Nieke Koek

Nieke Koek;

I come from the world of location music theatre. That’s where I got the chance to look at expressive bodies in theatrical spaces. I could look at the body as a complicated system of emotions and transformations. The becoming of a persona is a magical transformation. With enough practice the actors could transform into ‘the other thing’ in an instant.

For me this expressive transformation was also possible with the use of costume during my tailoring study. I fantasized a lot about the impossible outfit. To be able to wear the space that is surrounding the body. Not to protect the body but to enlarge the expressive qualities.

During my study Artscience, which is about making work for the senses of the spectator, I made some performances. 
The performances were based on the sensations of the body while moving through time and space. I translate Sensory experiences into performed, theatrical and dramatic time-based works.

I display them slower or bigger than reality. The dramatic qualities inside a fast or short moment are very hard to grasp. While I display them slower than reality the brain can connect to the situation and re-construct the movement. What happens in the perception of the spectator, I cannot direct. The part, which is the most abstract and the most difficult to grasp, will make the best connection with the spectator. Because my work is with or performed by the body, the spectator easily relates to the displayed scene and therefore can use their own body to try to perceive and experience the same movement, or at least try to connect the elements.

Time becomes a narrative and therefore starts being theatrical.  When I stretch one second of time into seven minutes, all elements within that second become visible, you have a better view on the dramatic story that lies within that short moment. You can witness the dramatic story develop over time and interpret this as a story or narrative.

In my research I like to connect to scientific experiments concerning the sensory organs and mirror neurons. My work is addressing to the human brain which is capable of making brilliant connections and therefore my work could be considered to only exists in the mind of the spectator.

The works are created with the use of the expressive abilities of the body and of material and objects.

In that sense I consider an expressive object as a performer too.

Stap; An installation based on the perspective of the foot. I made a shoe with cameras to be able to capture vision and sound from the other side of the body. The foot is a moving limb and therefore it is impossible to put your eyes in that position. By capturing the ‘sensations’ of the foot you get the change to perceive a different perspective on such a normal daily thing like walking.

Yellow; a spoken word is divided into five faces. I filmed a face while saying the word yellow and slowed it down to discover the dramatic and expressive transitions between the perceivable parts of the sound. In the word, while listening to it, you are able to distinguish the y-e-ll-o-w. I’m interested in the parts were the ‘-‘ is positioned. These transitions of the face and the sound are were the brain is working to make and to keep the connections, to re-construct what has to become one understandable word. Our brain is able to do this when the individual elements are close to each other. In film this has to be at least 16 frames a second to make an almost fluent movement visible. Our brain works best at 20 ‘frames’ per second.

I like to slow down time in such a way that the moments stand further apart from each other. The brain starts to connect the faces that I display and creates his or her own word again.

1 seconde #1; I filmed myself making a simple gesture like a turn-around and divided that into the 20 frames or slides that the brain perceives. These slides were turned into silhouettes with an open structure so that the inside mass of the moment is also visible. When you stand still you can look at the actual development over time. While you walk around, the slides start to interfere and create the moiré effect. You are looking at curved steel but the interfering lines create new movements within the sculpture and therefore display something like a film again. The brain makes you believe you see new moving shapes and interprets these as individual elements within the sculpture.