Location Eemplein (Amersfoort): Coco van der Wiel en Mijs Both

Coco van der Wiel’s Collective

The breakup of a long-term relation, happening together with the covid crisis, sent Coco van der Wiel on a journey of exploration. On this journey, she explored how her individuality is relating to her need to do things together with others. For transforming this search into a visual story, a stage performance turned out to be the excellent medium.

In the performance, called ‘Between we and me’ in Dutch, four people are moving across a playing field of several metres, while being held together by a red elastic canvas. When one person is taking space, another must either follow the movement or resists – a play of dependency versus personal choice. Van we Wiel: ‘The play reflects the balance between personal freedom and the responsibility we all carry for the wellbeing of the community. In a healthy living environment, these two elements, the ‘Me’ and the ‘We’, are in balance with each other. This performance shows that personal choices and collective responsibility affect each other.’

According to Van der Wiel, this balance between the individual and the ‘we’ is one of the main issues for her generation. ‘How do you care for others without limiting your own space to live? While the Western world often emphasises individualism, there are other cultures where instead communality is the norm. This was an inspiring discovery for me. Partly because the creation process for this performance was specifically not about my own individual idea, but can only find shape by the input from others. This is clearly a creation by a collective. The players, the composer and the camera crew. Such collective processes are really energising for me.’

Performers: Jasper den Dikken, Chiara Jongepier, Nelleke Grimberg, Pyke Maas
Music: Max van Westerop |
Film: Dimitri Sterkens en Dries Vereanderen

The research of Mijs Both

What has fed me, how can I feed others, and how can we feed each other? And how to bring all varying snippets together? In this art installation, absurdism and realism are merged in the form of giant kitchen utensils, created from multiple woodpieces. Mijs was looking for kitchen elements that can offer familiarity and support in our food rituals. The result: three cooking appliances where people can build a relation with: the installation is both an artwork and an invitation to be used, because location, object and action are always a triangle in the kitchen. The start of the project in February 2024 gave rise to the open-source kitchen: a place where guests were welcome and could listen to stories, or provide their own stories and recipes.

Both: ‘The idea is that this will bring about an analogue archive of recipes and stories, at a place where participants can enter relations with each others. I see ‘Snippets’ as a research, in which new visual steps are constantly being made, in a search for warmth and that which can unite people.’