Here at Paradigm Festival, we’re always striving to create the best environment for everyone. This comes to fruition in showing off quality music, a great atmosphere and also creating unique and intriguing works of art. Our many deco-artists and creatives always succeed in showing off their skills and making something unique whilst working with a central theme.
To highlight some of the artwork we’re putting into place, we’ve asked Caroline van de Meent (one of our heads of decoration) to show us what she and her team are accomplishing. We sat down with her to ask her some questions and we’ve taken some photos of her work to lift the veil a little on the festival art!
First, some introductions.
Tell us something about yourself.
Hai! My name is Caroline van de Meent and I’m one of the heads of the deco-team that’s responsible for all of the artwork for Paradigm Festival! I’m studying Scenography (theaterdesign) at Minerva Academy Groningen and currently in the process of graduating. I’ve been a volunteer for Paradigm Festival last year, which was my first participation with Paradigm, and I loved it! Some folks over there loved my being there too, because I was asked to join the core team for the decoration right after the festival! Things started developing and now I’m one of the deco-heads for Paradigm Festival 2016!
Great that you love it so much! Can you tell us something about what you’re doing for the festival this year?
As a child, I have always been interested in horror stories and dark themes and tales. I draw a lot of inspiration from these influences, as well as realistic art. Combined with a love for surprising elements, I knew I wanted to shape these ideas into physical objects for the festival art. Shocking realism is a constantly returning theme.
To accomplish this, I had to think of a sub-theme for our work. I was inspired by Dante’s Inferno (1 of 3 parts of the Divine Comedy, written by Dante Alighieri, a 14th century Italian poet), specifically the 9th circle of hell. Described by Dante, the 9th circle is also the “centre point of the earth”, where the great traitors of our history are trapped for eternity. Frozen solid in the middle is Satan, which is the greatest traitor of them all.
I want to recreate this description for my project. To accomplish this, I want to erect a misshapen, frozen figure in the middle of the festival area with numerous icebergs (made of wood) surrounding it. These icebergs double as seats for the chill-area! There will also be a bunch of frozen limbs sticking out from these icebergs to enhance the desired effect.
That sounds incredibly ambitious! We’re guessing that you’re not doing this all by yourself. Can you tell us something about your team?
I’ve appealed to my Facebook contacts and asked my social circle for anyone who wanted to join me on this adventure! Slowly but surely, my team grew to what it is today. Besides that, there are a lot of people that are helping out all over the terrain. All of them have been a great help and I really wanted to give everyone a shout-out for all of their hard work!
My team also includes 2 graduates from the Frank Mohr Institute at Minerva. They’ve been working on different technologies to give the artwork something that separates us from other festivals, such as lighting that changes colour constantly. The rest of my team consists of “inexperienced” volunteers that are being steered by the professionals and myself. This way, we’ve also created a learning environment, which is great for everyone’s overall development and the decoration as a whole!
Well, we’re anxious to check out the end-result! Thanks to you and your team for your contribution!
