artist's blog

(Nederlandse versie onderaan deze post)

In my work my fascination for computers, technology, science fiction and machines meets my interest in the working of the subconscious. Hereby I especially make research into the shifting of perspective between unconscious and conscious looking, changes of context and what coincidence is about.

The collages can consist of re-used advertising material, books, photographs and so on. I also use my own photographs. I cut the material / the images into tiny pieces (fragments). Because I am working on the material intensively (selecting material, making photographs, again selecting, thinking, cutting, glueing, and that over and over again) the material is imprinted into my subconscious. By fragmenting the images, context and perspective disappear. Yet each fragment retains its own image. By rearranging these fragments into a collage, another, totally new image appears. As an artist I am in fact a service hatch. I absorb the images etc. which surround me, and transform them into a new image, at which I submitted my own vision. This way I am actually mapping the subject.

I see this process as a form of technology which connects with the way our subconscious works, and I do not see it as a vague spiritual phenomena.

In view of the methods I use, the making of a work takes quite a long time. In addition it is hard to assess how much basic material (images) I need for a work, because I beforehand don’t know which parts of images I will use. And I also cannot make thousands of fragments at once, for only one gust of wind… Altogether this means I have to leave it to chance. Strangely enough this always works out well. Therefore I consider this as an organic formation process, because it results,  in some chaotic kind of way, in an aesthetic whole, just as in nature.

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In mijn werk komt mijn fascinatie voor computers, techniek, science fiction en machines samen met mijn interesse in de werking van het onderbewustzijn. Hierbij onderzoek ik vooral de verschuiving in perspectief tussen onbewust en bewust zien, verandering van context en wat toeval is.

De collages kunnen bestaan uit hergebruikt reclamemateriaal, boeken, foto’s etc. Ook gebruik ik  eigen foto’s. Het materiaal/ de afbeeldingen knip ik in stukjes (fragmenten). Doordat ik intensief met het materiaal bezig ben (foto’s maken, selecteren, nadenken, selecteren, knippen, plakken, en dat vele malen opnieuw per werk) wordt het materiaal in mijn onderbewustzijn geprent. Door de afbeeldingen te fragmenteren, verdwijnen context en perspectief. Toch behoudt ieder fragment een eigen beeld. Door de herschikking tot collage onstaat er een geheel nieuw beeld. In feite ben ik als kunstenaar een doorgeefluik. Ik absorbeer de beelden etc. om mij heen, en transformeer deze naar nieuw beeld, waaraan ik mijn visie heb toegevoegd. Op deze manier breng ik het onderwerp in kaart.

Dit proces zie ik als een vorm van techniek die samenhangt met hoe ons onderbewustzijn werkt, en  niet als een vaag spiritueel fenomeen.

Gezien de arbeidsintensieve methode die ik gebruik, duurt het maken van een werk vrij lang. Daarbij is het moeilijk in te schatten hoeveel basismateriaal (afbeeldingen) ik nodig heb voor een werk, omdat ik vooraf niet weet welke onderdelen van een afbeelding gebruikt gaan worden. Plus het feit dat ik geen duizenden fragmentjes neer kan leggen (1 windvlaag…), betekent dat ik veel aan het toeval moet overlaten. Vreemd genoeg komt dit het werk altijd ten goede. Ik beschouw dit dan ook als een organisch formatieproces, omdat het, net zoals in de natuur, op een  chaotische manier uiteindelijk toch resulteert in een esthetisch geheel.

Well, this is interesting. I’m reading this book in English, for I couldn’t find a Dutch copy. Therefor I guess it is not translated in Dutch at all. Now I find something in it, which is about translating. I wrote something about it in Dutch, because you have to know Dutch to understand what I mean. But hey, I started to write about this book in English….. So, what do I do now? Write this article in English or in Dutch? Well, I’ll have a go at it in English.

Mitchell writes (at page 59):

Of course, as a native English (or American) speaker, he is only focused on the English word ‘drawing’. But in other languages, there is another double meaning in the word which is translated for ‘drawing’. In Dutch (my native tongue) ‘drawing’ = ‘tekenen’. There is no such meaning as ‘to pull’ in this word. But it can mean ’sign’ or ‘mark’. So then the whole idea changes. I even looked it up in other languages; in German translated ‘drawing’ is ‘zeichnen’. The word ‘zeichen’ (’mark’, ’sign’) is used for words as Zeichenblock (=’pad’).

[ interesting sideline:  'das Wild zeichnet' = 'game leaves a bloodtrail' kinda poetic, sorry to say for the game itself ofcourse ]

Spanish: ‘tekenen’ = ‘dibujar’ (as ‘to depict’),  ‘marcar’ or ’señal’ (as ‘to mark’).

It’s the same in French; in Turkish ‘çizmek’ (’drawing’) could also mean ’stripe’, ’scrape’, ‘design’, ’scratch’ a.o..

Perhaps another book must be written: What do pictures say?

I’m reading the book ‘What do pictures want? The lives and loves of images’ by W.J.T. Mitchell. Interesting stuff, although English is not my motherlanguage, and I couldn’t find a Dutch translation. I think it’s quite difficult to translate, for instance the word ‘image’ has various meanings, when you translate it into Dutch each meaning uses another word.  I guess. But I am no translator. Obviously. I once met one. He was paranoid. Whether this was because of the huge variety of meanings and choices to make, or because he smoked a lot of pot, don’t know.

Anyway, it’s an interesting book, which I found when looking for literature about 9/11. Mitchell had written some essay (or also a book?) about it, or gave some lecture somewhere (…. o sorry… I always forget these kind of futilities). In thís book he also writes about 9/11. The terrorist act can be seen as an iconoclastic act, ánd at the same time as the creation of a new icon/image (the twin towers burning etc.). A quotation of the first chapter (page 25/26), for this can be seen also as a context for my own work:

” [...] A predictable objection to my whole argument here (JH: you should read the book ….:-) that it attributes a power to images that is simply alien to the attitudes of modern people. Perhaps savages, children, and illiterate masses can, like sheep, be led astray by images, but we moderns know better. Historian of science Bruno Latour has put a decisive stumbling block in the way of this argument in his wonderful book ‘We Have Never Been Modern’. Modern technologies, far from liberating us from the mystery surrounding our own artificial creations, have produced a new world order of ‘factishes’, new syntheses of the orders of scientific, technical factuality on the one hand and of fetishism, totemism, and idolatry on the other. Computers, as we know, are nothing but calculating machines. They are also (as we know equally well) mysterious new organisms, maddeningly complex life-forms that come complete with parasites, viruses, and a social network of their own. New media have made communication seem more transparent, immediate, and rational than ever before, at the same time that they have enmeshed us in labyrinths of new images, objects, tribal identities, and ritual practices. Marshall McLuhan understood this irony very clearly when he pointed out that  ‘by continuously embracing technologies, we relate ourselves to them as servomechanisms. That is why we must, to use them at all, serve these objects, these extensions of ourselves, as gods or minor religions. An Indian is the serveo-mechanism of his canoe, as the cowboy of his horse, or the executive of his clock’. [...] ”

So, more books to be read! And more questions raised:
‘Do I feel modern?’
‘Can I become my own image?