See the article here

and Nelly Ben Hayoun Presentation at Design Indaba here

Thrilling, creative, passionate, these are just some of the terms that could be used to describe the work of Nelly Ben Hayoun. She shares some of her quirks.

1. What would you like to have written in your obituary?

She went to Mars, met with the dinosaurs, engaged with politics, lived for 100 years and married a few astronauts. She lived every day to its extreme thinking that nothing is impossible to achieve.

2. How do you deal with failure?

I Fight! Failure is always part of the process. I fail a lot, and I mainly look for it, the more I fail, the more I learn. ‘If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same’ (Kipling, ‘If’). This articulates my approach to work as whether you succeed or fail, you take what you can and you move on onto the next project. Continuously look to the new challenges, to the future without dwelling on what happened.

3. What would you save from your burning house?

The picture of my Armenian grand-mum and grand-dad

4. Who in the world, dead or alive, would you most like to have dinner with?

Boris Vian  , polymath: writer, poet, musician, singer, translator, critic, actor, inventor and engineer.

5. What’s one thing that you haven’t done that you would still really like to do?

Going through a black hole- that is called going through ‘Spaghettification” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghettification! But I will get there (as for Mars!).

6. What’s the best creative advice you ever received?

I was lucky enough to have incredible tutors, a selection of their advices could be:

Creativity is a muscle, work hard to keep it going

Learn from and respect your peers

Trust in your instinct

Edit, edit, edit

Never be satisfied

7. What always makes you laugh out loud?

My sister

8. What’s the one gadget that you can’t live without?

A whistle with an integrated compas (I am always getting lost- even with a GPS! This gadget has proven being very useful, especially when I was lost in the deep radioactive forest of Chernobyl!)

9. Winter or summer?

Definitively summer! I am hot blooded! Born in the south of France! So yes the sun more than everything!

10. What items would you put in a time capsule?

A hammer and a jigsaw (my favorite tools), and probably something to do fire with (just in case), some sort of fire stones!

11. What is the question you ask yourself the most?

How did you manage to put yourself in such a situation!?

12. Which animal do you most identify with?

An elephant with the eyes of the tiger!

13. What’s your favourite film?

Hard to tell: Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky & of course 2001, a Space Odyssey by Kubrick

14. What is your present state of mind?

I am currently working on a very exiting new project…So I am in a warrior and passionate state of mind, trying everything possible to make it happen.

15. What is something you know you do differently to most people?

Apparently I am good at cooking ‘crepes’ and at bringing chaos and thrill in people’s everyday!

 16. Which superpower would you most like to have?

Can I have two superpowers? I would like to fly and be able to break walls!

17. What qualities do you most admire in others?

Patience

18. Are you a morning person?

Yes, definitively, an early bird! I used to wake up at 5am to practice boxing!

19. What does water taste like?

The taste of whales?!

20. What’s the most adventurous thing you’ve ever done?

That is a very difficult question. Every project I do aims to be more extreme then the previous ones. What would you say was the most adventurous:

- Lighting up a volcano into my living room while my landlord lives downstairs?

- Being in the middle of a neutrino observatory while a Sonic BOOOOOm is happening?

- Lifting off on board of the soyuz Rocket

- Making dark energy in my kitchen sink

- Going to Chernobyl and Baikonur Cosmodrome with 40 wild students on board of the Unknown Fields Division,

- Teaching students in Iceland from Platform 10 at the Royal College of art how to experience extreme leisure activities on the top of a waterfall or how to hunt sharks…?

or maybe the most adventurous is the one I am currently working on…. I can’t really speak about it yet but it involves an orchestra on some sort of satellite….!

For this occasion she will give a talk on her work, 14th June 2012, 10-11 am.

textilefutures.co.uk

‘Designer Nelly Ben Hayoun has worked with Foley artist Sue Harding on a very exciting-sounding project entitled No More Heroes. The piece forms part of the 100 years of Rebellious Imagination – Hacked exhibition, curated by Beatrice Galilée at La Rinascente. The project will see Ben Hayoun recording Milan Design Week’s background noise and manufacture processes, playing them back in a performance – aiming to echo John Cage with his ‘let’s put a performance on design’ advice.”

see the article here

NO More Heroes: A Milanese Foley, sees director and experience designer Ben Hayoun join forces with film industry Foley artist Sue Harding to record the background noise of Milan Design Week.

