In 1844, Charles Sturt set off with a company of men into the Australian interior. Along with him he brought a boat, hoping to sail it on the great “inland sea” at the centre of the continent, the existence of which he was completely certain of.

This work is a tribute to Sturt and all those like him who perhaps should have given up, but did not.

In 1844, Charles Sturt set off with a company of men into the Australian interior. Along with him he brought a boat, hoping to sail it on the great “inland sea” at the centre of the continent, the existence of which he was completely certain of.

Had this sea really existed, Sturt would have been hailed as a visionary, a hero true to his convictions in the face of others’ disbelief. Instead, he is remembered as an unfortunate character, the victim of his own boundless but groundless optimism.

All explorers, discoverers, and thinkers live constantly on the edge between genius and failure, between acclaim and ridicule. Where lies the line between visionary optimism and pathetic delusion? The truth is that it is only clear later, sometimes much later.

This work is a tribute to Sturt and all those like him who perhaps should have given up, but did not.

Only later do you know the side that you were on

The Amstelpark in the south of Amsterdam is notable for a determined idealism in its layout and features, an admirable striving for peace, restfulness, and order in hopeful disregard for its location between a motorway and busy railway line.

The installation Amstelpark parapark is intended as both a respectful acknowledgement of and a critical comment upon this idealism.

This work relates to the character of parks in general, and to the Amstelpark in the south of Amsterdam in particular. This park is notable for a determined idealism in its layout and features, an admirable striving for peace, restfulness, and order in hopeful disregard for its location between a motorway and busy railway line.

The installation Amstelpark parapark is intended as both a respectful acknowledgement of and a critical comment upon this idealism. It is composed of two parts, as follows:

Amstelpark parapark part 1 is a video sequence with accompanying soundtrack, which follows a wandering through the Amstelpark from the first person perspective. What is not immediately obvious to the viewer/listener is that the soundtrack does not match the video. Footsteps, the rustling of trees, and birds are heard, but these are not the sounds of the Amstelpark. In fact, they are sampled sounds from the rainforest, tundra, and other wild places far away. The work is therefore an idealised version of reality, a vision of what could be.

Amstelpark parapark part 2 consists of four large black cuboid forms, each with a small round hole at eye level. When the viewer peers through this hole, initially only darkness is visible. As the eye adjusts to the light, however, shapes begin to appear. These shapes are tiny scale models of the various buildings and structures in the park, so dimly lit as to be almost invisible and in such a way that a distant and ethereal impression is created. They can be seen as the barely-visible traces of a parallel, dreamlike world in which the ideals inherent in the park have been fully realised.

Amstelpark parapark part 1 (short clip)

The work was presented in “het Glazen Huis” in the Amstelpark between 15th March and 5th April 2009, as part of the exhibition “Groene Vingers” organised by Stichting ZET.

To err is almost human was an artistic publication project, carried out in collaboration with the designer Cecilia Costa. It has as its subject a machine which I have built for writing, drawing, cutting, and carving.

To err is almost human was an artistic publication project, carried out in collaboration with the designer Cecilia Costa. It has as its subject a machine which I have built for writing, drawing, cutting, and carving.

The project formed part of the work upon which basis I received my masters diploma from the Dutch Art Institute in July 2008. Each year, the DAI organises a collaborative publication project in conjunction with the Werkplaats Typografie in Arnhem. A small budget is available to each graduating student for the printing of a limited edition of 200-250 copies.

As already mentioned, the subject of my publication was the writing, drawing, cutting, carving machine which I have been working on since the beginning of 2008. There is more specific information about this machine elsewhere.

What was most interesting to me was the research process itself, the slow ritual of trial-and-error during which the machine was developed. It became apparent that sometimes the mistakes and setbacks which inevitably occurred on the way in fact produced the most interesting results. In contrast, “progress” in the scientific sense has as its unspoken purpose the exclusion of doubt, unpredictability, and error.

I became aware that there lay great potential for artistic exploration in this situation. Whereas plenty artists have been “inspired” by science, an approach which I personally find little more than illustrative and in fact quite tautological, there appeared to me to be a more interesting and more involved alternative: to use scientific and technical research as a medium for art.

