WWW.TELETRUSTLAB.NET

Do you need to see my eyes to trust me?

TELE_TRUST creates an engaging agora, researching new parameters for online trust. While in our changing social eco-system we increasingly demand transparency, we cover our vulnerable bodies with personal communication technology. In a visual, poetic way, TELE_TRUST researches contemporary emotional and social tension between visibility, privacy and trust.

Project description:
TELE_TRUST takes place in dynamic public spaces, like train stations, museums, and festivals, where the audience participates in a networked performance & installation.

Everyone can wear a data-veil. The audience can put on a data-veil that functions as a second skin, a membrane, for scanning a networking body experience. The data-veil is a full-body covering garment, combining visual elements from both eastern and western traditions; inspired by a monks’ habit, a burqa and Darth Vader; and ‘trustworthy’ business suits.

The data-veil is interactive. With flexible touch sensors woven into the smart fabric, the wearer’s body becomes a wireless tangible interface allowing connection with an online audience.

Who is watching you now? Around the data-veil, the audience connects with the wearer by Iphone. When touching their Iphone screen, they can unveil the wearers’ face online - and share via real time audio: emotions of trust.

Audience members meet each other in an intimate body experience to exchange stories about: Am I here with you? Who is watching who? Who is controlling who? And in whose body?

TELE_TRUST offers a tangible body interface for scanning online trust.

User generated content of texts and portraits is on www.TELETRUSTlab.net.

TELE_TRUST Shows 2009/2010:

BNMI Canada; De WaagSociety for Old&New Media; ADA-network New Zealand; De Balie-Electrosmog Amsterdam; V2_Institute Rotterdam; Sonic-ActsXlll; Gasthuis Amsterdam, Lumineus Amersfoort; Tschumi-Pavillion Groningen, Exposorium Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

With generous support of:

Mondriaan Foundation Interregeling; Mondriaan Foundation international art presentation; AFK Amsterdam; V2_Institute, BNMI Canada.

AM I SAFE WITH YOU?

StalkShow deals with the threat of insecurity and isolation in public spaces. It is a response to the desire to control situations and eliminate violence:
‘What is rejected and refused in the symbolic order reappears in reality. Specters, ghosts and phantoms haunt the world.’ 1).

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

A performer carries a backpack, containing a laptop with a touch screen. It is a wearable billboard, on which a webcam is attached. The webcam records the face of the user of the touch screen. Individual audience members are invited to touch the screen and navigate through an archive of statements about the threat of insecurity and isolation.

By webcam and wireless connection, the live video portrait appears behind the statements on a large projection screen in the same public space.

The user sees himself 'watching' through a text-window. He 'watches' through a visual, technically created, social-psychological frame of mind which seems to have a life of its own. The statements of other people are linked to his personally rendered image: statements about insecurity and isolation that do not seem controllable. An ‘observing' face gazes down on the observing audience.

The StalkShow’s TEXTS derive from agora-phobia-digitalis.org 3) where Lancel and Maat invite people living isolated, like a prisoner, a nun, an asylum seeker, a digipersona, to make statements about: 'personal strategies to deal with social spaces’. By touching the screen a menu appears, through which the participant of the StalkShow can identify with the prisoner, the digipersona, or other.

By navigating through their statements, the user shows a personal montage of social strategies; making these visible on the large projection screen. The statements are connected within a hypertext related structure.

TOUCH ME INTERACTION:

When touching the screen the user starts a tangible relation with the back of a stranger carrying the billboard. He enters the intimacy of the vulnerable body of the stranger. Generating alertness, attraction or repulsion, the intimacy of the body plays a compelling role in the interface. The unexpected encounter with the mobile billboard and the navigation through the texts offer a confronting relation with the surrounding audience. The resulting interactivity is location- and context- specific.

MEDIA AND PUBLIC SPACE:

The StalkShow shows statements referring to slogans used in media-communication. They expose experiences and feelings of insecurity which are dominant in mainstream media, like on television and in newspapers. Through the Stalkshow Lancel and Maat aim to amplify these feelings to an extreme to be re-experienced and re-interpreted in the urban public space. In doing so the relativity of these feelings has the chance to be revealed.

STALKER:

In the StalkShow the other is absent, replaced by projections. Both cherished and threatening projections represent fear and desire for the other, haunt the mind like a STALKER 2).

