What Are You Willing To Do… (2017)

At7 Amsterdam (NL).

In collaboration with Nora Hansen.

This Way Out (2018)

La Plage, Paris (FR).

Photography by Aurélien Mole.

The site specific installation ‘This Way Out’ is part of an ongoing project about tax evasion in the art world. The Freeport plays an important role in tax evasion where works of art are “temporarily” stored, exempted from Value Added Tax, in climate controlled cells, rented by high-end art dealers and collectors.

In an attempt to enter the otherwise impenetrable concrete art storages, I watched promotional videos posted by the world’s most famous Freeports. The most relatable object inside the polished facilities, were the green little men running for the Emergency Exit. Within a fully automated climate-controlled warehouse, fire of all elements, forms the most catastrophic and irreversible threat and potential destruction of wealth.

In the video the viewer sees dark and empty industrial spaces exemplary for Freeport storage facilities. Human shadows walk in and out of the frame, seemingly unaware of the camera. In the scenes that follow, the viewer witnesses the shades inspecting sculptures and paintings, and the sealing of what seems to be some sort of deal.  

The video is projected on to the gallery window which is covered with a frosted-glass window foil. The frosted glass references the materials inside the Freeport, as well as the Freeport’s quintessential quality of protecting the confidentiality of tax free art sales and storage. Between the scenes, the video dips to black, leaving the viewer with the opaque frosted glass gallery window. The video fades in and out, just like the car headlights passing by on Boulevard Saint-Martin where the gallery is located.

By turning the viewer into an eyewitness of the sketchy activity happening inside the gallery, I tried to transform the space into a crime-scene. The stylistic choices of the video reference film-noir, in which crime is depicted by silhouettes and shadow-play.

Part of Bond-Ware

6 New Truths (You Didn’t Know) About Ducks and Other Noumena (2016)

Greenray, London (UK)

The Artist Talk (2017)

South London Gallery (UK). Invited by Cédric Fauq, part of The Conch.

This is a reading performance of the script of ‘The Artist Talk’. It was performed at the South London Gallery. The script is based on a text written by Nathalie Boobis , a curator I’ve worked with. The text about my practice includes background information about my work, stories I have told her, and references I have been using.

The script of the play is projected on the back wall, and forms the set design. Together with ‘the Audience’, ‘the Artist’ reads through the script that contextualises my practice. Everyone had found a copy of the script on their chair. They were scripted to say things they might not agree with, but were taken by the hand to behave as my perfect audience. Emotions such as laughter and surprise, were scripted and performed communally. Various audience members, such as the writer of the text and the curator of the South London Gallery, had a special role: complimenting my work, or critiquing the performance.

In the image the script starts melting from the wall behind me after taking of my long black dress covering my white outfit. I push the script up with my hands.

What Happens in Bond, Stays in Bond (2018)

Commissioned by POIUYT for UNSEEN Photography fair (2018)

Art Rotterdam – Prospects and Concepts (2017). 

‘What happens in Bond, Stays in Bond’ premiered at UNSEEN photography fair as a performance. In the context of an art fair, the interview explores the role of the art object within an unregulated art market. The interview was broadcasted live from the fair, and the documentation of it is available as a podcast.

‘What happens in Bond, Stays in Bond’ exists also as video. Bond-Ware is a project about tax evasion and ways in which the art object is instrumentalised through infrastructures of tax evasion. The work investigates and speculates upon alternative functions and valuation of art, under the circumstance of dirty shippers, freeports and offshore finance.

Both the performance and the video consist of a whistleblowing interview between fictive character Richard, a former gallery director played by my father, and myself. The text of the interview is based on real interviews I did with big players from the London art world that want to remain anonymous.

In one of the scenes Richard describes the way in which he used to help his clientele to tax evade with the exchange of originals and replicas: “You tell the Freeport: ‘You think you have the original, but actually you have a replica in the warehouse, and we need to swap them. So, you take out the original and replace it with a replica”. This way, the replica stays in the warehouse and the original was taken out of the freeport without paying any VAT.

