Commision by Stroom the Hague for a work of art at the new school building of elementery school  de Vuurvlinder 2023

The challenge for this work was to get to a plan that would be supported by the school and the pupils of the school. As a reaction to the invitation to come up with a proposal for a work of art, I didn’t make a proposal, but I did come up with a strategy on how to get to a proposal. Together with Anouk Nooteboom, we devised a strategy how to find out what really mattered.

With a group of school children between the ages of 10 and 12, we formed ‘Denktank de Vuurvlinder’. I hosted 7 meetings where we tried to figure out what the artwork should be about and what really mattered to them. We had conversations, did a workshop on enamel, made drawings and sculptures, and went on an excursion to Buitenplaats Brienenoord. At the last meeting, I had to leave the room so they could formulate the criteria for the artwork to fulfill on their own. 3 weeks later, I presented them my final proposal; it was up to them to decide if they accepted it. They thankfully did, otherwise I would have had to give the commission back. One could say I used the children to get an idea of what to make, but by letting them have a final say, I think it was a fair exchange.

The school proposed that the work should be at the border between the school yard and the park. We took this as a starting point for the conversations and workshops with the children. In the end it turned out that for them, the border wasn’t that important after all.

Special thanks to the members of Denktank de Vuurvlinder: Dash Raap, Guncha Gupta, Damien Niehoff, Tishanny Inocente, Lara Evtimov  and Sofia Molcanova. And thank you Anouk Nooteboom and Rob Rosier from BS de Vuurvlinder.

Made possible with the generous support of:

Making the scenography for the Spanien 19C symposium during the Aarhus festival. DK 2022

The symposium organized by Spanien 19C is situated in an area that is undergoing a huge transformation. In a corner of the construction yard of the Sydhavns Kvarteret is a space that is normally used for storage and as an outside workshop – during the festival it will function as place that is halfway between the city and the new development. I will make a scenographic intervention that is based on a flexible process and which will transform and expand during the festival. The starting point is very simple: people need to sit. For almost ten years now, when I came in a situation where I didn’t like the sitting arrangements or they were simply missing, I just made some object to sit on, stools, chairs and benches with whatever materials were available. This has slowly developed from a purely practical, hands-on approach driven by necessity into a integrated part of my practice.

With the arrival of Bananskolen, a Copenhagen based collective calling themself activist-neodadaists’, the project really started taking of. Their proposal from the Bananskolen was to use the context as a backdrop for making of a film based on the play ‘Dulcitius’ written by Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim in the tenth century. There were other collaborations, but this specific one was the most transformative. When I offered them my services their initial reply was reserved, they had everything they needed. Before they came I had already made them some furniture, but they didn’t really know what I could offer them – so I suggested that cloth hangers might be very useful for the costumes they were making, to give them an idea about how I could be useful for them. The hesitation they felt with allowing me into their practice is also understandable, they came as an actual collective under the same denominator, while I was in the symposium my own agent. The Bananskolen is for me an entity that is hard to grasp, if you search for them online you will find that it is a record label run by Goodiepal and friends – but that is definitely not all they are. What I understood from observing them was that the Bananskolen is a collective with varying composition and their method is in collective learning and experimenting – around a core of queer-feminist politics and activism.

After completing a dozen cloth hangers, I asked them if I could do more for them. With a bit of twinkle in her eyes, Nynne Roberta, one of the founders of the Bananskolen, told me they needed a wooden dick for one of the costumes. I found myself a piece of wood, flipped open my knife and started cutting in the middle of the area where they worked and a short time later the dick was finished. This was a crucial moment in our relationship, the initial hesitation from Bananskolen fell away and the next request was if I could make them wooden shoes – obviously because I am Dutch. In the same performative way I started constructing some Roman inspired sandals, since the play was situated in the third century a.d.. In the days after I made dozens of artifacts: spears, pots and pans, helmets, more shoes, a sword, a crown, a scepter, anything the Bananskolen needed and some more. It is not that I was exaggerating the acts involved in the making, but there is some drama in the noise and space it takes and that is strengthened by the sheer number of objects. The way I made them gave them a very specific aesthetic that made it easy to identify as something I made.

