People from many different countries live, study and work in Eindhoven. Every week, E52 has a talk with an international about what brought them here and what life is like in Eindhoven.
Name: Lorenzo Gerbi
Country of origin: Italy
Work: Designer / Cultural Producer
You can’t really put a label on Lorenzo. He is a designer, graduated from Design Academy Eindhoven, he has lots of experience in cinema, video art and video art festivals and works at Baltan where he manages de educational program for students of Fontys, Avans and St. Lucas. “In a nutshell: I like to organise and produce. If I’m not in the mood for organising, I produce and the other way around. This way I always do something I like. I love the combination of science, tech, art and design. For instance, I work with R&D center Holst and my role is to help to make the context of a project understandable. Why is it valuable for partners to participate in this project? I break the ice and bring something new to the table.”
“For Baltan I work on different programs like Age of Wonderland, a social innovation program. I also joined the collaborative project of Plug in City here in Eindhoven. We started the Vertical Gallery, an exhibition space and workspace for a diversity of creative interventions, located in the Strijp S area.
Last year we organised together with Baltan Laboratories’ Economia Festival a call for residency to produce an artwork in the context of Plug in City. The resident artist or designer was expected to build an artwork according at least to one of the five topics of Economia: economy as a game, as evolution, as a fiction, as a market or as magic. Out of all the entries, Monique Grimord was selected. With Terra Economics and the Financial Speculator she created a future scenario where data from the natural environment determines the stock market: an algorithm measures how each and every quantity of manufactured material affects the earth’s environment in a negative way.”
“You are not forced to do something a certain way here, you can think of it by yourself”Lorenzo Gerbi, Designer / Cultural Producer
“I’m learning Dutch now. I want to stay here and speaking and understanding the language makes life easier. I like the way people interact with each other here. In some way there is a shared trust. You are not forced to do something a certain way, you can think of it by yourself. In Italy Plug in City would be a hell to do. With all the bureaucracy I wouldn’t even start with something like that. Dutch people just do stuff, try and if it doesn’t work, they do something else. In taly most things get overtheorised. To me trial and error is the best way to do something. I work freelance, every assignment is different and that keeps me on edge.”
“In Eindhoven I really like the parks. They are so well interwoven in the structure of the city. I visit the Philips De Jongh park, just to relax. And as a video and film lover I love to go and see movies. Thanks to my work at Baltan I have a movie card at PlazaFutura. The movies also help me with learning Dutch because of the subtitles. Luckily you don’t dub movies like in Italy. When I’m not working I also like to spent my time on my personal artistic work. Currently I’m working on a project about internet memes and censorship. Another project I worked on is Nabati, a series of four video-walks through the City of Melbourne that uncovers some of the new powers defining its current identity. Nabati means stranger in Arab. All these different projects and my work give me a lot of energy.”
Read all the internationals stories here.
Photography: Diewke van den Heuvel