Interview with Allard van Hoorn, former manager and now artist performing sound and spaces

More than 100 among exhibits and events in 15 years: the globetrotter artist tells his practice

section: blog

10-12-2013
categories: Architecture, Art, theatre, performance, Slow Words,

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Interview with Allard van Hoorn, former manager and now artist performing sound and spaces

More than 100 among exhibits and events in 15 years: the globetrotter artist tells his practice

Sound-installation and performance artist collaborating across the disciplines of architecture, design, music, dance and theatre (with a past of manager in economics), Allard van Hoorn (1968, born in Leiden) and me met few years ago and after this shining encounter, I never stop to follow his progressions, because he works “on creating visual, acoustic and spatial scripts and scenarios that investigate our relationship to public space”. And not only… somehow he is a living archive: his website allows any reader to see and listen everything of him in real time wherever he is on the planet and to reproduce at home many of his performances (that have an instruction tool to be set in the same way he did in museums or galleries). He also actively works on durable pieces that can be also filed under the “design” label as, last but not least, a copper flooring he did in a Munich gallery (pictured in the cover of this post). Or a gigantic LED forest of bulbs translating in light the variations of the sky over an Icelandic volcano (via an online capturing server), happened at the reopened de Appel one year ago.

 

He has been on shown at: the 2013 Istanbul Biennale; the ongoing Biennale for Urbanism and Architecture in Shenzhen; Centro Centro, Madrid; MaCRO, Rosario; Rosenthal Contemporary Arts Center; de Appel arts centre; Storefront for Art and Architecture; Hear it! at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam; the Gwangju Design Biennale; Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich; Gasworks in London; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Shanghai; the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, the Netherlands; Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia, Salvador de Bahia, Brazil; The Moore Space in Miami; Museo de la Ciudad de México; the German Architectural Centre (DAZ) in Berlin; the Zendai Museum of Modern Art in Shanghai and CCCB in Barcelona. He has been featured in publications like the books Kapital K _ A Classless Character by Onomatopee, On Barcelona by Actar Publishers and Strategies for Reaching the Millennium Development Goals by BigPictureSmallWorld Inc. and the Buckminster Fuller Institute and a variety of magazines. He is tutor at the Architectural Association Interprofessional Studio and guest tutor at the Royal College of Art in London and The Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam. He has lectured on art as well as organised workshops and panels for, amongst others, Rijksakademie Beamclub, Amsterdam; Gasworks, London; Hogeschool sint-lukas, Brussels, Belgium; the Museo de Arte Moderna in Salvador de Bahia; the program Pensando en Voz Alta in Puebla, Mexico, organised by Fundacion/Coleccion Jumex; at Sheffield Hallam University and the university for architecture UIC / ESARQ in Barcelona.

Reading his 2014 program, he will be at ISCP Open Studios in November 2014 and Focus Artist at Art Rotterdam 2014.

 

Diana Marrone: Globetrotter artist, you practice that particular philosophy of making and designing pieces of art by starting from your body. Not as many performing artists of the recent past or present times, but in a social and densely actual body of statements and actions in the wider area of life, especially pointing on space, spaces and cultures, music, visual identities and theatre. Is art for you a process with mankind, within instances and feedbacks that integrally compose the piece of art rather than a white cube activity in a more "aseptic" environment? Therefore, which is your ideal audience and your ideal collectors?

 

Allard van Hoorn: The way I understand to make art is that on an energy level the work should specifically be related to a place. By reflecting on the social, political and historical features of a locality I can analyse it and am able to flip it to allow us to look differently at it. In this way, the public spaces I research are given a new voice that re-thinks our relationship to them and possible new interaction with, and uses of, them. Audiences are therefor sometimes stander-on or passers-by that not necessarily have to encounter, recognise or experience the works as 'art' but rather as a tool to re-define their relationship to their environment or that one. Collectors of these events or experiences rely on documentation, photos and videos. Sometimes props that frame these newly created 'legends' of the places that are researched and processed through my interventions.

 

DM: Is your interest ranging from architecture as the natural space of human and political interference to aesthetic urgencies or is it originating from your previous experiences as economic expert that allows you to have a privileged knowledge of what is "behind" human actions and social shapes in Western world?

 

AvH: It is the opposite of the things I learned earlier in life that drive me to understand our relationship to our external self, our living spaces, our shared environment in which we all co-exist and collaborate. Architecture is one interesting end of the spectrum as it is a static and daring manifestation of our development of our world, monuments to our times and technological demonstrations that lend themselves very well for translations into dance, music, theatre play, playgrounds for skateboarders or other dynamic interpretations that allows the shift of perspective... Having known the rigid I easily recognise the shifts in public space and its topographies.

 

 

DM: You are a tireless traveller and you believe in residencies as true form of art: can you tell us more of the state-of-art of this special practice? Is it still valid for beginners or is a more suitable tool for experienced artists who have already a network with solid bases in which a "residency" is not just a vacant time to experience foreign contexts?

 

AvH: If researching local environments for local rules, dynamics and re-interpretations is the method or objective of the artist, then residencies give a solid framework to work from. My first residency was as fruitful as the current one so experience is not what matters. If understanding and being able to work with a place, discover its ruptures in the fabric then living there, being there, eating there, sleeping there all helps to unveil and process the environment.  

 

 

DM: Which are your preferred projects of last 5 years and the next one you are starting now?

 

AvH: I like many works for different reasons but mostly those which have given me the most surprising insights, reactions or reflections. Last work for the biennial in Istanbul created a very strong reaction in the audience. It was as if the piece allowed the people present to process certain emotions that were already there but which were not able to surface until then... I am continuing to search for new methods of shifting our understanding of public space and our relationship to it and will be looking at different methods of indexing and classification. Also I am interested to look more closely at the formal roles and relationships that exist to public space through cinema and theatre. 

 

 

DM: How it have been different if you were acting not as Dutch artist because in The Netherlands in the past years there have been solid Stichtings with a serious funding policy able to "enable" artists to engage a more professional path in visual arts?

 

AvH: Having the Dutch funding system behind you helps but is not holy. I imagine if you operate from a life's necessity to investigate the world and make your art you will find ways to do so.

 

 

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