100 Brain Salad Bowls (2020)

Social online Art Event.

Granted by Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunst, AFK.

100 Brain Salad Bowls is a social encounter. For this I worked with video(performances) and video images of people hand modeling with clay together by video conference. They worked synchronizing their hand movements following my instructions on the screen.

It was an open invitation for 100 citizens of Amsterdam to be part of this collective art event to reconstruct ways in which we can re-connect with people during times of body distancing, uncertainty and fear of physical touch. I started this project during the first lockdown and it consisted of me delivering 1400 grams of clay (the average weight of a human brain) to participants’ houses. We would gather online on several occasions and I would guide them how to build a Brain Salad bowl with clay.

The following are one minute videos showing three of 9 guided online meetings I had with different people:

They worked synchronising their hand movements following my instructions through the screen.

They were free to take things in a direction they felt like exploring as they were thinking about and experiencing the plasticity of their brain whilst socially gathering in a safe way and working with the clay.

Patterns

Video 00:01:40
Final meeting. Everyone attended with their own finished salad bowl and in a playful way, by synchronised movements as patterns, we collectively elaborated constructed images of the bowls.

Deconstruction.

Video 00:01:08
Edited video showing moments from 'the party', the last online meeting of the 100 BRAIN Salad Bowls art event. In the same way as we did the construction of our salad bowl, I opened up the space to movements of de-construction. Everyone was free to decide whether they wanted to follow my instructions and practice the way of "undoing" or whether they wanted to keep the new BRAIN Salad Bowl to eventually be able to fire it and use it.

Bye.

Video 00:02:42.
Saying good bye and closing the event.

To know more about this event: history, guide lines, image and video documentation go here.