StalkShow invites the audience to ‘infiltrate’ a public space, like train stations, museums, squares, airports; and provide the alleged threat with a personal face and interpretive space, to show both its horror and its beauty.

Lancel and Maat create meeting places in which they research connections between social experiences in the virtual and in the physical space.

01. From:‘ ‘CTRL SPACE’, Peter Weibel on Jacques Lacan
02. Refering to Julia Kristeva in ‘Powers of horror’.
03. agora-phobia-digitalis.org interactive project since 2000

Presentations StalkShow:

2008
Urbanscreens 08, Melbourne Australia, curator Mirjam Struppek
Ceac xiamen 08 Xiamen China
2007
ArtCenter Nabi Seoul, Korea P.Art.Y festival Seoul curators Roh Soh-Yeong, Dooeun Chio
Art and Science Exhibition and Symposium Beijing, China
Science and Art Expo Shanghai, China Millenium Museum Beijing, China
2006
‘Outvideo 06’ ArtInPro Moscow & Yekaterinburg, Russia, curator Arseny Sergeyev
Smart Project Space Amsterdam, Netherlands ‘Tresholding’, curator Alice Smiths
Festival ‘Stad als Film’Schiedam, Netherlands, curator Martijn Verhoeven
DasArts Amsterdam, Netherlands
2005
Beijing new Media Arts exhibition and symposium China, curator Alex Adriaansens
Urban Screens 05 Symposium, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, curators Geert Lovink, Mirjam Struppek, Jeroen Boomgaard
2004
ISEA 04 Helsinki, Finland
Kiasma Museum Helsinki, Finland
E culture-Fair Virtual Platform / V2_LAB for Unstable MediaRotterdam, Netherlands
Hong Kong Arts Center Hong Kong, China
IVFA Independent Video and Film Festival, curators Connie Lam, Teresa Kwong, Isaac Leung

Support from:
Stalkshow has been developed in collaboration with V2_Lab.

Thanks to: Fund for Visual Art, design and Architecture (NL), Mondriaan Foundation, Amsterdam Fund for the Art,
Fund for Performance Art, Kiasma Museum, [Nes]theaters Amsterdam, Foundation DasArts, SSAS, Dutch Embassies in Helsinki, Hong Kong, Moscow and China.

Thanks to:

Josephine Bosma, Mart van Bree, Günther Heeg, Steven Kovats, Anne Nigten, Jellichje Reijnders, Alice Smits, Robert Steijn, Alfred Rademakers.

Entering The Paranoid Panopticum you will run across your own fixation on control. While you will be able to control the visual by mirror and video- projection, a shift in the perception of reality takes place. Controlling changes into fear of being controlled, maximizing control becomes its own threat. In the Paranoid Panopticum you are haunted by your own mirrored projections. You can play with your own projection in a paradox based on the myth of Echo, Narcissus and his mirrored image. At the moment where Narcissus commits suicide, the mirrored image of the visitor is ‘suicided’. At this point the story starts over again.

The text in the installation is based on an Echo play (1923) by Alfred Kreijmborg. The lines of the characters in the play are spoken by Viviane de Muynck and Hermen Maat. The visual appearances of Echo and Narcissus are alternately played by the mirrored projections of the visitor and actress Viviane de Muynck.

In the installation the visitor is haunted by his own, mirrored projections. These projections start a dialogue with the pre-recorded images and texts of an actress and a male voice. This dialogue reflects on ones self-image and is based on the story of Echo and Narcissus. The multiplication of this image through the visual control possibilities of the mirror, live and semi-live video projection alienates the visitor from his own self(image). When the (projected) visitor meets the (projected) actress, he is confronted with his own fixation on control: Who am I? Who do I meet? How am I manipulated? With what image outside myself can I identify? These thoughts become part of the projected video image. At the same time the work shows the surprised the visitor a painterly video-portrait, in which the image of himself meets the image of the actress. The installation consists of a non-transparent privalite-glass, 1 meter high 3 meter long, which can change into a mirror. Opposite this wall there is a projection-screen. The spectator walks in-between the projectionscreen and the mirror. The mirror is permeable from behind so a video camera can record the spectator. This recorded image is projected on the screen opposite the mirror. As a consequence you see yourself looking over your own shoulder in the mirror. On the projection-screen the recorded images of the visitor are played back.