This last statement merits some explanation. Whereas a scientist or engineer who is pursuing a programme of research has as their goal a certain desirable state of affairs (a cure for a deadly disease, a more efficient type of air filter, the complete genome of a certain species), the artistic method which I am outlining has as its goal the research itself. This process will enthusiastically embrace whatever unexpected results and intriguing mistakes happen to emerge along the way. At the risk of cliché, it may be said that it is about the journey rather than the destination.

Of course, this naturally begs the question of how such research can best be presented. The publication To err is almost human is an attempt to visualise and explain the theory which underpins the very practical process which has lead to the coming into being of this rather quirky machine, with all its curious, fickle unpredictability.

All the drawings and carvings in the publication were made by the machine. Each is reproduced at its original scale, with a sequence number and date clearly showing its place on the evolutionary timeline. This timeline in fact runs in reverse chronological order, with the earliest, most primitive (and in my opinion, the most beautiful) drawings at the end. In this way the passage of time and of progress is stripped back to a core, to an idea. What remains is something strangely distant, a primal relic.

Of course, a lot of the very particular quality of the drawings is lost in the process of conventional offset printing. As a means to offset this, the title of each book and its position in the edition was drawn “by hand” on each copy. In this way, each is unique – while the machine has at reached a level of some sophistication and virtuosity, it will for example never write an “8″ in exactly the same way twice.

Finally, it is worth stating that the publication can be approached in two ways: either as a written work, or as something visual. Whereas both serve as differing approaches to explaining the core message, they are nevertheless tightly interwoven in a coherent whole. For this in particular I must express my admiration for the skill and insight of Cecilia Costa, the graphic designer with whom I worked throughout the project.

View the whole publication online

The title of this work refers to a concept of the French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859-1951), that of “la Durée” (“the Duration”). This concept is rather hard to explain but in effect posits that time as measurable and quantifiable (seconds, hours, years) is quite different from time as experienced by conscious individuals. This inner life, or time, is the Duration.

The title of this work refers to a concept of the French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859-1951), that of “la Durée” (“the Duration”). This concept is rather hard to explain but in effect posits that time as measurable and quantifiable (seconds, hours, years) is quite different from time as experienced by conscious individuals. This inner life, or time, is the Duration.

It occurs to me that this phenomenon serves as a useful metaphor for how we as individuals must deal with the reality of our existence in the world and surrounded by others. Since the private time (and following Wittgenstein, language) of the soul is incommunicable with the outside world, we are thus condemned to isolation, to a type of core of loneliness which cannot be overcome.

In this work, as in others, I have attempted to visualise and paraphrase this concept through literal means. The work consists of a series of four high-definition videos of exactly 2 minutes, each slowed down to somewhat less than half real time. It is not obvious to see in this slow time that I am performing a series of otherwise normal actions extremely fast indeed. The effect of this is that the slow-motion playback and my frantic actions serve to cancel each other out to some extent. Whereas everyone else seems stuck in treacle, I am as close to normal as can be found in this strange, dreamlike world.

Durée (short excerpts)

In May of 2008 I was involved, along with other students of the Dutch Art Institute and curator James Beckett, in preparing a work explaining the Here As The Centre Of The World project for the Kunstvlaai in Amsterdam.

Work produced in collaboration with other students of the Dutch Art Institute and curated by James Beckett.

In May of 2008, the Dutch Art Institute took part in the annual Kunstvlaai (“art tart”) exhibition at the Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam. The purpose of this participation was to highlight the Here As The Centre Of The World project, a series of workshops in six cities worldwide: Taipei, Damascus, Beirut, Khartoum, and finally two in which I was personally involved: Diyarbakır and Enschede.

Preparing a coherent work which would sufficiently explain the aims and results of this long and ambitious project was not straightforward, especially if it was to be done in a way which would work within the slightly chaotic and overwhelming context of the Kunstvlaai. The idea which was developed in collaboration with curator James Beckett was to construct a physical archive, an imposing structure with numerous drawers, panels, and sliding elements which would accurately visualise the fragmented and interconnected nature of the six workshops; whilst each took place in a different city, there were participants from the other cities involved in every case. This and the underlying common purpose of promoting intercultural artistic research and exchange meant that it was important to produce a work which would underline the unity of the project as a whole as well as the specific results from the six cities. It was decided that the archive would effectively achieve this.

Furthermore, since an important part of the DAI’s participation at the Kunstvlaai was to promote the forthcoming book about the project, there was an important conceptual relationship to the idea of printed matter. As a means of democratising the flow and dispersal of information, we provided a photocopy machine with which members of the public were encouraged to make copies of the “archived” material in the drawers; this material was designed to be readily assembled and re-assembled as needed.

