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