Using materials as unusual as coconut shells, frozen romaine lettuce, cornstarch and gelatin to reproduce background noise, Ben Hayoun promises to engage audiences by offering them the experience to listen and, as they do, to pervert the concept of design. Ben Hayoun and Harding will respond to design works in Milanese galleries – chairs, tables, shelves and more – through recordings and a performance, which they will then play back in a Foley sound studio.

Ben Hayoun describes NO More Heroes as “a commedia dell’arte”, an Italian theatrical comedy. Ben Hayoun’s belief that design should be embedded in a physical experience is at the core of the project, and through these recordings and performance, she endeavors to repackage the abstract notion of design as a substantial experience.

Through NO More Heroes, Ben Hayoun seeks to democratise design by deconstructing it and questioning the power structures embedded in the design process. She criticizes the often-intangible nature of design and its process – “How can I experience the Barcelona Chair if I can’t sit on it or even consider buying it?” Ben Hayoun believes that design that subverts the everyday is capable of generating events, even riots. Her performance will both pay homage to and turns a critical eye on this potential.

Edited by Kobe University and Fiona Raby. With Texts by Prof. Anthony Dunne, Sputniko and Fiona Raby.

More on the project soon.

What is la Gaîté Lyrique?

La Gaîté lyrique explores all forms of digital culture: film-making, animation film-making, theatre, dance, circus, music, visual arts, design, graphic design, motion design, musical film, architecture, computer programming, software art, web, games, fashion, etc. As well as all those which we haven’t named yet…
La Gaîté lyrique adopts an inter-disciplinary approach to all these creative fields, helping to foster connections and relationships between them.  What is at stake is really the exploration of a new dimension, which is being created by these arts and technologies right before our eyes.

Programme:

The History of La Gaité Lyrique:

In 1862, during major works on the boulevard de Sébastopol undertaken by the Baron Haussmann, a Parisian theatre of the boulevard du Temple was relocated to 3 bis rue Papin : the Théâtre de la Gaîté lyrique. Its 1800-seat hall, decorated by Félix Jobbé-Duval, its majestic lobby and its grand public foyer very soon distinguished it as a Parisian jewel. During the next 150 years, directors – among them Jacques Offenbach – and names (Théâtre de la Gaîté, Théâtre Lyrique, Opéra Populaire, Opéra Municipal de la Gaîté…), succeeded one another. But above all, it was the productions and programs, though operettas had to be included, which remained popular throughout the times.

Very few other places in Paris can boast of such a turbulent history : recording one of the highest revenue of all such places during the Commune of Paris, celebrating Victor Hugo’s seventieth birthday, hosting Russian ballets visiting Paris in the 1920s… It was looted during the occupation, when the great chandelier installed by Offenbach and the Emperor’s golden coach went missing, stored in the service quarters, it was occupied ten times, and reclaimed twenty times… In the 1970s, there was even a circus school which moved in and had the attic converted into stables for its elephants!

In the beginning of the 1980s, as the imposing dome of the hall threatened to collapse, part of the great hall had to be cemented.  It was soon destroyed by the open air amusement park in the centre of Paris “Planète Magique”, which was opened by TV-cartoon mogul Jean Challopin for just a few weeks in 1989.

Since then, la Gaîté lyrique lay dormant, dust gradually settling over this important landmark of Parisian cultural life.  The situation remained unchanged until 2002, when the Mairie de Paris decided to set up a new cultural establishment there, promoting digital culture and contemporary music.
A team, led by Pierre Bongiovanni based themselves there, and from October 2002 to April 2004, organized events and activities within and around the building. During the first Nuit Blanche, La Gaîté lyrique was the venue of a projector installation by well known artist Samuel Rousseau.

Designer Nelly Ben Hayoun has been commissioned to create a work for the 2012 ZERO1 Biennial. This work will be featured in the main Biennial exhibition. This project is supported by both ZERO1, the AND festival, V_2 and the nearby Montalvo Arts Center where Ben Hayoun will be in residence for the period July-September 2012.

More on the project soon on www.GroundControl-opera.com

The Soyuz Chair will be in Tokyo for a limited number of performance from 20th June 2012, more details soon….

see more about the Soyuz Chair here