Using digital tools such as sleep trackers, calorie counters, and heart-rate monitors, we increasingly collect data about our daily existence. Strengthening and improving the body has become an almost obsessive pursuit, but does this contribute to a more stable sense of identity? Therapy Session convenes speakers and performers to explore the horizon beyond the performance index and provide insights that lie outside of the realm of optimising one’s life via a techno-fix.
Cultural Philosopher Robin van den Akker’s (Erasmus University College) lecture is about a new generation of artists who increasingly use digital technology in their practice. Miloš Trakilović gives a performance-lecture on his work Nothing Really Matters in the exhibition space. Trakilović’s lecture expounds on how humans relate to (digital) environments and networks. Sound artist Tomoko Sauvage presents a concert of water sounds to accompany the work Attention Spa by Anni Puolakka & Jenna Sutela. Laps, by the artist Ilke Gers, is a performance made especially for TENT in which dancers alternately take a route around TENT. The artist Amy Suo Wu talks about her work TLTRNW and the origin and effects of text fragmentation and text reduction as influenced by digitisation. There is a screening of Anna Zett’s video work Circuit Training in which she talks about the human immune system and the alternation between rest and action. Jesse van Oosten and Niekolaas Johannes Lekkerkerk, the curators of Spending Quality Time With My Quantified Self, will moderate the evening.
Spending Quality Time With My Quantified Self
Therapy Session is part of the group exhibition Spending Quality Time With My Quantified Self. The exhibition presents work by young artists who consider, deconstruct, and rearrange the intimate and complex relationship between the human body and digital technology.
About the participants:
Robin van den Akker (NL) is Lecturer in Continental Philosophy and Cultural Studies at Erasmus University College. He is also co-founder of the Notes on Metamodernism research platform, which maps and analyses changes in aesthetics and culture symptomatic of the post-postmodern condition. Van den Akker has written about contemporary aesthetics and culture for the Journal of Aesthetics and Culture, Frieze, ArtPulse, De Groene Amsterdammer, and NRC Handelsblad.
The workshops and performances of the artist Ilke Gers (NZ) examine how movement and behaviour are controlled by social conditions and local regulations. Her work was previously presented at Kunstverein (Amsterdam), 019 (Ghent), De Appel (Amsterdam), and Split/Fountain (Auckland). Ilke Gers was a resident at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht in 2014-2015.
The work of Amy Suo Wu (CN/AUS/NL) combines art, design, and media research. She explores how technology, language, and media define people and vice versa. She teaches Hacking/Creative Disruption at the Willem de Kooning Academy and is a co-founder of Eyesberg, a design studio known for their conceptual and experimental working methods. Her work was previously shown at the 2013 Venice Biennale, Sign (Groningen), Showroom MAMA (Rotterdam), Gogbot (Enschede), and ISEA2011 (Istanbul).
The work of Anna Zett (DE) employs video, radio, drama, and dance. She is interested in the human body’s relation to science and technology. Her work was previously shown at the Serpentine Cinema (London), National Gallery (Prague), Sorbus Gallery (Helsinki), and Human Resources (Los Angeles). She wrote a play for German public radio and is currently developing visuals for Copy&Dance; a performance at Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin.
The performance, text, and lens-based work of Miloš Trakilović (BIH/NL) explores the human body in relation to progressive digitisation processes, both on-screen and off-screen – and in between. His work was previously shown at Kunstpodium T (Tilburg) and Showroom MAMA (Rotterdam).
Tomoko Sauvage (JP) is a Japanese musician and sound artist living in Paris. Her music uses sounds from various manifestations of water – drops, waves, and bubbles. Her work centres on the delicate balance between the controlled and uncontrolled through a fragile tonality that she creates using fluid materials that are constantly in motion but also evaporating. Sauvage has given performances and workshops in Europe, America, Canada, and Japan.
Admission: 3 euro
Language: English
Program
19.45 Doors open
20.00 Performance “Laps” by Ilke Gers
20.15 Welcome and introduction by curators Niekolaas Johannes Lekkerkerk and Jesse van Oosten
20.30 Lecture by Robin van den Akker
21.00 Screening “Circuit Training” by Anna Zett
21.15 Performance lecture “Nothing Really Matters” by Miloš Trakilović
21.30 Artist talk by Amy Suo Wu
22.00 A concert of water sounds by Tomoko Sauvage to accompany the work “Attention Spa”
22.30 Drinks and music