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info@clarindewesselink.com
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instagram.com/clarinde_wesselink/

︎︎︎De Groene Amsterdammer, Column

Clarinde Wesselink,
Filmmaker & choreographer
Van Breestraat 92-1
1071 ZT Amsterdam
The Netherlands



Biography

Clarinde Wesselink is a movement artist from the Netherlands. Buddhism-influenced concepts such as emptying, forgetting, and inter-being are reflected in her somatic performance and choreographic practices. After graduating from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, she was introduced to the improvisational dance scene in Berlin. Also, she practiced in Butoh, a collection of different Japanese dance and martial art forms. Listening skills are an important focus for her, expanding it to other senses. She often collaborates with and develops dialogues and movement practices with different organisms, animals, plants and non-living entities. As she follows the rhythms and movements of non-human entities, her work becomes intertwined with the choreographies of the earth. Sometimes these are processes of months and years and sometimes of seconds. The boundaries between her and other entities seem to blur. She creates places of patience and aptitude for looking, feeling and touching. She presents her work in detailed compositions. In recent years, these compositions have taken the shape of performances and performance films. These are ambitious in themselves and meaningful in relation to each other, building a cohesive practice in which each step deepens the work: showing an image and experience in which humans are not isolated but interwoven in a web of connections with the world.


Press Release

They are not sculpture, but the films and drawings of Clarinde Wesselinkinhabit space as a sculpture does. Moving through water, flying in the air,running on the ground – all these figures in motion leave an imprint,however fleeting, on the medium that surrounds or supports them, like animage that remains momentarily on the retina after the act of perception.Accustomed as we are to see imprints as solid bodies produced by cominginto contact with some other solid body, from death masks to Duchamp’sFeuille de vigne femelle, these moving bodies leave an imprint that isinvisible, but no less present for that. Clarinde catches and documentsthese intangible imprints, these traces. Vanished from sight, she bringsthem back, momentarily (in her time-based media) or frozen in time (inthe drawings).The lava landscape, the garden, the brook: all are environments in whichthe body leaves a trace, or rather a multitude of traces, invisible butperceptible to and through the other senses. They may recall a passingform: a leaf, poised in a paused instant as it stands to attention. Theymay suggest a communication by signs with hands or other limbs as itshieroglyphs, an articular system that speaks through its own bodylanguage in an unwritten choreography. We cannot see the force ofgravity, but its laws are revealed when an object falls downward throughspace. Try to see the imprint in the air that its trajectory leaves.So we are invited to pay heed to those languages – the language of trees,the language of the sea, the language of birds in flight – to become awareof the imprints of passing and past movements that surround us, nothastily but with an ear receptive to listening to other people, otherlandscapes, before and after they pass on.

‘And suddenly it is evening.’
                           
                                                     Peter Mason
   

                                                                                                     






 
Exhibitions

2022
The Garden, film, Museumnacht, Amsterdam.
Rust, live performance, IJburg Strand, Amsterdam.
Apart, We Are Together, live performance, Dat Bolwerck, Zutphen, NL.
The Reason I move, video work, drawings, and live performances, Bolwerck, Zutphen, NL.
2021
Apart, We Are Together, live performances, Kunstkapel, Amsterdam.
Hunger, group show, AKINCI gallery, Amsterdam.
Horizon-Tale, film, nominated Social World Festival, Italy.
Horizon-Tale, film, nominated Fine Arts Film Festival, Los Angeles.
2019
Horizon-Tale, video work, De School, Amsterdam.
Ondicht, residency and exhibition, SIGN, Groningen.
Sporen, residency and exhibition, Knockvologan-Studies, Isle of Mull, Scotland.
2018
Windreizen, interactive performance, De Karavaan, Alkmaar, NL.
Windreizen, residency and performances, RAUM, Utrecht, NL.
Zandloper, performance, art center Nieuw Dakota, Amsterdam.
Zandloper, performance, art centre Casco, Utrecht, NL.
Prospects & Concepts, group show, Art Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
2017
How to touch the space, solo-exhibition, Artspace Nieuw Dakota, Amsterdam. 2016
Waterwerkers, dance performance, Oosterkerk Amsterdam.
Waterwerkers, dance performance, Festival aan de Maas, Rotterdam.
Waterwerkers, dance performance, Movement Research Center, New York.
Waterwerkers, dance performance, Nexst Festival, Turijn, Italy.
Waterwerkers, dance performance, Moving Bodies Festival, Italy.
Waterwerkers, dance performance, Nieuw en Meer, Amsterdam.
Waterwerkers, dance performance, De Karavaan, Alkmaar, The Netherlands.
Waterwerkers, dance performance, Beeld en Geluid festival, Amsterdam.
Waterwerkers, dance performance, Springtime festival, Amsterdam.
Waterwerkers, dance performance, De Old School, Amsterdam.
Waterwerkers, dance performance, De Sociale Verzekeringsbank, Amstelveen, The Netherlands.






© Doc 234/27
CA 02027 Rex
File 2/3764
© Doc 234/27
File 2/3764