Part of Bond-Ware.

#keepingalegacyalive (2018)

Arp Museum, Bahnhof Rolandseck (DE). Performance in collaboration with Nora Hansen and Grant Moxom.

Reintroducing performance in the Arp Museum that focuses solely on Jean Arp’s (and very little on Sophie Taeuber-Arp’s) sculptures. The poetry, dance and performance based character of both their practices are lost in the collection completely.

We wrote wedding speeches for Hans and Sophie, arguing that a wedding is a moment of reflection in a person’s life. Dressed up as wedding guests, we walked different routes through the (very large) museum, clinking a glass, and speaking to the museum audience as if they were the wedding guests of the Arp wedding.

One speech is written from the perspective of fellow dadaist Hannah Höch talking about feminism of that time. All speeches contain verbatim texts of the poetry of Hans in both English and German.

Mama Margaux (2016)

PANDO Enclave Lab, London (UK). Exhibition structure by Anne de Boer, original sculptures by Rieneke Pisuisse.

For this exhibition I invited my mother to take part in my exhibition with her work as a hobby sculptor. I worked together with her on a site specific installation in the basement of our house.

I wanted to exhibit her work filling it up-to-date according to contemporary art standards, where the sleek installation images are overly edited. In this case, you can see that the images have been overly Photoshopped. You can see that it has gone wrong slightly. Some dimensions are out of proportion and the intensity of the exposure, flattens out the depth of some of the sculptures.

This work is a critique on extensive exhibition texts over-contextualising the work; I fall victim for this as much as everyone. Putting much more weight on the content that actually present, exhibition handouts are often frankly full of shit. For example, in the text, I linked her work to second wave feminism and Donna Haraway, because she makes female figures.

The title is a pun towards the pedestals we used for her work, consisting of bottle racks.

Tripsitter (2020)

Made for Gh0stspace

Shown at: International Short Film Festival Oberhausen,  Video Art Festival Turku, Finland and International Film Festival Rotterdam

Short experimental film 12’25

Tripsitter (2020) is a personal journey through various consciousness-expanding moments that the artist experienced during and after a traumatic trip with the hallucinatory drug DMT. By means of a poetry reading, the viewer is taken through an undefined model landscape. The scale model “Gh0stspace” forms the set of the film. Initially an exhibition space in which various exhibitions have been shown, in Tripsitter the model personifies the dark corners of the human mind. While the camera wanders through the model, you see shadows glide over the tranquil landscape. The seasons pass and a raven flies quietly through the decor.

The voice-over guides us past Ayahuasca ceremonies, meditation retreats, panic attacks and “Out of Body Experiences”. The diary-like text, written from a “stream of consciousness” gives the viewer insight into the recovery process after the development of a depersonalization/derealization disorder (DP/DR) of the artist. DP/DR This is a dissociative disorder in which people get the feeling that the world is not real, and after which the outside world looks like a movie or a film set. It is also an unwanted side effect of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Poster design by Bin Koh

Music and mixes by snailaway

Snailaway by Frederique Pisuisse

Resident @ MONOmob1le
Founding member of PARAME-WORK w/ Glabra and DJ MFK

Landing from a fascination for syncopated drum patterns and ecstatic hypnotism, snailaway is dedicated to bringing sweat and joy to the dance floor. Their psychedelic cross-overs are a contagious form of editing through storytelling, aiming to deliver a bodily trance by playing at the higher end of BPM, unbound to a specific genre as long as it has a sexy bassline.

This Side Up (2018)

Safehouse 1 London (UK).

Part of Bond-Ware.

Soft day light-, a clock ticks diligently, into the mirror (2015)

GOLDSMITHSGALLERY, London (UK)

Movement of Obedience – Paperweight (2017)

Elevator Pitch (2016)

Trailer for Elevator Pitch; a TV series and network formula, broadcasted on YouTube. Acting by styrmir örn guðmundsson, Saemundur Thor Helgason and Frederique Pisuisse.

