felix was battling freaking pneumonia. Who even gets pneumonia? Poor, poor guy. When he explained to the doctor that he was planning to host a vernissage in 2 days, the doctor laughed at him. Felix, the absolute champ powered through though, and with the poster crisis solved we figured it was smooth sailing from there on. The weather man had other plans. The prognosis suddenly changed, and now it was supposed to rain on the day of the vernissage. Since there was nothing to do about it and we had come this far, we simply pretended it wouldn’t. We carried on with the preparations until the evening before, when we decided to change the time of the event to try to stay clear of the rain, hoping that people would show up anyway.
We got up early in the morning of the big day, made the last preparations and hurried across town with all our stuff towards Tivoliparken. On our way there, Maja called. She had gotten there a bit early, (on time actually, we were late) and explained that the place was a mess. A rave had just ended and people were still cleaning up. Again, there was nothing we could do, so we simply pretended everything was fine and carried on as fast as we could. When we were getting close, a very tired man fully dressed in leather stood a bit hunched over in a bush and asked if we had a lighter. We smiled at him through the sweat, too out of breath to respond. We arrived on site with just half an hour until the vernissage was supposed to start. As it turned out, it wasn’t too bad. The guys who had hosted the rave were super nice, especially considering they had been up for over 24 hours. They explained that over 300 people had been there during the night, showed some pictures of the party and hurried up with the cleaning process. We were able to start putting up the posters and some versions of Assembly_one. Maja showed us the one she had painted. It was truly bonkers great. I mean look at it. What the hell.
Beyond that, Maja exhibited three extraordinary paintings with themes of summer and a sense of rawness with motives from a relative's old photo book. We put up five posters designed by our one and only Simon, and lamps of both available finishes for people to interact with.
From there on, it actually was smooth sailing. The sun showed up and with it some very beautiful people. Folks had a look around, had some beers, had some wine, listened to music and enjoyed a late summer sunday outdoors. It was so interesting to hear people’s thoughts on what we do, art and consumer electronics in general. People had some great ideas and we plan to shamelessly steal all of them. We feel truly inspired and excited about the future which will surely include more events like this one. Our sincerest gratitude to everyone who came, and above all, to Maja Sondén for doing this with us. We felt very happy as we hastily packed everything into garbage bags as the rain came, two hours after the vernissage was supposed to close.
/John, Communications guy at PX-Lab