Laurens Kolks > spatial design

Inside Out MA Graduation Show 2020

October 23 2020

Event

Inside Out MA Graduation Show 2020 - Master Institute of Visual Cultures

Moderator - Thematics Panel #6 - Becoming the Non-Normative WA

The two elements that, to me, stand out most when examining the graduation projects of Jesse van den Berg, Monique van de Ven, Minke Nouwens and Geert van der Schaaf are their critical stance towards both conventional norms (assumptions and phenomena easily taken for granted) and what one might refer to as ‘the modernist gaze.’ These artists’ projects all seem to problematize dominant and very fundamental ‘Western’ ways of knowing the world: A worldview that explicitly separates human beings as knowing subjects from their non-human surroundings; a worldview, moreover, that is constituted by strict categorisations and mutually exclusive dualisms such as the nature/culture or the mind/body divide; a seemingly comprehensible worldview that is being challenged by these artists and their work.

In their collective text they refer to the Japanese word WA to describe “an awareness of interpersonal connection and how the quality of space influences the types of relationships that form there.” Physical, imagined, normative and discursive spaces frame the shape and form of the specific relations these spaces mediate. The work of Geert, Minke, Monique and Jesse relates to these various types of spaces in several ways – and more importantly, to the way these spaces influence our ways of knowing and therefore what we consider to be ‘normal.’ The artists wonder what else is possible beyond what is commonly considered the normal or the normative, what else is possible beyond dominant views on how things should be.

Click here to read my complete introductory text.