The Bananskolen got ready for filming by completing the costumes and asked me to make some extra props and set pieces. They also came with an interesting proposal – since they liked the work I did for them, they offered me the role of the Dulcitius, a character that played a comic role in the first half of the play and from who the play got its common name from. Even though Hrotsvitha named the play Passio Sanctarum Virginum Agapis Chioniae Et Hirenae (“The Passion of the Holy Virgins Agape, Chionia, and Irena”)* with the three girls as the main characters. The Bananskolen interpreted the story written by the nun Hrotsvitha in a contemporary secular way. In the original play Dulcitius was a pagan Roman governor who tried to corrupt three Christian virgins who where, because of their strong faith, incorruptible. In this version they were not incorruptible because of their faith in God, but because they were strong independent women, and at the same time, Dulcitius was renamed ‘Governor Pervert’.

Solo exposition at JOEY RAMONE, Rotterdam 2022

Exposition text by Kiki Petratou

Sculptured structures are bodies. Their matter consisting of different materials, is variously formed. The forming of it happens by demarcation as setting up an inclosing and excluding border. Herewith, space comes into play. Becoming occupied by the sculptured sculpture, space receives its special character as closed, breached and empty volume. 1

Hardware & Industrieelektronik is Maurice Meewisse’s not only first exhibition at JOEY RAMONE but also his first gallery exhibition in general. This is specifically noteworthy because his trajectory follows a very rich spectrum of activities and exhibitions in institutions and art spaces, which came to inform his critical attitude towards the institutionalized contexts in which he finds himself and led him to question his own position. He has been emphatically scrutinizing his role as an artist in relation to the context he brings with him in his practice. His explorations took him to the idea of an artist as a self-institutionalized figure to focus on that artist’s agency. In his last works he has been considering himself in the same way as he has been approaching a platform until now, with his doubts, vulnerabilities, curiosities and assumptions and looking for discrepancies between his theoretical and ideological views and seeing it as part of the larger context. This has ushered him to regard within his practice what kind of space he can offer as an artist to the people with whom he works as well as to the public. In that sense, his role has changed from that of the artist or the performer on stage to that of the facilitator to the extent that in one occasion he became the curator and started inviting and hosting other artists. This is essential and connects with Maurice’s conception of context in the broad sense that does not just concern the physical place, but also the politics surrounding it, the institution and the reason why he is there.

Anthropological studies of space and place recognize that landscape, space and the body represent important sites for cultural meaning, social and political memory, and public discourse. Space can be used to carry social meanings that are culturally and historically constructed as well as contested. The hermeneutic study of space explores space as a symbolic medium and recognizes that space and space language convey a culture’s meanings about the immediate world, while place carries with it sentiments of attachment and identity that emerge out of lived experience. 2

Maurice Meewisse’s work is in principle site-specific, whereby he sees the ‘site’ as part of a complex network of interests, projections and relationships. Within that he looks for a discrepancy, a certain complexity or a potential hidden beneath the surface. These finds function as the impulse to create a work or action for which he uses different techniques, ranging from sculpture to performance. In fact, and this is true for his present installation at JOEY RAMONE, he negotiates the tension between the sculptural and the performative space. His installation consists on the one hand of the making of space within space as it were. The transformation that the gallery underwent under Meewisse’s auspices doesn’t only concern the placement of artworks but also and most importantly the alteration of the context, which treats space as a symbolic medium and allows for new relationships and new imaginaries. In the hands of Meewisse space becomes place as it connects to our memory and experience of certain elements with which we are confronted within but also outside the exhibition space. In fact the borders are blurred in a sense that the outside suggests that one enters not the gallery as we know it but Meewisse’s own ‘dwelling’. The two Neon signs – installed at the façade above the two entrances of the gallery – read Meewisse hardware & Miscellaneous and Meewisse Industrieelektronik & Sonstiges. This intervention evocative of a different context became a gesture that has opened up new potentials and possibilities of interpretation and participation. Reflecting on his approach Maurice Meewisse explains: I go into context with an open mind and try to gain insight into the network of relationships that make up such a context. From that position I make an aesthetic intervention and try to provoke a re-evaluation of our patterns of perception or behavior. I explore the boundaries of a context, looking for inconsistencies or for something that is overlooked. With my work I examine the projections on that context and add a certain subjectivity to bring to light something that can break our conditioned patterns. The vital point here is that space in its most fundamental sense is based on the ‘release’ of places. In Heideggerian terms, this involves ‘making-room’, and in the course of this, ‘granting’ and ‘arranging’.

