After months of hard work, the Cool Capital Biennale is proud to present the Cool Capital 2014 catalogue. This 265-page coffee table book beautifully documents over 150 design interventions and events that took place during this world’s first guerilla designer city festival.
The inaugural Cool Capital Biennale kicked off in 2014 as the first of it’s kind city festival that put the city into the hands of its creative community. It celebrated the creative wealth of Pretoria with pop-up exhibitions, film screenings, art installations and design activism – all of which is documented in this handsome volume.
In line with Cool Capital’s ethos of collaboration and citizen involvement, the catalogue is a collective piece of art – combining the efforts of local graphic designers, photographers, artists and typesetters who all worked incredibilly hard to condense over a 1000 participants’ work into a comprehensive product. Many small contributions made one great book, and now eveyone who took part has a physical outcome that features their work and of which they can be proud. The catalogue is a presentation of the creative capacity of the city, and can be used to show the world what the creative community of Pretoria can collectively achieve.
Cool Capital was recently a finalist for the Loeries Ubuntu Awards, competing against big names like BNP Paribas, KFC, Nandos, FNB and Pick ‘n Pay. The Ubuntu award recognizes projects with significant social and environmental gain. The Biennale’s PPC Bench project is also a finalist for the BASA innovation award. The winner of this awards will be announced on 21 September 2015.
Each Cool Capital project is graphically documented on a page with corresponding youtube or vimeo links and text descriptions that give more information like project location, duration, intent and participant names. “We still can not believe the massive positive feedback loop the biennale created,” says convenor and editor Pieter Mathews, “the people of this city are truly its biggest asset. Everyone who knew of Cool Capital wanted to become involved, and wanted to contribute to their city in creative and meaningful way. The outcomes completely blew us away.”
Mr. Jimmy Lim, the production manager of Tien Wah Global, who printed the book said Tien Wah was very proud to be part of such a unique project. “We hope that this book in some way captures all the effort and creativity that has gone into the Cool Capital Biennale and would like to wish the organizers and participants of this great event success.”
The catalogue will be launced on 22 October together with the premiere of a film documenting the biennale by local filmakers ENABA productions.
See a video of the catalogue content below.
High resolution photographs and captions for all the images in this release as well as many more can be downloaded from this dropbox folder.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/48pokf6vczbesos/AADuQ7ZTmaS7TAG7jD9PbWIaa?dl=0
While no one was watching, the citizens of Pretoria launched the world’s first uncurated DIY guerrilla biennale: Cool Capital. For two months, the city came alive as spontaneous street art and design interventions celebrated the city, inspiring urban renewal, achieving social coherence and, above all, putting a smile on the mind. Cool Capital’s uncurated approach meant that the usual bureaucratic processes were short-circuited: the biennale successfully democratized creativity by putting the city into the hands of its creative community. Low on budget but high on innovation, over 150 interventions took place, from guerrilla gardening and fabric bombing to performances, events and exhibitions. The affair between people and place cemented Pretoria’s reputation as a notable South African centre of creativity. The legacy of Cool Capital will still be felt in years to come. Lekker!
Other information:
Editors: Pieter J. Mathews & Carla Taljaard
Logo design: Karen Meyer & Bronwen Rautenbach, Sunshinegun
Graphic design: Dipna Bhana, Pieter J. Mathews, Carla Taljaard, & Katty Vandenberghe
Graphic preparation assisstance: Yolandi Viljoen & Lourina Grobler
Cover design: Chenette Swanepoel
Layout, typography typesetting and image editing: Katty Vandenberghe & Tanya Pretorius
Main sponsor: Atterbury Trust
Publishing manager: Pieter J Mathews
Copy editors and proofreaders: Graham Wood (English), Rudolf Stehle (Afrikaans)
proofreading assisstants: Liam Purnell & Jan Hugo
Printed and bound: Tien Wah Press Global
Distribution: On The Dot +27 (0) 86 166 8368
Cool Capital Sponsors and Strategic partners:
Atterbury
PPC cement
University of Pretoria
Lafarge
City Property
Gautrain
Kansai Plascon
Pretoria Institute for Architecture
