The girl you see here is Eva, my next-door-neighbour at Tractieweg. She tried out my latest version of Experiment no. 003: A sudden Gust of Wind. Note: Must rename it because this setup works with vibrations.

Basically, it’s meant to make participants conscious of the fact that – yes – art is predominantly visual/auditive, but then we also have a body that is sensitive to the world around us. The work could be read as a critical comment on a world and a way of life that is drifting away from the here-and-now of immediate sensation and moving more and more towards disembodied experience – visual culture, virtual worlds, hyperspace. No groundedness, connectedness, modern culture alienates us from our bodies and our surroundings. Not at all a good thing as far as I am concerned. One could see this work as being a wake-up call for the body, a statement against living in our heads all the time. (It was my tutorial with Klaas yesterday that made me write these lines, the discussion we had made me see more clearly what it is that I am after, he set me thinking ….).

Call this kinesthetic art? Body art is taken I think …   Strange that we have a word for being without vision (blind), without hearing (deaf), without speaking (mute),  balance (clumsy?), but no words for being without taste, smell, touch.

Eva was curious about the rectangle I was about to give it’s final coat of paint today. So, before I sandpapered and painted  it, she tried it out – with good result, she really digs it. She really tested her whole register of sounds, from deep deep belly laughs to tiny whimpers. Fun to watch. Eva doing this reminded me of the one-minute-sculptures of Erwin Wurm. Note: maybe make short films of participants?