Intimate Open Studios #2

Intimate Open Studios #2

Event15-16.05.2021iii workspace hostintimateperformance

Intimate Open Studios #2
Saturday 15th & Sunday 16th May
iii workspace, Willem Dreespark 312, The Hague
Reservations and queries: please contact anastasia@instrumentinventors.org

Following the success of its launch edition last Fall, Intimate Open Studios returns to present works in progress by iii artists, residents and guests.

Due to the extension of the current covid regulations, this event will be held as a private event for professionals by invitation only. All the works will be documented and freely available online for viewing post event for all our audiences.

Intimate Open Studios is a curated event which offers a tasting selection of intimate sensory experiences. iii opens its doors to provide an informal setting for the presentation, demonstration, testing and discussion of new works by featured artists. As feedback is essential in the creation process, we welcome you to come and give your input as well as have the chance to experience the works firsthand while they are still in development.

For this edition there will be works by artist in residence Mint Park, workspace and team member Kay Churcher, workspace member Mihalis Shammas, and guest duo Maarten Heijnens & Anthony van Gog.

Heartscore – Maarten Heijnens & Anthony van Gog

“Heartscore is our second physical score. It is a composition in which the live heartbeat of the performer(s) forms the metronome of the score itself. The live heartbeat of the performer(s) thus determines the tempo at which the score is performed. Contrary to the classic tradition of a rigid conductor’s beat, we give the conductive function to the heartbeat. By doing that we create a tension between the organic/intuitive (of the body) and a rigid/rational framework (of a composition). A duality, so to speak, arises between the will of the body and the dominant brain. We want to offer space and give language to the body itself, so that we are able to (re-)meet each other at our most intimate and existential level; as breathing, pounding and living bodies.”

Anthony van Gog & Maarten Heijnens both graduated in 2019 with a BA in Performance at the Institute of Performative Arts (Maastricht). From a shared fascination with the body, its processes and its expressiveness, they formed an artist-duo.

Together they create what they call ‘physical scores’. In a physical score, the ‘body-as-instrument’ is centralised, not the musical instrument. Within their physical scores they create a field of tension between the organic body and the rigid framework of a composition. They search for the friction between the will of the body and the will of the mind, between intuition and reason, between bodily desires and rational submission. Here they see the poetic space open up: where the body comes to speak. In this digital era – where the physical/sensory is under pressure – they want to give the sensory body a platform and thus contribute to the relationship discourse between the organic/mechanical, the natural/artificial and freedom/submission.

Whoosh –  Kay Churcher

Whoosh (working title) is a work focussed on the physical sensation and experience of air. Bringing us out of our heads and away from our dominant senses, returning our attention to the body and to the sensation of feeling. It is in this physical sensation where we can find peace, calm, and meditation.

A popular method of meditation is to focus on the rhythm of one’s breathing. The combination of the regular rhythm and the internal physical sensation allows your mind to focus on this and away from the turbulent thoughts occupying your brain. This work externalises this rhythmic air, to focus on the sensation of air brushing over one’s body and the sound of it rushing past you. It aims to pull focus to the present, where only the now exists and memories of the past and thoughts of the future hold no place.

Kay Churcher is an installation artist working with spatial awareness and the senses. Born in 1996 in Edinburgh, she studied ArtScience at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague where she now resides. She creates site-specific immersive installations exploring the fleeting nature of experience and subjectivity. She employs a wide array of new media and sculpture to create her works while adapting each one to its surrounding environment. Using light, sound, projection, and architectural constructions she creates individual experiences for people to explore, drawing the attention to an often overlooked aspect of themselves or their environment.

Morphology of the Aerial – Mint Park

Morphology of the Aerial (working title) creates a series of palpable yet ephemeral experiences of ever morphing landscapes, by revealing progress of site-specific airflow patterns as an installation, a composition and a performance. From the technical base and conceptual research of the two previous iterations of air sculpting apparatus in Turbulence Studies 2019 and Turbulence Studies 2020, the project will take a closer look at the relationship between fluid dynamics and its audio-visual aftermath in air patterns using turbulent/non-turbulent interface created by different intensity of air pressure and temperature changes brought on to the atmosphere. The series of spatial experiments will not only include the scientific research in pneumatic engineering, thermodynamic mixing, and new materiality, but also an aesthetic investigation in creating visceral multi-sensorial audio-visual narrative.

Mint Park is an electronic musician and a new media artist who investigates space, texture, and natural phenomena in her sound-driven practice. She will be undertaking a month long research residency at iii to further develop the project ‘Morphology of the Aerial’, a continuation of her studies in air turbulence. For more information, please visit her resident page here.

Lyraei – Mihalis Shammas

The Lyraei is an electromagnetic string instrument developed over the course of the last 9 months at the iii workspace. It is a hybrid between electronic and acoustic instruments; its modular brain generates electromagnetic pulses, imposing them on a set of steel strings. The complexity of the circuitry is reflected in the timbres of its sound, as the oscillations of its strings are constantly wavering between chaotic motion and natural resonance. This artifact can be used for live performance, or simply left to act on its own.

Mihalis Shammas is a Cypriot (born 1988) artist and designer. His work is driven by an urge to create narrative objects and tools for musical expression. It explores the intricacies of movement and sound in animating materials, by manifesting tensions between the mechanical and the chaotic. Amidst mechanical precision and poetic error, his artifacts carry about the imaginary dimension of the useless machine, their technical nature muddled by their narrative capacities.

Intimate Open Studios is presented by iii with financial support from Creative Industries Fund NLThe Municipality of The Hague and Performing Arts Fund NL.

Heartscore is co-produced by Veem House for Performance, Makershuis Tilburg, STUK, Via Zuid and Master in Theatre. It will premier at Veem House for Performance and be on tour from September 2021 onwards.

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