On Demand 4: Between Self and Other
鈥淚 forget how pungent the body odor of a stranger can smell. I forget how countless dancing heads in a crowd can merge into one solid mass. I forget how it is to compete for the narrow armrest of a seat at the movies. In the fourth ON DEMAND exhibition 鈥楤etween Self and Other鈥� we can experience that again. The dividing line between the secure and the stifling is evidently paper-thin.鈥�
Speaking here is curator Ellis Kat, who conceived the concept of ON DEMAND 4: Between Self and Other. 鈥淲hen I was asked to compile a new edition of ON DEMAND, it occurred to me that during such times the exhibition had to be about the closeness of the other. The bubbles in which we are all forced to live these days do offer security, but they also make it easy to avoid confrontations with 鈥榯he other鈥�. We鈥檙e evidently becoming rather comfortable with the avoidance of encounters with strangers. That鈥檚 dangerous.鈥�
鈥淭he closer you get to someone, the more you realize that you鈥檙e dealing with an individual, a person who has his or her own life. In Joost Conijn鈥檚 film Siddieqa, Firdaus, Abdallah, Soelayman, Moestafa, Hawwa en Dzoel-kifi (2004), in which the artist follows seven brothers and sisters growing up in the immense freedom of a squatted harbor lot, togetherness is portrayed from a close perspective. The title in which the name of each child is stated explicitly already tells us: every child has a distinct story. Once we zoom out, the individuals turn into a large crowd. Heads become tiny dots that move as a single organism, as they do in Marilou van Lierop鈥檚 Total Recall of Mundane Conversations (2014).鈥�
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鈥淚 forget how pungent the body odor of a stranger can smell. I forget how countless dancing heads in a crowd can merge into one solid mass. I forget how it is to compete for the narrow armrest of a seat at the movies. In the fourth ON DEMAND exhibition 鈥楤etween Self and Other鈥� we can experience that again. The dividing line between the secure and the stifling is evidently paper-thin.鈥�
Speaking here is curator Ellis Kat, who conceived the concept of ON DEMAND 4: Between Self and Other. 鈥淲hen I was asked to compile a new edition of ON DEMAND, it occurred to me that during such times the exhibition had to be about the closeness of the other. The bubbles in which we are all forced to live these days do offer security, but they also make it easy to avoid confrontations with 鈥榯he other鈥�. We鈥檙e evidently becoming rather comfortable with the avoidance of encounters with strangers. That鈥檚 dangerous.鈥�
鈥淭he closer you get to someone, the more you realize that you鈥檙e dealing with an individual, a person who has his or her own life. In Joost Conijn鈥檚 film Siddieqa, Firdaus, Abdallah, Soelayman, Moestafa, Hawwa en Dzoel-kifi (2004), in which the artist follows seven brothers and sisters growing up in the immense freedom of a squatted harbor lot, togetherness is portrayed from a close perspective. The title in which the name of each child is stated explicitly already tells us: every child has a distinct story. Once we zoom out, the individuals turn into a large crowd. Heads become tiny dots that move as a single organism, as they do in Marilou van Lierop鈥檚 Total Recall of Mundane Conversations (2014).鈥�
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