SPOTTED: Metropolis M shows the work of Marieke Leene, which reveals the friction between a cosy atmosphere and worrying world events.
- Fine Art
Every year, magazine Metropolis M releases a Graduation Special, featuring work by several finals students who graduate as visual artists. Frida Berntsen is one of the alumni featured in the special. Metropolis M asked Frida the question, "What is the story behind your work?"
Birthday parties are back, but current events often leave little to celebrate. Whether it's war, the environment or other sensitive topics, guests are often requested to keep it ‘gezellig’ – cheerful. But how do you do that when the world seems to be on fire?
That friction is central to the graduation project Let’s Keep It Gezellig by Marieke Leene (1992). The large installation is designed as a lift that gets stuck between two floors, which on the one hand represents the desire to close yourself off from the outside world while on the other knowing there are serious problems that need to be addressed. Although the work is a semi-sealed off space, it never quite allows you to withdraw completely. There is no door and it's far from easy to screen off the outside world.
A lift is one of those places where you briefly have nothing to do and, half out of boredom, half out of habit, take the outside world out of your trouser pocket. Through various recesses in the walls, the viewer can see small screens belonging to tablets and smartphones. Short animations are displayed on the screens which are inspired by news reports and other articles that have recently caught Leene’s eye. The videos are short loops of playful and imaginative scenes. A small selection: an emaciated African cow tossing a fat Dutch cow onto its back; a fighter jet dropping like a stone as if it were a human body that has just been shot dead; a teacup overflowing. Leene notes that children in particular find these videos really funny, unaware that in a few years’ time they will also have to face the problems they allude to.
Although the lift is stationary, it almost seems in freefall when you realise that Leene is turning the all too human-focused hierarchy on its head. Videos about people make up the bottom layer. The videos in the middle are about everyday implements. At the top, the animations are about nature. Leene explains that whilst at the academy, she several times attempted to make projects based on a non-human perspective. She admits that she has never quite been able to escape that human point of view: once again stuck between two floors.
Author: Maarten Buser, poet and art critic