performances
They who become part of the senery itself
2022Destination Unkown
Where hides the glitch in the system? Fenna Koot (1996) is fascinated by how architectural spaces affect social structures. The roles people are used to taking on stem from the influence of the physical environment - no matter how mathematical, overwhelming, religious, distant or acoustic. "They who become part of the scenery itself" plays around with this influence of the architecture on the behaviour of the visitor. The two works focus on the feeling of being in power or overpowered relative to the space.
First work, Museum guard
During the opening hours of the exhibition at the Heilig Hartkerk in Venlo. People chat and look at art. Will they feel his eyes burning in their backs? Will they become aware of their own attitude toward the church and the works of art? In large museums, you are used to the presence of guards. But in this space?
sculpture
At the beginning of the residence in the vacant church, I found a broken piece of wood in the shape of a finger, bedecked under the dust. Upon examination, it turned out to be the little finger of the Jesus statue.
I was struck by the idea that this finger had been left here unnoticed. This work is a copy of the found object, placed back where I found the wooden object.
Section E
2022PIP Expo
Section E is a collaboration between Jesse van Epenhuijsen and Fenna Koot that explores the different perspectives on architecture and change in the space that now calls itself PIP Den Haag.
By viewing the building as an archive, Fenna and Jesse used municipal archives and various architectural approaches to highlight a place where previous ownerships, distant functionalities and slight alterations are part of a larger infrastructure of change and urban politics.
Through an evening of several performance and interventions, the aim is to peel away layers of the space - revealing modified facades and uncovering plans that suddenly disappeared.
If time allows
2021AIR Witte Rook
For my residency period at Witte Rook in Breda (NL),
I was given ‘time’, ‘space’ and ‘visibility’ in return for my work.
Time: 3 weeks
Space: An empty living space and a barn
Visibility: A co-resident, a presentation and an online article
How will I use this ‘time’? What does this ‘space’ mean to me?
To pass the time, I covered parts of the space with plasticine (a flexible type of clay that doesn’t dry out): the threshold, the baseboards, the window frame. This meditative process calmed me down after a busy period. The space was slowly but surely covered with clay. Unobtrusive, it was almost invisible.
Nine-to-five
Within my artistry, I react to the by man conditioned environment. I am interested in how our daily surroundings are shaped, already have been shaped and how this influences human behavior. This interest emerged after a number of conditioned actions in which I revised or emphasised my learned systems and habits.
The performance Nine-to-five is an example of this, where I visualised an 8-hour working day in very fine sawdust. In concrete terms, that meant during a period of 8 hours I sanded sawdust on a stool.