making-room admits something. It lets openness hold sway which, among other things, grants the appearance of things present to which human dwelling sees itself consigned. On the other hand, making-room prepares for things the possibility to belong to their relevant whither and, out of this, to each other… Place always opens a region in which it gathers the things in their belonging together. 3

The interconnectedness of body, space, politics and history is manifest in the ways Meewisse stages his work, piece by piece and as an installation unfolding freely, starting from the exterior and moving into the two exhibition rooms. The individual works are explorations of a more autobiographical nature, connections of the artist’s past with stories he came across. The prevailing material throughout the exhibition is scavenged wood because as Maurice sees it, it is alive, it is transformative and it carries its own history. Such is the case of the immersive installation “Isolators”, which includes 47 pieces of diverse sizes, made out of different types of wood, of different timelines with countless tales to tell and sourced throughout the country.

Following Heidegger’s idea that ‘things themselves are places’ – the elemental notion of place is ontologically fundamental – Meewisse’s ‘sculptures’ are not just things that occupy the space but they are ‘places’ themselves, they are the embodiments of places.

1. Heidegger, Art and Space in Leach, Rethinking Architecture, 121.

2. Pauline McKenzie Aucoin, Toward an Anthropological Understanding of Space and Place,408.

3. Heidegger, Art and Space in Leach, Rethinking Architecture, 123.

Exposition overview

Commisioned by Kunstenlab for AMUSE Van Hier Tot Ginder – Okkenbroek 2021

https://kunstenlab.nl/kunst-buiten/amuse-van-hier-tot-ginder/

Kunstenlab invited me to make a site specific work for AMUSE Van Hier Tot Ginder in Okkenbroek. On the first location visit I was struck by a small spruce forest (appr. 30m by 50m). Trees planted very close together in straight lines so they became very tall and thin. My plan was simple: to connect ropes high in the trees and put tension on them so the trees would bend away to reveal a streak of light in the canopy. For Lichtstraat (Sky Light) we had to bend 36 trees out of the way.

The work was made possible by the amazing tree climbing skills from Victor van den Bosch and the help from Elen Braga.

2021

Rotterdam 2020

The Maasbode, build for the newspaper with the same name, had to be demolished to create space for a 70 meter tall apartment building. Selma Hengeveld, an independent curator who lived for several years in the building, decided to take this situation as the starting point for Tot hier en weer verder (free translation: Until here and onwards again) to gather a group of artist to speculate about these circumstances and project their findings on the windows of the building, just days before the demolition started.

When exploring the building I got interested in the first stone, installed there during a festive ceremony on the 6th of May 1952. It seemed the only logical thing for me to do, was to bring the last stone – which raised the question: What stone?

I asked three artists, Elen Braga, Katinka van Gorkum and Sina Seifee, to travel with me to the north of France, because until recently there were several quarries, to find a stone to bring to Rotterdam. Arriving there we heard about the village of Craonne on the Chemin des Dames. In the First World War it was completely obliterated to be rebuild 500m further down the road.

This made finding a stone hugely more complected – there are interesting parallels between the histories of Rotterdam and Craonne, but taking a stone from there seems wrong and shouldn’t be taken lightly – even though as a memorial site it was neglected. And after further research, more discoveries made the story only more interesting, there was extremely heavy fighting with a lot of useless waste of human live during WWI, Napoleon had close by his last victory before his defeat in Waterloo, Caesar claimed his victory over Gaul – hugely complex context – just taking a stone would be problematic – but these stories should be told.

We decided it was okay to bring a stone, under the condition that it should be brought back after it has been shown in Rotterdam.

