performance, during eight days by 15 minutes each, Eindexamen Tentoonstelling, Academie Minerva, Groningen 2011, as a video presented in gallery Sign+ (Groningen 2012) and in Das Spectrum (Utrecht 2012)
I am eating the white chocolate spine pieces until I feel very sick. With each bites more chocolate odor appears in the room. One spine is outside and one is inside. The one inside is small, bent and supported by an orthopedic corset, the one outside is huge, it’s fatness and sweetness is overwhelming.
The project is based on long term research and detailed study of the anatomy of vertebrae. Originally each part was sculpted in wax twice the size of the human spine; cast out of prepared molds and arranged on a metal frame.
Pain as something untamed appears as constantly transforming tissue that builds up strange unnatural forms in our head. There is no good strategy for suffering. We cannot grasp it because there is always the never-ending permeation of the consciousness, the rational, the unconsciousness, the irrational and the fight between the two.
Pain is not experienced as an isolated stimulus outside its context. It is part of a very complex process that takes place in at least three fields- the outside world, the somatic environment (physical symptoms) and the cognitive environment (interpretation).
This live action in combination with the audience’s reactions gave me the possibility to present the circulation of inside and outside.