Earth, is depicted as a young energetic teenage feminine body. (not so clearly gendered) It is depicted as always in movement. Always running. Lots of energy. Very curious and energised. Leaping across higher and higher. Farther and farther. Earth is followed by a series of her friends who are running with her, following her. Along with the moon. So she is lit by the moon. The moon and her other friends can never really catch up to her. They come close and drift behind. (like the phases of the moon.) One night the Earth runs so fast that she leaves all her friends behind. The leaps and jumps and the associated huffs and puffs overlapped by the chatter of the many moons (all phases) and their call outs for their friends produce a song.
In a parallel place. The sky is a teenage person again. Very angry, angsty and upset about something. Super fired up and upset because Sky has been asked to behave well. (don't yet know the reason for the angst, however it seems to be a typical, universal, mom-dad don't want to do what you want me to do.)
When the Earth hears the song of the arrows for a moment it is distracted and turns their attention towards it and bam they are hit by several arrows on their knee. Earth falls with a loud thud and the moon knows that Earth is hurt. Earth is in total agony and pain. And ofcourse we imagine what it might feel to be hit by a 1000 arrows. The sky hears her moans and feels wtf. have I done and rushes towards the moans. and finds Earth lying down and moving from side to side in pain. At this point the moons arrive. They are a bit concerned to see Earth fallen on the ground first, they surround the Earth. Sky arrives at the scene. Sky is super guilty and upset. Now it becomes clear that Sky is infact a very tiny creature and Earth is humongous in front of the sky. The arrows that the sky was shooting are the size of cactus spines. And Earth is by all means over reacting. Moons by now are playfully teasing the Earth and also guilt tripping the Sky. All this teasing is too much for the Earth.
Sky pulls out each of the tiny pricks. and is still guilty. The moons are teasing Earth about this. Earth is over reacting and also enjoying the attention they are getting from the moon. The earthat some point, cannot take this any more and wiped her face and started to run again. The sky runs behind asking for Earth's apology and the moons run behind them. This is the story of the marriage of Earth and Sky.
The place where the Earth fell down. Under each part its body grew a different plant. (all of those now grow wild in NDSM) But because of all the moving around in pain and agony. The plants were totally smooshed. And this is how paper was first made.
The medieval saints in some monasteries in EU grow a garden of the fallen Earth. Each part of her body represents a special plant used to make special paper.
with Caroline Geiser, Emelie Obernosterer, Esila Esma Mayadağ, Lisa Birades, Lovise Kjoepstad Rimmereide, Maria Ines Calvimontes & Maruša Jakopič, George Demetriou, Lucy Walvisch, Sophia van der Putten & Steven Elbers
Only this does not happen. It never did.
Moths Must be Moaning is a theatrical experiment exploring the possibility to understand the crisis on the cotton farms from the perspective of its most invasive pest the Pink Bollworm Moth.
*Pink Bollworm moths were not used during the performance instead a close cousin that was not a quarantined specie was used.
with Julia van der Putten and Dr. Emily Burdfield-Steele
During this work we conjure a god figure from the Indus time and brig it in conversation with John Hubert Marshall. The conversation is however held in the context of the polluted landscapes of the cotton farms where toxicity has seeped into the Earth and the human body indiscriminately.
The series as a whole follows the connections between fertility and sexuality of land and people in the Indus Valley around 2500 BCE. It was in 1920's British India that this ancient civilization was discovered. One of the finds was the oldest fragment of woven cotton. There were several contested speculations made by archeologists at the time about the sacred and ritual use of cotton. Based on clay tablets with depictions of cotton cloth and sleeping ithyphallic figures, cotton was believed to be related to fertility rituals involving nocturnal emissions or wet dreams. The prevailing puritanical morals of the British Crown and its imperial intentions to reframe Indian history resulted in deformation of these wild histories. The link between cotton cultivation and the belief of the Indus people in the power of sexual imagination, destabilised the colonial categorical division between man and land, between human fertility and that of the soil.