Set Volcano (2019)

Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich (CH)

Part of Set Volcano.

A site specific performance piece, with a focus on deconstructing elementary features of theater, unfolding the interplay between performer, set, soundtrack, and audience. Throughout the performance at the tip of my finger I placed an electro-magnetic sensor connected to the theatre speakers, making audible the electro-magnetic fields that electronic devices carried by the audience members (a laptop, a phone, an iPad) emit.

The interference of the electro-magnetic fields evokes audience participation and makes ‘visible’ the relation between audience and the performer through sound. The phone signals create the soundtrack, making visible the knitted communication web of the audience, alien to the human eyes. Meanwhile the storyteller takes the viewer on a journey into the core of the earth and back.

With special thanks to Youtuber and inspirator @Silentmiaow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnylM1hI2jc

Music of ‘Sun Storm Alexa (2019)’ by Solarflare via FreeMusicArchive

Podcast #1 Opening Clearview.ltd (2016)

Clearview.ltd, London (UK).

This is the podcast #1, especially made during the grand opening of Clearview.ltd, a project space opened in London in 2016.

GOLDSMITHSGALLERY (2016)

A hyperreal gallery project at the campus of Goldsmiths University, with Frieze Magazine sponsorship, a dodgy intern,  and a facebook scandal…

With works by: Andrea Williamson, Anne de Boer, BANK, Helen Knowles, Joseph Ridgeon, Josephine Reisch, Jonathan Clark, Laura Yuile, Madeleinde Stack, Marcel Darienzo, Nora Hansen, Ruth Waters, Shane Mcarthy, Tom Kobialka, Zbong Lee.

Vat Notice 702: Works of Art (2018)

Changing Room, London (UK).

‘Vat Notice 702: Works of Art’ is work made from the VAT Notices of various European countries in their original language and graphic design. The VAT Notice is an element of the national import legislation which consist usually of definitions to identify works of art. This goes from materials: canvas, bronze, tapestry, to the maximum amount of prints there should be. I made two of these towers with each 12 countries.

Different countries use different definitions at customs to determine what is art. In a way, they compete with each other. Switzerland is one of the most progressive ones: “With the change in social values and the emergence of new technical potential, the artwork constantly takes on different forms”, whereas countries such as the Netherlands maintain an outdated idea about what art nowadays consists of. They are concerned with the hand-made: “Unique ceramic objects which the artist has created entirely by hand”.

All materials used in this exhibition would pass every European border. This can be done under the widely used, but vague import category: ‘Exhibition Materials’ with which a lot of galleries swindle and import artworks as “non-art”. It wouldn’t qualify as art under the regulations of most European customs. The sculptures are made from a custom designed marketing cardboard display units, 5XL workers T-shirts, Fake Ivy, art-handling gloves and rusted chains. 

The title ‘Vat Notice 702: Works of Art’ comes from the page of the Vat Notice of the United Kingdom.

Part of Bond-Ware.

Due To Realistic Suspicion (2014)

P/////akt Amsterdam, 2014

In Memoriam of a Past Gallery Life (2016)

Goldsmiths University Degree Show, London (UK)

Interview by VPRO Backlight, Interviewee David E. Weekly, Music by Cinematic Orchestra.

In the video which is hold up by a re-imagination of a Henry Moore sculpture, David E. Weekly, production manager at Google, explains the moment of going into a so called flow-state: a mental state that highly skilled programmers can reach while imagining a complex set of coding by arranging various databases and visual outputs in their mind. The hand gestures of the programmer start to draw a complex pink shape, by motion tracking his index finger.

The outcome of his gestures forms the outlines of a laser cut Perspex sculpture which is supported by a column balancing on a vacuum sealed stack of Frieze Magazines, generously donated in the form of a sponsorship.

This work combines a classical artist, with a self-proclaimed one. The way in which the coder speaks about his coding process is similar to the way artists used, and sometimes still, speak about their practice. The work is part of an installation romanticising art history by ways in which older artists are content to play romantic figures in society.