WORKSHOP

Summer 2022 we moved into Reform´s big bright showroom in Copenhagen. For a week the NIKO JUNE production was happening here behind the glass front facing warm pavement and the oyster bar across the road. A live and fully open diorama grew as kitchen parts were appropriated and repurposed to accommodate our hands. Different kinds of groceries on this tabletop. Makeshift workshops.   

THINKING ABOUT LABOUR

The whole thing was about labour. As everything always is. About how we approach production in general. Experimentation, impulsivity and playfulness is what makes us want to sweat: what is alpha in our workshop. We realised that this approach is equal to the one turned on in other workshops we touch. Thinking about labour. And the expanded workshop. The soft, raw edged lab.  

Thinking about collec-tivity. 

The whole thing was a reminder. About how the kitchen is best as a social mediator and how the kitchen party is a smokey romantic kind of workshop too. About how amazing it is that collective production seems so effortless in the kitchen workshop. Members start to move as one body. 

For a week we tried to move with the same intuitive drive. Sophisticated zoo in here. Important note - these workshops don't run on recipes.

We created stools made from drawers exposing the most beautiful finger-joints. Think about transparency and honouring of process. We created movable stoves on wheels, tailed by questionable cable solutions. Next to ping pong tables made from HDPE plastic tabletop. And a makeshift 2,2 M high water fountain made by stacking table tops with sinks. Oak and reflective sturdy steel. Drip     

Full kitchen solutions created as samples of multiple existing Reform constellations were supplemented with a selection of NIKO JUNE Studio ceramics. 

THINKING ABOUT ALTER-UTILITY. 

Ode to all badly equipped kitchens. To freedom in simple. Basic facts of life. To the deep pleasure that finds you in banality. And a new outlook on necessity. This is for the love of kitchens with blurry lines that dare to play dress up but forgets about backbone basics. Dining tables that demand creativity out of scarcity or promote misuse for the fun of it. Preach alter-utility. Kitchens that fight, that disagrees - dinner tables with more attitude than it´s passengers. But kitchens that are simple as a solid handshake and looks like it could stand the touch of a thousand well meant more. Equip my hands with personal banality. Ode to the expanding workshop.

The week was highlighted by a wet event on Wednesday. Soft Serve was born this day. As a live act the glass was created by manipulating the no-nonsense material borosilicate with a blowtorch. Blue lines and dots were then applied in paint by hand. Next it was handed to the guests who would get served in it before bringing it home.   

Thinking about days in a workshop.  

Thank you thank you Reform for giving space, material and love for us to work your tabletops.   

Words by Amanda Lydert