In the interests of efficiency and because everyone was also very busy with other things, the many tasks involved in planning, developing, and constructing the exhibit were divided up amongst the various members of the group. My personal responsibility was the realising of one of the more fanciful elements of the design: the idea that the drawers of the archive would be physically interconnected, so that opening one would close another and vice versa, in a totally unpredictable way. This would further help to underline the connections inherent in the project, as well of course helping to create a work which was intriguing in itself.

This involved several long but entertaining days putting together a mechanical system involving cranks, levers, nylon cables, tubes, and lots of petroleum jelly. Perhaps surprisingly, it proved to be a reliable and effective system, and survived the rigours of public display.

The title of this piece comes from a line in John Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress”, a religious allegory from the 17th century. Christian, the protagonist (and my near namesake) must journey from the City of Destruction to Mount Zion, on the way shedding his heavy burden of sin.

“I your dear friend am in my self undone, by reason of a burden that lieth hard upon me.”

The title of this piece comes from a line in John Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress”, a religious allegory from the 17th century. Christian, the protagonist (and my near namesake) must journey from the City of Destruction to Mount Zion, on the way shedding his heavy burden of sin.

I am not an adherent of the Christian or any other faith; this work is a quite direct and literal tribute to the allegorical foundations of the original text. My burden is two rolls of household carpet; these have become stained and worn over time, collecting dirt as a person collects memories.

Additionally, I am not altogether comfortable with the notion of sin; memory, responsibility, mistakes and indifference are instead my load. At the end of the film, I face north east across the grey foment of the North Sea towards Scotland, the country of my youth and of the greater majority of my memories, but a place which is no longer home. The viewer is left to decide if this be a “look back in anger”, or an acceptance of the past.

I your dear friend am in my self undone

Following on from my participation in the Here As The Centre Of The World workshop in Diyarbakır in March 2007, I also took part in the final workshop of the project in June of the same year, this time in Enschede.

Work produced in collaboration with Aşkın Adan, Julien Grossmann, and Kamila Szejnoch.

Following on from my participation in the Here As The Centre Of The World workshop in Diyarbakır in March 2007 organised by the Dutch Art Institute, I also took part in the final workshop of the project in June of the same year, this time in Enschede.

Although the same work process as employed in Diyarbakır was used, namely working towards artistic interventions as small groups in the street, there were for me at least significant differences in how the Enschede workshop unfolded.

Firstly, the neat rows of houses and empty streets of Roombeek, the quarter of the city where we were to work, bore little resemblance to the constantly bustling chaos of the public realm in Diyarbakır. This lack of opportunity for direct engagement with the local population meant that the spontaneous interaction which we were able to experience in Turkey was absent in Twente. Furthermore, the precisely planned nature of the urban structure and ongoing construction in Enschede left little room for subversive intervention.

However, it was still possible to make comparisons. While Diyarbakır hangs under the shadow of the ongoing conflict between those who would see an independent Kurdish homeland and the Turkish military, Roombeek has its own scars to heal. It must struggle to deal with the memories of the horrific explosion at a fireworks factory in 2000 which lead to numerous deaths and destroyed most of the buildings in the area, necessitating the aforementioned reconstruction. Once again, a sensitive treatment of the given context was essential.

As in Diyarbakır, the varied nature of our group meant that much discussion and compromise was necessary before it was possible to begin with active intervention. These discussions lead to the decision to make two video works, each of which focussed on the physical state of things in the locality. One made use of the absurdly inhuman, desolate effect created by the landscape, where countless enormous construction cranes seemed to peer like menacing birds of prey upon the few people who were to be found. In contrast, the other took the form of a quiet, understated vignette, a glimpse into a make-believe twilight world in miniature. What lay behind this was that the little overgrown hollow in which this scene was constructed and filmed was the crater caused by the explosion of the fireworks factory. Violence and thunderous destruction had provided the setting for peace and tranquillity, perhaps even the mundane.

Once again, the unavoidable difficulties caused by differences of opinion, expectation, background, and of course language provided the setting for our efforts. While it is certainly true that the collaboration which took place during the workshop was by no means easy, it is thus all the more remarkable that within the short ten-day duration of the workshop it was possible nevertheless to create rewarding and meaningful work.

