STATEMENT

In case you haven’t noticed, things are very weird right now. But if you start thinking about it, we’re all weird. There’s nothing self-evident about things we see as completely normal. How much sense do our habits make? What influences our beliefs and the way we treat each other? Material conditions and cultural habits shape our perceptions and our behavior, what we consider worth protecting or defending against. We are much less free than the freedom-obsessed cultures I’ve lived in would have us believe.

I’m particularly interested in the macro and micro-infrastructures that perpetuate oppressive notions of normality and a detached and utilitarian view of the “other,” be that a stranger you bump into at Albert Heijn, an animal raised for food, or an ecosystem. In my work I research the idea that the infrastructures we build to control water—the perfect symbol of something uncontainable—might embody some fundamental answers to questions that have huge repercussions: what is the border between “me” and “non-me”? What is a threat? Gazing at the Oosterscheldekering might be a bit like looking into your own soul.

What do we lose in our capacity to feel, love one another, and accept the changing nature of existence when we live our lives trying to defend ourselves from something that might engulf us?

Stories are fascinating. What makes them irresistible or boring? Sometimes I get carried away. I constantly need to go back and change them, because some of them are spells, and you’d better know what you’re trying to achieve when you’re messing with powerful forces.

I tell tales about disparate things like the reversal of the Chicago River, my uterus, the true meaning of a Bee Gees song, and the Maeslantkering. I also enjoy singing songs about being ghosted after (what I thought was) the best date of my life, or throwing up in an alley in a London hostel that smells like bad soup, and looking forward to being comforted by my cat back home in Rotterdam, who doesn’t mind if I wake up in the middle of the night because my stomach refuses to function. She’ll still sleep on me when I go back to bed.

Writing for me is an expanded practice of attention. My words don’t particularly enjoy living on a page, preferring to move through voice, performance, video, and out towards the borders of the universe. My narrating voice is an unstable meeting place of the many forces that shape it. I love language, but I’m particularly curious about its edges, where we feel its impact in the body before we know what hit us.