A movie of the slow spinning stone was projected on the window next to the first stone, while the window was turned into a speaker which played La Chanson de Craonne.

The stone will be returned when traveling is allowed again.

Thanks Elen Braga, Katinka van Gorkum and Sina Seifee to find a stone with me.

Curated by Selma Hengeveld:

https://selmahengeveld.nl/

“A.pass is an artistic research environment that develops research on performativity and scenography, in an international artistic and educational context. The institute includes two complementary bodies that operate in parallel and in dialogue: a Post-master Program and a Research Centre.” – since May 2018 I follow the Post-master Program. (a.pass)

After 16 months the a.pass cycle draw to a natural end, it was time to present my findings, discoveries and new questions. Together with Laura Pante and Caterina Mora under the guidence of Lilia Mestre we created Peach Baskets – three angles on balancing. A.pass End-Communications are every four months and happen at different locations every time, we had the opportunity to present it within the space of the institute, where it become part of the scenography for the next block curated by Lilia Mestre and Sina Seiffee.

For me it was very good to be able to present within the institute, in my practice I am drawn towards the periferie, to take a position on the side, and sometimes even on the outside. But it became urgent during the last period at a.pass to question what my position is, where I stand and where am I in what I do. These questions formed the starting point for the explorations that resulted in three closely related, but very different interventions. 2019

Double Spiral

In previous works I often used piles of material, pathways and the act of work, very often my role was that of a performer and my relationship with the audience was in a way one direction. In a relative simple gesture, I inversed those motives, and that changed everything, it became a space in which I could invite the audience, my role changed from a performer into that of a facilitator. During the end-communication evenings I invited people to walk the 92 meter path of the spiral and experience the transformative potential of the structure. During the rest of the four month block the double spiral functioned as a stadium or theatre that is used as a place for debate and presentations.

Rainmakers

To focus on the ritual potential of the spiral during the evening I wanted to introduce sound devices that could function as a clock. I started experimenting with electronics to create some sort of drone sound, this turned out to be a dead end. I looked further and became curious in non western music instruments and I saw potential in Rainsticks. Out of bamboo I created three motorized rainmakers which I painted in a mix of red, yellow and blue paint and filled with split peas (the main ingredient for snert, the Dutch national soup) – in the final presentation they became independent from the double spiral.

Dinner

During several presentations and openings I served food or drinks, so far I used it primarily in a supportive role. During my time at a.pass I started wondering about the agency of serving stuff at those moments and for my end communication I decided` to experiment by taking over the catering. During my last block I came across Valhalla, where viking warriors feast on pig and mede – for a presentation I spoke about paradigm shifts and decide to serve pig food instead of pork. I took this dish and served it.

At a.pass I met the Muslin Bros, Tamar Levit and Yean Levi, and I asked them if they would like to make an outfit for the evenings based on their reseach.

My participation at a.pass is made possible with the generous support of Peter Paul Peterich Fonds/ Cultuurfondsbeurs and Research/Development grant from CBK Rotterdam.

“A.pass is an artistic research environment that develops research on performativity and scenography, in an international artistic and educational context. The institute includes two complementary bodies that operate in parallel and in dialogue: a Post-master Program and a Research Centre.” – since May 2018 I follow the Post-master Program. (a.pass)

School of Love

“SOL is a collective platform that was initiated some years ago, inspired by the interest in both love and school as charged with potential to generate new politics and relations in the world. SOL is practiced through regular meetings, but follows no curriculum. Instead, it develops a spontaneous program through the presence and interest of its participants. SOL is basically an invitation to hang out. But to hang out deeply. To practice school as a place of free time – free to study things as they appear, separated from the dependency on the time and space of social order and production. And to practice love – Not the kind of love that is generated through affirmation of who we think we are, but love as an act of giving by allowing it to transform us.” Curated by Adva Zakai, Sept/Dec 2018

