After a fruitful in-depth discussion on the future of the Turtle project on Friday 7 march, the Museum night was a great celebration of its achievements so far. Over 1000 people saw the project on one evening, and most of them really took their time to understand its motivation, context and underlying System D logic.
We thank V2_ for hosting and investing in the Turtle project. We thank Azongo to represent SMIDO for flying all the way over from Ghana to do such a splendid job presenting the importance of the project to the development of Suame Magazine.
Rotterdam-based artist Melle Smets and sociologist Joost van Onna followed the trail of discardedWestern car parts and ended up in a place called Suame Magazine in Ghana, where this scrap is processed and marketed by some 200,000 highly specialized technicians in 12,000 informal workshops. Smets and Onna turned this trail to Suame completely around and together with the local mechanics of Suame Magazine produced the first car to ever
be exported from this region to the West. Once even the King of Ghana visited Suame Magazine to see it with his own eyes, it was clear to the Ghanaian media:These European ‘benefactors’ will bring Ghana a car industry. Can Smets and Onna meet such high expectations? V2_ Institute for the Unstable Media presents their answers in the exhibition Turtle 1: The Sequel.
The Turtle 1 is presented to the Dutch audience at the car fare Autosalon 2013. The first edition of the Autosalon is held in the conference center Ahoy in Rotterdam. Specialy for this occasion Dr. Wacu from our partner SMIDO came to join the promotion team of the Turtle 1. For eight days Dr. Wacu was our guest.
Dr. Wacu and Melle Smets at Autosalon
The Autosalon was the perfect place to promote the Turtle 1. A lot of people recognized Dr. Wacu from the Autoweek magazine. We thank the organisation for their dedication and help to make the promotion of the Turtle 1 a success.
http://www.autosalonrotterdam.nl/?lang=en
Dr. Wacu at the HAN workshop
The aim of the visit from Dr. Wacu is to make a plan for the future. SMIDO wants to build a Turtle 2. To see how we can help to continue the project, we paid a visit to the most famous Automotive university in the Netherlands, the HAN. Lejo Buning gave us a guided tour in the workshops of the HAN University of Applied Sciences.
http://www.han.nl/international/english/about-han/research/automotive/
Filmcrew from VOX filming the testdrive
On the last day of Dr. Wacu’s visit, the German television program VOX came to do a interview about the Turtle 1. For this occasion we did a off terrain test-drive in the Rotterdam harbor. The item will be broadcasted in january 2014.
See for more information:
http://www.vox.de/cms/sendungen/auto-mobil.html
Joost van Onna and Dr. Wacu at the Kinderdijk
Of course we had some time left to do a touristic tour to the Dutch highlights!
Teun Vonk, Bram Esser, Joost van Onna, Melle Smets, Tijs van den Boomen, Cynthia Hataway, Dr. Wacu and Gerrit Esser.
The final evening we gathered the whole group who traveled to Ghana to eat in the restaurant Happy Safari in The Hague. A proper Ghanian meal before leaving the country!
De eerste editie van AutoSalon Rotterdam vindt plaats van 29 november tot en met 2 december in Ahoy Rotterdam. AutoSalon Rotterdam is de nieuwe ontmoetingsplek voor mensen met een passie voor auto’s. De brede beurs biedt daarnaast een veelvoud aan auto gerelateerde producten en diensten en een verrassend aanbod aan luxe lifestyle presentaties.
