The SPACE between us.

A research by two artists who react at each other, in seclusion, locked up, with a basic question; “reading the space between us, and around us”.

Jan Freek Lulof and Sebastiaan Majoor, got to know each other at a digital meetingplace where we started to sent messages to one another, and reflected on each others work, which are text and photo’s. After having mailed for some time we decided to meet in a nonvirtual pub in Amsterdam. We got to know each other better and started Productions solitaires, with the motto; doing things ourselves together. In July we started working on a fotoweblog, reacting to each other from our own private working spaces.

We are interested in the essence of communication; there is a transmitter and a receiver and noise will always arise. There is a continuum of chaos and through language and imagery we try to conjuure it.

For us communication is image as well as language. We will use expedients as pen and paper, a typemachine, tape and chalk, a polaroidcamera, a videocamera and a webcam that only we can run. For this research we will get our inspiration and visual associations from the work and ideas of the French languageartist George Perec.

SPACE.

It is our intention that we lock ourselves op, in seclusion, one after another repeatedly, in a space where the perimeters above will be present, and where the inner dialogue confronts us with thoughts, ideas, memories etc, that will be left as traces in the space.

The target is to work with each others reactions thus create a Production solitaire.

In this process it is interesting to watchmthe possible arising of the oforementioned noise and what its causes might be. Meeting the emptiness, of the space we will be confronted with conversations of the inner space, thoughts, feelings, emotions.The decoration of the space is very minimal containing a mattress and sleeping requirements, a table, two chairs, (to emphasize on the absence of the other), a mirror and a clock.

The final exhibition will be a reflection/document of the processes that took place in the space.

PICTUREWRITING

One of the themes of our weblog is the question of how the relation between word and image manifests itself in the virtual space. The words “virtual and virtuality”come from the Latin word virtualis which means nonexistent. For us this virtual space presents a way of playing with meanings. What happens on the weblog can be seen as a virtual version of what we will try to do in the existent space where we will perform our research.

It is possible to see the researchspace as a virtual space where we fysically actually share the space without meeting eachother except through the work we create. This is the space between us.

What will our communication be about during the researchperiod?

Descriptions of daily banalities as eating, drinking, sleeping, and a description of our thoughts and feelings, emotions and ideas.

AUDIENCE

The thought of presenting ourselves or our work to an audience, and the meaning they give to our traces will play a clear role. We do not strive to complete knowledge of the other, even better, we are interested in the above mentioned noise.

In the noise lies that what is left unspoken.

The audience can follow us via a website with a livecam, we conduct the cam ourselves and in that way show what we specifically want to show.The emphasis of the exhibition will mainly be between the absence and the presence of both artists and the audience, and the results of the research during the four weeks of being locked up/in.