W139, video installation
The play begins with two boxes on moving platforms(dogs). One large cardboard box that appears to be an IKEA type large box. There is a hint that there could be self assembled furniture in there. The second a small box with a key hole and a slit for the money. There is light on the two boxes.Really sad tragic music plays for a few minutes and nothing happens. Music is in Hindi and a subtitle bar hangs from the roof. The audience holds red envelopes
in their hands that have written on top. Not to open until a given point. A blade is attached on top in a box. A sticker on the envelope says ‘USE AT THE RIGHT MOMENT.’
The Ikea box contains a special piece of furniture that is constructed to sacrifice farmers as collateral cost for neoliberal bio power The farmer suicides that have taken place in India since the 1990s constitute the largest wave of recorded suicides in human history. We collectively fail to recognise both the particularity of bio-politics in a context where the presence of death is ubiquitous and the way in which the death of some may reinforce the bio-political governing of life of others. The farmer suicides express rather than contest the devaluation of “unproductive” lives in neoliberal capitalism. The extent of farmer suicides prove the function of death in neoliberal bio politics.
with Oneka Van Schrader and Laura Mentink
Technical set up: Husky UGV outdoor field research robot with smartphone camera mounted on top. Live video feed connect to Touch Designer patch with Posenet body recognition and Stable Diffusion image manipulation
Research into the human relation to non-human beings and material objects using emergent technologies. We take the practice of putting eyes on mountains, trees, objects for worship and deification and use this to think through modes of relation.
Ancient practice in Central India, seen across different tribal communities. This particular practice is stemming from a mining community. This community had a belief that you could access what your ancestors saw through the objects they touched. Some of these practitioners could go so far back that they could see beings that we would recognize as humans. Beings that have no fossil records, beings that are beyond imagination. Beings that are in between worlds, stages of life, stages of earth. They could imagine these beings in action, hunting scenes, birthing, death, very vividly. They could access these through any object from their mining community.
One of the ways in which this practice became popular was by putting eyes on an object. By putting eyes you created the possibility to see what those eyes would have seen. One of the first things that came to these practitioners was breath. From breath they'd find the voice of these creatures. From voice, they'd find body. From body they'd find skin, shape, edge of the body.
Some of these practices were documented by researchers who didn't understand the native languages, but did record it verbatim. Now we've been able to decipher this language. We have so far deciphered five descriptions of beings. This studio research is a reenactment of that.
The performer establishes a relationship with different objects by putting eyes on them.
After that the performer starts to slowly send these eyes back into time, by reminding it of what it saw. The performer follows an incantation script to prompt the image/memory from the object.
with Laura Boser (performance), Computational Mama (generative AI), Julia van der Putten (dramaturgy), Carolien Teunisse (visuals), Jered Vroon (robotics)
One morning in Ruru and Suka’s town everyone wakes up speaking in a new voice that they themselves cannot understand and panic begins to take hold of the town. Ruru and Suka go to investigate the cause of this catastrophe and to restore their lands. The conniving and deceptive alien Larynx offers to be their guide on their journey through a treacherous forest. After a life changing journey they ask for the restoration of their lands and are deceived into accepting the transformed landscape as their new reality. Their only consolation is the five nights before the sowing of cotton, when their lands temporarily transform into their beloved Cosmic Cradle.
White Gold is part of a long term research project about the history of Cotton Farming in India. Since 1995, 400,000 farmer suicides have taken place in India. The Cotton Farming community is the worst affected by this wave of suicides that are a result of complex social, economic and political reasons. Cotton was proverbially called White Gold in the commodity market.
The reenactment is prefaced by an introductory lecture to contextualise the performance. As a part of the performance, collective reading sessions and a small exhibition is also being organised.
Made with Sipan Tekin, Yunus Bilir, Julia van der Putten, Naomi Broms, George Demitriou and Laura Boser.
2023