Picnic 11 – a good combination is crucial

The future is colourful and digital, and all of us are part of it. This essence of the second festival day in Amsterdam is also the essence of the event per se.

The second day at a three-day festival usually runs very smooth: the rhythm, the pace, the setting has been found, and the event has finally developed its own dynamics – and this one is no exception. Today, the sun will rarely disappear behind the clouds, around noon time, it will shine so intensely that the workshop takes place in fresh air instead of the greenhouse, awaking some nice memories of otherwise less than exciting schooldays. People are eating their lunch sitting at the water, and the market place is brimming with even more people and brainstorming than yesterday. At ten o’clock in the morning, some international female visitors spontaneously start to dance in front of the DJ tent. A funfair atmosphere, sympathetic and chaotic.

 

Relaxed hustle and bustle

 

This day illustrates why the Picnic is so hard to describe: it is more of a patchwork, a mosaic, less targeted and result-oriented. The festival offers a framework – an area, a playground – not the big meaningful idea. You’ll have a workshop on board of a ship, some sawing or hammering students in the artist’s studio or in front of one of the hangars – the area exudes an atmosphere of a relaxed bustle.

While the Grand Theater is starting a retrospective of the day before, the ECBN tent hosts an old acquaintance of 2010lab.tv: Charles Landry talks about the creative city. The red thread – the festival motto – Urban Futures is still kind of observed on this day, too – although it is chosen and expressed very open, after all.

Sociologist Saskia Sassen talks about the "city as hacker", the head designer of BMW, Benoit Jacob, presents his vision of a mobile future, and the Appsterdam tent has chosen Open Data as the main topic of the day. The digital present and future are omnipresent, be it in nice activities like the ones by Willempje und Leonieke who, on request, run figures thoughout the city (check their figurerunning activities on Google Maps), or in the discussion of the European Journalist Centre („From database to urban planning“), or during the much acclaimed speech by Harvard professor Lawrence Lessing who didn’t talk too good about western governments, especially the USA („The present always tries to defend against the future“). And of course at the 2010Lab Twitter event of the day: during the virtual question/answer quiz #Askthespeaker, Scott Snibbe pops in, one of the hippest media artists and entrepreneurs of these days, who has become famous because he conceived the innovative app for the new Björk album.

 

Companies & grass roots

 

And we shouldn’t forget the competition "Postcode Lottery Green Challenge" with its award being handed out by William McDonough. The architect, designer, and author is announced by none less than Brad Pitt – albeit on the video screen. He awards Nick Christy, the winner of the prize for „people with a sustainable and innovative idea“ with the impressive amount of 500 000 Euros for his project, a shower system which saves up to 70% water and energy. 

At the end of the day, Picnic co-founder Marleen Stikker and director Kitty Leering talk about the future direction of the event: the ratio of corporate to grass roots participants should be a well-balanced one in the years to come, too – after all, that’s part of the festival’s philosophy. This day has proven this philosophy right – a good combination is crucial!

 

Video Credits

Camera: Markus Otto // video editing: Chantal Thali & Markus Otto // text: Chantal Thali