2022

Installation, Floriade World Expo 2022, Almere

Iterations: Stedelijk Museum Schiedam (2023), Kunstenlab Deventer (2025)

Dimensions: variable

Materials: stainless steel, aluminium, sand and light

 

Abiosis refers to the absence of life and is conceptually rooted in the ‘primordial soup’ theory, which holds that life can arise from non-living matter under specific conditions. The project translates this theory into a sensory installation that combines mist, a field of bubbles in water and a mechanical organism. These elements act as speculative references to the origins of life and place the viewer in an in-between space of emergence, movement and uncertainty.

 

The work examines the position of humanity within a cosmic and technological perspective, and raises questions about the possibility that future technologies could generate new forms of life. In doing so, Abiosis asks to what extent technology relates to, or deviates from, what we consider the natural order.

 

Abiosis is conceived as an adaptive, constantly evolving work that adjusts both content and space to its context. At Stedelijk Museum Schiedam the installation was transformed into a new landscape in which sand became a supporting element, giving the work a darker and more alienating tone. In its most recent iteration at Kunstenlab Deventer, the installation took on a distinctly modular character. The mechanical entity was no longer read as an autonomous object, but as a landscape in itself: an environment in which parts shift, rearrange and can be approached and experienced in different ways.

 

Commissioned by Museum M for the Art Pavilion at Floriade World Expo 2022, exhibition NATURALLY: WILD FUTURES, curated by Ward Janssen

 

Technical production: Ian Considine

Mechanics: Daniel de Bruin

Code: Nap Labs

Thanks to: Sander van Gelswijck, Studio Thus That, Jorick.tv

 

Supported by Creative Industries Fund NL

Video by Dammes Kieft