In various places on earth collective rituals are photographed: rituals sustained by individual euphoria in which colour – or colourful garment – dissolves all individuality. The full series will have its première at Onomatopee. Pictures of the human towers ‘Castells’ in Catalunya (Spain) for example, or the ‘Cascamorras’ festival (Spain) in which black paint plays a prominent role, or also the ‘Els Enfarinats’ in Ibi (Spain), a militaristic looking fight with flower, eggs and fire extinguishers that takes place on Fools Day. Another new work came about on Korea during the ‘15th Mud Festival’ that sees teens and tweens throw healing dirt at each other and rubbing it in, thus allowing for physical contact of an intimacy Asians would otherwise consider inappropriate.

A one-work installation exhibit in parallel to the exhibition of Katrin Korfmann

In collaboration with Showband O.M.
O.M. is an abbreviation for the neighbourhood Oud-Mathenesse in Rotterdam where all the band members live and where they use the community centre to rehearse. As these marching band members were filmed individually their conditioned movements were disconnected from the groups’ conditioning. By re-aligning these in montage, a visual study of movement arises, zooming in on the conditioning social mechanism that takes place during the marching of the band.

Teun Vonk (1986) is a photographer and video artist. In his work he observes how a group affects an individual. He explores different groups, ranging from teams to clubs to communities. Both during his process of developing and in the visual result, the continuous balance of influence between the group and the individual, the visual director and the subject, are at stake.

Vonk records his subjects noticeably neutral. His objective is not so much to portray but rather to conduct a visual analysis. In this visual analysis, the camera and the eventual framing of images are his instruments. As images in motion, the individual body and that of the group are taken into account as dynamic studies of form. They abstract real behavior and function as mirrors to our minds. The result is a layered combination of an abstract imagery that indirectly represents, and a figurative portrayal that directly depicts. This, in sum, constitutes a rise of individual identification, both physically and playful, while simultaneously opening up analytically and poetically.

Vonk’s work consists of video-installations, generally at full scale, such that there is a true relationship between the depicted stage and the exhibition space. This allows for the human-sized material of his research to become a visual reality and to reinforce a more intense identification between the viewer and the displayed individuals within the framework of the study.