These images are digitally 'live' added in a story played by Viviane de Muynck and the Visitor.

De bezoeker wordt in de installatie achtervolgd door zijn eigen, gespiegelde projecties, die binnen de geprojecteerde ruimte een dialoog aangaan met vooraf opgenomen beelden en tekst van een actrice. Deze dialoog gaat over het zelfbeeld en is gebaseerd op de mythe van Echo en Narcissus. De verdubbeling en veelvoud van het zelfbeeld middels visuele controlemogelijkheden van spiegel, live en semi-live videoprojectie vervreemden de bezoeker van het eigen zelfbeeld. Wanneer de (geprojecteerde) bezoeker een ontmoeting aangaat met de geprojecteerde actrice, confronteert dit met de eigen fixatie op controle: Wie ben ik? En wie ontmoet wie? Wordt ik gemanipuleerd? Met welk beeld buiten mijzelf ik me kan identificeren? Deze gedachten worden onderdeel van het geprojecteerde videobeeld.Tegelijkertijd toon ik aan de gedesoriënteerde en verwonderde blik de schoonheid van een schilderachtig videoportret, waarin het beeld van de kijker en de actrice elkaar ontmoeten.

Credits:

Produced at V2_lab Rotterdam in collaboration with ZKM Karlsruhe

Software design: Carlo Prelz, Aadjan van der Helm.

Thanks to:

Viviane de Muynck

Jeffrey Shaw.

The Paranoid Panopticum is funded by:

The Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Architecture and Design

Amsterdam Fund for the Arts

Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe (ZKM)

De interactieve installatie Paranoid Panopticum is aangekocht door het ZKM en staat daar momenteel in de tentoonstelling : Meisterwerke ause der Collection.

The interactive installation Paranoid Panopticum (2000) is purchased by the ZKM Karlsruhe and was on display in the exhibition: Meisterwerke aus der Collection.

FloatScanner is a play with two participants:

A participant is invited to make a journey on the canals of the city with a blacked out boat. He lies on a waterbed in a tent. The waterbed reacts on the movements of the boat, the effect is disorientation. For the perception of what is happening outside one is depending on a surveillance camera mounted outside on the boat. The images of the surveillance camera are projected above his head on a projection screen. These images are mixed with what a surveillance camera inside the boat scans; his own body. Thus finding yourself in a closed of space, observing yourself floating in the mediated surrounding of the boat. The body is transferred in to a mediated reality, in which it can float.

The physical experience is detached from the rational understanding of the surrounding. FloatScanner plays with the floating apart of these two worlds, thus making the participant lose more and more control on his surrounding and himself. The identification with a self-center which generates meaning to the world a round us evaporates, disappears.

Floating away on a waterbed, who doesn’t want that? FloatScanner gives you the opportunity; it scans and re-projects your surroundings, while you float away from the shore. But how reliable is this information if your journey is depending on the manipulations of a visitor on the shore? Are you still in control of what you see and experience, while you float away?

FloatScanner is an interactive installation. It explores mechanisms of manipulation and submission in the domain of wireless communication.

Floatscanner in Groningen:

Manipulation from the shore:

The process of detachment is manipulated from the shore by a second participant. Images of the surveillance camera’s are send to the shore, manipulated by participant 2 and sent back. This makes the surveillance camera images even more surreal. For the manipulation the second participant has several scenario’s at his disposal.

Lying on the waterbed of boat participant 1 can manipulate the 3 videolayers in the image with a joystick. During the approximately ten minutes trip, both camera's scan the surrounding of the boat and the body of participant 1, thus uncovering meticulous the process of detachment of the body and the surrounding. FloatScanner scans the process of detachment and boundlessness.

FLOATSCANNER INSIDE

FLOATSCANNER PROJECTION TOUCHSCREEN:

Leisure activities have become one of the mayor economic forces, a force that penetrates different levels in our lives. Simultaneously with leisure activities a control-economy became a force that gives direction to the way we live. As with leisure activities these forces determine the way we design our public space. People are looking for new experiences as leisure activities, with the consequence that city-centers change into controlled ‘fairground attractions’.

Presentations:

Groningen Bubble/NP3: June 2003

Amsterdam Scheepvaart Museum: May 2004

Bremen CulturZentrum Schlachthof: June 2004

In collaboration with Karen Lancel

Robert Steijn, Malijn Maat, www.Scholtenswerkplek.nl, Maritska Witte, Arjen Lancel, Martijn Veldhoen, Peter Bogers, Erwin Slegers, NP3/platformgras/ax710.

