BOUWSTOF Talkshow BOUWSTOF is the talk show in Tilburg: a dynamic program with space for current affairs, interviews, in-depth conversations and crossovers where everyone with an interest in architecture, spatial design and design wants to be part of. A relaxed evening with substance and depth. This edition guests include: MartJan Kuit, Violettte Schonbërger and Mirte van Duppen. WATCH HERE

Around its own axis
Video work
16:9 full HD, 50p, 11:15 min
2020
Around its own axis showcases the infinite, repetitive rhythm of the automated Dutch agricultural landscape. In this video work, machines perform a dance, while the camera transports the viewer through landscapes of large displacements. Silent, monumental images evoking tranquillity are continually interspersed with more dynamic actions. Using the jargon of her profession, choreographer Pauline Roelants guides the viewer through the scenes — like a sports commentator — providing a blow-by-blow description of the movements of the machines and products. In doing so, the stillnesses and the silences of the landscapes, along with the impulsive actions and errors of the machine become an integral part of the choreography. Examining and describing the landscapes this way minimises the distance between creative man and pragmatic machine. Roelants’ movement analysis also reveals a minor dissonance: not every industrial act is perfect. A realisation both comforting and slightly comical. By approaching the movements of the machines and products like a dance, van Dupen reveals the poetry of a previously unnoticed landscape.

Cinematographer and film editor

Mirte van Duppen

Comments by choreographer

Pauline Roelants

Sound

Benedikt Wöppel

Color grading

André Badjebeir

Translation

Paulien Mandos

Edit coach

Gabrielle Provaas

Dancers breeder, Florensis, Hendrik-Ido-Ambacht en Dinteloord - orchids grower, Opti-flor, Monster - goat farmer, van Tilburg, Oude Dongen - tulip grower, Bloem-kwekerij Michiel Smit, Hensbroek - cow farmer, Christian en Sanne Klein Koerkamp, Lettele - plant grower, Pligt Professionals, ’s-Gravenzande

Simulated scent of a tomato greenhouse
Algoritmic Perfumery
O'dor Aroma Diffuser, a bespoke scent
2022
In van Duppen’s youth, her family would often drive from Tilburg to ‘het Westland’, entering a landscape replete with greenhouses. On these visits to her maternal aunt and uncle, who had an anthurium (floral) business, she never failed to explore their greenhouses. As a child, she remembers the excitement of the unknown landscapes; her senses triggered by the heat, humidity and smell.

Mirte van Duppen commissioned Algortimic Perfumery to capture the smellscape of a tomato greenhouse. This particular memory — a scent memory, is part of AgriValley Hotels, the video installation designed to engage multiple senses because images alone could never do the experience justice.

Pink light
light plates fern grower Vitro Plus
2022
This distinctive light, with its fairy-tale pink glow, is the minimal light necessary for crops to grow. Plants only require red and blue spectra, not white light (which contains all the colours of the spectrum). Fewer colours translate into fewer costs, thereby allowing greenhouse growers to reduce their expenses. The lighting panels, floating over the ferns, mimic this diffuse light by spreading this ‘idea of sunlight’ as evenly as possible over the plants, like a blanket. The light source is on the side of the panels, whose laser pattern distributes the light in conjunction with a reflection plate.

AgriValley
publication
English | Dutch, 176 pages, 17 x 24 cm
2023
AgriValley is a long-term poetic study of Dutch agriculture. In her cinematographic representations, video artist Mirte van Duppen brings together various production landscapes as a social construct: here, humans and machines live and work side by side. The futuristic, almost dreamlike images give an insight into the enormous impact of technological innovation in the Dutch agricultural sector.

Van Duppen shows the contemporary landscape in associative analyses, using visual rhyme and essayistic camerawork. With contributions by Bernke Klein Zandvoort (poet and essayist), Joost Oomen (poet and writer), Hein van Duppen (spatial designer and visual artist), Willem Claassen (writer and journalist) and Corinne Heyrman (theatre maker), and a conversation with Floris Alkemade (architect and former Chief Government Architect).

EXHIBITION
BOUWSTOF Talkshow
Wednesday 05.07.2023
walk in 19:30 20:00 – 21:30 Studiozaal Theaters Tilburg

exhibition made possible by
Vitroplus

AgriValley is made possible by
Creative Industries Fund NL, Impulsgelden Provincie Noord-Brabant, Kunstloc and Tilburg Makersfonds