Mebike – The Dream Bike Project is a green initiative I have developed, co-curated, planned, produced and financed with my partner, US artist Abner Preis. We started the project in 2005 and until now more than 200 artists have been involved. The idea is based on a Simpson’s episode, where Homer’s brother wants Homer to create his fantastic dream car. So, Homer develops a car named The Homer which had everything he thought should go into a car, including: a toaster, bathroom with a 360 degree view, beer keg, some TVs and a small swimming pool. In Amsterdam style, we turned the question into: How do artists with different nationalities and artistic roots dream about their dream bike? We have been exploring this for years through building real bikes, 2D and CGI bikes, bike installations, bike paintings and poems, bike related music and much more from contemporary artists.
In 2010 we invited 10 international teams to the Amsterdam multi-media lab Mediamatic to envision their dream bike in a weekend-long competition. The teams had different backgrounds, ranging from sculptors or product designers to performance artists and architects. They all had 24 hours to construct their dream bike that also had to go on a race through the city of Amsterdam. Each team had the same tools, materials and standardized basic bike to work out their dream. Finally, a committee of bike experts awarded several prizes such as the H.M. Garson Award for the best bike, Most Creative Bike Award and Worst Of Show. The event stretched out over a whole weekend and besides the teams constructing their bikes, we had two nights of parties with bands, art performances and workshops.
Title: Me Bike – World Championship of Dream Bikes [2010] // Concept and Production: Abner Preis, Claudius Gebele // Artists: Noordkap Aartspace, Slacker Team, Stefan Gross, Nina Boas, Missing Slippers, Supercity, Elma Plaisir, Rikke Korswagen, Joshua Ties, Halfway Station, Adrian Falk, MC Up & DJ Down, Hot Maracas, Tina Vila, Lil’Shy, Ovni, Ive St. Covert, WhyStyle, Joe Franceschi, Fabio Thomaz, Kjersti Larsen, Jan Kryszons, Kelly De Meyer, Wing Lam Winnie Kwok, Jeff Elarde, Tobias Krasenberg, Halfway Station et al. // Location: Mediamatic Amsterdam // Camera and Edit: Joao B. Costa // Photos: Attilio Brancaccio, T sign&photography
More info: Me Bike Website, Me Bike on Facebook, Me Bike Artists