Soft- and Hardware development V2_lab: Anne Nigten, Artem Baguinski, Simon de Bakker, Stock

Production: Hermen Maat, Karen Lancel

Floatscanner is supported by Amsterdam Fund for the Arts & V2_lab Rotterdam. Hermen Maat is supported by Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture.

What is a safe place for you?
How would you describe an unsafe place?
When and where do you feel isolated?
How do you control your space?

Agora Phobia (digitalis) is a mobile monument for ‘public isolation’. Traveling in city public spaces it questions mental images and strategies for being (un)safe and isolated; and connects social experiences in both the physical and the virtual space.

Agora Phobia (digitalis) invites you in a semi-transparent, inflatable Isolation Pillar, in crowded city public spaces. Inside the Isolation Pillar one feels safe within an intimate space; and at the same time, lacking control over the outside, one feels vulnerable. Agora Phobia (digitalis) provides for an isolated communication space in which notions of being inside and being outside are reversible. In the Isolation Pillar is an online computer. You are invited to participate in an internet-dialogue, to chat with someone who lives isolated somewhere else, such as someone who has been living in prison, someone who lives in a cloister, someone living illegally in the city, a digi-persona, someone suffering from agoraphobia. Your participation in the chat will be published on www.agora-phobia-digitalis.org and become part of an archive of chat-sheets, performances and installations. The website also offers the opportunity to participate at home by monologue.

Agora Phobia (digitalis) shows:
Eyebeam New York USA, curator Benjamin Weil
Villette Numerique Paris France, curator Benjamin Weil.
SKOR / City of Utrecht, NL - Exhibition: Parasite Paradise.
Artfair and Podewil Berlin, curator Wilhelm Grosz.
MUU Galleria Helsinki Finland - Exhibition: 'Direct exposure'.
Volkskrant.nl/oog, curator Nannette Hoogslag.
De Appel Amsterdam NL, curator Zdenka Badovinac - Exhibition: 'Unlimited.nl#3'.
Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam NL - Exhibition 'Municipal Acquisitions'.
Foundation DasArts.
CBK Amsterdam, curator: Maryla Nienhuis.

In collaboration with:
Rens Bouma / imaginAiR - design inflatable; Robert Steijn; Jellichje Reijnders.

Supported by:
Mondriaanfoundation, Amsterdam Fund for the Arts, Fund for Art design and Architecture, National Fund for the Performing Arts, Foundation DasArts, Prince Bernhard Culture Fund, Berliner Kulturveranstaltungs-GmbH Berlin, [NES]theaters, the Dutch Ambassy in Germany and Paris; Dutch consulat in New York (USA). Website hosting donated by Driebit Amsterdam, www.driebit.nl

Interactive Video and RFID installation

Straitjacket Embrace! deals with experiences of fear and desire for the other in contemporary public spaces. In our networked society the public space is no longer a space we can leave or exclude. Through mobile technologies – like mobile phone, RFID – the controlling gaze of public space is everywhere; in our private homes, our beds, and even in our bodies. Lancel and Maat research the networked gaze as a ‘participatory panopticon’. They explore the personal gaze and individual narratives of the connected body; the way we meet and embrace.

For Straitjacket Embrace! Lancel and Maat designed a ‘fictional public space’ with an interactive straitjacket as interface. Here they invite their audience. The interactive traitjacket is wearable, like a second skin, and provides the wearer with both the experience of play and a phobic ‘self-surveillance system’. The space around the straitjacket is sonically created around audible stories, while visually creating a surrealistic panopticon. In their straitjacket Lancel and Maat turn a hidden RFID control system upside down into a private play-zone for your own body.

On RFID control technology

For the interactive straitjacket Lancel and Maat use 'invisible technology' called RFID (radio frequency identification). RFID is a system that uses tiny little chip-with-sensors, RFID tags, that provide objects each with an unique identity. RFID creates a wireless network, nowadays used for (product) control and logistics. Through RFID, anonymous strangers can ‘trace’ your private life wherever you go without you ever knowing it. Today these tiny little RFID tags can be found almost everywhere – in our mobile phones, under the skin of our pats, in bracelets and anklets worn by people in prison.