The curatorial proposal seemed from the start interesting but problematic, so I decided to beforehand what my position should be and how I want to relate to the program and a.pass. From the start the claims made by the curator – it is not about love, but about political love, the willingness to let yourself be transformed by other, and that it was not a school, but there is an interest in school – formed the basis of my attitude of constructive opposition. In a not always subtle way I put the thesis of this block to test. The production of actual works was not the main goal of the block, they functioned more as conversation starters within the continuous political game. For me it resulted in a period where I explored how to relate to activism and specific perceptions of reality.

test – the tower

I decided to start with a small provocation, in the middle of the space I build a tower where it was possible for one person to sit on top of. The tower formed a visualization of the attitude I approached SOL with. Halfway through the block, during some presentations I explained my motives and asked the people there if they thought that they excepted the tower. Everybody but one wanted to keep the tower – no unanimity – so the tower had to go.

test – the class picture

During the closing week of this block we traveled together to Performance Art Forum, in northern France. This school trip made me think about our group, what we are, what are status is and how we are related to each other. I decided to do an expiriment, with making a class picture – to see if that could clarify some those questions. I put up a camera on a stand and made every 10 seconds a picture, assuming that at one point everybody would have their eyes open. The actual picture didn’t clarify much, but what remained was the act of the making the picture.

My participation at a.pass is made possible with the generous support of Peter Paul Peterich Fonds/ Cultuurfondsbeurs and Research/Development grant from CBK Rotterdam.

Eighteen Coffee Breaks ( 2017 – stills)

Eight Working Hours (2018 – stills)

The Zandmotor might be one of the most curious bits of land in the Netherlands. In 2011 the sandbank was constructed to protect the Dutch coast, to create nature and to extend the recreational possibilities. But it was also presented as a scientific testcase, how to ‘build with nature’, and as an export product for the Dutch dregging industry. It seems that they projected pretty much everything on it depending on who was listening. It might not even be the Netherlands, it is outside the official coastline, so you could also see it as extraterritorial land… 

The Zandmotor formed the context for the Mondrian Fund residency hosted by the Satellite Group in 2017. During my three months stay I traveled daily to the beach to try make some sense out of this constructed mess. I did experiments that resulted in Eighteen Coffee Breaks, where I introduced on the Zandmotor an important ritual for every working person. Later I asked Jordy Walker to make a soundtrack for the stop motion film I made of this performance, around the same problematic nature/culture

In 2018 the Satellite group organized a group exposition, Climate as Artifact in the Elektriciteitsfabriek in the Hague, and invited me to join and present a new work. I used this opportunity to complete the process started in 2017. Eight times I went back to the Zandmotor to work there for an hour and it resulted in Eight Working Hours, the final part of the triplet. The video’s are around 9 minutes.

Procedure

Eighteen Coffee Breaks – during 4 weeks I traveled every working day to the beach to have a coffee break. I brought a thermos with coffee with me and dug up the chairs, the table and the flag. The flag signaled that the 15 minute break was happening. After that I buried everything and left.

Eight Working Hours – During the first two week of the exposition I traveled from the venue to the Zandmotor to move sand around, with the plan to make an impact, as big as manually is possible given the situation. The individual hours of work formed together one eight hour workday.

Both actions where open for the public.

Made possible by Satellite Group/ Climate as Artifact and the Mondrian Fund

I was invited to make a site-specific work at the Patlz, an private estate with a very interesting history. It was originally build halfway the 19^th century and fell into bits apart, but in 1984 it was bought and reconstructed by mr Raatjes, who made his fortune by coming up with the simple but brilliant idea to make it possible for cities to have their name on their manhole covers. He recreated the estate but also added his own traces, like an 7 meter tall waterfall and paths that flow like rivers over the estate from one source and lots of other things like this, it was packed! But he never lived in his dream house, because he moved into the estate of his girlfriend. At the moment the estate is a nature park with three private houses that pay rent for the ground they use, this pays for the maintenance and opens it up for the public. Meria Bakker and Wouter Blom live in own of those houses and every two year they open up their house and garden for the Paltz Biennial.

