Artist Roos van Geffen works with video, installation and photography. The central questions she asks in her art practice is: What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to live and die, to feel and be present in this world and in our bodies? She explores different ways of revealing being human herself, where the body (or parts of it) is the interpreter of abstract ideas. Her artistic process is autobiographical and phenomenological and begins by exploring her personal life experience, which she connects to larger trends in the final work.
In 2023, Van Geffen stayed as artist-in-residence at Buitenplaats Doornburgh in Maarssen, creating work for Incentive, the last exhibition of Buitenplaats Doornburgh Foundation. The owner decided to sell the building, eliminating this wonderful artist-in-residency and exhibition venue.
An artist friend sent me the open call for this residency, plotted among artists and scientists to conduct (artistic) research on stimulus processing and develop new work for the exhibition Incentive, a collaborative project of the University Medical Center Utrecht, the HKU and Schweigman&. Starting point was the question Are we all currently overexcited in today's society? And by extension What can we learn from our own and other embodied experiences of the world? These questions appealed to me because I have a head and body where stimuli come in quite unfiltered; I experience light, sound, smell, emotions and tensions very strongly as if my feelers were reaching out extra far. During this residency, my starting point was to create work that would not only deal with my own experience, but also reflect on the abstract feeling of overstimulation and how to let those complex feelings flow.
What can we learn from our own and other embodied experiences of the world?
The former monastery of Buitenplaats Doornburgh proved to be a good context for research on stimulus processing. The building, designed in the style of the Bossche School, enforces silence and concentration. The monastery was designed according to the "plastic number," a system of proportions devised by the monk Dom Hans van der Laan, based on the number seven and the proportions of the human body. My residency was split into two periods. The first period, in early March, I lived and worked for several weeks on the north side of the building. The sunken windows in the thick gray walls made it difficult for sunlight to reach the cells, so the rooms were often dark and cold. While other residents called the building heavy and sometimes even depressing, I also experienced it as enveloping.
In the simple and austere spaces I came to rest, I read about stimulus processing, about the influence of social media, wrote in silence and walked along the Vecht. Occasionally I met other residents, we ate together. From a shared fascination with stimulus processing, we talked about body perception and awareness, phenomenology and how to weave personal experiences into your work.
In the last week, I experimented with my analog camera to explore whether I could capture in a self-portrait how full it sometimes is and feels in my head. By exposing one negative multiple times (i.e., two or more photos on one negative), a layered image is created. The more images on one negative, the more ambiguous and abstract the image becomes.
The thrill of not knowing exactly what it will look like was addictive and acted as a ritual to calm down
In the months that followed, I made more and more of these multi-exposure self-portraits. The thrill of not knowing exactly what it will look like was addictive and acted as a ritual to unwind. In the end, out of more than seventy photographs, I selected seven, which I printed myself on baryta paper. In the room where I made the series Overexposed exhibited, it turned out that a selection of five worked best.
During the half year in which several residents researched stimulus processing, Buitenplaats Doornburgh organized Art Science Prikkeltalks; evenings where the residents shared their findings and scientists, artists and audiences engaged in conversation about sensory integration, neurodiversity and "the overstimulated society. Here I gave a artist talk, in which I linked stimulus processing to phenomenology and showed how that is woven into my work.
In the room where I have the series Overexposed exhibited, it turned out that a selection of five worked best
The second part of my residency was in the spring and I stayed on the sunny south side of the building. A relief after the dark weeks on the north side, it gave new energy to my making process. When by chance I was sent a video - from a moshpit, in which people plunged their bodies into a swirling crowd - that I wanted to watch again and again, I knew it could be a beginning of new work. It moved me. There was a surrender and an absence of fear in it and something violent, which fascinated me, but also frightened me.
In the weeks that followed, I searched on You Tube and social media to images I could use
At some concerts, circles form from large crowds of people and at one point everyone dives on top of each other at the same time in one big movement. This is called a circlepit; a collective ritual, with its own unwritten rules, intuitively sensed and guarded by the group. I see in it the desire to be part of something bigger, a way of feeling through another person's self. It reminded me of what in science is called deep pressure, something I had never heard of before this project. Deep pressure on an overstimulated body causes it to calm down.
In the weeks that followed, I searched on You Tube and social media to images I could use. All videos from circlepits that I found online were filmed from a public or bird's eye view. But I wanted to see those crowds straight from above, so that it could break away from the context and become more abstract, so that other associations could emerge. In the months following the residency, I visited metal-concerts, emailed with bands, festivals and venues, filmed swirling crowds straight from above in the Milky Way, but finally found the right footage on a large metal-festival in Belgium, which led to the video work Leib.
In parallel with that process, another work emerged; At night, the knives are sharpened, from the fascination with my own teeth, worn down by nightly grinding. Six months earlier I found in my bathroom cabinet two plaster teeth, cast off by the dentist, which I took with me to Maarssen. One was twenty years old and completely intact, the other five years old, with the front teeth worn down two millimeters. From the intact teeth I made a mold, so I could cast my own teeth in plaster. By sliding them on top of each other for a long time, plaster powder swirled down. I saw it as a metaphor for the destructive power of subcutaneous tensions, in myself but also in the world. In the months that followed, I elaborated on that idea. This led to a kinetic installation, with seven teeth in a row, each grinding with its own speed and force, some teeth seemed to laugh, another seemed furious, yet another evoked a nervous feeling. The teeth were set in motion by invisible little machines, (created by the fantastic Uif Putters) causing grit to swirl out of the teeth, leaving behind in white clouds. Eventually, the work destroyed itself during the exhibition.
Looking back, the residency was for me a valuable period of rest, focus and creation, fueled by the dialogue between art and science and the interaction with other residents. The three artworks are connected and move from the personal to the universal. The process begins with my very individual experience of a too-full head in Overexposed. After that, the distance increases slightly in At night, the knives are sharpened, which is intimate but less personal in both content and form. Ultimately, it literally zooms out to the collective movement in the video work Leib, which can also be seen abstractly."
On behalf of Roos van Geffen with thanks to: Mondriaan Fonds, Joanna van Dorp, Henny Dörr/HKU, Schweigman&, UMC Utrecht as well as the artists Molly Palmer, Shertise Solano, Margriet van Breevoort, Silvana Hurtado-Dianderas, Vinny Jones, Boukje Schweigman, Johannes Bellinkx and scientists Anouk Keizer, Odile van Stuijvenberg and Deanne Spek.
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