How does the straitjacket work?

The Straitjacket hangs from the ceiling surrounded by camera's, audio feed and video projections. You are invited to put the straitjacket on and find both it’s enclosing functionality as well it’s natural invitation ‘to embrace yourself’. Through touching the straitjacket, your body becomes an interface. Invisibly in the front of the jacket Lancel and Maat placed not one unique RFID tagbut a hundred of them for you to play with. You 'trace' yourself by putting both your arms in the jacket and embracing yourself; by a smart hidden little RFID reader invisibly attached to your hand in the jacket, to ‘read’ the RFID tags. By softly caressing yourself the RFID tags open their information for you.

- Left hand - With your left hand you activate projected live video images of yourself on the screens surrounding you. The images are generated by multiple cameras from different angles, connected to the RFID tags. Relating to each RFID tag, you manipulate these cameras, creating a surveillance system or Panopticon turned mad.

While playing in the privacy of the straitjacket your image on the screens is mixed with live video feeds of an audience gazing at you from public space. Your video image is simultaneously presented on a screen in the museum entrance hall. Here ‘you’ gaze at the audience – and the audience gazes back, at both your exclusive situation as well as at their own reactions.

- Right hand - Your right hand turns your body into a multi-channel radio-archive.

Your body seems to contain intimate whispering voices of different people telling stories about trying to be safe in public space by being invisible and uncontrollable. For these stories Lancel and Maat had interviews with people who in some way feel excluded from the public space, like people living illegally in the city, prisoners, refugees and people dealing with mental health issues. The main question was: 'what is a safe place for you in public space?'

The interviews lead to personal and intimate stories about the (im)possibility of creating an own safe place, and the often total dependency for this on strangers. In StraitJacket Embrace! your body contains a mediated memory for these stories on public space experiences.

Straitjacket Embrace! is both a self-surveillance system and a tool for storytelling; creating an audio-visual, immersiveenvironment through embracing yourself.

Are you safe with me NOW

In Explosive Jacket we research ‘the body as a memory archive’, in a mediated environment. How are mediated experiences(like 9/11) stored in our private bodies? How does this influence our social interaction – crossing boundaries of intimacy? In Explosive Jacket the body is mediating between the audience and ‘explosive’, online memories. The audience is invited in dynamic public spaces to play with these physical, mediated memories and the suspense they create; and show both their horror and their beauty.

Photo's Cross Media Week: PICNIC '06

Performance / installation:

Explosive Jacket is a wearable, interactive performance installation. The actual jacket can be touched or caressed by the visitor through mobile telephone NOKIA 3220 - RFID, activating a 'Touch-Body Extension' in the performance. Through the RFID technology, the Explosive Jacket is wirelessly networked to a public generated net archive of mediated ‘explosions’. Through body touching and immediate appearance on screen and audio tube, Explosive Jacket creates an immersive, explosive environment.

By touching the Jacket, one can activate images of explosions; 9/11, a meteor crash, a suicide bombing, images of test explosions in the dessert appear around the visitors on projection screens. Explosive Jacket shows mediated explosions, which we remember collectively from television replay, surveillance footage, docu-drama, newspaper articles  and personal websites. These images are repeated and remade, inadvertently creating a 'more real' mediated 'here and now'. In Explosive Jacket the body becomes an interface for showing every body as potentially ‘explosive’.

Body as an interface

A visitor wearing the Jacket plays with a visitor touching the jacket. When touching the Jacket, the user starts a tactile relation with the intimate, vulnerable body of a stranger. Generating alertness, attraction or repulsion, the intimacy of the body plays a compelling role in the interface. The perversity of a tender physical caressing, which is generating destructive explosions, questions boundaries of intimacy in a public space of suspense. When locating a tag on the body, both mobile phone and Jacket tremble – immediately followed by surrounding explosions; through sound and on screens.

Public generated net archive

Explosive Jacket invites the audience to add movies of explosions to its collection in the online database. In this way, ‘explosive’ images and stories will flow through a body. The body mediates collective, online generated, explosions. To create the online movies, participants find dramaturgical parameters (time, space, tension) online.

