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Stolen Work

Still of Springtime

Springtime, 2010-2011, 35mm to HD, black and white, silent, 19 min, 5 sec, Cahir, Co Tipperary, Ireland http://www.jeroeneisinga.com/films/springtime

Research ‘Steal’ and ‘Copy’ from the museum

The artwork I chose was a short film called Springtime by Jeroen Eisinga. In this film Eisinga covers himself with 150 000 Irish bees. He uses the scent of a queen bee to attract the bees, and in the image it’s like de artist disappears in the background. The image spoke to me because however you could see this act as crazy or frightening I sort of felt peace while watching this. For me if you ignore real life the image appears mythological as if the man in de film controls the bees. The artist confirmed the spiritual, on his website he says “I did not feel any pain. Except towards the end when I was stung on my eyelids. I felt resistance up to a certain moment, but after a while I let it go and surrendered to the experience. I think I must have entered a state of trance at some point. I started to feel completely empty inside and entered a state of complete freedom. Towards the end I only heard the beating of my heart and my own breathing.” And nonetheless the artist completely ignores historical and other symbolisms within bees in his statements, I really liked his description of his experience. Specifically, the sound he described to hear, you could see the sound of breathing and a heart beating as the sound of life. The sound of bees could also stand for everything that lives on this planet. That’s why I wanted to recreate the sound as sound of life. Thereby I recorded the sound of this vibrating batteries I used for a bee project I did before, the result was an audio fragment as a copy of the experience of the performance. Within this sound I recognized you could also hear the buzzing as the buzzing of a home fly, an insect that maybe more symbolizes decay and sickness in contrast with the humming of bees. Together with the beating of a heart there is a friction of life and decay.

 Preparing sensor for final presentation

Statement

With this theme(life and decay) I got referred to the Verbeke Foundation, so I went. At the foundation were multiple artists who capture life and death together to show that these matters are not distinctive. A merely used subject but for me a relevant one since I feel like in this world so many things are killed, it’s powerful to zoom in on this energy. I feel like that’s also what I have been doing in my practice past year. Zooming on the tiny lives and thoughts to make things that you tend to forget a little bit more important. Verbeke foundation was a good place to see how culture, nature and ecology come together in a relevant way. For my project in p2 I feel like I didn’t find the right balance yet to conduct the themes I am talking about, but it’s a start to develop my own language in this. Choices had to be made fast, if I had more time I would bring the images and audio more carefully together and explore more on how I could use these images. But it was an interesting research to put something that carries so much power in real life together through sound and image.

Sources

Image: http://www.jeroeneisinga.com/films/springtime

http://verbekefoundation.com/