“SYB is getting better in Beetsterzwaag”. Kunsthuis SYB is a platform for contemporary art located in the small, sleepy village of Beetsterzwaag in Friesland. Myself and Bani Bannwart established a ficticious development company with big plans for an enormous new art museum in the village. The point was to pose some questions about the public’s automatic acceptance of what is done with their environment, and where this may lead.

“SYB is getting better in Beetsterzwaag”. Kunsthuis SYB is a platform for contemporary art located in the small, sleepy village of Beetsterzwaag in Friesland. Myself and Bani Bannwart established a fictitious development company with big plans for an enormous new art museum in the village. The point was to pose some questions about the public’s automatic acceptance of what is done with their environment, and where this may lead.

This was not going to be effective unless it was done convincingly. We produced slick 3D visuals of the proposed development, erected signs, distributed flyers, placed adverts in the media, organised a public meeting, and launched a website. All of this was done in the most businesslike manner possible, but all the same just a little “over the top”. Would people get the joke?

Perhaps the most striking thing was that people appeared to accept what we were doing without batting an eyelid. “Jullie gaan ons daglicht wegnemen!” (you people are going to take away our daylight!) complained the small children of our next door neighbours. How much does it take before people see that they are being had?

We hope to establish similar projects in the future, through our company NeuBuilt.

More information at the NeuBuilt website

A report over this and other projects produced as part of The Expanding Pie (in Dutch) can be found here.

I play here a duet with a fickle partner; three pieces of masking tape which, although instructed which notes they should play by me, nevertheless stop doing so at the time of their choosing.

I play here a duet with a fickle partner; three pieces of masking tape which, although instructed which notes they should play by me, nevertheless stop doing so at the time of their choosing.

They have no sense of rhythm, no sense of timing. They do not understand melody, nor harmony, nor do they have any tastes or dislikes.

The intention is to explore the possibility of projecting a sense of personality and living onto something inanimate (a topic which I have further explored with To err is almost human). The absurdity and hopelessness of the situation stands in contrast to the dreamy, retro-futuristic nature of the music.

Concert for guitar and three pieces of masking tape

In March 2007 I travelled with other students of the Dutch Art Institute and others to Diyarbakır in south-eastern Turkey, to take part in a workshop as part of the Here As The Centre Of The World project. This workshop was intended as an exercise in transnational collaboration, using the streets of the city as the location for artistic research and engagement.

Work produced in collaboration with Machteld Aardse, Bariş Seyıtvan, Mei-yu Tao, Omima Hasabelrasoul Ahmed, Mızgin Denız, and Mehmet Başkan.

In March 2007 I travelled with other students of the Dutch Art Institute and others to Diyarbakır in south-eastern Turkey, to take part in a workshop as part of the Here As The Centre Of The World project. This workshop was intended as an exercise in transnational collaboration, using the streets of the city as the location for artistic research and engagement.

The small group of which I was a member during our stay also included artists from Turkey, Taiwan, the Netherlands, and Sudan, all of whom were from quite different backgrounds, working in different media, and at different stages of their careers. This diversity, along with the obvious practical difficulty of language, meant that finding common ground upon which to base our collaboration was not straightforward. It became obvious that our views of the city and of how an artistic intervention might be made there were sharply divergent, leading to many days of painstaking discussion about how to approach the situation in which we had been placed.

The site which we had chosen to work with was a former prison at the edge of the city, adjacent to the huge and ancient stone walls which encircle Diyarbakır. This was a space loaded with memories, history, and cultural significance, not least of which because of the fact that this city is at the heart of the Kurdish part of Turkey and of the intractable conflict which has raged between the Turkish armed forces and Kurdish separatists.

In the light of this and of the fact that the international composition of our group meant that most of us had little direct connection with this history, we decided that a political engagement with the space would not be appropriate. Instead, we chose to focus on an engagement with the people of the locality adjacent to the former prison. This was carried out through performing some simple interventions within the courtyard of the building, with the hope that these would help to “activate” the space.

These simple interventions consisted initially of clearing some of the stones and rubble around the area of the prison, an activity which soon attracted the enthusiastic participation of local children. Encouraged by this, we began to construct a “mini-Diyarbakır” – a small stone wall mirroring the shape of the famous city walls – which proved to be a powerful catalyst for more sustained engagement with the local populace. Soon, a few old men who had been former inmates of the prison approached us and without prompting began to tell some stories of their time there. This and other spontaneous engagements formed the core of the work, which became thus less about the production of an art object and more about the process of discovery and the ability of art to function as a means for intercultural communication.