Public Space

Explosive Jacket functions as a second skin, which the audience temporary inhabits; relating to an interactive, ambient, virtual environment. Intertwined in a changing interplay of social roles in public space, the user searches for explosions on the body. The unexpected encounter with this physical navigation and the explosive sound and image offer a confronting relation with the surrounding audience.

example of video's triggered when touching Explosive Jacket.

Photo's Cross Media Week: PICNIC '06

Projection Screens

In Explosive Jacket we use context specific screens, such as projection screens or

public (LED) screens. Indoor Art Space presentations:

2 semi transparent screens of 3x4 meters; standing (mirroring) on floor.

Presentations Explosive Jacket:

2007 Mediamatic Salon Amsterdam.

Nabi Art Center in Seoul (Korea) (conditional).

Fashion Institute / Diana Krabbendam: Fashion Event.

Specially developed format in collaboration with Moroccan students, living in De Baarsjes Amsterdam;

discussing the (cultural) implications of touching, gender, image.

Development of a spatial / international network of interacting Explosive Jackets.

2006 Cross Media Week, Amsterdam

With support from:

Fund for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture, Cross Media Week 06 Amsterdam, Mediamatic (Amsterdam), De Waag, Society for Old and New Media (Amsterdam).

Thanks to:

Anne Nigten and Stephen Kovats (V2), Rob Kranenburg (Virtueel Platform), Klaas Kuitenbrouwer (Mediamatic), Marnix Rijnart (HKU), Erwin Slegers (Designer), Mirjam Struppek (Urban Screens), Robert Jan Smit (lab) en Steven Jouwersma (Frank Mohr Institute), Maritska Witte (Frascati /Nes theatres)

Short description of artwork Karen Lancel & Hermen Maat:

What is a safe place? Lancel and Maat deal with the threat of insecurity and isolation inpublic spaces. Their work is a response to the desire to control situations and eliminate violence: ‘What is rejected and refused in the symbolic order reappears in reality. Specters, ghosts and phantoms haunt the world.’1)

Lancel and Maat inquire the changing perception of the public space and notions of community. In this context they research the relation between individual identity and social

structures; inviting the audience in concepts for meeting places. ‘How do media and new communication technologies change our contact with others?’ Using electronic communication devices Lancel and Maat experiment with new artforms for social cohesion; connecting social experiences in the virtual and the physical space. In their performances and installations Lancel and Maat use a combination of online and offline media (internet, live TV, video feedback, RFID, WIFI, newspaper, cd-rom, web-archive) in which they invite the audience to participate.

Lancel and Maat show their performances and installationsin public spaces like train stations, museums, squares, airports. Here they invite the audience to ‘infiltrate’ a public space and provide the alleged threat with a personal face and interpretive space, to show

both its horror and its beauty.

01.Peter Weibel on Lacan, in: CTRLspace/ZKM)

Selection International shows:

ZKM Karlsruhe (Germany) Second new media Art Exhibition 05 – Symposium Millennium Art Museum, Beijing (China) V2_Institute for Unstable media (NL) Ars Electronica (AU) ISEA 04 (Inter Society Electronic Arts) and Kiasma Museum Helsinki (Finland) Transmediale Berlin (Germany) Eyebeam New York (USA) Biennale Villette Numerique Paris, (France) VideoTage / Hong Kong Arts center / IFVA 06 (China) ArtInPro Moscow (Russia) Podewil Berlin (Germany) Artfair Artforum Berlin (Germany) De Appel Amsterdam (NL) SKOR (Foundation Art in Public Space, NL) Kunstgebouw (Art in Public Space) Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (NL) Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam (NL)

A TEMPORARY LIBRARY Karen Lancel in samenwerking met Hermen Maat 1998

Voorjaar 1998 werd ik uitgenodigd door National museum Zadar, in samenwerking met kunstenaars / curatoren Sandra Sterle en Dan Oki. De vraag was om de inwoners van Zadar te betrekken bij een project, dat in gaat op de historie van de City Loggia, een laat middeleeuws gebouw aan het centrale plein.

Zadar ligt aan de kust en is in de Tweede Wereldoorlog zwaar onder vuur genomen. In de laatste oorlog hebben vele inwoners drie jaar lang in kelders geleefd.

