3D Tactile Object - White Man Got No Dreaming

Audio Description and Manual

In front of you stands a translation of the artwork ‘White man got no dreaming’ by Artist Michael Rakowitz.

It is a tower of eighty centimeters high and is a copy of the original work of art that is also in this room.

The object and this audio-manual are for everyone, young and old.

I will explain how blind and low sighted people can explore it by feeling and what it means exactly by experiencing it with their hands.

It is important to first discover where the tower is standing.

It is best to start at knee height.

Rotate the object until you have the part which is sticking out right in front of you.

At first place your hands on both sides and then put your hands in the tower; you feel rotating elements.

If you feel the height of the curved opening, you can imagine the height of the original tower.

In that opening is room for a child of 1.15 meter, the total height is 4.65 meter.

On the outside you can discover how the tower was built.

The original is built with building materials from a neighborhood in Sydney, Australia that is about to be demolished.

Many Aboriginal people live in this neighborhood.

The first people of Australia, also named Aboriginal people, are the indigenous people of Australia and they have lived there long before the first colonizers arrived.

Nowadays, those in powerful positions have still not adequately dealt with the violent history and unequeal treatment that still takes place.

A hundred years ago, Vladimir Tatllin designed a 400 meter high tower that was supposed to stimulate a hopeful future and equality.

The artwork is actually about how Australia should deal better with its indigenous people, but it is also an image of their hopeful equal future.

If you want to learn more on what you felt in the tower, about the first people of Australia, Vladimir Tatllin of how the Dutch society does not treat all of its inhabitants equally, listen to to next audio-description.

Text written and spoken by Simon Dogger, designer of the 3D touch object.

Background Information

In this audio-description I’m going to tell you more about what you felt exactly, what Vladimir Tatlin’s idea was, about the first inhabitants of Australia and how the Netherlands does not always treat their inhabitants well.

In the first audio-description you have observed how the artwork ‘White man got no dreaming’ is built and how big it is in real life.

On the outside, you may have sensed that there are two spirals on it, elements are spinning inside, the top is skewed and there is a little flag on the top.

Michael Rakowitz’s artwork replicates Vladimir Tatlin’s idea.

Tatlin was a Russian painter, architect and stage designer, who was asked by Lenin in 1919 to design a monument to the Third International.

This monument had to represent what communism stood for; a hopeful and equal future for everyone.

The tower had to be taller than the Eiffel Tower, the spiral was an antenna for a radio station, and propaganda would be projected onto the clouds from the top.

Inside the tower, three buildings for the legislature and executive powers would revolver at different speed.

In the artwork ‘White man got no dreaming’, Michael Rakowitz has recreated this idea together with the inhabitants using construction materials of a neighborhood in Sydney, Australia that is about to be demolished.

Aboriginal people or the original inhabitants of Australia live in this district and they lived in Australia long before the first settlers arrived.

The government have not treated the Aboriginal people well and equally and still do not do this in the present.

The title of the artwork ‘White man got no dreaming’ refers to how aboriginals view the current government.

Dreamtime is for Aboriginal people a time of order in which the landscape, the ancestors, the past and the present play an important role.

You could say that ‘White man’ could refer to the people currently in power who are descendants of the first white British setters.

That they have no dreams means that they do not look at the past, focus on innovation and therefore have not regarded the original inhabitants as equal.

You may have discovered that the elements inside the tower revolve.

The bottom one is a large gear, the middle one is part of a motor and the top one a spring.

This material comes from Dutch Trailer parks, where some inhabitants collect scrap iron which they then resell.

Caravan camps are Dutch material heritage and must therefore be protected, but the municipality often prefers to get rid of them.

They use a dieback policy in which they remove old caravans and prevent the construction of new ones.

Not being treated equally happens all over the world.

Text written and spoken by Simon Dogger, designer of the 3D touch object