This November, Amsterdam Central Station’s screens will host an Hour of Nice

It’s Nice That is excited to be partnering with DEMO – Design In Motion – Festival this year. Taking place on 7 November 2019, DEMO will take over every screen on every platform of Amsterdam Central Station for 24 hours. We’ll be covering the event, which was initiated by Studio Dumbar (part of Dept) and Exterion Media NL, on our site, as well as curating our own section of the festival, choosing participants from an open call.

Cast your minds back to April. A comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, was elected as President in Ukraine; the Notre Dame went up in flames; and The Face relaunched. We also announced that as part of DEMO – a festival taking over every single screen in Amsterdam Central Station for 24 hours – we would be curating our very own hour-long slot, profiling the work of some of our favourite moving image-makers from around the world.

DEMO, which stands for Design In Motion, will be taking place on 7 November and sees a complete takeover of every screen on every platform in the station: 80 in total. The selected works have been chosen from an open call and selected by DEMO’s curatorial team: Liza Enebeis, creative director at Studio Dumbar, interdisciplinary designer Koos Breen, and Xavier Monney, a graphic and motion designer. Together, the team has designed a programme that changes every hour, creating a whole new motion experience.

And that’s where It’s Nice That comes in. We have pulled together a list of creatives from across the globe, all of whom work with moving image, to create an Hour of Nice. Feeling glum, sick of your morning commute, and generally annoyed by the constant stream of backpacks and elbows hitting you as you patiently wait for your train? Well, park yourself in front of one of our screens and let us turn that frown upside down. Because during the Hour of Nice, there are no bad vibes.

Hailing from Italy, the UK, Germany, Israel, Australia, the Netherlands, the US, South Korea, Spain, France, Denmark, Canada, and Hungary, the 31 creatives involved in the Hour of Nice are a talented bunch, to say the least. And, what’s more, they represent the multifarious ways moving image is being employed by creatives today.

Take London-based Rose Pilkington, for example. Her saturated, morphing visuals are the product of clever CGI and 3D rendering, and are enough to put anyone at their ease, as globules of colour shift and dance. New York-based Zach Lieberman’s experiments with AR and face tracking, on the other hand, are joyous expressions of creativity. In between them, we’ve got everything from 2D frame-by-frame work to kinetic typography and character-led snippets.

Occupying the screens of Amsterdam Central Station alongside Rose and Zach, the Hour of Nice will feature: Gianluca Alla, Harry Butt, Sophie Koko Gate, Timo Lenzen, Everyday Practice, Daniel Wenzel, Eran Hilleli, Esther Cheung, Karan Singh, Eva Cremers, Nicole Ginelli, TwoMuch Studio, Jaedoo Lee, Caitlin McCarthy, Regular Practice, Rapapawn, Laurie Rowan, Lucas Zanotto, Milo Targett, Daniel Spencer, Kyle Platts, Angela Stempel, Alexis Jamet, DIA Studio, More and More, Wang & Söderström, Haein Kim and Paul Rhodes, Julia Farkas and Aysha Tengiz.

If you’re lucky enough to be in Amsterdam, make sure you head to the station at any point during the 24 hours to see DEMO live.