Bij navraag werd me duidelijk, dat men buitenlandse kunstenaars uitnodigt om ‘in de toekomst te kijken’ – maar niet dat deze kunstenaars de oorlog opnieuw aankaarten. Ik wilde daar respect voor tonen, maar tegelijkertijd wil ik als kunstenaar een manier vinden om binnen de kunst een gebaar te maken naar het overleven; voor, tijdens of na een oorlog. Ik zocht een manier om het onderwerp ‘oorlog' te vermijden, maar er met een omweg toch over te spreken.

De City Loggia kreeg in 1885 de bestemming van een openbare bibliotheek. Tijdens de tweede wereldoorlog werd die bibliotheek er weggehaald om in veiligheid te brengen. Na de oorlog werd zij gehuisvest een paar straten verder. Deze behuizing met daarin de bibliotheek werd in de laatste oorlog zwaar gebombardeerd. Momenteel is er een internationale actie gaande om boeken aan Zadar te doneren.

Voor mij is het lezen een koesteren van boeken en verhalen een manier om moeilijke tijden te overleven. In deze periode was ik zelf net bezig om mijn eige bibliotheek, die voor een verbouwing maandenlang in dozen had gezeten, weer uit te pakken. Het trof me, hoezeer elk boek dat ik in mijn hand nam, me onmiddelijk naar binnen zoog, en me herinnerde aan de beelden en verhalen die er in verborgen lagen. Ik besloot in de City Loggia een `Tijdelijke Bibliotheek' te organiseren. Tijdelijk, passerend in de tijd, met boeken zwevend in de hand juist wanneer je er naar reikt. Een collectie van boeken, verhalen, die altijd bestaat - ook als de bibliotheek vernietigd wordt.

Het museum bracht me via de universiteit in contact met een tolk. Samen spraken we, zij in 't Kroatisch en ik in 't Engels, een week lang met mensen in Zadar. We vroegen, of zij voor `n twee weken durende tentoonstelling hun favoriete boek wilden meebrengen, `as an attempt to make a library of stories and parts of stories, that one treasures in the heart to survive.' We vroegen ook of zij hun favoriete passage erin tijdens de opening wilden voorlezen.

Na een week brachten vijftig mensen een boek mee. Soms één boek per twee personen, want boeken zijn duur in Zadar. We hingen de boeken op, zodat ze in de ruimte zweefden, op ooghoogte van de eigenaar: kinderen lager, volwassenen hoger. Ze hingen geopend bij de persoonlijk uitgekozen passage.

Tijdens de tentoonstelling lieten mensen elkaar hun boeken zien, en bladerden nieuwsgierig door andermans uitgekozen passages. Tijdens de opening lazen vele boekeigenaars, ook zij, die eerst te verlegen waren, voor. Het was niet de bedoeling een voorlees-moment te maken met een lezer op een podium en luisteraars op een afstandje. Iedereen las door elkaar heen, zijn eigen verhaal alleen hoorbaar voor hemzelf en voor de mensen om hem heen. Er ontstond een gons van verhalen. Soms herinnerde het aan de toren van Babel, zoals ook voormalig Joegoslavië op conflictueuze wijze vele talen sprak. In a Temporary Library ontstond een tijdelijk, vluchtig, prachtig  geluid van individueel hoorbare verhalen.

Bij Artists International Research/AIR

At the show of Maat Netwerken at A.I.R. visitors were recieved by a host.

Together the entred the visitors data in the computer.

The Computer gave every visitor a personal code.

Then a handprint was made together in the dark room.

Darkroom in the exhibitionspace Exhibitionspace with handprints of visitors

At the end of the show visitors got their handprint sent home after being scanned,

they were publicly deleted on local TV directly form the computer.

MAAT NETWERKEN publishes BIOCHEMICAL PORTRAIT

in 'Beurs van Berlage'

01. The finger of the person portrayed is being cleaned and stung for blood.

02. With a pipette the drop of blood is taken from the finger.

03. The drop of blood is analysed.

04. By means of this analyses a portrait is being made, it gives a specific image from You at that specific moment.

05. BIOCHEMICAL PORTRAIT (XEROX)

Concerning the meaning of this analyses

Maat Netwerken has no interest.

So far and yet so close

So close and yet so far

An installation by Hermen Maat:

Software and sound: Hans Kerkhof

Hardware: Rob Linders

Voices/conversations:

Susanne Visser and Roef Ragas

Dawn Mastin Marc Bellamy and Michael Gibbs

The Meetingpoint is an interactive installation meant to be used by two people.

The installation consists of a Video projection part and an Audio section.