During my first visit I noticed a lot Douglas pine trees that had fallen because of strong January storm and found out that Wouter Blom, together with some friends, reraised a small tree. This seemed a lovely gesture to me. This in combination with the Paltz history and the concept of something called ‘mastbos’ formed the base of my contribution. With a chainsaw and a planer I transformed the biggest of the fallen trees into a traditional Dutch flag pole, white, an orange top and a rope. With help of my parents I raised the flagpole and now it stands there, on it original spot between the other trees. 2018

Paltz Biënnale

Photo Jan de Groen

Blok Beton is a performance resulting in a sculpture where I filled a mold with concrete. The stage was set as pleasant gathering for the neighboorhood, with fire, blankets and hot drinks. While filling the mold Jordy Walker sampled the sounds made by the mills into a super-real soundtrack. After two days the concrete was hard enough to remove the wood and was ready for what this whole exercize was about:
The decicion if the work was welcome in the neigboorhood or should be destroyed. We put all the individual adresses from the neigboorhood in a bucket – picking out a random address and ring the doorbell and invite the person opening to make a decision. After some houses and offices we found Mrs Gina Riedewald to put a thumb up or down.

Commissioned by TENT Rotterdam and Kunstblock – Coolstof 2018

Please check out the video made by Joey Smith

Thanks to: Mrs. Gina Riedewald, Jordy Walker, Aannemingsbedrijf Mostert BV and Leonie Rip, Esther de Leeuwe, Stanley van de Meer, Menno Verhoef, Lise Sinnbeck and Gemeente Rotterdam

Jordy Walker and Stanley van de Meer (photos Jan de Groen)

Photo Coolstof

Photos Jan de Groen

People have to sit.

a.pass – Brussel 2019

a.pass/Permormatik, Kanal Centre Pomidou, Brussels 2019

Buitenplaats Brienenoord, Rotterdam 2017

Sattelietgroep/Mondriaan Fonds, Den Haag 2017

Karikula, Georgia 2015

  Chen Long International Environmental Art Project, Taiwan 2014

‘Diep Gaan’ is an art project organized by Lucy in de Lucht in connection with the start of the Tour de France in Utrecht. They invited artists, who go deep and challenge their own physical and mental limits. With a shovel and a wheelbarrow I moved 20 cubic meters of sand (30 tons) which I dropped, wheelbarrow-full after wheelbarrow-full, from the top of a spiral-shaped construction, so that a mountain formed in the middle. I worked continuously from 8.00 to 21.45, and the wheelbarrow was filled and emptied around 400 times. May 2015
The photos above are made by Baldwin Henderson

http://lucyindelucht.nl/

André Schreuders made a film of the 13 hour long performance. 48 minutes – please contact me for more information.

I wore my safety shoes

until they were worn out.

Then I had the left one silver plated,

I polished,

and installed it here.

The night after, it was stolen.

2015-2019 NL=US Rotterdam

Art Villa Garikula in Georgia organizes every year Fest I Nova, a festival for contemporary art. Teams were invited to Fest I Nova to build pavilions. Dirk van Lieshout designed and build the Dutch pavilion. I was asked to make a work around his pavilion. Bivouac is a work that makes it possible for people to actually be around the pavilions, to live there. During the build up and the first days of the festival I created a complete camp and lived there, with places to sleep, work and shit. On the second picture the pavilion of Dirk van Lieshout is shown in the background.
Bivouac has been supported by CBK Rotterdam.

Interesting about Garikula is that art is a used as a tool to create a model for a society, based around the villa.

2015

http://www.garikula.com/

The Cheng-Long Wetlands International Environmental Art Project in Taiwan was in 2014 focused around the fishing huts in the village. I made a plan to repair one complete hut, spread out over a series of huts and build a folly based on the repairs. The folly got the function of a coffee shack. Special thanks to Amy and Sam. May 2014

https://artproject4wetland.wordpress.com/

The Folly

Bål is Danish for bonfire. During Kunsten i Bevægelse I collected wood in three different villages with the use of a little wagon. With this wood I made a big bonfire in each village. I invited the suppliers of wood to come to the fire while I served them self-flavoured-snaps. The pictures are from Staby.

This project resulted in a photo serie with seven photos, six with wagons and one with the stack. September 2013

http://kunsten-i-bevaegelse.dk