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Life coaching for the Inanimate (2020)



In Life coaching for the Inanimate (2020) thrown-away objects are morphed into personalities with windshield washer motors from the scrapyard. Movement and posture express their distinct characters. These characters come to life in a play where they experience desire, aggression and disability. Broken, out of fashion or simply out of place, the objects now fend for themselves.


Code can be found here (theater piece) and here (installation).

medium: 

2 chairs 
rake
2 brooms 
ironing board
5 wiper motors
scrap metal
electronics 






The project started with the question: “Can I perceive other, non-living beings as other subjective beings?” This question was Inspired by Object-Oriented Ontology by Graham Harman and Actor-Network Theory (ANT) by Bruno Latour. The aim was to question the passive role that's normally attributed to inanimate objects by creating a setting where the lives of these discarded objects could unfold as a narrative. Or following Bruno Latour's description of the Anthropocene:

“Today, the decor, the wings, the background, the whole building have come on stage and are competing with the actors for the principal role.”

One of the concepts that inspired me to explore this question was Graham Harman's notion of withdrawal. According to this theory, every object possesses an inherent, unseen essence inaccessible to other objects. This idea iterates on Heidegger's assertion that dasein, human subjective being always withdraws from direct, exhaustive understanding. For Harman, this idea extends to all subjects, not just to human subjectivity. Every object has a concealed depth intrinsic to its being. When fire burns cotton, only some of the characteristics of the cotton are expressed to the fire in this exchange, such as its flammability. However the cotton is more than just its qualities. There is no number of relationships that can fully exhaust what the cotton is. Harman wants to rethink metaphysics as an anthropocentric discipline, by deprioritizing the human-object relationship and rethink metaphysics in object-object relationships, where humans are just another object.

To materialize the idea that objects have realities beyond their interactions with humans, found objects were anthropomorphized and given a performative sense of agency and subjectivity. This was done by morphing them into actors with human-like characteristics. By making the objects perform on a stage, they were perceived to have a sense of agency and subjectivity, suggesting an inner life, a world inaccessible yet apparent to me. The work was initially designed to be shown as a theater piece and was later developed into an installation at various locations. The theater piece was created in collaboration with Justin Schellekens.


This work was shown at:

NEST Residency
05.09.2020
WORM
Rotterdam, Netherlands


Lost in a One Way Space
25.09.2020 - 27.09.2020
...ism project space
The Hague, Netherlands

ALL INN
31.02.2021 - 11.04.2021
Het HEM
Zaandam, Netherlands

The New Current
02.07.2021 - 04.07.2021
Spaanse Kubus
Rotterdam, Netherlands
Running on Cargo