Visitors can take places at the two bar stools each end of the table. On both sides they will find a headset with a microphone.

The black box in the middle of the table holds a projection screen; on the screen they will see their own face and the face of the person from the other side of the table, projected upon each other. Because of the small distance between the participants and the good quality of the sound in the headset, they feel very close to each other. The strange character of the video projection on the other hand gives a great feeling of estrangement.

On the table there is a green, a red and a blue luminous button. By pushing the green button one can call up sentences of a recorded conversation. There are two conversations between a male and a female voice. Both have an opposite theme: one conversation is reflecting on our telephone-habits and other social behaviour. The other conversation is very direct; a meeting in a bar, the voices are paying court to each other, one becomes a voyeur . This makes them both ground and disturbance for conversations.

With the red button statements of visitors can be recorded, they are mixed through the previously recorded conversations. Through the participation of the visitor the Meetingpoint becomes a dynamic system. The blue button switches between the Dutch and English recordings. The image is connected with the voices of the visitors. Your portrait will fade in and out, depending on weather you speak.

1996

Locaties

Museum voor Moderne Kunst Arnhem.

Theater Lantaren/Venster Rotterdam.

Theater de Brakke Grond Amsterdam.

Festival `Triple X' Westergasfabriek Amsterdam.

'Uw Gastheer M/V' Veemvloer Amsterdam.

Helden op Herhaling is een interactief gezelschapsspel. Het publiek speelt met maakbaarheid, met vervreemding van bijvoorbeeld intieme en geweldadige ervaringen en met de `echte, kwaliteits'ervaring als produkt. Binnen de vorm van een gezelsschapsspel onderzoekt Helden op Herhaling hoe deze thema's individueel worden ervaren, en welke rol de verbeelding daarbij speelt. Het spel geeft de gelegenheid te spelen met begrippen als Echt, Onecht, Live, Intiem - en Lekker. Het publiek speelt op een levensgroot, ovaal speelbord van veertig vierkante meter, onder begeleiding van een gastheer of gastvrouw. Het publiek wordt als spelers verdeeld in vijf identiteiten: Echt, Onecht, Live, Intiem en Lekker. De eerste vier identiteiten corresponderen met vier `taartpunten' op het speelveld. De vijfde identiteit, Lekker, is een zwervende groep. De spelers kijgen een eigen krukje om, als pion, op een eigen vlak van het speelbord plaats te nemen. De gastheer of gastvrouw beschrijft de identiteiten, en laat daarna het spel naar aanleiding van vragen over Echt, Onecht, Live, Intiem en Lekker vergelijkbaar met quizvorm  zoveel mogelijk uit de persoonlijke associatieve verhalen van de spelers bestaan. Door de verhalen van de spelers over 'onpresenteerbare' ideeën als Echt en Onecht, tast het spel af wat niet gepresenteerd kan worden. Tegelijkertijd is er gelegenheid om door het steeds opnieuw toetsen en definiëren, de persoonlijke betrokkenheid bij de werkelijkheid als spel te beleven. De winnaar van het spel wordt gevormd door de consensus die de spelers binnen de spelregels over elkaars beschrijving van de werkelijkheid bereiken.

Het spel werd gespeeld in theater en museum. In het museum op de opening en iedere zondagmiddag. Wanneer er niet gespeeld werd in het museum, vormde de speelvloer de tentoonstelling, aangevuld met de spelteksten, die opgenomen op CD, in de ruimte klonken. In het theater speelde het publiek het spel, in het museum waren er bovendien toeschouwers die keken hoe er door anderen gespeeld werd.

Helden op Herhaling is een interactief gezelschapsspel. De vertrouwdheid met spel, spelregels en `willen winnen' maakt dat de concentratie bij beeld, inhoud en het concept van `gezelschapsspel' komt te liggen.

De catalogus is tevens een speelbord/spelboekje, dat het publiek, perspel maximaal 40 deelnemers, meekreeg bij het betreden van het speelveld.

Met dank aan:

Werkplaatsproduktie van Theater Lantaren/Venster Rotterdam,

CBK Rotterdam, Mondriaanstichting.

Betrokken beeldend kunstenaars/acteurs:

Carel Alphenaar, Chris Baaten, Eveline Janssen, Renee Kool, Arjen Lancel, Hermen Maat, Linda Pollack.