From 2017 to 2019, I worked as a studio assistant at RAAAF, where I was primarily involved in in-house graphic design, experimentation in video and sound, concept development, and general project assistance. During this period, I worked on multiple projects, some of which were realized and brought into the international art world; others remained as proposals, concepts, and artistic visions.

Projects participated in:

Breaking Habits | Beyond The Atlantic Burden | Luftschloss |
Deltawerk // | Trusted Strangers (unpublished) | Nieuw Amsterdams Peil (unpublished)

Beyond The Atlantic Burden, 2017

Part of: 'The Materiality of the Invisible'
at Bureau Europa, Maastricht

Project text RAAAF: “77 years after the Second World War the installation Beyond the Atlantic Burden breaks the status quo of the controversial heritage of the Atlantic Wall. The overly cautious way in which Europe deals with the 17.000 bunkers has paradoxically led to the conservation of their original intention; as ruins of the ‘Thousand-Year Reich’.

This megalomanic system will be impaired by digging out, reorientating, and displacing the monoliths in the context of the dynamic coastal landscape.

The installation is a call for renewed imagination and represents a search for a new meaning of controversial heritage through seemingly impossible experiments.”

Team: Ronald & Erik Rietveld, David Habets, Cecile-Diama Samb, Mariana Fernadez, Johnny Long & Joop Schroën
Photography: Ricky Rijkenberg

Breaking Habits, 2017

Mondriaan Fonds, Amsterdam

Project text RAAAF: “Breaking Habits is a new spatial installation at the crossroads of visual art, architecture, and philosophy. The art installation by RAAAF is commissioned by the Mondriaan Fund for the visual arts. This experimental landscape inside a classic Dutch canal house breaks with entrenched living habits.

Just like our offices and the rest of our sedentary society, our living rooms are filled with chairs, even though medical research has shown that sitting too much is unhealthy. RAAAF explores with Breaking Habits how a world without chairs and couches could look like in 2025. This physical thinking model materializes a philosophical worldview and makes it tangible: a diagonal landscape of affordances scaffolds a more active lifestyle by inviting to change positions and explore new diagonal standing postures. Will diagonal living become the new norm?”

Team: Ronald & Erik Rietveld, David Habets, Cecile-Diama Samb, Joop Schroën
Photography: Ricky Rijkenberg

Deltawerk //, 2018

Waterloopbos, Marknesse

Visualisations | Making of Film | 'Nieuw Amsterdams Peil' Film

Project text RAAAF: “A giant wave bassin served as a test site for the Dutch Delta works. Deltawerk // questions the ambition to build an indestructible Holland in times of climate change. Related to this, the artwork is also an experiment in making new ruins. In a radical way, this intervention sheds new light on the practice of preserving cultural heritage: Hardcore Heritage.”

Visualisation images have been published by multiple media outlets including:

→ ArchDaily
→ Dezeen
→ Designboom
→ L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui
→ Metropolis Magazine

Luftschloss, 2021

Premiered at 'Beladen Beelden'
Part of Amsterdam Artweek

Sound Design | Video edit | Post-production

Project text RAAAF: “Luftschloss imaginatively and deliberately destructs a nazi fortress that nowadays still towers over Vienna. In 1942 Hitler himself gave the orders to erect several 55m tall Flak towers to protect the historic city of Vienna. These colossal concrete castles were meant to become symbols of a victorious Third Reich. The way Europe deals with such historically burdened heritage has paradoxically led to the conservation of its original intention. The seeming indestructible castles still tower over the city. Until today. The short film was made by mixing filmed images of the hydro‑demolition of reinforced concrete (3 x 2 x 2 meter) with a CGI animation, which we created on the basis of secret historical drawings of the Flak tower.”

In collaboration with Olivier Campagne, ArtefactoryLab

Trusted Strangers, 2018

Premiered at 'Stedelijk Statements: Patricia Pisters - Worlding the Brain'

Drawing | Sound Design | Audio Mixing

For the project text of RAAAF please refer to the philosophical research by Erik Rietveld. Available at → Research Gate

In collaboration with Olivier Campagne, ArtefactoryLab