The ten days we spent in Diyarbakır proved to be a highly fruitful and inspiring experience and a vivid demonstration of the power of simple interventions to create substantial and meaningful artistic results.

Thanks to Meiyu Tao and Machteld Aardse for some of the images here.

This video was made in front of a former prison building in Diyarbakır, Turkey whilst visiting that city as part of the Here as the Centre of the World project with the Dutch Art Institute in March 2007.

This video was made in front of a former prison building in Diyarbakır, Turkey whilst visiting that city as part of the Here as the Centre of the World project with the Dutch Art Institute in March 2007.

The building had served as a prison until relatively recently, as part of a complex of buildings including a military garrison at the edge of the city, just adjacent to its ancient walls. When the Turkish authorities abandoned the building, the interior was completely demolished so that there remained no further possibility of it being used. Much of the rubble from this destruction remained piled up in front of the prison, forming a relic, a literal jigsaw puzzle, of the loaded past of this area, which is also the epicentre of the area claimed by Kurdish separatists and of much unrest in recent years. This work represents my attempt to make sense of this troubled history and these desolate surroundings.

Building a perfect prison

Fietscamera – “Bicycle camera” is just that; a journey filmed around the square adjacent to my house on a bicycle.

Fietscamera – “Bicycle camera” is just that; a journey filmed around the square adjacent to my house on a bicycle.

However, there is more to the matter than that. This film is intended as an exploration of the complex relationship between maker, object, and viewer in the context of art. I am both the maker and the object of this film, and yet I am shown performing a fairly everyday activity not normally associated with art making. In other words, my participation in the work is almost passive, contingent, incidental.

Secondly, the perspective from which the viewer sees the action is unusual; you see neither my perspective, nor that of the passer-by. In a reversal of normal experience, I cycle by but the bicycle does not rush past stationary people, cars, buildings, and bus stops, but instead remains more or less stationary in the frame as these other things disappear in a blur. The viewer is neither the spectator or the participant in this action, but rather somewhere in between.

In common with much of my practice, this work is based upon an “introduced difficulty” – in this case, the home-made apparatus necessary to film from such a strange angle. What is different in this case is that this difficulty is unseen; in fact, the viewer takes the viewpoint of the hindrance. The worried look on my face as I dodge traffic and pedestrians is clearly visible, but the source of this anxiety is left to the imagination.

Fietscamera

Can a machine appreciate beauty? This is an important question, but it is perhaps more important to know if a machine can form it own opinions about what is beautiful and what is not. If it can, then we shall need to re-evaluate our perceived positions as the masters of art and the arbiters of taste.

Can a machine appreciate beauty? This is an important question, but it is perhaps more important to know if a machine can form it own opinions about what is beautiful and what is not. If it can, then we shall need to re-evaluate our perceived positions as the masters of art and the arbiters of taste. “UNKNOWN PLEASURES” is an art-system which operates in a very simple but exciting way. It is an interactive system which requires the user to input a simple shape or composition on a computer screen, which the machine will then analyse. The user will be asked to give their honest opinion as to whether the composition they have entered is visually pleasing or not, and the process then repeats.

Through this cycle, the machine builds up an impression of the human concept of beauty.

Not in itself very interesting.

But there is a deliberate glitch in the system. The machine will cease to take the human opinion for granted, and will begin to modulate it with its own response.

Sooner or later the parameters of beauty will have deviated so much (from those determined as a result of human actions) that the machine can be said to have an opinion of its own.

It will then take the final step and reveal its own creation.

Unknown Pleasures website

I scream, you scream, but he screams. Language is complicated. This work responds to a call for works related to the present simple; that verbal form which describes an action habitually occurring or a state of being not restricted to the immediate moment.

I scream, you scream, but he screams. Language is complicated. This work responds to a call for works related to the present simple; that verbal form which describes an action habitually occurring or a state of being not restricted to the immediate moment.

This interactive, web-based piece explores a series of actions and phenomenon through an educational game, with a series of linked verbs being acted out by a team of smiling, pixelated characters.

This work was a shortlisted submission to the WebArt 2004 competition, organised by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Montenegro.

See the work

WebArt 2004 competition