A herd of elephants in a Leiden park

Photo: Sonja herds elephants into
the Yuchengco Museum,
Manila, The Philippines,
Nov. 2011.
About the "Nothing to Declare" art event

Performances: 10, 11 May 2012,
starts at 8:30 p.m.
Bos van Bosman, Leiden, along the path opposite the Roodborst street entrance.

This "caravan" of origami elephants, first aired in Istanbul as part of ISEA Istanbul are made out of print material collected in the countries the artist, Sonja van Kerkhoff, travelled through to get to Istanbul. Then she took the herd to the Philippines, New Zealand and then Australia. New elephants were added en route while others were retired from the herd. They will be aired for a walk for the first time in her home city of Leiden as part of Fields of Wonder's Vergezichten I open air theatre project.

Vergezichten I
Openingsvoorstelling
Bos van Bosman (entree tegenover de Roodborststraat), Leiden
10 t/m 13 mei 2012
aanvang 20.30 uur
gratis entree

More information and more photos

Caravan From Istanbul gets a Christchurch airing

On Saturday December 24th starting at 12 midday New Zealand-Dutch artist, Sonja van Kerkhoff will give a herd of origami elephants an airing along the Cashel Street Mall.


Photo: Sen McGlinn.
Dec 7th, 2011, Sonja with her herd in the Octagen, Dunedin, Aotearoa / New Zealand. Click on the photo to see a larger view in a new window.

Otago Daily Times article, Dec 8th

The performance, “Caravan to Istanbul,” was performed in Istanbul while she was there as one of 8 artists in the New Zealand exhibition, “Te Kore Rongo Hungaora” (Uncontainable second nature), at the international new media festival, ISEA Istanbul.


To see photos of the Istanbul performance to go "Caravan to Istanbul"


As she was driving to Istanbul, via a number of other art-related projects, she was thinking of a way to represent a kind of globalism not dominated by money or economic policies. Caravans, in days of old, were dominated by the practicalities of getting from place to place, by politics and by cultural conditions. Van Kerkhoff believes this is still the case, only that so often what we read as ‘international news’ in our newspapers emphasizes the doings of the global elite. Each elephant in her international herd originates from a particular location in one of over 20 countries she has travelled through with this herd.


Photo: Sen McGlinn.
Sonja with the herd from Istanbul in the Nelson Saturday Market, Montgomery Square, Dec 17th, 2011.


Art and culture have been the main influencing factors here. For example one elephant in this herd is made from an Italian village church newsletter, from a church Van Kerkhoff visited. Others use printed material from the Venice Biennale, and from galleries in the Philippines. Come see how the herd is faring at its third airing in the country. Previous locations were Dunedin, Murchison and, last Saturday, in between downpours, Nelson.


Photo: Sen McGlinn.
Three of the herd in the Nelson Saturday Market, Montgomery Square, Dec 17th, 2011.

More photos in various locations: www.sonjavank.com/caravan.htm

Artworks for the "go-ganesha-go" event in Cyprus

I'm in Cyprus for 2 weeks for 1 -14 May and the following is what I plan as my contribution to the go-ganesha-go project happening in and around the Ledra Street.


“Greetings From Leiden” is an art performance featuring origami elephants bearing local news of my city in the Netherlands, the city of Leiden. The performance involves laying these out along a street and responding to people's questions. In other performances I've found that this can lead to discussions, for example about what is a greeting, about communication in general, or the relevance of communication (or a greeting) in a situation of tension between local communities. As an outsider to the Ledra Street and to the country of Cyprus, it felt it would be most honest not to bring any sort of message but rather to bring a greeting, a potential for dialogue in equality.

See other performances i've done



On the other hand, the short animation: “And these realities of things, though in the utmost diversity, are yet intimately connected one with the other” by Sonja van Kerkhoff + Sen McGlinn is loaded with messages. Yet as a viewer, you have to work out your own message.

The title, a quotation from the Bahai writings, could refer to the changing elements in the animation or it could refer to a narrative that seems to spin off in several directions at once. In the end, elephants surface, fly and seem more human than the people in the animation, in the sense that they are more free from the constraints of the world around them. This freedom is as much a message about free will as about peace, because peace is chosen and created by society. The song, Son Maloso, is by Colombian David Dely + the band, Tumba y Quema, currently based in Budapest, Hungary.

september 4 - 7th: ARS Electronica in Linz, Austria

I travelled by bus with about 40 other students from the Hague to Linz. It was a 14 hour overnight journey. I took a pile of bedding hoping to sleep, because in 2005 when I last took this trip, I was a wreck.
I sat next to Matt, mainly, because I just didn't feel like making small talk with anyone and he had recently had his jaw broken, so ignoring him wouldn't be a problem! As it turned out we chatted all night and I am really glad that we got to know each other.

Downtown Linz

The ARS ELECTRONICA Festival for Art, Technology and Society is an annual event. I decided to go at the last moment because of the conference on September 4th which featured 4 speakers I'd cited in my graduation paper Engaging Media: issues of engagement in media art projects for my masters in Media Technology. Interaction, Interactivity, Interactive Art - a buzzword of new media under scrutiny was the title of the 8 hour conference. It was fantastic and I even got into a little debate at the end.

September 4th: SoUNdSET, an interactive sound collaboration by Italian artists Domenico Sciajno and TeZ aka Maurizio Martinucci, is a 8 channel sound performance made for the Pöstlingberg circular terrace on a hill above Linz.



September 4th: Performance at Pöstlingberg by Evelina Domnitch + Dmitry Gelfand

...to be continued...